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Beyond events: online professional development for part time staff

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If you train staff, students learn better (Gibbs & Coffey, 2004) ... Lyceum/flashmeeting. Electronic assignment submission. eTMA system. tutor. student. monitor ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Beyond events: online professional development for part time staff


1
Beyond eventsonline professional development
for part time staff
  • Janet Macdonald
  • OU in Scotland
  • SHED Annual meeting Jun 2007

2
Advantages of events
3
Learning to be a teacher..
  • If you train staff, students learn better (Gibbs
    Coffey, 2004)
  • Most staff learn to be an HE teacher on the job
  • remembering own experience as students
  • and shared social practices (Knight, Tait Yorke
    2006)
  • But events still important for introducing new
    ideas, policy and practice

4
Eraut says..
  • Learning depends on the intention of the learner
  • implicit taken for granted
  • reactive in response to need for information
  • deliberative when time deliberately set aside
  • (Eraut, 2000)

5
OU in Scotland part time tutors
  • 550 in all parts of Scotland
  • Work from home
  • Mark assignments
  • Provide tuition
  • Professionally isolated!

6
(No Transcript)
7
Library resources
  • 14,000 electronic journal titles
  • 7,500 e-books
  • 255 databases
  • 93 courses integrating e-resources

8
Startrek to Shakespeare...
Star Trek to Shakespeare
9
Lyceum/flashmeeting
10
Electronic assignment submission
student
Staff tutor
  • eTMA system

tutor
monitor
11
Researching online professional development
  • Tutor Moderators formal provision
  • Online communities supporting non formal learning

12
Tutor Moderators the extended event
13
What does the course do?
  • Three week training in online facilitation which
    covers
  • social skills
  • technical skills
  • pedagogical aspects

Developed by OU in Scotland Run for the benefit
of the whole OU community
14
Exit questionnaire
  • 130 respondents over 9 presentations Nov 2005-Oct
    2006
  • evaluation forum
  • experience
  • confidence/competence
  • successes
  • ideas for enhancement

15
Winning features
  • Collaborative and experiential approach, working
    across faculties and regions
  • Its good to see the range of approaches and
    solutions and carefully consider the pros and
    cons.
  •    Its been a great opportunity to be a
    participant in a conference where all the other
    contributors are sharing experiences and
    practical tips.

16
Winning features
  • The online student experience
  • It has helped me to see things from the
    students perspective and this will be
    particularly important when designing activities
    for my own students.
  • to get the sense of what it is like to be a new
    student in a group hopefully I can hold on to
    that feeling if I do go on to moderate.

17
Winning features
  • restricted flexibility
  • learning contract activity list
  • certificate of completion

18
But participants want
  • Content to take away
  • Space to come back..

19
Online communities at the OU
20
Methodology
  • Transcripts from 8 presentations Tutor Moderators
    course Jan 06-Jan 07
  • 94 responses to Activity 1E
  • Iterative reading, emergent themes

21
Activity 1E
  • Explore the forums on your desktop.
  • What forums did you visit?
  • What purposes did you think they had?
  • Share your observations and experiences in the
    Reflections forum with your fellow participants.
  • Now have a look at the attached file to this
    message and see what we think. To what extent do
    you agree with these ideas?

22
Categories online staff room
23
Course discussion
  • - they are active and a reply to an urgent
    question usually takes only a few hours. ..We
    recently were questioning our own understanding
    of a particular assignment question. I guess
    it takes a brave tutor to say I dont get this-
    but once someone did it was huge relief and more
    added their concerns.. (Tutor 10, Jan 06)

24
Sharing resources
  • One of the very experienced tutors has posted
    his tutorial handouts on his own website and I
    discovered that fact from the forum. The
    materials he has produced are outstanding and
    have saved many of his fellow tutors hours of
    work. (Tutor 5, Jan06)

25
Peer support..
  • a great way to get in touch with other
    tutors, to keep in touch with the course team
    about things that we need advice about, or for us
    to give our own views and feedback. Its also a
    great way to share a smile and a joke
    occasionally..many of us work in far flung
    placesso its good to feel part of a body of
    people from time to time. (Tutor 68, Jun06)

26
Plenary, interdisciplinary.
  • ..there seems to be an intense discussion about
    politics and education provision. A debate is
    good, but in some opinions are quite forceful and
    may put someone off joining the forum. I would
    feel uncomfortable sending a message to this
    forum... (Tutor 65, Jun06)

27
To join or not?
  • Centrality to role
  • Issues which matter
  • Size of message base
  • Clarity of purpose
  • Wenger, 1998
  • Preece, 2000

28
  • Learning Development Team
  • OU in Scotland
  • www.open.ac.uk/scotland
  • OU Knowledge Network
  • http//kn.open.ac.uk
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