Final Project
Report
Multimedia Authoring and Publishing for Distance
Learning:
Theory and Practice in Developing instructional materials to enhance student
learning via the World Wide Web
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Background:
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In August 2000, I was asked by a professor in
information and communications technology in the Teacher Technology Education
program at BYU, if I would help him develop a course on authoring multimedia
instructional material for the WWW, with particular consideration to Distance
Education. At the time I was coordinating the Online Masters program (HREOnline)
in the college of education here at UIUC, and have since moved into a position
with the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education where I consult
with faculty in engineering on how to redesign their courses, course material,
etc. and how they might effectively use communication and instructional
technologies to achieve their course goals and learning objectives. |
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Making Connections:
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During my work in the Academy (AE3), I've engaged
CET in setting up courses and I've trained faculty in new technologies including
streaming media, courseware systems, content delivery online and face to
face, and pedagogical issues concerning their course content. As I've visited
with CET over time we've seen connections in our interests to help faculty
improve their understanding use, and learning about a variety of instructional
technologies available to them. We also see a need for further understanding
of what works, what doesn't, for who, why, and in what conditions while
using a variety of tools both from a formative and summative perspective. |
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Innovation in teaching and learning:
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As part of my thinking out the possibilities for the course I will be teaching for BYU in January, I thought it would be very neat to teach the course through a variety of multimedia instructional tools and asynchronous and synchronous interaction via the web as well as so that the participants would be able to experience and assess the different approaches used for themselves. I would facilitate this by teaching the course in sections. Each section would use different instructional methods and technologies to support the learning. For instance:
Additionally the delivery methods would change throughout the course. For instance:
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Objectives:
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The objective of these exercises would be to expose these prospective
teachers and faculty to what innovative methods are currently being used
in both distance education and face to face teaching settings that include
teaching and learning opportunities over the web. They will be asked as
part of the course to reflect on the experience and assess the methods
and tools used as they go throughout the class. By becoming familiar with
a variety of tools and methods used to facilitate teaching and learning
opportunities through the world wide web, and applying them in developing
instructional material, they will apply their learning a course they are
currently teaching or one in which they foresee themselves teaching in
the future as part of their assignments. This course format will help
students improve their understanding, use, evaluation, and assessment
of learning technologies available to them. |
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Collaboration Proposal:
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Rick Baird and Robert Langley in the office of CET feel that a collaboration on these issues would be beneficial for them in a number of ways. Some of them include:
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Collaborative Mutual Benefit: |
As we talked about the possibilities and structure
of such an arrangement, I suggested that one of the primary benefits to
me and all of us overtime would be to begin a collaborative relationship
where I would feel comfortable sharing my course content, activities, etc.
with CET so they could better and more quickly develop faculty training,
share data, and CET would be willing to share with me later what they have
developed moving forward with faculty training and development with this
initial effort. I believe we can promote one anothers interests in a collaborative
way that will benefit not only our immediate needs, but as we research and
publish things we learn moving forward, we can benefit the overall education
process from an instruction and information technology perspective. What
I would need from CET is to be able to work closely with Rick and Robert
to work with me on getting a variety of tools we determine together would
be appropriate and feasible for delivering such a course. The final for
the course will be the application of what the students have learned --
their own multimedia online course section in the selected format they felt
best suited them. I anticipate the number of students to be less than 20. |
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Development and Theoretical Framework: |
This project has been a large endeavor. Just setting up the mutual agreement
and relationship with CET took well over two months with emails, dialogue,
meetings, and letters concerning intellectual property. When I set up
the Master Schedule, or Course Schedule, I remember the first day I formatted
the calendar, and determined that I had to come up with activities for
45 class periods, all scheduled for 2 hours a piece. No way. Anyone who
has been involved in distance education knows that the amount of contact
time "outside" of class is extremely heavy so if you were to
set up 6 hours of contact in a week, you would go crazy. Most distance
education courses have one hour a week contact time through some kind
of class synchronous session. I have been gathering links and framing the idea for the outline of the course for several months. The framework I've decided to use is outlined on the course syllabus as follows:
Looking at the Course Schedule , you can see that the majority of time is spent on Designing and developing through learning technologies designed to assist a professor or teacher place content online in the format of a course. This in itself can be extremely intimidating and time consuming if one does not have skills as a web developer. The organization and structure of the links can be enough for faculty to say forget it. Therefore considerable time is dedicated to three of the most popular courseware or course content publishing tools, which was then followed by specific multimedia tools for developing content. In addition to a solid focus on teaching some applicable skills, I have been careful to introduce important elements of design and pedagogy that provide a theoretical basis and framework for applying these skills. |
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Reflections:
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LIS 450 LTL has provided a natural opportunity to further my thinking
on learning technologies and I have enjoyed being able to further investigate
how instructional technology can be used as learning tools, and how I
could frame a class to teach pre-service teachers about their effectiveness
and potential use. The project itself, creating a course, has been difficult but rewarding. I have felt numerous times that I was 80-90% done. But after each one of those times (i.e. previous deadlines) I found myself putting countless hours into the project. After I had the theoretical framework in developed early on in the course I thought it would be rather easy to complete. I'm still not totally finished with the course development for the Spring course, but have achieved my goals as was proposed in my project proposal. Considering my time invested on the project, and the critical points, I believe establishing the goals of the project were essential in guiding my thoughts and development efforts. Once I came up with my objectives, I was able to get a calendar together and start putting the objective into the allotted time. The number of day's on a specific topic was then assessed, and I was able to add, remove, and shift time and emphasis to different topics, etc, as I filled out the calendar and general topics for each day. From here, I began placing appropriate readings in and websites as resources that I had begun saving and bookmaking over the past several months. The keystone of the development effort (actually putting my ideas on the web) was to create the course schedule. From there, I was able to extend into specific assignments and go back and refine ideas on the syllabus, or section overviews, etc. Once I had a basic outline, basic resources, I was able to then search for resources on topics I didn't have. This took a lot of additional time. I also foresee a considerable amount of time being spent on creating lecture materials, slide shows, etc. moving forward as the actual class dates come.
Considering technical issues, I've still had to have numerous meetings with CET. We are trying to get a server set up for streaming that I will use, and at this point I'm still not sure what will come of it. We met yesterday again, and no progress had been made since the last time we met. I decided I needed to try out some basic off the shelf technology so I piloted a mini class session with the professor at BYU with free ware CUSeeMe software and AIM audio chat. It actually worked pretty well, though the video is poor. We have the advantage that all the students are planning to be in a classroom, so if worst comes to worst, I can fall back on this point to point technology to begin the class until the RealServer is set up. Ironically, these are some of the issues I will be teaching the students about and it will be a nice context to present to them that they will be able to relate too. In summary, I've enjoyed this project immensely. I really appreciate the opportunity to create something that is meaningful to my scholarship, and be pushed to go beyond my knowledge alone through mentoring and fellow student comments, suggestions, and relationships established through this course. I feel Learning Technologies are opening way's of thinking, teaching and learning that are completely new from a cognitive perspective where people can make connections with knowledge that have really never been experienced before. I believe technology will play an increasingly prevalent role in learning and it will force teachers to re evaluate their role and become more facilitative in nature to nurture students in their search for understanding. One thing I would have liked to have done was to get more formal feedback at this point of the project, but I will actively seek this feedback through my Qualification Exams here at the University in January as well as asking students for formative feedback as we go through the class.
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