Week one reflection

The first week has been interesting. The discussions on e-learning were good. I particularly liked Carl's comment on the downsides it was interesting. Unfortunately, there are a lot of individuals in Carl's position. Unfortunately change is also inevitable. I'm sure our predecessors felt the same about changes that needed to happen in education and training as a result of technology as well. Michael Wesch is clearly an inspiration in this area.

Our remit is to serve the needs of our learners by delivering curricula and teaching in ways the can connect with. I would argue that the technological wow of e-learning has faded and allowed us to return to issues of teaching/training and learning. It's interesting to note that some of the participants see that there is a huge amount of work involved in online tutoring. With regard to the discussion tracking and moderation that clearly depends on the emphasis given to this aspect of e-learning. The course we are doing is heavily discussion based because it needs to be. If I was designing an online course and elucidated that three discussions were all I needed (1 for help ad advice and 2 related to activities) then I would have significantly less work. The other thing to consider is that you would spend time talking to learners on a face to face course so the amount of time you would commit to your course should be roughly the same.

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