More Specifically:
- Customised Share Point/Tulip Pages
- Blogs
- Podcasting/iTunes U
First off some background about Work And Wellbeing for those not in the know.
"This pioneering programme has been developed for those individuals/organisations who maintain people in or return people to work. This is a contemporary programme that takes a biopsychosocial approach to addressing lifestyle balance, health and well-being in the workplace."
Custom:
Customised SharePoint sites can come in a wide range of forms, simple ones which require little technical know how to utilise such as custom links:
Every SharePoint/Tulip page has a links section filled with default links, however it can be really useful for students to place contextual links here such as government initiatives relevant to the course/module or blogs from people with areas of expertise in that area etc. For example if this was an E-Learning Module linking to Steve Wheelers Blog would be a useful for the students.
To create/update the links list users simply have to click on the "Add new link" option (this option isn't viewable for students FYI).
Adding links is all very well and good, but what if you want to create a site people link to not from? Well SharePoint/Tulip being the flexible resource it is can be folded in any manner you want, it just needs a little bit of persistence and perhaps some help from your local Learning Technologist... this is something I've created recently along with Adele Kane:
Now obviously this might be out of the scope of this course, but hopefully you'll be able to see some aspects which could be used, this particular site has been published publicly so, anyone in the world can view it without having to log in, likewise you could create something of academic excellence (or something like that) and show it off to the world.
Blogs
Blogs seem to be big business within this faculty all I seem to blog about on this blog is about how to blog! So I won't go into any blog examples or how to blog specifically in this blog post. However with a course like Work and Wellbeing with students from a wide range of backgrounds I can imagine blogs could be a key aspect of the some of the modules.
Blogs essentially give your students a voice, which can be shared amongst the class, I imagine this could be useful particularly with students coming from a variety of professional backgrounds, they might be able to give contextual reflections about what they've learned and as a result help their peers and future potential students etc.
Podcasts/iTunes U
The most misused term in E-Learning and here all I really mean is audio recoding's or video/PowerPoint slides with Audio over the top. Basically all I'm referring to is an audio recording or a video which will be of benefit to the students learning. These can be simple uploaded audio recordings taken directly from lectures, or slightly more complex could have slides overlaid onto the audio recordings. Or most effectively short audio/video/slideshow snippets highlighting key aspects of programmes/modules/lectures for students to review at later stages (e.g. before exams), whilst on the way to their next lecture to refresh their memories etc. I hope you can see how amazingly powerful these could potentially be, however annoyingly due to the effort put in is quite often skimped over in favour of more traditional techniques. However there is nothing stopping you from getting your students to do all the hard work for you and to create such resources themselves to benifit the rest of the class etc?
Above I've mentioned iTunes U, iTunes U is a key initiative the TEL (Technology Enhance Learning) team at the university are aiming to push. iTunes U is a tool created by the guys at Apple (think iPods, iPhones, Macs etc).
"iTunes U — a powerful distribution system for everything from lectures to language lessons, films to labs, audiobooks to tours — is an innovative way to get educational content into the hands of students."
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u
The difference between this and podcasts on Tulip, is that these podcasts are free for the whole world, i.e. do you really want to be shoving all your lectures on there free for anyone in the world to view. In an ideal world this would be fine as all your really paying for with a degree is a piece of paper with University of Plymouth Logo on, but obviously there's more to it than that! The way's I'd see people using iTunes U, is to create these high quality snippets of each lecture/module/programme for anyone in the world to view. This comes into its own when the areas your covering are pioneering in their field, such as this course. Since why would people want to view your particular resource when they could be looking at a university better suited in that area. For example it wouldn't be worth listening to a technology lecture from an unheard of university when you could be listening to the pioneering technology guys over in MIT.
