If you're like most instructors, you love your subject and the idea of sharing information gives you great satisfaction. However, you have probably noticed that it's easy to overload your students, or to give them materials in a way that tends to confuse them. How can you avoid overloading and confusing your students?
One of the most effective ways to do so is to make sure that you base your selections of instructional materials on course outcomes and on the learning objectives for each unit. Keep in mind what you'd like your students to be able to do after they complete the course. What is the basic, enduring knowledge they will take with them after the course is over? What kind of fundamental change do you want to occur in terms of the student's abilities? What kind of new skills will they be able to perform?
Once you answer these questions, you will have a list of learning outcomes. Keep them in mind as you select the instructional material you wish to use in your course.
It is often convenient to develop a map or a diagram that connects your learning outcomes with the course materials and the assessments you will use. Consider what you want your students to learn, and how you'd like them to perform. Also, you shape the sequence you will build and how you'll present the materials.
It is often convenient to develop a map or a diagram that connects your learning outcomes with the course materials and the assessments you will use. Consider what you want your students to learn, and how you'd like them to perform. Also, you shape the sequence you will build and how you'll present the materials.
Using forums to present your material
We'll start with an approach that is very easy to implement, which is ideal if you're just getting started and need a solution that would be good for all kinds of e-learning, including mobile learning and guided independent study.
pTools today announced the completion of a significant deployment of pTools Content Management Software (CMS) for the new Pensions Board online learning service.
Available to pension scheme trustees (of which there are more than 200,000) and anyone working in the pension’s industry, the service provides training free of charge in an easy to use, self-managed environment. The new initiative was designed to respond to new legislation which, from 1st February, requires all pension scheme trustees to undertake training at least once every two years.
The system includes extensive user management and learning content management features driven by the core pTools content management engine. pTools worked with The Pensions Board and pensions industry partners to deliver the technology behind the online learning solution that is easy to use, intuitive and capable of being updated to reflect a continuously evolving regulatory environment.
Moodle Course Conversion: Beginner’s Guide is a new book from Packt that provides the quickest way for teachers and trainers to turn their familiar teaching materials into a Moodle e-learning course. Written by Ian Wild, this book helps to add multimedia, and incorporate existing sounds and videos to improve a course by converting the existing handouts, worksheets, and other resources into Moodle courses.
ATutor 1.6.2 has been released. This is a significant release, with the addition of quite a number of new features, and further support for accessibility and interoperability standards.