I am constantly looking for ways to improve the training we provide within my organization. I have worked with my small section to look at instructor and student feedback to generate quite a lot of ideas for change. However, I have limited resources and my time is constrained by other duties as well, so sometimes determining what to focus on is difficult.
When we talk about change in distance education, I think of essentially every conversation that I have had with someone who has taken a distance education course in the early 2000s and because of their poor experience is convinced that distance learning can not be as good as face-to-face learning. Dron (2014) highlights how pedagogy and instructional media have evolved together, detailing reasons why some evolutions are successful and others are not.
Most of our learning takes place face-to-face, so in that way, our instructional system appears relatively soft as modifying a face-to-face lesson plan is far less time consuming than redesigning online learning (Chapman, 2010). However, the lack of instructor training, their reliance on PowerPoint and lack of subject matter expert time makes even modifications to our face-to-face learning challenging. Dron’s (2014) article is encouraging as it advocates breaking learning into small isolated chunks which we already do as modules. Focusing on changing one module is more manageable than making changes to an entire course. Some of the changes we are currently trialling within my directorate are new to the whole organization. “Allowing flowers to bloom requires new varieties to be at least partially sheltered from each other at first” (Dron, 2014, p. 247). We have implemented the changes in only a few courses, collecting student feedback and modifying the initiatives accordingly. For further changes, Dron (2014) advocates Bate’s ACTIONS model to help select technology. I will incorporate this into future options analysis to help determine what changes to tackle next!
What parts of Dron’s (2014) article did you feel are applicable to your work?
References:
Chapman, B. (2010). How long does it take to create learning? [Research Study]. Published by Chapman Alliance LLC. Retrieved from http://www.chapmanalliance.com/howlong/
Dron, J. (2014). Innovation and Change: Changing how we Change. In Zawacki-Richter, O. & T. Anderson (Eds.), Online distance education: Towards a research agenda. Athabasca (pp. 237-265). AB: AU Press.