What’s your take on the quality of content in online courses?
Claude says "Howdy!"
For the first post in this blog (and emailed to the subscribers’ list), I found three unusually valuable blog postings you may want to check out all related to the quality of the content commonly found in online or blended courses.
- The one that got me started: Poor quality content in online Higher Education?
- One for instructors: What is content in elearning?
- One for students: PLEASE Don’t Blog or Tweet
A thought leader in e-learning and a mentor and hero of mine, Linda Harasim from Simon Fraser University, has started a GROG (group blog) to experiment “with using WordPress to support an eLearning knowledge community.”
She calls it “Ask, So What? Looking critically at online education, social media, policy & research, and asking So What?” (http://asksowhat.com/).
Linda spotted a post entitled “eLearning at Universities: A Quality Assurance Free Zone?” in a blog by Mark Smithers. Mark was severely critical of what he sees as a mostly poor level of quality in the content of online courses in higher ed.
The One that Got Me Started
Linda used his post to launch a very interesting conversation for people helping faculty to build good quality online or blended courses. Here’s the link:
For Instructors Building Online or Blended Courses
Linda created another discussion thread entitled “What is content in elearning?” that may be of great interest to you or instructors you know. I found it quite illuminating:
For Students in Online or Blended Courses
Finally, in “Engaged Learning: Organizational Improvement & Culture Straight Talk,” a blog authored by Kevin Jones, he posts a great discussion for students about the difference between “blogging” and “tweeting” just because you’re supposed to and doing it when you have a real purpose. Purpose is everything and Kevin’s post will really make them stop and think about all that mindless smart phone thumbing that seems to be going on these days.
Feel free to share any of these links under your own signature or credit me (Claude Whitmyer at FutureU.Com) if you think it would help to cite an outside expert (an “expert” is someone from out of town–grin).
Until next time, let me know what’s on your mind. What’s your biggest issue these days? Feel free to send me a question you want answered; anything at all about elearning (administration, teaching, learning, virtual or blended, tools or techniques, software or cloud tools). I’d be pleased to find you a quick answer.
All the best,
claude
4 Comments
trying to find you on facebook, wats ur profile
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For me content is the most important part of a blog. What could be the use of your perfect layout yet, you have nothing good to offer for your visitors?…what’s the use of a catchy titles if in the end you only fail your readers with your out of the world write ups?…It’s in the content of the blog you can prove your worth.
Good point, PETC!
Do you have any example sites you could point us to that would illustrate either “good” content or “poor” content or both?
Thanks,
claude
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