University of Salford Occupational Therapy Education Blog

Sarah and I were invited to give a Key Note address at the University of Bradford conference: The Connected Learner: Distance Learning for the 21st Century last week. Through our networks we had been recommended to speak about our experiences in developing the MSc Advanced Occupational Therapy programme delivered online from registration to graduation (applications for Sept 09 intake accepted until August 24th 2009).
Whilst being nervous, we were very keen to both share our ideas and learn from the experiences of others.
The first Key note speaker, Palitha Edirisingha from University of Leicester talked of his work in the media zoo and the work of the Beyond Distance Research Alliance -. Palitha also referred to Salmon's 5 stage model of elearning which is something I intend to look at more closely in a quiet moment.

We then sat in on a couple of workshops on Second Life and the use of social networking in learning . As we were not staff at the university we had difficulty getting access to the internet - but it was a useful experience to see how delegates were introduced to Second Life, and the facilitiator, Will Stewart has kindly offered to share his extremely clear notes and instruction for us to consider using with our second year MSc students as we begin to introduce them to Second Life.

Lunch was very tasty, and we had a chance to chat to a few of the delegates. Sarah's chair nearly landed her in a very embarrasing situation - but luckily she managed to compose herself and the offending bolt from the chair was later found under the table to corroborate her story!

Sarah and I presented to the conference after lunch - potentially the graveyard slot - but we were well received and managed to keep to time. We explored (amongst other things) the importance of
a) the pedagogy informing the technology
b) being a student yourself of the technology before expecting others to engage
c) online identity (more of this soon in another post)
d) social constructivist approach - and being consistant with this
e) pushing boundaries and challenging self and others

We also shared what we have learned from our developments and what we have still to learn. Whilst there were very few questions immediately after our session, we were asked many at the plenary session. Most centred on how we are using negotiated assessment and the time resource requirements in developing and delivering a totally online programme.

What becomes clear as we network and reflect more about our programme is how innovative we are here at Salford with this MSc. Whilst there are pockets of online teaching and learning developments, very few are delivering whole programmes totally online using elearning principles.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to attend our Key Note address. We have been invited to join a couple of University online networks in Ning and Pebblepad - which we are looking forward to being involved in. We have also exchanged contact details with a number of people who are interested in what we are doing and may want to collaborate with us in the future. We are always happy to work with others and share ideas and experiences where relevant.

image by AHook
It has been a while since I have posted, so I thought I should get back into the swing of things having just been to our Universities first good practice in e-learning event.

It was an interesting day with much food for though, not least stimulated by the guy who asked "Is this all really good practice? How do we know?" And how do we know, because so much of it is new, innovative and ultimately untested? But I digress from the issue of social networking...

Angela and I had been invited to present on our experiences of developing an online programme and the role of social networking in education. Preparing the session lead me to realise that as OT's we are immersed in networks, or teams and that this really isn't such a new concept to us. The question became how can we use web 2.0 applications to enable our students to maximise the potential of their existing networks, or create new ones in order to enhance their learning and development?

In order to answer this question, I reflected on my own experiences of learning through social networking. Prior to the onset of our programme development I was totally ignorant of the world of web 2.0. It is entirely through talking to others online and in real life, reading and interacting with blogs, contribution to online forum discussions and experimenting with Second Life that my enthusiasm was fired and I became more motivated to learn and apply my learning to my work. I now know that I have been immersed in socially constructed learning and I can honestly say I have found it to be the most positive and motivating approach to learning that I have experienced.

The critical point though, is that I felt I needed to learn and needed to learn fast and in some depth in order to keep up with the challenge of developing the programme - this could be described as Long Tail Learning. Was I motivated by the desire to succeed or by the fear of failure? A bit of both really, but then isn't that true of all students????

Please find my presentation below and this book is really useful too. Comments are welcome.