the end of Section 5

My impressions of online learning as a student are much more positive than before. I have become a confident learner and I feel I can even grasp technical aspects of online design related to online tests and different forms of assessment. Through the constant research and practical adaptation of such sources as JISC, MTT, MERLOT, RDN, CAA, IML I have understood that online knowledge is accessible and online design ‘doable’ even for the beginners like myself. There has been a certain level of learning routine which I developed until now which helped to enforce my confident attitude, but most of all it was the group forum and continuous contact with other students that reduce my anxiety about new elements of knowledge or design. There has been always someone there to help! I treat the material on this course more flexibly and the links provided on the UEL Plus make it possible. I am not so afraid that I cannot research every single recommended source which links with another source and another source. I think I have learnt how to be an online learner and apply my knowledge according to the ILO’s on each section and on the course as a whole. It was particularly due to the activities on constructive alignment I can see how much my personal project has gained from this experience. I would be able to design my own online activities from the ‘internal’ point of view - from the inside of the process of online learning. Through the assessment activities in this section I have learnt how much every word in the guidelines and every element of the assessment design matters and can affect the result of assessment. I particularly enjoyed learning about self-test and different softwares for assessment, again, I realised that I can do it too! I am going to apply them to my teaching now (still on the WebCt when I write it), even before I start designing my real online module. Through this section I have learnt how online assessment and self assessment can be applied to blended learning which I party practice at the moment. However, summative online assessment is not yet possible in my teaching, but I will readapt formative forms of assessment. Today I had group presentations from students all day and I was looking at them from the point of view of how online peer assessment could help them to solve traditional teamwork problems before the deadline. I would like to write a short paper about this particular problem and publish it on one of the openwares which we have been using. I think my feelings at this stage are similar to those of others, we all realised that on this course we learn through practising what we will be teaching and therefore our motivation has increased. The closest similarity I find with Les who also teaches a vocational module and Gosia who is going to apply blog to her assessment. Nevertheless, I have also realised that there still gaps in my knowledge on online teaching and learning which I need to cover. They are methods of online assessment: PowerPoint Interactive Mode which I am going to learn it from the guidelines available on the Internet and different test and quizzes which need a closer analysis – I am going to research the case studies from Swinburne Home (http://www.tafe.swin.edu.au/indsci/assess/examples.http). Before we move fully to the UELPlus, I will need to learn Respondus which is used by the UEL WebCt which I will consult with Michale Parkes, our advisor. Another area I need to know more about is standards of CAA. It can be done through colleagues ‘in-house’ or Learning and Teaching Support Network (my discipline – advertising does not have a subject centre for online teaching yet)