The previous 2 workshops had proved so popular and effective at training many people how to create e-Learning materials, that we decided to run seperate workshops in the College of Medicine, and Kamuzu College of Nursing. This allowed us to highlight the benefits of e-Learning to many new people, as well as continuing to develop the skills of people who had attended previous workshops.
we decided to maximise our efforts in the Lilongwe workshop by running parallel workshops for the duration of the week. Our decision was based on feedback from the previous workshop to give more time to develop resources for any participants who had attended previous workshops.
Workshop for “First Time” participants
Ten participants from KNC Lilongwe, KCN Blantyre and MCHS Zomba attended the 4 day novice workshop in Lilongwe. We had a total of 12 participants in the workshop. No participant had any prior knowledge or experience of creating or using eLearning resources to support their teaching and their students’ learning.
The workshop framework was based on the format used in the October 2010 workshops. This had received positive feedback from novice participants who felt that the approach was well-suited for those new to eLearning and had enabled them to develop their skills in a timely and appropriate manner.
The topics covered were planning the creation of elearning resources, from identifying suitable topics/concepts within the participants teaching curriculum where these resources could provide supportive supplementary material. Familiarization with the Articulate software, Engage, for presenting content. Identifying the principles of good online content, the skills for writing for the web and the peer review process for assessing the quality of online content.
We then looked at writing self-assessment quizzes with Articulate Quizmaker that tested students’ understanding of the material created. We explored principles of good MCQ question writing, good overall quiz design, and the importance of giving good feedback.
We had the opportunity on the final day to concentrate on packaging up quizzes and interactions into suitable and useful elearning packages using Articulate Presenter. We also reviewed and quality assessed these packages as well as those created in the parallel workshop to elicit a summary of good practice.
Workshop for “Experienced” participants
The “experienced” workshop was intended for participants who had attended previous workshops, and was designed to refine skills and promote good practice, while offering time to work on creating a number of immediately usable resources for the curriculum. A total of 10 people took part in this workshop: 5 KCN, 4 MCHS, and 1 College of Medicine.
A steady flow of resources were created throughout the week. KCN staff used their time in the workshops to work through the module documents to identify resources that could be linked into the CMS. Most participants seemed keen on creating large e-learning packages that incorporated a number of e-learning materials. The process allowed them to look at their teaching and look for the areas where a resource could have a great impact on student’s understanding on the teaching.
A full range of Engage resources were created, and Quizzes used a wide number of question types to create quizzes for review, and revision purposes.
The team from KCN Midwifery again proved to be keen at shooting videos, and recorded another 4 films about different delivery procedures. The videos were shot, edited, and added into e-learning materials completely unaided.
Throughout the week a number of advanced topics were discussed about getting the most out of the Articulate software. The talks and discussions included:
- In depth look into Image Copyright
- Using Quizmaker as a Question Bank
- Creating Virtual Patients, and Case Based Scenarios
- Review of “Articulate Guru” resources
- Discussion on reviewing resources
