What next after H808?

Having hacked my way through my toughest ever OU Masters Module, H808, I was delighted with how much of my learning seems to be transferrable to our own Future Shape of the Winner Distance Learning Programme.


There are several different angles which I hope to apply.


Point One: the fact that our learners are so varied in their backgrounds and experience, and also have different reasons for wanting to do the Programme might seem to make the design of a generic programme very tricky. However, this ought to be where the 'distance learning' element comes into its own. If we can get the right structure and the right support material, the differences could be a strength not a weakness. I found the H808 focus on creating a Professional Development Plan (PDP) was a very useful way of encouraging students to set their own framework for their learning. Providing our students with a FSW skills/knowledge template to help them create a PDP structure for FSW is well worth considering. Not only will that focus the students, but it will also give tutors the chance to tailor their inputs/discussions to respond to the objectives of our students. The process of creating that template will be a good discipline for us, as it will make us consider the key dimensions we are aiming to communicate. The PDP discipline may also give us the scope to get academic accreditation for the programme, which would add to its attractiveness to potential students.


Point Two: the 'invisibility' of what learning was taking place on the programme seems to be a weakness. Three months after the end of the first programme, we find ourselves with only one student actively using the Excellence Audit, and we are not in a position to pinpoint what - if anything - is missing from the programme. In my TMA1 I wrote the following:


Moon (2001) outlines a hierarchy of stages of learning; “noticing; making sense; making meaning; working with meaning; transformative learning” (P6). The further up this hierarchy that learners progress, the deeper the learning and the more the learner is able to apply the new meaning creatively in their own situation. Citing the research of Marton, Hounsell and Entwhistle, (1997) Moon (2001) reports “A deep approach is where the intention of the learner is to understand the meaning of the material. She is willing to integrate it into her existing body of previous ideas, and understandings.” (p5). Moon (2001) recommends reflection skills as being key in generating this deep learning.


Being able to track our students' progression through noticing, making sense, making meaning, working with meaning, transformative learning, would give us a fantastic insight into how they were getting on with their learning. Therefore, I am considering two revisions. 1. Changing the accreditation conditions to include the requirement to submit a learning log of their reflections throughout the programme. 2. Encouraging/requiring? the learning log to be kept as a blog, which will allow all the students access to each others' reflections, but also will help tutors to track progress, and make adustments as needed to programme content etc.


Point Three: A major H808 insight was around the overall pedagogy of the programme, which I now recognise is heavily influenced by the face to face bias that all the tutors have. There is still a strong desire for us to tell the students what we think they need to know, rather than encouraging them to explore and make sense of the ideas, and to work out how they might use them. I believe it would be unwise to attempt to make a U turn in pedagogical thinking, not least because we have very limited experience in this more participative virtual approach. So I think a good step forwards would be to convert all of the presentations which we made during the web tutorials into podcasts. These will be incorporated in the pre-work ahead of web tutorials, and the telephone conference will be a chance to discuss and reflect collectively - a much more participative way of using the synchronous forum.


In summary, if I can convince my colleagues that these three modifications to our approach are worth trying, I believe we will have a great deal more insight into the extent to which students are getting to grips with the new knowledge, and this will hopefully enable us to support them more actively in becoming active users of the FSW model.