Online Learning – Page 2 – Digital Learning Dispatches

It’s time to pack your bags as Dublin is ready and eagerly awaiting your arrival. You might need a warm coat as we expect some spine chilling weather this week to conicide with Halloween, the celebration of Samhain and the world famous Bram Stoker Festival. If you’re one of the advance parties arriving in the next few days for the meeting of OERu partners or for one of the other NIDL pre-conference activities then you can expect a week of deadly adventures. It might be a little cooler outside by this time next week based on the long range weather forecast for Dublin but we can still guarantee you a warm Irish welcome and plenty of good Craic. The ICDE World Conferenceoffers an action packed programme over 5-days and the local NIDL team at Dublin City University (DCU) keenly awaits your arrival in the land of saints and scholars.

What’s New?

Over the last week we have been adding the polishing touches to the conference programme, with a team of volunteers from DCU working tirelessly to ensure that everything is ready for your arrival. We are also delighted to report that a great team of DCU Student Ambassadors will be supporting us throughout the conference. Last week the full Conference Book went off to the printer containing the final programme along with lots of useful information to set the stage for an impactful week. Also we released our conference app so that you can start engaging with other participants and some of the tools and resources we have available for you. We strongly encourage participants to download the conference app before you depart for Dublin in order to get ready for the event and to greatly enhance your professional learning and networking experience. To download the app:

Search for ‘The Event App by EventsAir’. Download to your device and enter the event code wcol2019.

Please enter the username and password you set when you registered for the ICDE World Conference. Note that login is case-sensitive so please make sure your device isn’t capitalising the first word. If you have any problems logging in to the app then please contact Celia or Judy from our great team at Happening Conferences and Events.

On other conference news we finalised the allocation of breakout session chairs and we are particularly grateful to the dozens of people who kindly volunteered to contribute to the ICDE World Conference in this important way. Without the volunteers we have drawn on over almost two-years the ICDE World Conference would not be possible. All paper sessions will have a dedicated chair to ensure that everything runs smoothly and presenters keep to time. We also received last week most of the digital poster submissions and successfully uploaded them to the conference app where you can already view and later in the conference vote on them. The scheduled to meet the poster author(s) to discuss their work appears in the conference book.

Preparations for Sunday’s pre-conference event on November 3^rd at DCU’s St Patrick’s campus are well in hand where we expect to welcome over 200 delegates to a busy full-day programme. A campus map with further directions to E Block where you will find the Registration Desk will be sent to delegates in the next few days. As your registration pack for the full conference will be available on Sunday morning when you arrive we encourage you to come early as tea and coffee will be available. Towards the end of Sunday’s pre-conference the #Openteach project team will be launching one of their key outputs, “Teaching Online is Different: Critical Perspectives from the Literature”. This report critically analyses the international literature about online teaching and professional development and a printed version of the work will be freely available to delegates attending the pre-conference. It argues that teaching online is different, evidenced by some of the unique roles, competencies and professional development approaches required to equip online educators to teach effectively. The #Openteach project is based in the Open Education Unit in the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) at DCU and the report is externally funded by the Irish National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, a valued Bronze sponsor.

Read more about next week’s ICDE World Conference in our final newsletter, including another informative speaker spotlight, an update for presenters and taste of Ireland section, before around 800 delegates from nearly 80 countries converge on Dublin next week.

Ken’s successful journey with DCU Connected…

It was Saturday October 5th 2013 when I first visited the Dublin City University (DCU) campus in Glasnevin, Dublin. Strange as it may sound it was only on my third visit in March 2015 that I received my parchment for the degree I completed online through DCU Connected. Thanks to the Irish Government’s Springboard+ scheme and the help from DCU I received along the way. I had promised myself for a long time that I would go back and complete my studies someday, but time and money conspired against me to keep that from happening. With an unwanted redundancy I fixed the time problem and thanks to Springboard+ I did not have to worry about the cost.

That first day I was not at all sure what I was setting myself up for or the journey that I was about to embark on. Feeling like the proverbial rabbit stuck in the headlights I wondered was this “online learning” really something that I could do or was I really just setting myself up to fail. Can I do this? Will I have the self-discipline required? How will I manage my time and combine a demanding study schedule with the rest of my life? So many questions, but feeling like I had so few answers.Thankfully I had plenty of fellow students making the same journey and the help and assistance from my tutors and the DCU Connected support staff was always on hand. Clear expectations were set from the start and a very detailed timetable of assignments, notes, and online tutorials outlined exactly what I had to do and when it was that I had to do it. The online tutorials provided clear guidance on the standard that was expected in our assignments and offered us the opportunity to ask questions and get answers. The online forums in Loop, DCU’s virtual learning environment, were also hugely beneficial in this regard. The notes provided were excellent and very clearly laid out with lots of useful references and additional reading.

Online study has the potential to be lonely; however, I was glad to have new friends that I made on that initial day in DCU as we were able to offer support and guidance to each other along the way. The nature of the assignments was such that there was almost always some group or team component and that provided an opportunity to interact with other students also. Sharing the work but also sharing stories of our own experiences meant that you never felt overly isolated. All of the assignments also provided the opportunity to share a part of your work with your peers and to both give and receive peer feedback in the form of an online critique and this provided a yardstick of sorts to gauge your own progress through the programme.

The real measure however was provided by the tutors. For each and every assignment we received timely and comprehensive feedback, with really useful guidance on what could be done to improve the work for future assignments and what the strengths and weaknesses of the assignment were. Seeing the list of completed assignments grow and the list of remaining assignments shrink provided the motivation to stick the course and complete the programme. It was hard, but it was worthwhile and I have no regrets that I made that trip to DCU in 2013. Ken tells his story here…

At Dublin City University through DCU Connected and with the support of Springboard+ opportunities are available for people to study at no cost or 90% subsidised fees towards graduate certificates in:

• Management of Internet Enterprise Systems

• Management of Operations

• Management of Information Systems Strategy

These programmes are designed so that students can study part-time whilst they work. Students who start with the above qualifications can progress to complete a full Masters degree. DCU has a long history of online distance learning and through the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) has considerable expertise in designing online courses. Notably in November DCU will be hosting the ICDE World Conference on Online Learning.

DCU Connected also provides a range of undergraduate programmes through the Springboard+ scheme. If you are interested in finding out more, please see our website or contact a member of our team:

openeducation@dcu.ie