Disruption and design

1.1 Who are the students?

Transcript (14.2 KB)  

Welcome to The Online Educator: people and pedagogy. I’m Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman – an academic with The Open University (OU). In the first three weeks of this course I’ll be drawing on my experience as an educator and a researcher as I introduce some of the hype around online education, some of the ways in which educators can navigate that hype, and strategies for designing engaging online learning experiences.

Over the coming weeks you’ll closely examine several myths connected with online education as the basis for making your own decisions about how to employ innovation in your teaching.

This week, you’ll start by investigating the notion that online education is a ‘disruptive’ solution to a broken education system. Then you’ll explore ways to create engaging and relevant learning experiences that make good use of innovative technologies and pedagogies to meet learners’ needs. You’ll be introduced to the use of personas in learning design and and look at the steps involved in designing a successful online learning experience.

In Week 2, you’ll discover ways to make innovative learning accessible to all and the relationship between accessibility and innovation. You’ll also consider the importance of inclusion in online education.

In Week 3, you’ll explore strategies to evaluate claims about the transformative impact of online education, such as those made in research reports. You’ll also investigate ways to reflect on your own teaching in order to assess the impact of educational innovation, including consideration of the ethical issues involved in researching online learning.

In Week 4 I’ll hand over to ed-tech celebrity and Open University emeritus professor, Professor Martin Weller. He’ll take you through a study of the benefits and complexities of constructing an online identity as an educator, and the importance of considering the wellbeing of everyone involved in online education.

First though, watch the video above and step into the future of education… It’s full of technological innovation. Teaching and learning have improved immeasurably. Everybody is included. Does this sound too good to be true?

The video was made by Educause – a nonprofit association whose mission is ‘advancing the strategic use of technology and data to further the promise of higher education’. It gives you a flavour of some of the claims that have been made about the online education of the future. In this case, they are claims that were being made when the video was released in 2017.

As you watch, consider the following:

• Have any of the predictions come true already?
• Do you believe the predictions being made will all come true? If so, why? If not, why not?
• Did the video creators miss anything out?
• Do you feel excited about any of the possibilities?