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Title of Project

Teaching and Learning Styles that Facilitate Online Learning &endash; Documentation Project

State

South Australia

Amount of Funding

$15,000

Institution

MindMedia Douglas Mawson Institute

Aim

The aim of this project was to research, collate, synthesise and document current theoretical and experiential findings from within the national VET sector, on teaching/learning styles that facilitate online learning

Methodology

National contacts

A Contact Person for each state and territory was nominated through the VET EdNA Advisory Group. The Contact Person provided lists of names and email addresses of those involved in online projects within their state or territory.

Online survey

An online survey was sent to 72 VET practitioners who had been identified by the State/Territory Contacts. The survey was also sent to the 4MAT Listserv, the EdWebDev Listserv and other people identified by colleagues.

The survey was designed as a Web form page. It consisted of 25 questions. The questions were a mix of tick box selection and open text boxes for longer responses.

The questions were structured across five major categories:

  1. Basic Information &endash; contact details
  2. Use of Online Technologies &endash; project description, target group, project role, motives, course components delivered, instructional strategies.
  3. Design and Development &endash; educational philosophy, successful and unsuccessful teaching strategies, unique online teaching fereatures, changes to structure of course, changes to design of course.
  4. Delivery &endash; technologies used, access to technology, induction, online support for learning styles, unique online learning feratures, support, assessment
  5. Reflection on Experience &endash; re-examination of teaching process, criteria for success of project, difficulties.

Visits to leaders in field

The Project Manager visited the ACT, NSW and Victoria to interview key people identified by the Contact Person as having particular expertise in online development and/or delivery. Twenty three people were interviewed.

Web Forums

Three Web Forums with Guest Moderators were conducted on key topics.

Timelines

The project was active from July &endash; December, 1997.

Participation/Access

There were 72 respondents to the documentation project. A list of respondents can be found on the Honour Roll on the Website.

Achievements/Outcomes

The following have been documented on the Project Website.

Survey results

A 28 page report on the Survey Results can be found on the Website.

Conceptual map

A Conceptual Map of Influences on Online Teaching and Learning synthesises the main project findings.

Pedagogical issues

The following pedagogical issues have emerged from this project:

innovative and unique uses for online capabilities include:

Challenges/Difficulties

The focus of this project was identifying teaching and learning styles that facilitate online learning. However, the online development process for many VET practitioners had not reached the stage where the issue of learning styles had been considered in great depth. The project identified a need for a practical planning model to address this gap.

Dissemination Strategy

This project is being primarily disseminated through a Website. The Website is already connected to a range of other projects and is being actively used.

Website

The project Website provides details of all stages in the project and project outcomes including:

The website can be found at:

http://www.tafe.sa.edu.au/lsrsc/one/natproj/tal

Contact details

Marie Jasinski
Principal Lecturer
MindMedia
Douglas Mawson Institute of TAFE
1 Mundy St, Port Adelaide
South Australia 5015
Email
Phone: 08 8303 2672
Fax: 08 8303 2667

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