A Tale of Two Courses
A while ago, I took two online courses; one about climate change and another on the ‘Good Life’. The topics don’t really matter, at least not for today’s musing. It’s been a while since I actually participated in an online course. As an instructional designer and learning technologist, I try to do one (or a face-to-face course) as often as possible to see what other people are doing. I’m looking for good practice but also to see what works and what doesn’t work for me, as a learner.
These two courses, taken back-to-back, offered a complete contrast in terms of teaching approach. I consider one of them to be awful, the other brilliant. In both cases, the subject matter interested me, so there wasn’t too much of a difference in terms of my willingness to engage. The difference was in what I was presented with as a learner.
I’ll start with the bad.
A course on climate change has so much potential. The information available online is gigantic as is its variety. One could probably design a course without adding much content themselves – it would be possible to stitch something together using external resources alone. These are varied, from video documentaries to interactive diagrams, journal articles, e-books, blog posts, and images. There are probably games available as well that will teach someone about the dangers to the environment.
None of this appeared in the course.
What I received were two PDF workbooks and an online form containing a long list of questions. The workbooks provided descriptions and explanations of core issues about the environment and climate change. Quite a lot of the information, especially near the end, was presented as a series of bullet-pointed lists. Each section focused on the answer to one of the questions that I was expected to answer, although it did make clear that I should seek out more information from ‘reputable sources’ myself. It never explained or even hinted what those reputable sources might be or how I might find them.
The course essentially provided me with some information, then asked me to write a paragraph to answer a question, and to look a little beyond the information provided, where relevant. This was repeated about 40 times across the entire course.
Now, to be fair, I did learn some things, and the topics were interesting BUT, the approach taken resulted in a flat and boring experience. It was a struggle to remain motivated. I also noted the lack of thought given to providing information literacy skills to the learner. It was suggested that the learner should look beyond the course to add more knowledge, but nowhere did it try to suggest what sources were reputable or hint at what the learner might want to consider when reviewing sources. With a topic such as climate change, there are equal amounts of misinformation as there is information on the internet. That lack of skills training could be dangerous.
Now, the second course.
This one was about how to live the Good Life, examining classical sources such as Plato and Aristotle, as well as presenting ideas from Confucianism in ancient China and the modern conception of “positive psychology”.
The structure is a simple one. A welcome email is sent out at the beginning of each week, and then learners are expected to work through a series of short talking-head videos, each one followed by an exercise. At the end of each week, there is a round-table discussion between the four academics and some weeks, a live webinar where learners can ask questions. It looks something like this:
Welcome Email
Video 1
Exercise
Video 2
Exercise
Video 3
Exercise
Round-table discussion
Webinar
Whilst the structure is repetitive, it means that the learner knows what to expect each week. I have not become bored with it. The exercises are varied. In the second week, the learner was asked to look through (and comment) on several sections of primary sources; in the third week, the learner looked at various journal articles and in the fourth week, the learner had a mixture of practical exercises and readings from classical works. Each time, the learner is asked to reflect and think.
Each unit builds on the previous one or at least adds to a larger picture and each subject is taught by a different academic, which builds in variety. The inclusion of a round-table at the end of each unit allows learners to not only see the academics debate and discuss but also helps to reveal the links between each subject.
The use of different media (primarily video and text) and the inclusion of practical as well as reading exercises all focused on self-reflection and academic ideas, combine for an interesting ride; one in which learning is fun and engaging. In this course, I feel that I know the tutors a little bit. I feel that they care.
Some thoughts
The contrast between the two courses has reminded me how important it is not just to design ‘content’ for learning, but to think about the experience of learning. I learned new things from both courses, but I engaged better where there was variety and, essentially, a human touch. The second course also fed in information literacy skills in the way that they asked questions in the videos and through the practical exercises. The first course did none of that.
There is much to learn from observing other online courses (or face-to-face courses for that matter). Have you had any similar experiences recently? I’d love to hear about it.