‘Sizing up’ the online course: Adapting learning
designs to meet growing participant numbers
‘Sizing up’ the online course: Adapting learning
designs to meet growing participant numbers
Online course design has experienced an upheaval recently with the arrival of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), turning the model which underpins many online courses on its head. In contrast to MOOCs, conventional online courses have usually been designed for small private groups of participants, giving access to closed content and online tutors able to cater for individual needs and provide personalised feedback on tasks. What principles and practical considerations underlie these different design approaches? The development of a pre-arrival online distance learning course for international students offered by an elearning unit in Modern Languages between 2005 and 2014 illustrates interesting aspects of this evolution. This course, focusing on English language development and transitions to UK academic culture, reflects an historical design shift from accommodating small tutored groups of 25 to an open student-driven course for over 2500 participants which exhibits features of emerging MOOCs. This paper will describe the evolution of this course design to allow a flexible response to needs in a changing learning context. Specific features of the learning design which have changed or remained constant will be identified and adaptations made to ‘size up’ the course and cater for growing numbers of participants will be highlighted
Watson, Julie
cdb14f26-f2b9-40ac-97ac-15545c5649ae
December 2014
Watson, Julie
cdb14f26-f2b9-40ac-97ac-15545c5649ae
Watson, Julie
(2014)
‘Sizing up’ the online course: Adapting learning
designs to meet growing participant numbers.
In 2014 EUROCALL Proceedings.
Research-publishing.net.
6 pp
.
(doi:10.14705/rpnet.2014.000254).
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
Online course design has experienced an upheaval recently with the arrival of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), turning the model which underpins many online courses on its head. In contrast to MOOCs, conventional online courses have usually been designed for small private groups of participants, giving access to closed content and online tutors able to cater for individual needs and provide personalised feedback on tasks. What principles and practical considerations underlie these different design approaches? The development of a pre-arrival online distance learning course for international students offered by an elearning unit in Modern Languages between 2005 and 2014 illustrates interesting aspects of this evolution. This course, focusing on English language development and transitions to UK academic culture, reflects an historical design shift from accommodating small tutored groups of 25 to an open student-driven course for over 2500 participants which exhibits features of emerging MOOCs. This paper will describe the evolution of this course design to allow a flexible response to needs in a changing learning context. Specific features of the learning design which have changed or remained constant will be identified and adaptations made to ‘size up’ the course and cater for growing numbers of participants will be highlighted
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Published date: December 2014
Venue - Dates:
2014 EUROCALL, 2014-08-20 - 2014-08-23
Organisations:
Modern Languages
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 372728
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/372728
PURE UUID: 66396ab3-0491-4a6b-a1fe-4b1c67eca71e
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Date deposited: 19 Dec 2014 11:52
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 18:41
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