Attaining 21st century skills online: A programmatic approach

This case study reports on the practical use of technology to support a programmatic approach to achieving learning outcomes. This is achieved through the provision of appropriate opportunities for online distance learning (ODL) students to achieve the range of 21st century skills needed to manage the complexity of future problems and continue to be critical consumers and producers of knowledge throughout their lives. A programme-focused assessment strategy is utilised on an ODL Humanities programme with a distributed, modular provision model, in order to satisfy related learning outcomes. This strategy allows for the deployment of a range of assessment types, many of which are only possible through the current affordances of online learning, for example, wiki-building in groups and debates using discussion forums. Both the students and the majority of the academic staff are off-campus, with technology providing the means for interaction and communication relating to assessment of learning outcome achievement. Technology is also the medium through which the off-campus subject experts who develop assessments receive appropriate, professional development such that they understand the pedagogical approaches and technological solutions available for assessment and feedback design and development. This paper will present the model through which this professional development takes place, and the way in which a team-based approach is used to ensure the appropriate design and development of assessments and related feedback mechanisms

Enhancing the teaching and learning experience of distance education through the use of synchronous online tutorials.

Oscail, Distance Education, Dublin City University is at the forefront, like many other distance education providers, in its commitment to adopting new technologies to improve the teaching and learning experience of their students (Cakir and Basak, 2004). Social interaction has been found to contribute positively to knowledge construction, higher order learning (Vygotsky, 1975 ed), achievement (Hrastinski, 2009) and successful completion (Rosenberg 2001, Salmon 2000). Advances in technology have facilitated an enhanced teaching and learning experience for distance education together with the opportunity for social interaction, an aspect often missing from traditional distance education. Following an evaluation of several web conferencing tools, Dublin City University opted to adopt Wimba Classroom to provide live, virtual tutorials. In 2010/2011, Wimba was piloted in the Bachelor of Science in Information Technology degree programme and the outcomes of this project were reported at the 2011 EADTU conference. Following the positive outcome of the pilot project, synchronous online tutorials were introduced to all Oscail programmes in 2011/2012. The use of Wimba was extended to include webinars, student presentations and student feedback sessions and to provide students with the opportunity to engage in social interaction and knowledge construction. This paper will reflect on the subsequent student and tutor experience of teaching and learning within Wimba. It will evaluate if the findings of the pilot project translated to the larger provision of online tutorials