Modular Courses
Sorry last thread from me, but this is something we had raised a few years back and I wanted to breath some life into it again - why not modularise courses to allow greater flexibility to the learner? I suspect I know the barriers, but I am interested in thoughts.
Replies
- Pete Graham (View all users posts) 30 Jul 2012 11:27am ()
There has to be merit in this idea. It could broaden the exposure of both students and teachers to online teaching and learning (they need only commit to a module rather than a whole-year course). I guess a potential barrier would be school structures, it would be logistically challenging to fit an online module into school programmes in a coordinated way.
This is not insurmountable and would probably provide a much-needed healthy kick in the right direction to making learning more flexible and personalised
- Lynda Walsh-Pasco (View all users posts) 07 Aug 2012 1:51pm ()
I have always offered my course in modules but only a few take a module mainly for the skiing module. It maybe the way they are presented the course in the menu or schools may find it difficult to fill up the student's timetable unless the modules all start and end at the same time. Maybe a first step is to break courses into semesters like the university and they can take a papers(modules)till end of term 2 or full year course.The other issue is students who are aiming of merit/excellence endorsements usually need to do whole course and also sit externals in most subjects so we have noticed students less willing to do modules since this was changed.
- Darren (View all users posts) 07 Aug 2012 3:06pm ()
I agree guys. We had this discussion in our last eSchool meeting and there were a few challenges highlighted. The course endorsements is annoying and one I didn't immediately think of. The other is going through another major round of course enrolments mid year - no fun, but not insurmountable. There are others of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth considering.
- Carolyn Alexander-Bennett (View all users posts) 14 Aug 2012 10:55am ()
Like Lynda, I have been offering one module which equated to the internal for Level 3 accounting where two students joined the class just for this module and used the credits for NCEA Level 3, however they were past students of mine who had the foundation so found it fine. Wouldn't work with someone with no background in accounting.
I have been thinking about the modular approach being more of a shared teaching situation where two or three teachers would share the content for a programme, so not having to commit for a whole year, but that would take some organisation and currently, we are only able to meet the needs as we have them.
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