Curriculum Design for Online Learning

1. Curriculum Design for Online Learning Dr Christine Armatas

2. About me • PhD from University of Melbourne • Psychologist by training • 25 years experience as an academic • Educational consultant • Expert in e-Learning and curriculum design • Specialist skills in research and evaluation

3. About you • What is your role at the Open University of China? • What do you find rewarding about your role? • What do you find challenging? • What are your students like?

4. Overview • Program • What we will cover: • Educational challenges and trends • Curriculum design and online learning • Creating and delivering an online course • e-Assessment • Useful applications • Format • Outcomes

5. Learning objectives At the end of this training you should be able to: • Describe challenges facing higher education now and in the future and discuss expected trends in the field • Understand the significance of changes in higher education and their impact on teaching and learning • Explain the concept of constructive alignment and its relationship to curriculum design, learning outcomes and assessment • Design learning activities and assessment tasks which address learning outcomes • Recognise different types of assessment be able to make judgements about whether they are authentic, valid or reliable • Create and deliver online learning activities and assessments in Moodle • Apply principles of constructive alignment and constructivist pedagogy to designing and delivering online learning

6. Topic 1. Challenges for Higher Education According to the PEW Research Center (2012) by 2020 universities will : • increase their online courses • shift to lifelong learning models • offer different ways of certifying courses • adopt new teaching approaches to meet student demand • embrace peer learning and reduce the reliance on traditional lecture/tutorial formats

7. Discussion Do you think this will be true of Chinese universities too? Why or why not? www.sydney.edu.au

8. Key trends 2013 Horizon Report by The New Media Consortium : • Technology trends to watch • Massively open online courses (MOOCs) • Tablet computing • Games and gamification • Learning analytics • Key trends • Openness • Informal learning experiences • Changes to the role of educators • Learning paradigms that are : • Online • collaborative • personalised

9. Significant Challenges • Responding to the importance of digital media literacy • Assessment practices that are: • Valid • Scalable • Sustainable • Systems and processes inhibit change • Competition from new educational models • Achieving customised learning • Getting educators to use technology (Horizon Report – 2013 Higher Education Edition)

10. Discussion • How true are these challenges of Chinese universities? • What are the most significant challenges facing Chinese higher education institutions and how does this impact on your role as a teacher?

11. The impact of labour markets Driving factors: • Need for high level skills • Skills shortages in specific areas • Employment prospects Bridging the gap between higher education and the labour market • Strengthen employer engagement and investment in skills training • Ensure that providers understand what is required in the workplace • Widen participation in higher education • Collect, analyse and utilise data in decision-making (DeWeert, 2011)

12. Producing work-ready graduates What skills and capabilities do your students need to be ready to work in their chosen careers? How does the curriculum help your students develop these skills and capabilities?

13. Topic 2. Curriculum Design www.prezi.com

14. 5 steps in Curriculum Design • Describe subject aims • Develop teaching activities • Write learning outcomes • Check alignment 1. 2. • Design assessment 3. 4. 5.

15. What are learning outcomes? Definition: • Statement identifying what students should have achieved as a result of completing a learning experience • What they should know, understand and be able to do • Can include attitudes, behaviours, values and ethics Benefits • Identifies what learners should focus on • Sets expectations • Dictates the learning activities and assessment

16. Types: • Subject mastery • Understanding • Knowledge • Subject-specific skills • Personal abilities • Cognitive skills • Employability skills • Professional awareness Knowledge: • Factual • Conceptual • Procedural • Metacognitive (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)

17. Learning Activities Should be: • based around teaching strategies that help students to achieve the desired learning outcomes; • Relevant, challenging & interesting; • Directly linked to one or more learning outcomes; • Accommodate different learner preferences.

19. Assessment Assessment can serve different purposes such as to motivate students, to provide feedback and for quality assurance. Types of assessment: • Formative versus summative • Criterion versus norm-based Assessment needs to be: • Reliable • Valid • Authentic

20. Discussion In small groups discuss your responses to the questions below. Record notes about the discussion and be prepared to report back on your discussion to the larger group. • What does it mean for assessment to be reliable, valid and authentic? • How do you design assessment so that it meets these criteria? How do you evaluate the extent to which an assessment task is valid, reliable or authentic?

22. Constructive alignment Constructive alignment (Biggs & Tang, 2007) is where learning activities and assessment are designed around learning outcomes. This alignment is crucial to assessment as learning. Benefits of a constructively aligned curriculum: • Ensures that students can demonstrate achievement of learning outcomes • Helps students to see what is important in the course • Guides teaching approaches and feedback • Can be mapped to show relationships between learning outcomes, learning activities and assessment tasks

23. Curriculum mapping • allows educators to review the curriculum to check for unnecessary redundancies, inconsistencies, misalignments, weaknesses and gaps; • documents the relationships between the required components of the curriculum and the intended student learning outcomes; • helps identify opportunities for integration among disciplines; • provides a review of assessment methods; and • identifies what students have learned, allowing educators to focus on building on previous knowledge. www.educationworld.com

24. Whole-of-course perspectives • Curriculum maps can be used to show how learning outcomes are addressed across the whole program, as well as within individual courses • Help to show development of learning outcomes and distribution of types of assessment

25. References Anderson, J.Q., Boyle, J.L. & Rainie, L. (2012). The Future of the Internet. http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/Future-of-the-internet.aspx?typeFilter=5 Anderson, L.W. & Krathwohl, D.R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman. Biggs, J. & Tang, C. (2007). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 3rd ed. England and NY: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. De Weert, E. (2011). Perspectives on higher education and the labour market: Review of international policy developments. Center for Higher Educational Policy Studies. http://www.utwente.nl/mb/cheps/publications/Publications%202011/C11EW158%20Final%20version%20Themarapport%20onderwijs%20-%20arbeidsmarkt.pdf Krathwohl, D.R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory into Practice. 41(4), 212 – 264. http://rt3region7.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/file/view/8+Perspectives+on+RBT.pdf New Media Consortium (2013) . Horizon Report – 2013 Higher Education Edition. http://www.nmc.org/publications/2013-horizon-report-higher-ed

26. Topic 3. Creating an online course What differences are there between face-to-face teaching and fully online teaching? How does this impact on how you teach online?

27. Course design

28. What is the difference between designing for a program, a course or a lesson? What is meant by horizontal and vertical integration of the curriculum and why are they important?

29. Designing learning activities Learning activities need to be linked to learning outcomes and aligned with the assessment. When developing learning activities: • Ensure activities are: • scaffolded • resourced • suitable for the level of study • explained clearly • Cater for individual preferences • Check alignment with the overall curriculum

30. Lesson design tools http://lessonlams.com/

31. Learning activities in Moodle What tools are there in Moodle that you can use to create a learning activity? How could you use these resources to create a lesson?

32. Role play lesson design http://lessonlams.com/

33. Assessing the role play activity Previously we have emphasised that learning activities need to be linked to learning outcomes and aligned with the assessment. Questions for discussion: • Would you want to assess the role play? Explain. • How could you assess the role play? • What would students need to know if the role play was assessed? • How could you incorporate assessment of the role play into your Moodle site?

34. How to assess? When deciding how to assess a learning activity, the following considerations are important: • What would be evidence that the learner had met the desired learning outcomes? • How much weighting should the task be given? • Is the assessment formative or summative?

35. Topic 4. Groups & Group work in Moodle Employers complain that graduates cannot work in teams, a skill which they believe is essential. This generic skill, along with others such as problem solving, communication, critical thinking and ethics are now being developed through the curriculum.

36. Team work What emphasis are employability skills such as teamwork given in your curriculum? How much group work is there in your courses and how is this managed? What are some of the benefits of working in a group? What are some of the challenges of team work and how do you manage them?

37. Group activities in Moodle What tools are there in Moodle that you can use to create a group activity? How could you use these resources to create a lesson requiring students to work in groups?

38. Assessing group work • Would you want to assess group work? Explain. • How could you assess a group learning activity? • What would students need to know if group work is assessed? • How could you incorporate assessment involving group work into your Moodle site? Discuss and answer the above questions in small groups – again take notes and be prepared to report back on the discussion to the large group.

39. How to assess group work “Getting the assessment right is critical. Decisions need to be focussed around four factors: 1) whether what is to be assessed is the product of the group work, the process of the group work, or both (and if the latter, what proportion of each) 2) what criteria will be used to assess the aspect(s) of group work of interest (and who will determine this criteria - lecturer, students or both) 3) who will apply the assessment criteria and determine marks (lecturer, students – peer and/or self assessment or a combination) 4) how will marks be distributed (shared group mark, group average, individually, combination)” Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne

40. Resources for group work

41. For consideration How could you incorporate these resources into the group lesson you designed previously? What additional learning outcomes could you achieve by adding these types of resources? What other resources could you suggest that would help students to learn to work effectively in teams?

42. Tips for effective team work • Set clear guidelines for the team activities and put in place measures to manage team dynamics • Ensure students understand the benefits of working in a team and why this is part of the curriculum. Start with a small activity and then build up to a larger group task • Get students to research the stages of team formation and the different roles people can take in teams so they understand how teams work– if possible make sure teams roles and membership are appropriately balanced • If assessing team work, consider including a component of peer-assessment to help manage the team process and ensure it is fair

43. 6. Using Moodle

44. Good practice for online teaching What makes a good online course? What constitutes good online teaching? What advice would you give to teachers new to teaching online? • A+

45. A toolkit for online teaching What are the basic tools that you need to design, prepare and deliver online learning?

46. Resource Sharing Information Tools Your toolkit Online Publishing Communication Tools

47. Top 10 tips for online teaching Start small and work your way up Make your resources re-usable Where possible use tools in Moodle Share your teaching experiences Make it active and fun

48. Top 10 tips for online teaching Interact with your students Keep your learning goals in mind Put learning in the hands of your students Remember the basics of good teaching

49. Top 10 tips for online teaching 10. Content is KING! But usability, design and curriculum alignment are critical too!