Thread:A Mathemateical journey is going to be a popular OERu offering! Initial reflections (1)

Hi Betty,

Judging from my experience working in the developing world -- I think this course is going to be very popular and it covers so many relevant skills for a wide range of disciplines. A good blueprint -- clearly ESC is very experienced in the world of asynchronous learning :-).

I really like the blueprint reference to tutorials and support materials for using different technologies (in your case spreadsheets). mmmm -- I think we need an OERu logic model activity for the range of student support tutorials for technology. The OERu will need resources to promote capability development in digital literacy. For example, Module 4 of COLs Computer Navigators Certificate Course covers spreadsheets, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA. We already have good resources for teaching wiki skills, and I suspect we will need resources on how to create and use blogs etc.

Thinking out loud:


 * What your your thoughts / recommendations for implementing the initial assessment of quantitative skills. Would this be an objective item test using online technology? I assume the initial test is formative / diagnostic and will not contribute to the final summative assessment?
 * ESC are world leaders in developing custom learning plans. Any advice / ideas on how to design this in a way which can scale? I imagine that the learning plan consultation would require the input of a skilled professional to support the learner -- or are there ways of designing this consultation as independant study materials?
 * Question of clarity: Am I correct in assuming that the "Weekly blackboard" sessions -- are video recordings of a teacher working through math problems? AKA Khan academy style vignettes -- or are you referring to the Blackboard LMS?
 * I think it would be useful to include a high level assessment rubric table which shows how the different components of the summative assessment contribute to the final grade. This will help us think about the assessment services and how the no-cost OERu teaching interfaces with the assessment model.
 * This is not a major issue for the prototype offering -- because we will be restricting the number of registrations. However, as a mentioned above, I think this will be a very popular course and it is plausible that A mathematical journey could register thousands of learners for each cohort. I'm not sure that Mahara will scale well in this context -- a community group larger than 50 or 100 learners using Mahara is not going scale. Any thoughts on how we might address the scalability question?

Always a pleasure working with folk who know how to design high quality distance learning!