What are some of the 'soft factors' that influence a student's initial experience of distance online learning?

What are some of the 'soft factors' that influence a student's initial experience of distance online learning? A couple of years back, this study sought to identify some of the key aspects that helped shape their experiences, as well as some of the expectations that they came with.
The study drew from video diaries submitted by 20 students, who were participating in their first semester of online courses. Tara García Mathewson from Education Dive summarises advice for online course creators and facilitators, taken from the study, as including:

• encouraging students to participate in support services from the beginning
• creating opportunities for students to interact with their peers and develop a sense of belonging
• offering additional training for students who may not be as comfortable with the course technology
• providing timely interventions to address a second at-risk period just before the end of the semester - the point just before their last assignment of their first course is due, where students and may begin to question their ability to complete their full programs (Mathewson, 2016, source).

If you are involved in online course design and/or facilitation, this article is a highly recommended read.
You can find the full paper here: Stories from students in their first semester of distance learning.





Image: Seven Principles of Learning. CC ( BY NC SA ) licensed Flickr image by Darren Kuropatwa: https://flic.kr/p/6Haxkh

Poodlling in Japan: Becoming a Moodle developer

Justin Hunt is based in Japan, where he has been for the past 21 years.  He taught English in Japan for the first 9 years. His Moodle journey began by developing a GPS application for a specific phone. It didn't go well and he lost a lot of money.

He went back to teaching English, and got a job at a High School that had a nice language lab. As part of his role he installed Moodle and wrote an audio recorder, which they called PoodLL. It was a winner because PoodLL became a brand.

As things progressed he was requested to develop various things for Moodle, and was trying to do this at the same time as teaching. Finally he decided to make the jump and go full time with the development. PoodLL got a bit left behind, but the plugin 'stable' grew.

Some of the plugins are not in the plugins database because it takes quite a lot of time to maintain the plugins - so you end up not putting them in the database. One way of addressing this is by commercialising the plugins to help ensure that they are compatible with new releases of Moodle.

There is not a lot of help for people who want to get up to speed with Moodle development. There is some opportunity to make some money as a Moodle developer however.

Education is really big in Japan, and high schools are very well funded, but Japan is very slow on the uptake, for example with mobile phones...but once the momentum starts it can happen quickly. So, eLearning is not very big in Japan. Many teachers aren't interested. Right now, the enthusiastic foreign teachers are pushing Moodle in Japan. The Japanese who are there are players in the organisations and institutions. When Japan does get going, they are likely to be innovative and meticulous, and it will take off. The partners over in Japan are Version 2, e-learning, and Manabu 3.

Blackboard is in Japan, and there are some proprietary systems. Moodle is there but tends to be in high schools.


poodllsupport@gmail.com

Image: Poodles! CC ( BY NC ) licensed image by Bananas: https://flic.kr/p/nKZtq9