Abstract
- a model for designing assignments for online courses in Continuing Professional Development The paper explores the challenges of designing assignments for online learning environments and looks into the use of models as analytic thinking tools for course designers. The paper opens with a discussion on challenges central to designing assignments for online learning environments in higher education. Subsequently, two widely used models for course design, Salmon’s five-stage-model (2002, 2003) and Ryan & Ryan’s TARL model (2013), are explored with the aim of evaluating their usefulness in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers and pre-school teachers, a context which has received relatively little attention in terms of research on course design. A number of assignments that have been used in online CPD courses for (pre-)school teachers are analysed with the aim of identifying design patterns, i.e. examples of how recurring pedagogical problems can be solved and, on the basis of this, a new model that can support CPD course designers in designing assignments, the Three Spaces Model For Online CPD, is presented and discussed.
Highlights
In recent years, an extensive body of research has been concerned with course design in face-to-face, online and blended education in different educational contexts, from primary school to university level (Nortvig, Balle & Petersen, 2018)
In the paper, we have explored the challenges of designing assignments for online courses in Continuing Professional Development (CPD), and we have looked into two widely used models for course design, namely Salmon’s five-stage-model (2002, 2003) and Ryan & Ryan’s TARL Model (2013)
It is concluded that the models are useful in supporting course designers in making effective pedagogical choices when designing courses, but as they do not focus on scaffolding students’ collaboration with peers outside the online learning environment, they are less useful for designing online CPD courses
Summary
An extensive body of research has been concerned with course design in face-to-face, online and blended education in different educational contexts, from primary school to university level (Nortvig, Balle & Petersen, 2018). It is important that assignments for online education relate to the course participants’ professional working lives as they bring with them years of experience and learning needs that are situated in their own practice. In online CPD courses for professional teachers, assignments should be exemplary in relation to the participants’ own practice in which they are designers of assignments (usually for pupils in primary and lowersecondary school). With this in mind, the paper seeks to investigate the following research question: what characterises assignments that support CPD students’ active learning in online courses and what are the implications for the design of online courses for CPD?
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