EDT4OL/Portfolio/Learning contract

Given the high levels of facilitation support and corresponding technology requirements for this course, places are restricted to 30 students per cohort. We want learners who qualify for this course to succeed, and are targeting high completion rates. Learners are therefore required to sign a learning contract to gain entry into the course.

In our experience, free open online courses have low completion rates, with the majority of learners who register not necessarily planning to allocate the time required for completion. This is why we require a signed commitment through a learning contract for this course. However, we do not wish to exclude anyone from the opportunity to learn new skills, and all course materials are openly accessible without the need to register on the course website. However, access to a number of the open source publishing technologies will be restricted to candidates who achieve entry through the submission of an acceptance portfolio, which includes the requirement to sign a learning contract.

The OER Foundation publishes technical recipes for hosting the technologies used on this course on the tech.oeru.org site for any institution to replicate if they wish to reuse this course for their own training purposes.

Description

Learning contract
A learning contract is a document signed by the learner providing clear expectations for prospective EDT4OL students. The learning contract outlines what the learner commits to doing to successfully complete the course.

The learning contract also specifies what the course facilitator(s) will do to support your learning journey.

In this way, the learning contract establishes a social contract between the learner and the course facilitator, and relies on the conviction and personal integrity of the parties to the agreement.

Working individually or as a team

In this course, you can work individually or collaboratively as a team. We encourage team submissions because OER development lends itself to co-operative design and development.

Course Badges and the Certificate of Completion is issued to individuals, irrespective of whether you are working on your own or as a team member. Using a wiki authoring model, we are able to track the individual editing contributions of team members. There are different learning contracts for individuals and teams - please see below.

We use a self-organising model for teams. Working in a team with a few colleagues at your institution or wider professional network is an effective way to support each other in professional development. Please read the following guidelines if your are interested in working as a team:

• Teams must appoint a co-ordinator who takes responsibility for organising and collecting signatures of individual team members on the learning contract for teams. The facilitators do not take any responsibility for organising individual teams. (You should organise your own meetings to prepare for the completion of the learning contract).
• Teams are restricted to a maximum of 5 team members. If you wish to work as a larger group, consider creating two or more sub-teams, each with their own coordinater.
• Each member of the team must individually submit an acceptance portfolio for approval. If any member of the proposed team does not meet the individual requirements for the acceptance portfolio, they will be removed from the team. As places are restricted for each cohort, we must provide an equal opportunity for every prospective candidate to gain entry.
• A copy of the collective Team Learning Contract must be signed by each team member and submitted individually by each teach member preparing an acceptance portfolio.

The EDT4OL learning contract

Activity - Read, sign, and submit your learning contract

Purpose: To understand your commitments and manage expectations for successful completion of this course

Each prospective EDT4OL learner is required to submit a signed learning contract as part of their Acceptance Portfolio.

1. Download a copy of the learning contract template (Choose the appropriate contract and version, depending on your choice to work individually or as a member of a team. Click on your preferred version below and you will be redirected to a page with a Download button.)
   • EDT4OL Learning Contract for Individuals (LibreOffice .odt version)
   • EDT4OL Learning Contract for Individuals (Microsoft .docx version)
   • EDT4OL Learning Contract for Teams (LibreOffice .odt version)
   • EDT4OL Learning Contract for Teams (Microsoft .docx version)
2. Reflect on your goals for taking this course, then complete and sign the learning contract
   • Please share your individual or team goals and corresponding consequences for meeting or not meeting your stated goals.
   • Include the learning pathway(s) you are planning to develop in the space provided, based on the design project you chose previously.
   • Sign the contract. If you plan to work as a team, please assign a team co-ordinator to organise signatures from every member of the team. Once every team member has signed the Team Contract template, the co-ordinator should share the final copy with each member so they can submit their learning contracts for the portfolio individually.
   • Convert your document into a PDF before submission, or print, sign and scan the document. Alternatively, you can take a photograph of the two pages using your mobile phone for submission.
3. Submit your signed learning contract
   • Each prospective EDT4OL learner must submit a signed learning contract individually, including those working as a team.
   • Log in to the Acceptance portfolio page on Moodle.
   • Click on Step 3: Submit signed learning contract and upload your learning contracat as a PDF or image file.

Not sure what to do?
If you have any questions about the EDT4OL Learning Contract process, please post these on the forums.oeru.org site.