By David Wells, editor at Surviving the OU

David is working hard on his EMA so just drops in for a brief update

Hello everybody! If you’ve missed any of the previous posts then find them here: Entry 1, Entry 2, Entry 3, Entry 4, Entry 5, Entry 6, Entry 7, Entry 8 , Entry 9, Entry 10, Entry 11, Entry 12, Entry 13 and Entry 14.

Just checking in with a brief update for anybody who’s interested. Sorry the most recent posts have been a little shorter than usual but I’m working hard on the End of Module Assessment (EMA) for H800. As I mentioned previously I’ve chosen two ‘technologies’ in the form of Instructional Video and Asynchronous Forums.

The EMA is split into four major parts, which all feature an element of both technology.

Part A. Digital technologies: experience and evidence (about 2,500 words)

I’ll keep this fairly simple but for Part A we are required to take each technology and gives examples of when we have used each technology, examples of fellow H800 students using the technology, both as a learner and as a practitioner, and infiltrate evidence from journal articles, blogs, reliable sources etc including some brief numerical evidence and images. This is a large bulk of the assignment and takes up a chunky 40%.

Part B. Digital technologies: your recommendations (about 1,250 words)

For Part B for each of the two technologies that we have chosen we have to set out key recommendations for other practitioners in terms of how we would advise them to use each technology for teaching. Then we assign each recommendation a confidence rating of either High, Medium or Low. Specifying the contexts of the recommendation is a key part of this section. Brief numerical evidence is again required. For each technology, we also need to state the areas where we consider additional research is needed into the ways in which that technology can be used. This part accounts for 20% of the marks.

EMA, Part C. Digital technologies: your design or specification (about 1,250 words)

For this part we take one of the technologies that we have chosen and design a learning activity, or create a specification for a module or training package, that uses this technology. As part of this we set out any potential barriers that may be encountered, learning outcomes and characteristics of the fictional learners we are targeting. This part accounts for 20% of the marks.

Part D. Digital technologies: individual and collaborative learning (about 1,000 words)

As the conclusion to the EMA and to our work on H800, we have to think back across our experience of H800 and give an answer to the following:

• To what extent do you find the concepts of ‘individual’ and ‘collaborative’ learning useful in understanding your experience of learning this year – whether on H800 or elsewhere?

“Give brief examples to illustrate your experience, and draw on some of the debates and theories in H800 to explain your position (for example, the work of Sfard, Brown, Engeström, Wenger, Säljö).”

Anyone who has been following from the start will recognise those authors’ work from previous blocks and entries on this blog.

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