Helen and I attended The University of Winchester Learning and Teaching Day 2008. The theme for the event was 'Gold Blend - Pedagogy and E-learning'.
The day began with a keynote speech entitled 'Perspectives on pedagogy and eLearning' presented by Professor Tom Boyle, Director of Learning Technology Research Institute (LTRI) from the London Metropolitan University. The London Metropolitan University are one of three universities that form the UK Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Reusable Learning Objects (CETL RLO): the others are Nottingham and Cambridge. The CETL RLO provide access to nearly 200 reusable learning objects (RLOs) and they are freely available for all. Each RLO undergoes substantial evaluation with students and tutors alike, with a strong pedagogical focus on the design. The RLOs can be downloaded and reused within your own online learning environment or for use within training sessions.
Professor Tom Boyle described the development process for creation of an RLO as one that is heavily focussed on extensive collaboration directly with tutors, lecturers and students: a process that is inclusive, iterative and extremely creative. Interestingly, Nottingham University were awarded the contract to develop the RLOs for the NHS Leadership Improvement Guides which will be available from the NHS Elearning Repository later this year. The Nottingham 'arm' of the CETL have produced a vast amount of RLOs on Health and Social Science topics. I have been lucky enough to have experienced their development process first-hand with my involvement in the development of the improvement leadership guide RLOs. It is a model I would encourage for any organisation looking to develop online content.
One rather exciting development by the CETL is their GLOs - Generative Learning Objects!!
Stick with me now!!! I know there's an overload of acronyms here.
What the CETL discovered after much research and development, was that the RLOs weren't actually as reusable as they initially thought. Yes, the objects could be reused by anybody wishing to reuse them but they could not be repurposed without a team of developers to hand. They had identified that there was weak support for repurposing the objects and local adaptation. This is where the new GLO comes in...
The GLO is designed to separate the content from the design, thus making the pedagogical pattern or template reusable for different scenarios.
The CETL have developed a free tool to repurpose their GLOs called GLO-Maker which is a WYSIWIG authoring tool. I found myself thinking "So what! there's plenty of tools on the market that can do that - show me something new!" ...What differs with their tool is that it includes a variety of ready-made storyboards and templates that have been fully research, evaluated and found to be pedagogically sound. Now you're talking! I promptly pricked up my ears, sat up in my chair and took notes furiously. The full version of GLO-Maker will be available mid June - and I for one can't wait to get my hands on it. The tool will be free and will output SCORM compliant content.
As for Nelson Mandela is dead...well, I'm sure you know its not true but it hopefully got your attention anyhow. Lecturers from the University of Winchester gave individual demonstrations of their use of technology to enhance their teaching: which included use of their new 'Learning Network' VLE (based on Moodle) as well as game-based simulation environments. Chris Horrie gave a demonstration of 'News City', their virtual newsroom that places the user in a high pressure online environment that simulates a real-life newsroom. The user, or would-be journalist, can only declare Nelson Mandela is dead when they hear it from a confirmed source http://virtualnewsroom.co.uk