A Rethink...

I've recently had a very productive meeting with Heather who kindly has helped me catch up a bit, and have revised my original ideas that I had listed below.

Background
The Certificate in Global Travel Level 4 incorporates the National Certificate in Travel Level 4. Two unit standards I teach in this programme is Unit 18213 Destination UK & Eire and Unit 3727 Destination Pacific Islands. Both these units are 10 credits each, so are considerably large in their content and assessment value.

We had several students wishing to complete these papers on their own and so four years ago I was asked to begin putting together an "e-learning solution" on our current LMS BlackBoard. Over the years I've refined it to the point where not only is it used by "on-line students" but I now use it as a base for my f2f classes and I often get positive comments from my f2f students on how useful they find it in doing their assignments.

As I've already talked about, I've been off work for 3 months and as a result the current Level 4 students have had to rely on this information much more than normal to complete their work. I've also mentioned that I've been asked to transfer/create new e-Learning /Blended delivery information to be put on Moodle which is our new preferred LMS here at UCOL.

I think that I should conduct a needs analyis of my current Level 4 students asking them what they liked about the current course on BlackBoard and what they would like to see included in future courses. For instance I want to add You Tube /Getaway clips of some of the destinations they need to study. Will they find this useful? Will it be easy to download?

Earlier on I had idenitified ST 8: Rather than just recalling facts, does the course help the student digest, reflect on and review new learning?

Does the information I currently give them help with Destination units? Or is it simply a repository for information? Sometimes I think I am guilty of this - how can I make it better for them so they actually learn, not just blandly find information for regurgitation into an assignment?
I think I will ask questions in this vein to find out more about what they would think would be appropriate for future students from the new Moodle site .

I had also identified SD 3: Do students gain knowledge relevant to employment and/or current thinking in their field? However I think now I will change that to look at ST9: Do the technologies employed help students successfully meet the learning outcomes?
Is the information provided help (or hinder) the students? Should I use other technologies (such as Facebook or similar) for some areas of their learning? Again I have some ideas of questions in this vein.

More to come...