E-learning
Additional reference material
Useful starting points
E-learning General
- The Theory & Practice of Online Learning - Second edition
- Edited by Terry Anderson & Fathi Elloumi a feely downloadable book on the subject focusing primarily on distance teaching but plenty of use to all online practitioners.
- Effective Practice in a Digital Age – A guide to technology-enhanced learning and teaching
- ’It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.’ Lewis Carroll’s prescient quote introduces this new JISC publication that updates the first edition of ’Effective Practice with E-learning’. This is a guide for those who seek to better understand how to integrate technology with their teaching, with a focus on blended teaching. The guide is divided into pathways depending on your level of experience and/or institutional resourcing. Video clips are used to augment many of the case studies in the guide.
- Higher Education in Web 2.0 World
- On 15 March 2005, the UK government's Department for Education and Skills published the e-Strategy 'Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning and children's services'. The strategy was written with the 2005-2010 period in mind.
- JISC - E-learning
- JISC is a major funder of e-learning in the UK HE sector. This webpage on the enormous JISC website has a handy menu to enable fast navigation to the relevant programmes and services that the JISC offer to support e-learning.
- Teacher training videos
- Russell Stannard, a lecturer in ICT and Multimedia at Westminster University, has created a website to showcase his growing archive of training videos for teachers. The videos use screen capture technology and so are extremely easy to follow. Current videos include: How to use Twitter, How to use Blackboard, How to create blogs, and 24 Tips for PowerPoint.
VLE Guides
- Using Moodle (Second Edition)
- This freely available e-book can either be downloaded or read online a useful into to teaching with the open source VLE Moodle.
E-learning policy & Strategy
- DfES e-learning strategy
- On 15 March 2005, the UK government's Department for Education and Skills published the e-Strategy 'Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning and children's services'. The strategy was written with the 2005-2010 period in mind.
- HEFCE E-learning strategy
- This document sets out our strategy and implementation plan for supporting higher education institutions to develop and embed e-learning over the 2005 - 2015. It was developed jointly with the Higher Education Academy and the Joint Information Systems Committee.
Learning Materials
- JORUM
- Jorum is a free online service providing access to teaching and learning resources, for teaching and support staff in UK Further and Higher Education Institutions.
- OpenLearn - Learning Space - Arts & Humanities Courses
- The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. This is the LearningSpace, where you'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others.
- Openlearn - Labspace - Arts & Humanities Resources
- The OpenLearn website gives free access to learning materials from higher education courses. Edit the materials in the LabSpace. Collaborate with others and publish new versions of the learning materials to share with the world. Materials can be downloaded and repurposed for use in your own VLE's
- School of Language & Literature (Faculty of Humanities) at Wikiversity
- The OpenLearn website gives free access to learning materials from higher education courses. Edit the materials in the LabSpace. Collaborate with others and publish new versions of the learning materials to share with the world. Materials can be downloaded and repurposed for use in your own VLE's
- MIT-Opencourseware - Writing and Humanistic Studies
- Free Open Educational Resources (OERs) from one of the pioneers in the field.
- MIT - Opencourseware - Literature
- Free Open Educational Resources (OERs) from one of the pioneers in the field.
- MIT - Opencourseware - Linguistics & Philosophy
- Free Open Educational Resources (OERs) from one of the pioneers in the field.
Virtual learning environments
- The Duologue Project
- The duologue project set out to pioneer and assess the value of the Blackboard system for an English department which had not hitherto ventured into the world of Virtual Learning Environments. The website contains a wealth of practical information about using VLE's and how some of the 'cultural barriers' were overcome to using technologies in the classroom.
- Effective Use of Virtual Learning Environments
- This infoKit produced by the JISC aims to enable tutors to make informed decisions, based on sound educational principles, about the use of technology in their teaching and their students' learning when using a VLE.
Online Assessment
- Guide to effective practice with e-assessment
- This excellent guide to e-assessment contains a helpful overview of the subject and a handy glossary, as well as a series of case studies involving 55 institutions around the UK.
Creating Accessible Learning Materials
- JISC TechDis
- The JISC TechDis Service aims to be the leading educational advisory service, working across the UK, in the fields of accessibility and inclusion. their website contains a wealth of information on practical steps that can be taken to create inclusive learning materials.
- ALERT - Accessibility in Learning Environments & Related Technologies
- The ALERT project (Accessibility in Learning Environments and Related Technologies) aimed to improve the accessibility of online learning in specific subject areas. In particular, to identify methods of supporting disabled students to enable them to achieve the pedagogical objectives of their modules through a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). The guidelines are particularly useful.
Legal Issues
- JiscLegal: Legal Guidance for ICT use in Education and Research - IPR
- The JISCLegal website contains a useful introduction to IPR issues in relation to creating and using teaching materials online.
