MOSAIC
Mosaic is a project by the Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL) unit at Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education (OUDCE) to develop an online course, ‘Voices from our past: the earliest English Literature’, and a standard induction unit to introduce students to learning online, from pre-existing content external to the University. The project will also develop guidelines and case studies, as appropriate, to disseminate the lessons learned both within the University and to the wider HE community.
OUDCE has made a significant investment in e-learning in the past twelve years. Since establishing its specialist e-learning unit, TALL, in 1996, the Department has developed a portfolio of around 50 online courses and is continuing to develop further online and blended learning courses in a range of subjects at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. In 2006/07 over 1,300 students studied online with the Department.
A guiding principle of OUDCE’s existing course development methodology is the development of a learning experience that facilitates rich student interactions with learning materials, their tutor and peers, rather than recreating content that has already been successfully developed elsewhere. In the majority of our online courses this includes the use of one or more course textbooks to support the online resources which guide the learning process. In recent years, the Department has reduced the use of printed textbooks and increased the use of online materials due to the growing availability of truly excellent freely available electronic learning resources. However, these have never yet constituted the majority of any course developed, and uptake of such resources varies considerably between individual authors and across subject disciplines. The Mosaic project thus fits into central initiatives for OUDCE and will form an integral part of our future developments in this area.
Aims and Objectives
The broad aim of the Mosaic project is to create an online course reusing as much external content as possible, and through this process, collaboration with the support project CASPER and the other projects in this strand, improve out understanding of the reuse of content in HE. The projects objectives include
- Identify enough materials of sufficient quality for reuse
- Develop these into a learning experience of a quality to be accredited
- Clear copyright to integrate all the materials into the course
- Develop guidelines and materials to encourage reuse more generally
- Deliver the course to a cohort of students and evaluate its effectiveness
- Make the materials and other course outputs available to the wider HE community
Project Methodology
The mosaic project will be undertaken in the following broad stages
- Project set up - Write project plan. Create project website and blog. Contract subject matter expert.
- Specifying the course - Subject matter expert specifies full course using TALL standard online course specification process. Rework as required prior to sign-off by Academic Director and Learning Technologist. Start initial licensing enquiries.
- Sample unit – Subject matter expert assembles learning materials for sample unit, adapts as required, and writes any additional materials. Senior Developer investigates technical issues. Rework content as required prior to sign-off by Academic Director and Learning Technologist. Web Developer builds sample unit.
- Assembling/writing the course – Subject matter expert assembles learning materials for rest of course, writes any additional materials and creates tutor notes. Content submitted for external academic review. Materials reworked as required prior to sign-off by Academic Director and Learning Technologist.
- Copyright/licensing and multimedia - Work with JISC support project to manage copyright clearance and licensing issues. Investigate technical repurposing challenges. Adapt and develop interactive and rich media course elements.
- Finalising the course - Final editorial QA, assembling of existing and new content. Copyedit and update all materials accordingly. Create course delivery schedule.
- Development - Assemble all existing materials, incorporate adapted materials and build any new content.
- Review and publication - Full editorial QA of online materials by Project Manager. Update materials accordingly. Final online QA by subject matter expert and Academic Director. Update materials accordingly. Final sign-off by Academic Director and Project Manager. Publish materials.
- Delivery – Advertise course, recruit students, identify course tutor, set up student profiles on Moodle, send login details to students, tutor leads course, provide IT support for tutors and students, arrange marking of assignments, archive course on completion.
- Evaluation - Participate in JISC peer review process. Review development process through reflective project blog and update plans accordingly. Evaluate course at each stage through standard sign off methodology (see above). Evaluate course delivery through reflective project blog and standard student evaluation forms. Feed into any external JISC evaluation processes.
- Documentation and report writing - Write reports as required by JISC. Update existing project support documentation both print and online to reflect lessons learned. Maintain project website and reflective blog. Generate any additional documentation as required by project.
Deliverables
The key project outputs will be:
- ‘Voices from our past: the earliest English Literature’ online course, primarily developed from existing external learning materials, delivered to students in Autumn 2008.
- A generic induction unit to be used with online learning courses, primary developed from existing external learning materials, to prepare students for online study.
- Where appropriate, learning designs and other documentation created from the development process.
- Guidelines in reuse of content to be added to existing author documentation and processes within OUDCE and appropriate versions of these materials to be made available to the rest of the University and the wider HE community.
Stakeholders
As well as the core project team and JISC the principle stakeholders will be:
- Academics creating online courses for the Department for Continuing Education, and those more broadly at the University of Oxford.
- Academics and teachers more generally in the field of early English literature.