ΣΔΜII623: Teaching Adult Education On-line

This module is about teaching adults online. It is organized around three central themes. The first theme is on “Critical Issues in Online Teaching and Learning”. From week 2 to week 6 of the course we explore and discuss critical issues in online teaching and learning, on topics ranging from online pedagogies, distributed learning in social media, ubiquitous learning, the role of adult educators and students in online learning environments, and online teaching in multicultural contexts. The second theme of this module is about “Trends in Open Learning Online”. Under this theme, from week 7 to week 8 of the course, we explore and discuss the logic and recent developments in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement and related topics and concepts such as crowdsourcing and citizen science. Furthermore we focus on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), from a pedagogic and social perspective.

The final theme of this module is about “Online Course Design Considerations in Practice”. From week 9 to week 12 we engage in designing a mini pilot course working in small groups. Students have an extensive hands-on experience in structuring a course using Moodle, perhaps the world’s most popular open source Learning Management System (LMS). In parallel the groups engage in planning and constructing their course in Moodle, deciding on their preferred pedagogic approach, remixing, repurposing and uploading learning materials, specifying learning activities and choosing assessment techniques.

During the module students will be asked to explore and use different kinds of online tools and environments for practicing their skills in e-learning content and course development, communication and sharing. It is therefore expected that students are already familiar with the most common internet technologies and uses (e.g. Google searching, e-mailing, social media, etc). Furthermore, it is expected that students have already developed an understanding of adult learning theories and pedagogies as well as of curriculum development for adults, two areas that are covered by the first year courses.

Overall, the module is oriented towards blending the study of sound academic research and theorizing on adult online education with the development of practical skills needed by competent adult educators working in online programmes and by e-course and e-learning content developers. Each week students are expected to study a set of learning materials (plus extra resources for further exploration) and engage in small individual and group projects on the weekly topic and its wider theme.