Programme outcomes & curriculum mappping

I had a 4 hour session today from 9.30am-12.30pm at the FSTE Conference Room assisting the FSTE team in reviewing the programme outcomes and carrying out the curriculum mapping of the new major in Geospatial Science. Although it may not be everyone's cup of tea given that it can be a mentally straining exercise, I actually found it to be an interesting challenge and given that I am still building up my experience in this process, it was just what I needed to enhance it even further - hoping to do more of this in the future. I also hope that in the future, this becomes part and parcel of instructional design work at USP as I see this as vital to ensure that alignment is in place from the institutional, programme, course and unit levels unlike the current practice where ID work is in effect when only a course is offered through DFL mode.

Killing two birds with one stone

I have just received notification to provide a progress report on everything that I have done so far this year with regard to the STAR project specifically for the Trainers group that is tasked with operationalising the graduate attributes of the USP and infusing this into the curriculum mapping of USP's academic programmes.

Given that I need to also provide a monthly report to my supervisor regarding my day to day workings, I decided to put my report here, thus killing two birds with one stone.

A sucker for anything "free"

By Free, I mean Free to use and stumbled upon some work worthy resources today: 

• Strategies for Managing Online Workload which is a collation of 50 something videos on this very subject. This compilation was the work of Penn State World Campus way back in 2008 and can be accessed through itunes.
• Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips features 12 articles on online faculty development and was generously sent to me by Dr Clayton R Wright.
• Podcast: 2 Minute Teaching which I just stumbled upon from Virginia Tech. One I thought that was quite interesting was that of the links between facebook use and academic performance.

MOOCS Galore!

Yes, the greatest craze at the moment in as far as revolutionising education is concerned is to do with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). It is such a life saver for many who have to continuously upgrade themselves to be able to carry  out their work well.
In my role as Professional Development Activities coordinator in my department, I frequently circulate MOOCs that are on offer and I am estimating that there are releasing at least one MOOC per month.
Here are some that I stumbled upon so far, at least since May...

• First Steps into Learning and Teaching - offered by Oxford Brookes University under its HEA/JISC funded OpenLine Project and the offer period ended in June but you are still able to access the course.
• Power Searching with Google - offered by Google (duh!) and the course ended on July 17th.
• Current/Future State of Higher Education - which is due to be offered in October and supported by a group of universities and relevant HE stakeholders.
• Curriculum Design with OERs - to be offered by Open University, UK from 10th Jan-13th March, 2013
• Entrepreneurship in Education [Ed Startup 101] - offered by well respected industry global  experts and is due to start on 27th August, ending on December 14th.
• BlendKit Course 2012 - This is a offering by University Centr.al Florida (UCF) and is due to be offered from September 24, 2012  to October 29, 2012
• IPR for Educational Environments - Not particularly sure if this is a facilitated course but everything is up and ready on the site and can also be repurposed to suit one's own context.
• MOOC MOOC - A MOOC about MOOCs offered by Hybrid Pedagogy which commenced on 12th August and ending on the 18th. 
• A Gentle Introduction to Python by Mechanical MOOC which will commence on October 15th. 
• Coursera offerings of 119 courses and counting....

• University of Edinburgh's MOOC offerings via Coursera which are due to start in 2013. 
• EdX offerings which is a collaboration between MIT, Harvard and UC, Berkeley to be released this fall. 
• Openness in Education by Drs. Rory McGreal and George Siemens which is a 12 week course starting September 10th, 2012.
• Open content licensing for Educators by OER Foundation to be conducted from  3-14 December, 2012. 
• Open2Study by Open Universities Australia
•  UNEOpen by University of New England, Australia

There might be others that I am not aware of so, if you do notice one that is not on the list above, please do share this.

And Happy MOOCKING to you!!

What I hate about teamwork!!

I started composing this blog article two months ago but left it in draft format and now getting back to it two months later :) Here goes...
Over the past weeks, I have begun to ponder over the not so good points of teamwork. Don't get me wrong! I love team work and its a great way to get things done in the workplace and of course in any circumstances be it at home (family), school, church or in the rugby field but one thing that has always bugged me over the course of 10 years of team based work here in CFDL is when a team member is not pulling their weight - how does one confront such an issue when you are leading the team and you have deadlines to meet? 
Do you:

• Confront the person (in a non-confronting way of course :)) to find out the reasons?
• Ignore the situation and hope for the best :) ?
• Report the situation to your supervisor for a solution?

I had started to read the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and maybe I'll get some answers at then end but anyway, life is not always a bed of roses and its these kinds of complex situations that either "make you" or "break you" as a person. I strive for the former!

OER Awareness Session

We had our latest OER Awareness Session for the USP community today from 2-4.30pm at the Communications Conference Room (CCR). There were about 80 that registered and about almost 50 participants turned up. We also had participants from outside USP specifically from the the Ministry of Education, Fiji and Fiji National University (FNU)

Our guest speaker was Abel Caine, Programme Specialist, Information Society Division, UNESCO who gave a very interesting presentation and was well received by the attendees. The OER VAKA Working group also put up an OER display at the last minute and splendidly did an excellent job! Access the video here.  Below are some pics from the session:

 

Getting our exhibition up and ready!

Theresa and Shikha, lining up the sticky tape for our USP Display at the UNESCO HQ, World OER Congress Open Exhibition Space from the 20th-22nd June, 2012

Marika and Dhiraj carrying over the display panes

The displays are going up

Marika, taking a necessary photo capture for reporting purposes