Week 3 eLearning Guide for Quality

This week’s task is to identify 2 eLearning guidelines relevant to my area of practice (which is in the School of Applied Business). At present I am not involved in teaching any eLearning subjects, however, we are being encouraged to with some of our papers to allow flexibility for students that may want to take some of our courses. I am hoping that by undertaking this course, I will have a better understanding.

I found the eLearning guidelines to be very interesting reading. The guidelines contend that to successfully implement elearning guidelines, they should be done at an institution wide level, not necessarily just at an individual or course level. This got me thinking a little more about resources, time, development for elearning courses etc, then I realised that I was getting off track from the question at hand and realised that I had to make my choices!

I found it quite hard to make my choice of only two and to know whether these will really be the ones that will help and guide me through my elearning project.

The two I have chosen are:
TD1 Is the use of e-learning appropriate to the intended learning outcomes?
TT13 Does the teacher evaluate the eLearning during the course to identify its effectiveness and how to improve it?

I have chosen TD1 as my first guideline, as I am still questioning the use of eLearning and whether it is the answer to learning. Although it may not be the final solution, I can see some benefits towards the use of elearning, however, there is also the issue of time, energy and effort that is required to successfully introduce eLearning that ensures a quality product at the end. I suppose I want assurance that there is learner/teacher engagement throughout the course (same as f2f) and that the needs of the learner are being met.

I have chosen TT13 as my second guideline, as I am interested in how you can evaluate progress and the effectiveness of the course during the teaching. When you are f2f you can often guage the learner/teacher engagement, students may talk informally with you and there are informal evaluation mechanisms that we use within our programme. Again, this is really ensuring that the needs of the user are being met.