4.1 Learner experience and identifying relevant resources
As discussed previously, learners on open online courses will have a wide range of study experiences. Some will be supplementing their study, or have an academic background. Others will have no experience of higher education, or may not have embarked on any study for an extremely long time.
It is vital to try and gauge the level or type of study that learners would be comfortable with. You may have been able to deduce from conversations and introductions outlined in Section 3.1 what their experience is, which will help enable you to make suggestions.
Even a brief conversation with a learner about their learning experience should enable you to gauge a basic view, and monitoring their patterns of participation (Section 3.4) may underline confidence issues or lack of understanding of the internet.
For instance, a learner who mentions that they have a BSc in chemistry may not find a course on essay and report writing particularly useful, but might be interested in seeing the range of Science academic modules and qualifications available to them.
Conversely, a learner who reveals that they are nervous as they haven’t studied since they were 16 may run a mile if you direct them towards academic modules. However, they could benefit from a suggestion of trying an entry level course on getting back into education.
Making informed choices
The important thing is to be able to make an informed choice when directing learners to further study and promoting resources:
- If you are not familiar with the range of content on your platform, have a good look through and note different sections that you feel may be useful to some of the learners.
- Make sure that you are up to date with the qualifications and modules available to them via their institution or platform.
- Promote other resources to help learners on other platforms and channels such as:
- Bibblio (free audio and video content)
- Audioboo (free audio downloads for many different devices)
- iTunesU (free audio downloads for Apple devices)
- YouTube (free video content)
- Googleplay (free ebooks for download)
- Facebook (for chat sessions and many other things)
- Twitter – encourage them to follow relevant accounts where they can search for conversations about any courses they are interested in and be kept up to date with news and links about other content.
4 Encouraging further study