Post on 19-Dec-2015
Human Resources
‘Blue skies’ storyboards
Greg Benfield
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Iterative design process
Blue skies design at Programme level
Re-design at Programme level
Risk assessment
Design at Activity level
Re-design at Programme level
Critical friends
Refinement of activity design
Specific activity design (alpha)
Implement & review
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Blue skies storyboard
Represent diagrammatically how you want your online course to be (best of possible real worlds)
Why?
To articulate the design objectives at the highest level …
…so that decisions at finer grained levels are easier to evaluate
… and see Sharpe, Benfield et al (2006)
Who for?
Yourselves in the first instance …
… and for your critical friends here today
… students, validation panels, colleagues, etc
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
What should go on it?
The Blues skies planning checklist (handout) is a tool to help you identify important elements.
It is not meant to be prescriptive – use as much or as little as you feel is relevant
The next slides show some examples of what others did …
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Institutional rationales…
are highly contextualised and institutionally specific Flexibility of provision
• E.g. student recruitment and retention , opening facilities for longer hours, etc
Supporting diversity • E.g. online support services
Enhancing the campus experience• E.g. supporting geographically dispersed students, e-portfolios
to support field work, technology rich classrooms that support interaction in large cohorts
Operating in a global context • E.g. marketing courses globally, competitive advantage,
developing global citizens with e-literacy skills Efficiency
• E.g. free up staff time, or at least make working locations and hours more flexible, make more effective use of contact time with students
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Local/course level rationales
Maintaining course quality in response to increasing cohort sizes E.g. • learning objects for working through difficult topics • extension activities for subsets of students • additional opportunities for feedback • preparing students for practical work • creating opportunities for dialogue in small groups • promoting interactivity in class
Engaging students out of class, E.g• discussions which structure and pace study between face to
face sessions• discussion boards for sharing critical incident analyses during
placements• interactive tasks for students to use outside of class time • multiple choice questions to help students judge their progress
prior to examinations
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Local/course level rationales 2
Developing professional skills• online collaborative work as a key skill for modern business
practice • using spreadsheet tasks to develop computer literacy in
accountancy • promoting interprofessional learning in nursing
Educational rationales • enhancing associative, constructivist or situative learning
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Recommendations
• be clear about the reasons for the blend • be consistent and transparent in communicating rationales and
expectations to students• transformative practices were frequently underpinned by radical
course redesigns:“We recommend engaging staff in multi-professional, team-based course redesign projects.”
• successful courses had undertaken several iterations of course developments, taking into account student feedback:
“There is a need to undertake evaluations of e-learning developments and to co-ordinate, promote and disseminate their results”
Sharpe, R, Benfield, G, Roberts, G and Francis, R (2006). "The undergraduate experience of blended e-learning: a review of UKliterature and practice undertaken for the Higher Education Academy." Retrieved 3 October, 2006, from http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/research/Sharpe_Benfield_Roberts_Francis.pdf