A widget for mapping student tasks over time

Output from an experimental pedagogy widget

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Gr�inne Conole
9 September 2009

As part of our OULDI (http://ould.open.ac.uk) and Corse Buisness Models work at the Open University we are trying to produce a set of representations to capture courses at the curriculum level. One of the views is what we call a Pedagogy Profile view. We have a flash-based widget which enables the user to enter the amount of time students are expected to spend on six different types of pedagogy, plus the amount of time they will spend on assessment tasks. The user can choose the granularity of time (week, month, semester, etc) and the scaling (hours, ratios, percentages). In the example below I have used weeks and time divided into hours. The profile is automatically generated from the user-inputted data.

We think this has a number of uses

As a means of teachers/designers getting a quick feel for the spread of task-types students are undertaking; typically there is an overload of 'assimilative' and 'assessment' tasks.
As a means of teachers/designers deconstructing a course to find its profile
As a means of comparing profiles across a deptment or faculty
For students to assess their own learning patterns and mix of task types.

Thoughts welcome on the value of this!

Pedagogy Widget

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Discussion

It could be useful to show how the profile varies over time e.g.

Pedagogy profile

Andrew Brasher
4:03pm 9 September 2009 (Edited 4:12pm 9 September 2009)

Hi Andrew where u trying to embed from slideshare? At the moment we are needing to use a work-around

eg. <a rel="embed" href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=grqt3HoLOIA">Video about Moodle, on YouTube</a>

Gr�inne Conole
4:07pm 9 September 2009

Hi Grainne

Yes, I was. I've now updated my comment using the workaround you suggested. Thanks!

Andrew Brasher
4:13pm 9 September 2009

Excellent thanks Andrew - useful link!

Gr�inne Conole
4:14pm 9 September 2009

Btw, on a more technical note, I think the the google docs spreadsheets and charts fuctionality be used to generate bar charts via the api, and to collect the chart data.

See e.g. http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

Andrew Brasher
4:31pm 9 September 2009

Thanks Andrew - will take a look.

Gr�inne Conole
5:09pm 9 September 2009

As an instructional designer, I think this could be a useful tool for getting a sense of the various tasks/activities when designing a course. It could also be useful for students to track the time they spend on various tasks/activities within a course. It could a good course evaluation tool, as well, to see if changes need to be made in the design.