Another subject that I’m really interested in – and looking forward to – teaching is a subject that I have tentatively entitled ‘Create: Designing Interactive Learning Objects’. I flipped back and forth about calling it Create or Design. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure it matters – I think that it’s clear what the intent of the subject is. In this subject, I’m particularly looking at how learning designers might create interactive learning objects. Now, there’s a lot to unpack in that term, and I’m not entirely convinced it will be possible to cover all of it in the space of 4 weeks, but I think it’s important to cover some of it. The first thing that I think is important to note is that many people might consider an interactive learning object might only apply in an online context – but I think that’s not true. I’ve seen objects like the ones that I’m thinking about used in face to face classrooms very effectively, as well. So, what might I cover in this subject? Off the top of my head, I’ve got a few ideas.
Firstly, this is the place to cover the basics of screen casting and webcasting. I’m using them as different terms – they are often used interchangeably – and I readily acknowledge that the terms bleed into each other. For screen casting, I’m talking about sharing your screen with others,and also recording it and your interactions with it. For webcasting, I’m talking more about speaking to the camera, face to face, so to speak, and broadcasting it live across the internet. As I said, such interactions are often a blend of the two – for example, academics sharing their slides and recording a voice over the top is really a screencast, but if they add a bit fo an intro, then that’s also a webcast. As a final note, I think there’s an important session to be had about recording audio effectively, and also the use of captions.
Another thing that that I would like to examine is the creation of things like HP5 objects, in order to build in interactivity for students. HP5 allows a whole bunch of different possible tools that all have applications and tools that might be used in a learning design context. Of course, there are many other tools that are similar in this respect – some more complex and some less so – genial.ly is one that’s popular, but there might need to be more work done in investigating these options – most of them require some kind of purchase before they can be used. I think this is also a crucial opportunity for an ‘expression session’ too.