Award Winning Pedagogical Support
We are very pleased to announce that the Learning to Teach Online project has won major Australian and American awards!
2012 MERLOT Award for Exemplary Online Learning Resources – MERLOT Classics (USA)
Faculty Development Editorial Board Award – Learning to Teach Online
McIntyre, S., Watson, K.
2011 Ascilite Innovation and Excellence Award
Exemplary and research informed use of technologies for teaching and learning in tertiary education – Learning to Teach Online
McIntyre, S., Watson, K.
What is the Learning to Teach Online Project?
The Learning to Teach Online project is a free professional development resource designed to help teachers from any discipline, whether experienced in online teaching or not, to gain a working understanding of successful online teaching pedagogies that they can apply in their own unique teaching situations.
Project Leaders Simon McIntyre and karin Watson explain the aims and structure of Learning to Teach Online, and describe the significance of winning the 2012 MERLOT Award for Exempliary Online Learning Resources.
Origins
Over the last decade, academics Simon McIntyre and Rick Bennett have developed, applied and evaluated award-winning concepts in online pedagogical training including a series of face-to-face Training Programs and Workshops. These have enabled educators from UNSW and other Sydney universities to develop their own new online curricula and teaching practices.
In 2009, COFA Online won funding from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Competitive Grant Scheme to help improve the perception and application of online learning and teaching pedagogy in a larger tertiary education context through a project called Learning to Teach Online: Developing high-quality video and text resourcesto help educators teach online. This project will use mainstream and broad-reaching online distribution channels to freely disseminate well designed, practical, easy to apply and pedagogy-focused digital training resources.
How Does the Project Work?
No matter what type of technology you are interested in exploring, the project will inform you of successful pedagogical approaches for improving your online curriculum development; assessment; teaching practice; and evaluation skills. Those wishing to experience and learn about online teaching for the first time, as well as those aiming to improve their existing online teaching practice, will be able to access the full range of digital resources to support and guide them through the process.
The Learning to Teach Online project structure, showing the relationship between the suite of training episodes, the various online dissemination points and the Learning to Teach Online Forum community
The Learning to Teach Online project team will be developing an increasing number of ‘bite sized’ informative episodes to help teachers achieve this. Each episode focuses upon different online pedagogy themes, to enable busy teachers to quickly access tips, examples and straight forward ‘how to’ documentation about online teaching concepts that are relevant to them.
Each episode comprises a video and an instructive PDF document. The videos explore successful online teaching strategies from disciplines such as art, design, science, maths, medicine, humanities, business, engineering, law and architecture. They also contain reflections from students and teachers on the reality of their online learning and teaching experiences, and most importantly highlight issues or potential problems teachers need to be aware of, offering effective strategies to avoid them. The accompanying ‘how to’ PDF document for each episode outlines the essential knowledge and steps needed to implement the particular online teaching concept being discussed.
How do Teachers use the Resources of this Project?
Episodes are available to anyone around the world for free through this site, iTunes U and YouTube. The video components of each episode are designed to be used wit the accompanying PDF file you’ll find on each episode page. We strongly recommend that teachers also read the short PDFs as they contain more detailed information, tips and strategies about the issues discussed in the videos. Production will be ongoing from 2009 until mid-2011, and episodes will be continually released during this time. We strongly recommend that teachers register on this site to be able to receive updates when new content is released (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook), participate in our online community, comment and rate videos, and save lists of your favourite episodes for future reference.The Project has now Concluded, but it Lives On!
The Learning to Teach Online project officially concluded in July 2011. However the resources continue to be viewed by an increasing amount of educators around the world. Future funding to extend the project is now being considered. Watch this space for updates.
Project Team
Simon McIntyre
Learning to Teach Online Project Leader
Project Manager
Educational Developer
Lead Graphic Designer
Karin Watson
Co-Project Leader
Co-Project Manager
Educational Developer
Rick Bennett
Co-Project Manager
Sarah Spackman
Project Assistant / Illustrator / Editor
Doug Aplin
Editor
Andrew Morrison
Programmer
Nicole Lugano
Illustrator
Graphic Design
Tom Cavdarovski
Media Producer
UNSW Creative Development
Michael Rampe
Media Producer
UNSW Creative Development
ALTC Support
Support for this activity has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The views expressed in this activity do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
