In a nutshell - Scope and first things
1. Leave the wikibook alone and where it is…Ruth can update that yearly or whenever it suits her to do that.
2. Create a mirror copy of the text in wikiEd - so we have a ‘static version’ in wikibooks and a ‘dynamic’, activity focused version in wikiEd.
- I feel we need to have as little content as possible in wikiEd and focus on the activities which support the content in the book. That way the book can be stripped right back to content only and one or two websites per chapter which are easily updated from wikied.
- COL would not be able to support our level of investment in this project under this scenario. I need a clear commitment from Ruth that the content of the text can be released on WE under a CC-BY license. --Wayne Mackintosh 07:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
- Or else we create an interactive book on wikied which eventually converts to pdf for uploading to Lulu.com and hard copy publication and perhaps CD publication and Ruth does away with the wikibook.
- A CC-BY license would allow users to convert the text into any format, including CD publication and Lulu.com publications. However, COL does not undertake any responsibility for funding these conversions. --Wayne Mackintosh 07:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
- Otherwise updating the wikibook and keeping it aligned with wikied version is going to become a nightmare. --bron 05:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
- COL does not assume any responsibility for updating the version on Wikibooks. Our interest is in adding value to the pedagogy of the resource as an interactive text drawing on our experiences of design and development of asynchronous learning. As the content would be available under a CC-BY license, it can be used in multiple contexts. COL would be comfortable to release its value additions to the text under a GFDL license, which means you are free to port the text to Wikibooks. --Wayne Mackintosh 07:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
- I feel we need to have as little content as possible in wikiEd and focus on the activities which support the content in the book. That way the book can be stripped right back to content only and one or two websites per chapter which are easily updated from wikied.
3. Build a set of activities in WikiEd that engage learners with each chapter of the text (as per points in summary).
4. Select parts of the chapters of the text to develop/embellish further – graphics, animation etc.
- Development priority of these would be based on
- alignment with new activities
- where learning problems are mostly experienced
Begin with
Two chapters (used early in current course):
- Cells: generic to both human and animal A and P students
- Skin: generic to a point, but also includes content specific to animals so gives us and opportunity to design and develop for both groups
Both are taught reasonably early on in the current course.
Cells and Skin [or possibly just skin??] could therefore become representative samples for design and development – will let us make decisions about further development --Fiona 23:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
The scope looks good Fee. The pros for Cells are:
- plenty of material we can draw on.
- it is a very early module.
- It will help keep the starting design as simple as possible. --bron 05:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Thoughts[edit]
- Should we try to (informally) collect info from Ruth’s students? …eg ‘focus group’ type of questions – would be useful when we come to actually designing activities … …analysis of what it is that students get excited about or need to talk about – like what we saw on the forums on Monday.
- Ruth…the other day you mentioned some of the types of activities you get your students to do in class and on block courses:
- look at
- identify
- magnify
- dissect
- comment on
any more??
A good idea Fee though my preference would be for a usability approach as we trial some prototype solutions - "they don't know what they don't know" - unless we show them some options. I am happy to draw up a plan to do this. My professional approach would be to develop a formal evaluation plan, which includes some overarching questions on which we base our decisions, as well as a mixed methods evaluation design. This is what I teach so am happy to draw something up if we agree to go down this path.--bron 05:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, some kind of survey or evaluation is essential. I do not really know how all types of learners respond to the material. I see and interact with full time students in tutorial class and generally get a sense that they like what I do with them. I do not see those that fail to turn up to the class and all those distance learners. I do sometimes get a bit of a sense of their reactions from the discussion boards but what about those that the material just does not hit the spot with and who say nothing. I would love to know how we can make it more relevant, easier to engage with, more exciting for these students.
Hey Bronwyn, that'd be brilliant. Given that there are students out there who have used the resources, done the classes, I definitely think we need to find out what we can from them - good for this project, good for Ruth, by the sounds of it. In terms of the LD process, my thoughts were toward some kind of pre-analysis (learner, materials, etc), using what we had at our fingertips, and not having to make too much of a meal of it. So, it would be hugely useful if you could cast your evaluative magic and help bring some of these things to light...whenever you get the opportunity.
If you want to run a survey instrument for demographic or "objective-item" type questions -- COL has a survey monkey account and we can run an online survey if this is useful.
See for example the WE newbie survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Ma4uFnRJxzEU7K1uNnpWKw_3d_3d
If you want to go this route -- let us have the questions and we'll get the survey loaded.
That said, I've found that focus groups produce more valuable data though.
Hi Fee and Otago Poly friends.
I like the approach of developing a respresenative sample to start with. This will give us the flexibility to fine tune the design -- but will also provide us with a better sense of the scope in terms of what we can realistically achieve. I'm pretty sure that we're going to generate a couple of "nice-to-have" bullets for our list and that's great.
Regarding the nice-to-haves we could implement one or two examples of how this might unfold for the future as a dynamic and evolving wiki project.
My sense (although recognizing that I was not at the meeting) is to select one chapter to start with. Ruth -- do you have a recommendation?
Cells or Skin?
Great project -- can't wait to see the results of our efforts
Hmm, the mirror idea.. I think I agree with Bron about the problem with that, and I thought we decided that wasn't the best way to approach this.. Way down in the summary of the discussion, Wayne responds with a note relating to the division between human and animal anatomy. In the meeting there seemed to be some feeling of concern that attempting to do this would scope creep the project. I think we saw that it would not if we approached it right.
From memory, the detail of the discussion on how to approach it was something like this:
Otago would look into possible funding for Ruth to begin developing a basic human anatomy text in wikibooks, usingthe simple and accessible style of the animals text and sharing material from the advanced human text, the relevant animal sections, and the various human texts that Ruth currently uses in her Blackboard courses. Hopefully, with these three areas of reusable content already available this development would not take too much effort - just editorial work really, which Ruth is quite skilled at. (If COL saw value in this development then support would ensure it happened quickly).
At the same time, we use Wikieducator to develop "activity sheets" that are useful for people to use to engage with either the human and/or the animal texts on wikibooks. To do this we would identify 2 chapters in the existing animal text that are generic enough so as to develop activities that are appropriate for both texts. The activity sheets developed for these initial chapters would scope out the workflow and what a "workbook" on wikieducator might look like.
Hi Leigh -- from a pedagogical perspective, I would prefer to develop a seamless and integrated exemplar that can be structured and produced for multiple reuse contexts building on the features enabled by the collections editor now possible with the wiki ==> pdf generator.
From COL's perspective -- in alignment with our strategic development plan for WE and scarce resources for eLearning work -- I'm not keen to single out the activity sheets as a development project.
In the spirit of openness and transparency -- perhaps the animal A & P project is not the best fit to achieve our collective objectives -- and that's fine by me. The strength of the open source model is that we self organize finding the best fit and eco-system to move our collective objectives forward.
Cheers
As you say, plenty of material to draw on for cells. In fact that is probably the main problem. there is too much material to draw on and we have to distill out the points that are most relevant to vet nurses and present them in the clearest way. I have a fairy good feel for what vet nurses have to know re cell biology but when adapting the material for human biology the emphasis seems to be different. For instance I have had issue with how little genetics vet nurses are exposed to while in bioscience for nursing there is much more material on DNA structure, cell division etc.
Fair enough Ruth --
I'm not querying the content integrity of the selection of diagrams -- but rather the formats in which diagrams are created and stored. Sourcing existing svg graphics means that we can save time, energy and money - moreover, they can easily be edited for alternative scenarios.
Like I said -- I have no expertise in your content area - just trying to give a few tips on how to improve the productivity of your content development processes in a contemporary environment.
Cheers Wayne
