trends in instructional technology k ferreira meyers 2013

TRENDS IN INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY

Karen Ferreira-Meyers

MIDT

OVERVIEW OF THE SLIDES

The next two slides give a general overview of the trends in instructional technology in the world and in Swaziland.

Then there will be slides showcasing all these instructional technology trends in general, before I narrow the field down to Swaziland, and more in particular to the University of Swaziland and its Institute of Distance Education.

TRENDS IN INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY: GENERAL

Mobile devices as learning tools

Open educational resources

Online learning communities

Virtual learning environments

Social media

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) and DOCC (Distributed Open Collaborative Course)

Cloud computing

SMSs

Simulations, games and virtual realities

TRENDS IN INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY: IN SWAZILAND





Social media

SMSs

Open Educational Resources

Social media

Networked learning: MOOCs and DOCCs

Interesting article: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/19/feminist-professors-create-alternative-moocs

CLOUD COMPUTING AND FINGERTIP KNOWLEDGE

Simulations, games and virtual realities

IN SWAZILAND, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SWAZILAND, AT THE INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

The contextual situation in Swaziland is thus that instructional technology is still very much concerned with face-to-face environments and is only slowly moving to a real distance or even e-learning environment. This implies that certain trends are those other countries have already, long time surpassed.

Mobile devices as learning tools and ubiquitous learning


In Swaziland the trend is only catching on now. Very few organizations use open educational resources (except the UN agencies perhaps). At the University of Swaziland, in the Institute of Distance Education, we are trying to create awareness about these resources.

One of the ways to create this awareness is through the Open Education Week, which we first celebrated in 2012.

The following slides give an account of this day; the notes were extracted from the IDE Open Education Week Report.

Open educational resources (continued)

UNISWA joins Open Education Week 5-10 March 2012

In the week of 5-10 March 2012, the University of Swaziland, Institute of Distance Education (IDE) joins individuals and organisations from around the world in helping to raise awareness of the open education movement and open educational resources (OER).

Open Education Week is a global event that seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of free and open sharing in education, especially Open Educational Resources (OER). In its simplest form, the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) describes any educational resources that are openly available for use by educators and students, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees. The first open seminar was held in the new IDE SGL Digital Gateway on the 5th March, 2012. The theme for the Open Education Week from 5 to 10 March, 2012 is: Efforts to expand access to education and knowledge.

Open Educational Resources (continued)

Discussion topics and facilitators:

-Open Educational Resources as a catalyst for transformation in open and distance learning Mrs Shokahle Dlamini

-OER initiatives and libraries Mr John Paul Anbu

-Is there compelling evidence for OER in higher education? Dr Karen Ferreira-Meyers & Ms Nokuthula Vilakati

Facilitators highlighted key areas as follows:

The genesis of the open education movement; open access initiatives; open education; history of OER; VUSSC project OER development processes and outcomes; and worldwide OER initiatives. Samples of projects and events were featured from institutions and organizations from around the world, including: MIT Open Courseware, Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC), African Health OER Network, UK OpenLearn, OER Textbook, Multimedia Educational Resource for Online Learning and Teaching (MERLOT), OER search engines and toolkits for creating, adapting and repurposing OER.

Open educational resources (continued)

Participants then discussed OER a possible way forward for UNISWA as follows:

►To form a collaboration between the UNISWA Library, IDE and subject experts in formulating a draft working policy on OER

►To engage a broad spectrum of university staff to be involved in the identification, indexing and archiving of OER

►To form a vibrant community of practice to actively create, identify, market and make good use of quality OER; and

►To formulate local OER project proposals and explore business models to support local initiatives to create OER and to involve many staff members and students throughout the processes.


In an effort to set up online learning communities, we, at the Institute of Distance Education, talk about the importance of learning communities when we meet our students and when we participate in workshops and seminars. One such opportunity is our yearly residential writers’ workshop which we normally hold in June or July.

We have tried to make it an online learning community after the COL funded workshops and the most recent one held in collaboration with SAIDE (South Africa) which was funded by SADC-CDE.

The trend is there, but it is only emerging. More awareness needs to be raised on the importance of these learning communities in an online environment, even though some of the IDE employees benefit from them on a personal developmental level.


Here, I want to narrow the discussion down to MOODLE, the learning management system we use. Several articles have been published in this regard, about MOODLE at UNISWA and at IDE. These are, amongst others:

2013 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. and VILAKATI, N. « L’utilisation des TICE au Swaziland - Synthèse des projets, ressources, défis et avantages », in Adjectif Analyses – Recherches sur les TICE, 6 p., http://www.adjectif.net/spip/spip.php?article233.

2012 FERREIRA- MEYERS, K. and NKOSI, J. « Strengthening Literacy: Academic and digital literacy in competition or in complementarity at the University of Swaziland? » in Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies (Special Issue on Literacy). Vol. 26(2).

2012 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. « Amélie Nothomb : Une Forme de vie (2010) L’autofiction épistolaire », in Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties, n° 9, novembre 2012, pp. 195-205,http://interferenceslitteraires.be/sites/drupal.arts.kuleuven.be.interferences/files/illi9karenferreirameyers.pdf .

2011 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. and NKOSI, J. « Strengthening literacy: academic and digital literacy in competition or in complementarity at Uniswa ? », in Conference Proceedings compiled by SERA, Manzini: Inter Agencies, pp. 253-261.

2010 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. « L'apprentissage par investigation et les outils Moodle : Un suivi des alliances stratégiques pour la mise en place de l'apprentissage en ligne des langues à l'Université du Swaziland », in Actes de conférence Grand Forum Francophone pour la Recherche et l’Innovation (EFRARD 2010), Rachel Kamga (coordinatrice), ISBN 978-2-909285-66-5, 176 pages, Paris : Europia Productions.

2010 FERREIRA-MEYERS, K. Strategic alliances for online learning within the Department of Modern Languages (University of Swaziland), in TEDC 2010 Proceedings, published online at http://playpen.meraka.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/TEDC2010/proceedings/Strategic%20alliances%20for%20online%20learning%20within%20the%20Department%20of%20Modern%20Languages.doc.

Social media

Even though most of our learners have Facebook accounts, very little research has been done on how to integrate social media in teaching and learning in Swaziland. Nevertheless, this is, according to me, an emerging trend.

SMSs

As recently as 21 August 2013 did the Institute of Distance Education have staff meeting discussions regarding the possible use of SMSs for certain of our required communication with learners.

Nothing definite has been decided, but an ad hoc committee will further analyze the needs and possibilities of the communication mode.

CONCLUSION

This set of slides gives an overview of some of the current trends in instructional technology. They are by far exhaustive, but give only selected avenues of growth for the future.