When we think about teaching something, we will normally look, from a formal sense at the outcomes required and then apply a treatment or method of delivery that will hopefully engage the intended audience. Some may call that contextualisation if they have a VET background.

I may create my content from scratch, I may collect it from places like YouTube, Picasa or Scootle –however one thing I must do is compile that content in a web world into containers (or courses) that can be found, delivered and reused.

I am not giving up the photocopier or books from the library or scissors, glue and coloured paper, but that talk is for another day… I am here to talk about eLearning, or the Electronic part of learning although some may argue that the “E” might stand for environmentally friendly as we reduce the number of trips we need to take to be face to face for the learning.

The e part requires an e-device to view the e-content – be that an iPad, laptop, interactive whiteboard or a TV.

To prepare our content in a format that can be used on one of these devices, we need to compile it into a format that the TV  or the iPad understands.

Let’s think for a moment about the most common forms of mass communication in the world today… Television, Radio, Print and the Internet. Physical events like seminars and rallies also communicate but it is the four channels of mass communication that have the greatest reach.

If we overlay our senses of sight, sound, touch and smell then combine that with interaction or collaboration with the information as it is presented to us, then we have covered pretty well all but two components of the learning jigsaw puzzle that we need to consider if we are to embark on this journey of creating and/or delivering elearning.

The first of these two additional components is the required prerequisite knowledge on the part of the learner. If this is absent and it is not possible to contextualise the delivery to the needs of that student, then prerequisite or bridging study will be required. Pretesting can assist in channelling elearners to these enabling modules if required.

The last one is interest on the part of the learner. We must endeavour to make our elearning pieces interesting, but our students need to be interested in order for it to be effective.

I won’t go into the strategies of trying to create interest when none exists, but we will explore how we can use our various forms of mass communication within our elearning to engage with our learners.

After creating, collecting, compiling and contextualising into containers for our learners we can collaborate to confirm the learner’s understanding of the content.

So let’s start mapping the 8 “C”s onto the real life skills and tools we use to create content and confirm its delivery.

To be continued…

 

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