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Last week at Jisc Digfest I gave a demonstration of the new Jisc Scaling up online learning guides and the Online Learning Readiness Tool* which received a lot of interest. It was a great opportunity to share the resources that have been developed over the last year as a result of feedback from the wider community and the support of the projects excellent Working Group. This blog post provides an overview of the key features of the resources I shared during the demo session and also how you can get involved/use and access them.
Key features of the Online Learning Readiness Tool*
- Designed to help you reflect on the kinds of question that you need to consider when
developing, teaching or supporting online learning activities - You can work through each pathway in sequence or just those that are of most interest to you.
- Can be used at an individual level, or at a team level where you can compare the teams readiness, strengths and weaknesses
- The tool saves all of your assessments results so that you can review them at any time.
- Intended audience: course/curriculum design leaders, learning & teaching staff and support staff
If you want to know more about the tool, see the ‘Get involved’ section at the end of this blog.
Scaling up online learning guides: overview
Guide 1: Scaling up online learning provides a strategic view of different models and the implications of implementing online learning at an institutional level
Guide 2: Curriculum design and support for online learning helps you make decisions around curriculum design and determine support needs when scaling up online learning
Guide 3: Technology and tools for online learning provides guidance, resources and case studies around the use of technology to support online courses and distance learning programmes.
All three guides provide:
- Tools, techniques, strategies and activities at institutional, strategic delivery levels to support the development and provision of online/distance learning programmes
- A series of questions at the beginning of each section that you may want to consider
- A table of potential barriers and the actions you can take to handle them at the end of each section
- Illustrated examples from institutions that have developed useful approaches to overcoming the barriers
Using the guides
In addition to offering a comprehensive source of information and resources to help users understand the decisions that need to be made and the processes involved around scaling up online learning at an organisational level, reviewers of the guide also identified these three key potential uses for the guides:
Strategy & planning – “The prompt questions at the start of each section & barriers table at the end could form the basis of strategy discussion / activities / away days around the topic to inform decision making.”- Course development
- Staff and personal development – “We will link to the guides through our own internal pages and use various sections in staff development activities.”
Get involved!
As part of the demo, we asked the delegates to get involved with using the Online Learning Readiness Tool* within their institutions and I’d very much like to extend this invitation to readers of this blog. The public version isn’t quite ready yet, but as soon as it is you will be provided with access details. Drop me an email if you’d be interested in this at heather.price@jisc.ac.uk To keep yourself updated on the wider project do join the project mailing list.
* Please note that the name of the tool may change.