Initial thoughts

Stop the procrastination and get on with the brainstorm process for a suitable special topic. My teaching area is Hotel Management as part of an Applied Business degree. As part of collaboration with another New Zealand polytechnic, we have students that can be enrolled onto the papers we offer and study these by distance. My teaching up until July last year as all been face to face (f2f) and therefore have not necessarily thought about some of the challenges of eLearning. I have decided to look at a paper that I am to facilitate next semester as a distance paper. I am currently teaching the paper f2f with students on campus for the first time. This will give me a good idea of the expectations I have with f2f students and then what I will need to accomplish with on online programme.

I had put my initial thoughts about this via the discussion board on Blackboard (the learning management system) that Manukau Institute of Technology use with their students. I think I was being a little too ambitious to start with, so am glad that Oriel let me know this! So that is where my thoughts are at the moment with my project – obviously more detail to come.

I think the key to the special topic is that the project is accomplishable within the semester. I really want to know that I have put in some effort, explored different eLearning options, trial things I have learnt through the course so far as well as being able to know that student learning will benefit from my efforts. Oh, and on a budget!

This blog will serve as a reflective journal throughout the semester, a place to post milestones and my progress. I hope that I will also gain some valuable feedback and comments from anyone that cares to follow what I am writing as well.

Of course there will be challenges along the way, the paper that I have chosen to use is a theoretical paper, but in our f2f situations there is alot of discussion in classes. I need to think about different ways that students can be interactive (this will of course depend on the number of students that might take this course via distance).