On September 29, SACE and VVOB organized a professional seminar on online courses for educator professional development.
Due to technological (devices, internet bandwidth) and societal evolutions (just-in-time learning, lifelong learning) and the potential benefits of online learning, notably its flexibility in time, pace and space, it can be expected that the share of online learning programmes in teacher professional development will increase. Online learning does not need to mean replicating face-to-face teaching in an online environment. The power of online teaching and learning is that it gives different – and sometimes better – learning experiences due to the unique affordances it provides.
The seminar explored how online teaching and learning may inform and improve the accessibility to and quality of teacher professional development. What implications does the rise of online modes of study have on quality? What are organisational impacts and how does online teacher professional development affect equity? How can SACE fulfil its mandate to guard the quality of teacher professional development against the background of a changing provider landscape, internationalisation of professional development and changing conceptions of learning?
SACE and VVOB gave an overview of the existing quality assessment framework for professional development activities and how this rubric may be expanded for online activities. Mr Rabotapi from DBE gave an overview of the activities DBE is undertaking with regards to making teachers more ICT literate, underlining that technology shouldn’t replace a teacher, but rather complement. Ms Trudi Van Wyk from DHET stressed that an online course might not be the most appropriate mode of delivery in all circumstances. Many subjects require also work-integrated learning. We should also be aware that technology and online learning are not an ‘easy street’.
In the session on current issues & debates, Ms Goodwin-Davey from UNISA underlined the need for appropriate and continuous training of tutors for online learning courses. Mr Tony Mays from the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE)unpacked the concept of open licenses and pleading for making Open Educational Resources (OERs) an integral part of online courses. Dr Johan Hendrikz from the University of Pretoria presented fascinating results about research done with participants in an online teacher education programme, showing the massive need for investing in strengthening teachers’ basic ICT literacy skills.
Two educators recalled their experiences with online learning in the next session. Ms Phuti Ragophala talked about her experiences with Microsoft, whereas Mr Graeme Holloway talked about initiatives by Hatfield Christian School to bring online learning of maths and science to disadvantaged learners.
In the afternoon, Ms Janet Thomson from Schoolnet SA talked about what she sees as critical issues for the quality of online learning. Issues that are often overlooked such as the quality of the writing, the ‘emotional design’ and the accessibility of support are crucial aspects in the learner experience. Mindset showed how they develop videos of teaching in context and thus create learning objects which are well suitable to integrate in online courses. Mr Malcolm Mooi talked about the Zibusa project, a promising online community of teachers, which uses digital rewards to stimulate teachers to create and share materials.
Dr Jacqueline Batchelor from UJ provided the audience with some critical observations. Do many online courses make sufficiently use of the unique affordances or opportunities the internet allows? Technology can indeed be very dangerous if used as just another layer on top of the traditional course. One such affordance is designing for choice. Another is integrating elements from games into courses, such as badges and providing safe spaces for trying out things. Another is bringing in an international dimension, pointing to the motivating aspect of Massive Open and Online Courses (MOOCs) for many teachers.
In brief: the seminar was an eye-opener for many and yielded a lot of food for thought!
The day after the seminar, SACE staff and CPTD evaluators worked together to review a draft quality framework for online courses and discussed which criteria SACE should use to determine whether an online course should be endorsed or not. A draft rubric and guideline is available and can be requested from VVOB (Stefaan.vandewalle@vvob.be) or from SACE (Theo.toolo@sace.org.za).
VVOB and SACE would like to thank everyone who made the seminar a success and give a special thanks to the speakers and the session chairs.
Most presentations and some pictures from the seminar can be found in attach. More pictures are available on the VVOB South Africa Flickr Site.
