Class Descriptions and Reflections

Research and Ethics in E-Education

Description: The course covers Statistics, Research design, and Ethics. For our research version we used a thesis format performing the first steps of identifying the problem, analysis, literature review, and research design. Additionally, we did quite a bit of hands-on work with the descriptive and inferential statistics used for most social science studies, studying and immediately applying the knowledge to exercises both individually and on teams. Ethics covered intellectual property and research ethics, both critical areas in the distance education field.

Reflection: This course is a famous Waterloo for students in any field where it is required. Here at UOP the monumental amount of learning that needs to be done is compressed into 6 weeks. We all manage to survive, but it is undeniably the most work-laden of the program courses and no one seems to “get” statistics quickly. On the other hand, the particular combination of subjects plus the intensity does provide an excellent foundation for future efforts and is even exciting. I not only learned enough to know what I need to still acquire, I wound up with a solid understanding of how research projects are done and designed. I even wound up with three or four ideas for my own research plans learned a great deal about the field of education itself and my topic of interest in the process.

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Courseware Authoring

Description: This course covers courseware and the process and system of its design.   Courseware in this case means computer-mediated instruction, which comes in a variety of formats, generally instructor-led or self-paced. A core component of the class is the instructional systems design model and all of its steps, which are used to finally compose courseware for the final project. In order of the phases of ISD, students develop their courseware through Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Assessment.   In our version, we used a second model to compare to this one from the text: the Development Life Cycle.

Reflection: This was one of the courses I’d looked forward to throughout the program and it didn’t let me down! The first thing I learned was that “courseware” and “courseware authoring” are very different things and that courseware is developed using the instructional design models of any course. We evaluated six courseware programs in the teams, which with the additional study of ISD revealed a wealth of information about what is needed in the distance education environment. It was nail-biting, but great fun to do the courseware project and try to put all that I’ve learned so far in the MAEDADL into practice, while running to brush up my web skills. My goal for the program was to develop self-paced instructional materials, and this course put me much, much closer to attaining it.

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