Creating online learning experiences – what's used? what works?

by Yvonne Belanger | December 10th, 2009

Whether for online-only distance education courses for remote learners or as part of a hybrid approach to instruction for undergraduates, faculty across the university use a range of technologies to package lectures and course content for delivery outside of the classroom setting. The needs and experiences of faculty in using these technologies has been varied. One of the most common technologies is PowerPoint, often with the addition of an audio narration. To streamline delivery of these files, programs which take this approach often use an additional software tool to compress the file for more efficient uploading to the course site as well as to reduce the download times for remote learners. Others have used Camtasia or Captivate, although faculty using these technologies often find that many hours of time are required to create a finished product that they are satisfied with. In an effort to create smoother narration without the need to edit out mistakes, a few faculty have experienced a moderate amount of success in using text-to-speech technologies to produce an audio version from written lecture notes. In some cases, online content delivery has veered away from the traditional slide plus lecture format, with faculty capturing and delivering content for an asynchronous online format using audio plus tablet PC annotations and screen recordings within specialized software (such as SAS to teach statistics). Some faculty have also described their explorations of the applications of virtual worlds to produce interactive simulations.

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