Local Delivey Model - Distance Education

Last year I posted an article "practice what you preach", discussing the fact I would be launching into the delivery of Information Technology Studies through our local delivery mode.

Well after one term, I felt it was time to evaluate my progress in this experience.

To put this into context it is important to realize that this year is the first year of a new curriculum statement that has changed the assessment model for students. This has meant the production of new assessment items, and changes to the delivery of content to meet the outcomes of the course. As such many things have not been tried before and successes and failures could be just as easily put down to this as the delivery model.

Local delivery definitely has some hurdles that need to be overcome. These include coming to an understanding of the knowledge the students come to the course with, time management/commitment to studies, individual differences and group dynamics and finally distance.

Schools all run differently and provide different processes for students to select subjects. At the end of last year I had the names of the students doing the course within my site, but only had sketchy numbers for the students at the other sites. After my first session that occurred in week 2 my numbers dropped considerably.

Point 1. Ensure that management provides details the year before.

The students came from various backgrounds. Some students had done the year 11 course previously, whilst others had not done IT since year 10. In essence this meant that some students had not been exposed to databases. This has brought its challenges, especially as they would be producing relational databases within this course.

Point 2: Have a meeting the year before the course of those involved to establish prior knowledge. Give tutorials/basic knowledge required to those with limited knowledge to do in their own time (i.e. Christmas holidays) to give them an opportunity for success.

The local delivery model we use has the students meet face-to-face for one hour a week and through Centra for 1 hour. If you consider that the average school probably has the students face-to-face for 5 hours a week then this requires the students to be able to manage their time effectively between lessons to ensure success.

In essence a local delivery model requires both the teacher and students to manage their time effectively and complete work between classes. Comments that some students have already made suggest that the course is being placed behind other subjects. Why? The face-to-face lessons get priority as their teachers are there to push them.

Point 3: Set the expectations clearly the year before and ensure candidates are aware of the time requirements of the course. Make good use of various communications media to reinforce deadlines and work requirements.

Last year the group of students I had were active users of technology and made extensive use of Moodle and other technologies. This year this is not the case, with my remote students only having access to dialup at home. As such they don’t use the resources unless they have to, with email also checked infrequently. In one instance a student has not been sighted for two weeks due to sporting commitments and with dialup access at home it is near impossible to set up a centra session or something similar to check in.

This changes things considerably. I had big expectations of Moodle that have not occurred to date. Last year it would have been a different story based on my clientele.

Point 4: Consider clientele, their experiences, technology etc when setting up tools for the delivery model. On that note, delivery models need to be flexible enough to change based on the clientele.

Finally as we have an expectation that we have one face-to-face meeting per week this needs to be considered. Who will travel? Where will you meet? If students are traveling how will they be supported with this?

At this stage it has turned out to be a lot more work than I expected. Getting students knowledge levels and understandings to a point that they can apply them in a project setting is quite a challenge.

If I had my time over again I would not have chosen to do this in my second year teaching the subject and with a new curriculum statement. The combination of all three makes it quite challenging. Having said that... there is nothing like a few challenges to make life interesting. ;-)