Authors Simonson, Smaldino, and Zvacek (2015), describe and open source management system as a free management system that supports learning and meets specific needs of a learning community. The course I choose to review was Human Emotion presented by Yale University’s Psychology department. I first accessed this course though my iTunes U app on my smartphone, however, when I attempted to search online on Yale’s Open Yale Course website, the course was not available. I believe that since this is a newer course (dated October 14, 2013), it has been integrated in iTunes U rather than being available on the website: http://oyc.yale.edu/. I will also be providing screenshots throughout my discussion to demonstrate my experiences as I navigated this course.

Figure 1: Screenshot of the course page on iTunes U.

      Overall, as a browsed contents of this course, it appears to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment. The first design element that I noticed prior to viewing the course, is that there is a video and audio component of the lecture, supplemented by an audio only component of the same lecture. I enjoy this features as this gives the participant the opportunity to choose how much data they are willing to use to access a lecture. For instance, for a participant who does not have access to Wi-Fi, they can choose the option of listening to the audio only, unless there is access to connect to an available network.  Another element that indicates this course was carefully planned is the orientation that is given prior to the actual lecture. During this course orientation, the instructor June Gruber provided an overview on how the course is structured, what to expect and offered external links to be successful in the course.

Figure 2: Screenshot of course orientation.

    In Simonson et al’s text (2015), the authors outlined four recommendations for distance delivered instruction which includes:

Organizational Guidelines

      While this course does not follow this guideline, it is still organized in a manner that it clearly outlines which topics it is going to cover and also indicates if it is the actual lecture, take away questions, or the expert interviews.

Assessment Guidelines

    The authors indicate that for distance delivered instruction, it should have at least one major assignment per unit and one major assignment per two or three modules. One feature of this course is that at the end of each lecture, take home questions are provided to viewers to reflex on what was discussed. After each lecture, participants have the option of participating in a live discussion panel to discuss information presented in the lecture and pose any additional questions one may have had.

Content Guidelines

      Not only are videos and audio files are available through the iTunes U app, but there is also a supplemental website in which participants can access additional materials, external links, and the expert series that is also available in catalog listing.

Instruction/Teaching Guidelines

      Unfortunately, I was not able to review this guideline as videos were not time/date stamped and all the episodes of the course were listed.

One of the best activities that I found to maximize active learning for participants was the opportunity and individual has to participate in the live discussion available. While there are no discussion boards available for this course, the live discussion session is a great alternative to encourage discussion and collaboration amount students.

Reference:

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., and Zvacek, S. (2015). Instructional design for distance education. In Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (6th ed., pp. 153-156). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.