Dr Simon Paul Atkinson (PFHEA)
Enhancing Institutional Outcomes
You are not alone! If you are faced with putting an existing course online for the first time, see it as an opportunity to refine it, invigorate it, enhance the experience offered to your students. If it’s a new online course there is all the more reason to make sure it’s as good as it …
Continue reading “Designing Courses: co-authorship with peers and students (5’30”)”
‘Dyslexia: a guide for tutors’ was originally developed in 2013 in the context of the UK. It’s a relatively long online lecture but it has some fairly simple message. Dyslexia is not a disease or a mental illness, it is a different way of seeing the world. This presentation invites colleagues to think about dyslexia, …
Continue reading “Dyslexia: a Guide for Tutors (35’02”)”
This brief presentation (6’15”) introduces some themes around guiding and motivating students online. These different facets are mentioned; being clear in instructions, avoid confusion, modelling behaviours, motivating, congratulating, anticipating motivational hurdles. This presentation was the basis for online webinar discussions with educators. It will hopefully prompt you to check your own practices against these …
Continue reading “Guiding and Motivating Students Online (6’15”)”
As so many new faculty are being compelled to teach online for the first time, many heads of department, quality assurance colleagues and academic developers are unprepared for the support the needs of faculty. Developmental peer observation is a frequently used approach to provide a reflection on an individual’s practise. Most of us will be …
Continue reading “Peer Observation Online (9’33”)”
This online lecture, first delivered as part of a UK University PGCert for educators, reviews the concepts of pedagogy and andragogy before going on to examine the applicability of Mezirow’s transformative learning theory to professional education. It also identifies Paulo Friere and bell hooks as radical thinkers in education worthy of note. Please note that …
Continue reading “Pedagogy, Andragogy and Transformative Change (23’20”)”
Some quick tips on how to engage students and manage your interventions in online discussion forums. Faculty unfamiliar with supporting learners online sometimes create a huge workload for themselves by poorly structuring discussions. They may also perceive their role to answer each and every posting, which is impossible when teaching at scale. This short video …
Continue reading “Engaging and Intervening in Discussion Forums (5’43”)”
This six-minute screencast (6’06”) is a top-level set of guidelines for developing effective teaching materials. For some, it may feel like going over well-worn ground, for others it may provide pause for thought. Rationalising what constitutes learning materials seems superficially straight-forward but when one considers the different institutional interpretations of what represents ‘direct’ learning versus …
Continue reading “Designing Effective Teaching Materials (6’06”)”
This ten-minute video (10’17”) is a series of screen captures from live synchronous webinars taught using Adobe Connect (2015). It is annotated to give you some sense of how to manage interactivity, manage your tone, reflect on the importance of personal presence and to make use of the visual nature of the webinar interface. These …
Continue reading “Teaching through Webinars (10’17”)”
Short vodcast (3’25”) outlining four dimensions to the choices of media that IDs and academic faculty might consider as they make selections to support student learning. Originally a vodcast to accompany internal development it is long enough to provoke some reflective practice, short enough not to waste your time! It invites educational practitioners to think …
Continue reading “Basics of Media Choice in Teaching (Vodcast 3’25”)”
This six-minute video (6’18”) is entitled ‘Best Practices in Preparing Online Materials for Webinar facilitation.” It is essential guidance for novice webinar teachers. There are 8 tips for preparing your webinar so you do not end up asking questions into the dark abyss and hear nothing back from your students. This screencast was generated for …
Continue reading “Preparing for Webinar Teaching (6’18”)”
https://youtu.be/Q-7felRll-g This seven-minute video (originally generated as a Podcast produced in 2015) provides a quick overview of 8 ways designers of educational material can ensure clarity for their students. Each is applicable to the development of distance online materials as much as it is to face-to-face visual materials. These resources from 2013-2017 are being shared …
Continue reading “Accessibility and Sequencing in Teaching (6’59”)”
This is a walkthrough of the basics of discussion forums (Moodle, but principles apply). This was recorded in 2015. Please view it as an overview of how to approach developing meaningful seed questions and to think about your moderation strategy. These resources from 2013-2017 are being shared to support colleagues new to teaching online …
Continue reading “Using Discussion Forums for Teaching (Basic) (4’18”)”
Acutely aware that there are still colleagues with little, or no, experience of supporting students online I thought I would start sharing some elementary resources. Here’s a share of a short (2’52”) screencast video that walks through the five steps in Gilly Salmon’s E-Moderating model. While it is not universally applicable and it may depend …
Continue reading “Foundations to e-moderating (2’52”)”