Blending Courses with Course Archives and "Webtexts"

1
Blending Courses with Course Archives and
"Webtexts"

• Stephen Chen
• ITEC Atkinson
• sychen_at_yorku.ca

2
Fearless Learning

• Alan November
• Leading Learning 2005
• http//www.yorku.ca/abel/LL2005/keynote/index.html
  
• Empower students to learn anything at any time
  from anywhere

3
Modern Economies and Modern Education

• Dynamics of modern workplace requires life-long
  learners and just-in-time learners
• Formal, packaged lectures are not ideally suited
  for promoting self-directed learning and
  independent inquiry

4
The Role of Learning Objects

• Learning Objects are on-line resources dedicated
  to a single topic
• Well developed Learning Objects engage users into
  deeper explorations and understanding
• Deep explorations and individualized learning
  experiences are not usually available to students
  in large-size classes

5
The Role of Face-to-Face Teaching

• Why are we here today?
• Teaching and learning benefits from the visual
  performance and dynamic interactivity of a
  classroom lecture
• Many concepts can be taught more efficiently and
  effectively in the classroom

6
Course Blending

• Achieve the benefits of both on-line and
  in-person teaching formats
• Any normal format course can be blended

7
Low-level Blending

• Course Archives
• http//www.yorku.ca/sasit/itec/courses/ITEC1620/16
  20archive.html
• Tutorials
• http//www.atkinson.yorku.ca/sychen/ITEC1620/tuto
  rials.html
• Discussion Forums

8
High-level Blending

• Teaching with Learning Objects
• Webtexts
• Collection of selected web resources organized to
  match the course
• http//www.atkinson.yorku.ca/sychen/ITEC2620/webt
  ext/

9
Current Research

• Gesture Friendly Interfaces
• Hard to teach with learning objects
• http//www.atkinson.yorku.ca/sychen/research/math
  /relationships_final.html
• Webtexts
• Independent research projects