eLearning Skills

Over the last year I have been trying to establish myself as an eLearning specialist within my area at work.  I still teach within a classroom environment, but more slowly I have been integrating more and more eLearning methodologies into my students learning experiences.

To begin with all of my material can be located online so students can access them both on and off campus.  I found this to be easier than having to chase students up with work that they may have missed out on if they missed a class, now I can direct them to their particular website.

Last year I developed an entire unit of study comprising of six competencies online and lectured it within a blended environment.  Now I integrate social media, video and audio files and also create a few files of my own which I hope to share amongst my peers within my institute.

I’ve had to undertake a new set of skills.  Before it was simply enough to understand markup languages, databases, scripting languages to build websites that I could share with my students.  Now it’s skills in online delivery, development and integration of the most appropriate web tools to assist students in their studies.  Lately I have become fond of using Adobe Captivate to create instructional videos.  And cloud computing with services such as Google Docs and Sites.

I have found that I am doing more research and development now than before, but I find that much of which I research and develop I use in my day to day Internet usage one way or another; and the work that I do develop can easily be modified for other units of study without to much of a drastic wheel reinvention.

Later in the year I will be doing a PD in eLearning instructional design, there is also an Diploma in eLearning that I would like to undertake soon.