Chris'+Heuristics

=**Task 2 - Online design Activity**=


 * Draft design - Chris Ohly**



=Task 1 - Heuristics=


 * 1. Chris Ohly**


 * Draft Heuristic:**


 * The more time you spend in preparation the more time you will save in operating your online course.**

This heuristic draws on two case studies reported in a paper by Woo et al (2007) titled “ Implementing Authentic Tasks in Web – Based Learning Environments”. Thinking and planning before the implementation phase helps you to manage the high workload of teaching with authentic tasks online. One of my jobs is to interface appropriate online learning tools with desired learning outcomes. When I develop online courses in collaboration with academics, it is critical to plan and assess every component of their course so that the design achieves the desired learning outcomes. From my experience, time spent in this process enables more efficient management of the course when teaching starts.


 * Comments:**


 * SG -** I wonder if your heuristic would read better if it was in the active voice (e.g. Prepare content well and save operating time later) (Actually, my example reads far worse!)

Shirley - agree with Steve's suggestion to paraphrase into a guide/tip. Justin; I read the paper Woo et al- prob should mention your name too Shirley ; ) success or failure depends on interaction which is of course ongoing. More preparation does not necessarily account for this aspect of operating an online course, Salmon indicates this in chapter one regarding e-moderating providing snippets from "Janes diary" she was online at all sorts of hours interacting with participants and ensuring they felt their voice was heard. Perhaps refining the train of thought along the lines of __**moderate, not operate**__ more preparation during instructional design will allow the teacher to follow the open ended nature of online authentic tasks as participants plot their own course specific to their own needs.

SG - Chris, The Bennett and Lockyer paper did an actual analysis of time spent on preparation, online and post lesson; on this actual course. They had some interesting comparisons between online and traditional teaching.


 * 2. Chris Ohly**


 * Draft Heuristic:**


 * If you believe that learning is a social process you must monitor the quality of student interactions in your asynchronous online discussion forum.**

This heuristic is based on a quantitative study conducted by Dawson (2006) about the possibility with data mining technology to find patterns in student to student interactions in asynchronous online discussion forums to inform timely facilitation for student learning. Two research question were addressed in this study; “Does the quantity of forum contributions influence the degree of sense of community experienced among the student cohort?” “Does the percentage of learner to learner (student to student) postings deriving from a unit of discussion forum influence the degree of sense of community experienced among the student cohort.” This is an interesting area of research and one that is relevant to my work.


 * Comments:**

Do you think that monitoring of student interactions will change those interactions? Privacy & ethics considerations means that students must be informed if they are being monitored, and the monitoring might restrict the range of conversations and learning experiences that students are willing to share??
 * Steve G.**

Steve, you make an interesting comment here. The article by Dawson refers to large scale monitoring, or data mining, of student to student interactions in online discussion forums in higher education settings. The content of the discussion postings is not the focus of this type of monitoring. There are three kinds of interactions identified, student to student, student to instructor and system postings, (which include orphaned posts or those that get no reply). Strong community can be measured by the number of student to student interactions and if there are many system postings a sense of community declines. Individual monitoring of students would be inefficient and not possible with a large number of students. When data can be visualized the unit instructor receives a snapshot of a period of time which shows the number of links between learners in discussion postings. This is a very efficient method of identifying at periphery (at risk students) in order to intervene and adjust their teaching. Here is an example: [] (scroll down to see the diagram). I would hope that monitoring student interactions would change those interactions for the better.
 * Chris**

SG - That sounds more interesting. There's an interesting online book by Jono Bacon called [|The Art of Community] that looks at the factors that make strong learning communities - and he talks a lot about the communication patterns. He came from being a community manager for Ubuntu. It's a good read.