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 …

Human Resources

Human Resources

Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development

Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development

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