By David Wells, editor at Surviving the OU

David looks at emerging technologies and prepares for the first TMA

Here we go then, another two weeks to get my teeth stuck in to…am I enjoying it so far? It’s OK I suppose. Struggling to find the time each week to be honest, but that’s more to do with my personal life rather than anything else.

Week 5: Emerging technologies and innovating pedagogies

One thing I’ve noticed so far in this module compared to H800 is that the learning objectives are lot more refined. The long lists of seven or eight study objectives used to slightly scare me as I wondered just how much time I could dedicate to each week’s activities. This week we learned:

  • how to use collaborative online activities to further your own knowledge and understanding of new learning technologies and pedagogies.

In activity 13 we had to read a report from the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project: 2017 Higher Education Edition which described six emerging technologies or practices the authors suggest may have a significant impact on learning in the future…..

This was followed by a bumper 12-hour activity 14 that involved reading a report by Ferguson that explored how innovations in pedagogy, rather than innovations in technology, could change education over the next five years.  The 12-hour time recommendation suddenly became clear when I noticed the PDF report was a bumper 48 pages long!

Week 6: Preparing your TMA01

And so we reach the first assessment portion of this module. It was coming…but I still get a shiver down the spine whenever I think about a looming TMA. This one is due in on 19 March and centres around our ideas about a definition of innovation in elearning and a range of examples of innovative elearning projects. I’m thinking of going for Mobile Learning through smartphone devices, video-based resources and digital citizenship.

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