Online Short Courses
From ElateWiki
The concept and practice of short courses have been around for many decades. Early modules involved lectures and demonstrations through video and computer-aided instruction (Smock, 1980). Back in 1978, J.T. Baxter was writing about how the packaging of short courses was an idea “whose time has come” (p. 101).
The concept of digital short courses delivered via online methods has been around for probably as many years as distance learning has been around, especially in commercial companies for various types of just-in-time trainings. The advancements of learning / course management systems, enrollment systems, learner tracking, automated learning structures, Web-deliverable simulations, and other elements have made this a much more doable process in terms of the technological dependencies.
[edit] Some Short Course Topics in Higher Education
Short courses now also address various semi-academic purposes for continuing education—to enhance professional development for people who work in a range of fields. These may be deployed for supplementing short courses, such as those deployed during intersession terms or the summer terms. Some are used to give new students a “flavor” of a discipline (Rebelsky, 2005). Others may be used as tutorials, as pre-learning priming for longer courses, or as post-course debriefings on particular tangential pieces of learning. These courses may head off skills decay and provide some basic remediation.
[edit] The Granularity of a Short Course
Short courses range in time from about an hour to a day or two, and they address various types of learning based on certain topics: software programs, new standards for compliance, workplace safety processes and procedures, and others.
The design of short courses involves the concept of granularity. In other words, how atomistic or “small” should a fundamental short course be? What elements should it contain? What help tools should be included? What sorts of practice should be included? What are “value-added” aspects to the short course? What mitigations can there be if learners are not acquiring the learning that they need?
[edit] Basic Elements of a Short Course
To build on the concepts of learning objects, short courses may have defined learning objectives that may be used as guides for the course contents and the pre- and post-tests. There should be some activities. There may be some assignments. There should be some readings.
There should be scaffolding for novices such opt-in helps for vocabulary learning and practices. There should also be scaffolding for professionals or subject matter experts taking a course that may be a specialty aspect of their own fields.
Ideally, such a course should be buildable on a shoe-string. Condensed pieces of pre-existing courses may be used for a short-course, assuming that the original build was “clean” in terms of intellectual property releases.
The standards for the building of short courses should be that they are technologically interoperable. They should have full metadata descriptors. They should be fully accessible. They should also adhere to all laws of intellectual property, so the contents may be used positively.
Those who need verification that they earned continuing education or continuing education units (credits) for their work to stay certified may have a certificate sent to them often by email. A separate database of those who’ve successfully completed a training may be kept for formal verification.
[edit] Projected Learner Pools
In higher education, short courses may be developed to reach out to recent graduates who have fresh ties to the campus and who would like to continue enhancing their learning in mainline fields, majors, and even peripheral interests. Alumni and locals who work in various workplaces and who want to hone workplace skills may opt to take short courses. Those who are running households may also want to take some refreshers. Lifelong learners may be drawn in to take short courses on particular topics of interest. Employees at particular companies may be drawn to taking short courses on the advice of their leadership. Special courses may be developed for particular corporate needs.
Learners who do well in short courses tend to have a strong set of learning skills already. They may engage in autonomous learning with a range of self-management skills. (The short courses should also be designed in a motivating way for learners. It should offer organizational elements to help learners self-manage their learning and to develop a sense of meta-cognition / self-awareness of their own learning.)
Opt-in learner tools described in the research literature include digital notepads, digital doodle areas, think-aloud tools, and other ways for them to draw and conceptualize their ideas in a recorded and sharable and downloadable way. Personal information keeping enhances retention and learning. Co-created notes by learners may also be helpful.
One basic strategy involves drawing multi-disciplinary learners to particular courses—based on the atomistic aspects of the learning module and learning objects. The more core or fundamental a topic is, the more widely applicable it may be. By contrast, the more specific a topic is to a particular field, and the more esoteric, the more elitist that topic may be.
[edit] Automated Short Courses
Most online short courses are pre-packaged and automated. There are automated marking systems for the pre- and post- tests. These are the current versions of canned courses. There are a range of feedback loops that tend to be stand-alone and informative. These also often include automated interactivity—so learners may learn by doing—by experiencing designed short simulations, for example. These courses need to be designed for novices—who may need plenty of opt-in help as well as experts—who may need refreshing information and challenges. Novices and amateurs also need a sense of their own progress.
More populist mainline courses may attract plenty of novices. The more elite and high-level topics may draw experts. Regardless, the metadata describing the courses in the course catalogs will need to be detailed about the levels of the learning and the pre-requisites for the learning (if there are any).
[edit] Human Facilitated Short Courses
A small subset of short courses seems to be human-facilitated, with a subject matter expert guiding the short course. These courses often require real time scheduling, or at least a general time period when the facilitator will be active and responsive to learners, and therefore limits the accessibility of such courses.
Human-facilitated series of short-courses may focus on various sequences of learning and potentially some complexity in the learning. Learners may be putting together portfolios of their work, or creating innovations and new outputs.
[edit] Ubiquitous Short Courses
Short courses may also be delivered in a ubiquitous way, which means “anywhere” learning through devices such as mobile computers and devices. The Web browser interfaces on many smart mobile devices enable numerous online learning experiences to be delivered to devices within a wireless fidelity (wifi) area or anywhere a device may connect to satellite-delivered connectivity (less common).
Those who need learning “in the field” may benefit from short courses that include decision support systems, diagnostic tools, and process-based learning.
[edit] The Importance of Quality Learning
Building the quality learning will involve some clear processes for many decision junctures:
The selection of the higher education topic (with clearly established information) The selection of technologies The selection of learning experiences The design of the modular or other learning structure The vetting of contents throughout the development The rigorous alpha and beta testing The integration of diverse user feedback, And others
Some short courses involve digital hand-outs and takeaways that may be reviewed to enhance the “far transfer” and application of the learning. These may also better tie the learning to the real world of practice. References to further resources that may enhance the learning would also enhance the work.
[edit] Required Software for Short Courses
One common strategy involves requiring authoring and compilation tools that are open-source and readily downloadable. This lowers some of the barriers that may be inherent in short courses that may require expensive authoring tools.
[edit] Match-ups of Learners
Social ways to encourage connections between mutual learners with shared interests may be a type of value-added tool. Mediating technologies for small-group work, real-time synchronous communications, text-messaging, and other ways to connect constructively may also enhance the work. Connections between learners may also enhance their retention in the short-course experience.
Potential downsides could involve people who use the course site to socialize and not really to learn. Adding a social element will add the need for more learner oversight.
[edit] Enhancing Learning Discourse
The inclusion of Web 2.0 technologies like shared wikis may include a knowledge-sharing and knowledge-building element to a short-course-based community of learners. Such virtual communities may enhance inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, and problem-based learning by adding multiple insights from a variety of fields.
[edit] See Also
The On-line Library of Digital Photography http://www.shortcourses.com/
Signal Detection Theory Module http://wise.cgu.edu/sdtmod/index.asp
[edit] References
Baxter, J.T. (1978). Package short courses: An idea whose time has come. In the proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services: Boston, Massachusetts (p. 101).
Rebelsky, S.A. (2005). The new science students in Too Much, Too Soon: An abbreviated, accelerated, constructivist, collaborative, introductory experience in CS. In the proceedings of the SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education. St. Louis, Missouri. Association of Computing Machinery. 312 – 316.
Smock, D.M. (1980). Self-instructional modules: Their development and use by user services. Association of Computing Machinery. 128 – 134.