Session 5: E-learning course and its pedagogical benefits

Locate an e-Learning course (synchronous or asynchronous) and describe its pedagogical benefits for teaching and learning.

Step 1. Search an e-Learning course & post a summary on e-Portofolio (Individual work)

 Pls include such information:

1)Course topic, course source & link, learning objectives,

2)Target learners,

3)Course evaluation criteria

4)Pedagogical benefits of this e-Learning course

5)Your other reflections about this course (e.g. advantages, disadvantages, effectiveness, reasons for recommending this course….)

Step 2. Share within your group

Step 3. Select a best e-Learning course, refine the e-Learning course report, and post it on e-Portofolio (Group work).

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Summary about an e-Learning course:


Katie:

1) Course topic:Ten Days to Breakthrough Korean Pronunciation.

      Course source: www.hjenglish.com

      Learning objectives: 
     1.To grasp the basic pronunciation in Korean.
     2.To imitate the accent of Native Korean
     3.To know the culture of Korea.

2) Target learners: Beginner in Korean;Interested in Korean;Traveller;Students who want to pass TOPIK.

3)   Course evaluation criteria: the degree of difficulty; the attraction to the students; the effective of teaching.

4)   Pedagogical benefit:Using interactive methods when evaluating;Give some real demonstration when difficulty occurs.

5)   Advantages:This course provide fundamental knowledge about Korean, and the difficulty is progressive which is suited for the beginner.Whats’ more, it is attractive, because it made by animation.And the shortage may be that it could provide some scenario to us to use those knowledge more accurately.For example, when a new word occurs, teacher can give a real life conversation and so that, students would better know how to use those new knowledge into real life.




King :

1) Course topic: The course is about teaching us cooking French food in a easy way.
The course link is http://www.bilibili.com/video/av1634353/index_1.html.

2) It aims at letting people get rid of their cliché about French food that it's super complicated. She hopes cooking is no fuss, just enjoyable and take people's fear out of French cooking.

3) Target learners are definitely those who want to learn the way of cooking French food.

4) According to Douban, its score is 9.1 out of 10. More than 60% of the people has given full marks to it. Her class is very effective since she would teach 5 dishes within 30 minutes. From gorgeous patisserie and quick-to-do dishes to classic suppers with a twist. The food looks amazing, I love her British accent and the food are not difficult to learn.

5) As for the pedagogical benefits of this cooking e-Learning course, I think for one thing, people can get her idea of cooking French food in a easy and enjoyable way. The food are rather original the presentation is awesome. Learners would be happy to learn such things within a short time. For another, some amateur chefs like me who wants to improve English can also benefit from this course.

6) I really like this course and I can't find any obvious disadvantages. But I think the introduction of each course can be improved a little bit.  Comparing to Gordon Ramsay's cooking courses, the ingredients of hers are not that clear. Gordon would tell you what you would use in advance and that would be better for us to do the preparation work.

Maybe for a Chinese cook, our ingredients would be rather different from French food especially when it comes to the spices. For example, we don't use parsley, rosemary and cinnamon that much. So it would really suck when you follow her course and in the middle of your cooking, you find out that you miss one spice. So that is what I want to mention about the disadvantages.

The advantages have already be listed before and I'd love to add one point. When we are watching the course, we can learn a lot about French culture apart from cooking. We can see the pedestrians, the streets and other things in Paris when she is on her way to buy the ingredients for food.

Lynn:

edX massive online course providor

1. Learning objectives : Students who want to access to high-quality courses and get best education can conduct self-directed learning through these online courses from best worldwide universities on edX

2. Target learners: motivated self-directed learners


3. Course evaluation criteria: Each video course interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can immediately practice and test if they digest the knowledge. Also there are online textbooks and discussion space where students can post questions and discuss with each other or teaching assistants.


4. Pedagogical benefits of this e-Learning course: All courses are free and opened to every self-directed learner, who has strong motivation to learn, so this online resource platform increases access to high-quality education for everyone around the world, enhance teaching and learning off campus and online. An important thing is that the learner can get a certificate if you register and finish one specific program.

5. Your other reflections about this course (e.g. advantages, disadvantages, effectiveness, reasons for recommending this course….)：The platform is super powerful with countless high-quality courses of diverse subjects from over 90 top ranking partner universities. What's more, these resources are all open and free, which is a very good and flexible choice for motivated self-directed learners. This is the reason I recommend this website as it's really effective, with not only online courses but also practice chances and discussion forum to exchange ideas with other learners or professional teaching assistants, if the learner is really want to learn something. However, there is still a common shortcoming for this kind of online courses, that is for those students whose motivation is not strong enough, it's hard to determine in learning through a website instead of a face-to-face learning with some pushing from the teacher. In general, edX is a quite valuable online platform for high-quality learning.

Philip:

1.      Course Topic : SMART CITIES by The open University

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/smart-cities

Learning objectives :

1.      Explore the role of technology and data in cities,

2.      and learn how you can participate in the creation of smart cities.

2.      Target learners：interest in the application of new technologies to city challenges and smart city solutions. It does not require any prior experience of studying the subject.

3.      Course evaluation criteria:

The course is for self-learning purpose and the learning hours are 18. By reading different articles, watching the related videos and joining discussion, the participants can apply the certificate of completion.

4.      Pedagogical benefits of this e-Learning course:

Many articles and videos are provided in the course that learners do not need to spend much time and effort in finding the related learning materials. Besides, learners can continue their study according to their own pace. There is no limitation for time and venue. Furthermore, the discussion forum can broaden the view of a specific topic of learners so that they can learn from one another.

5.      Your other reflections about this course (e.g. advantages, disadvantages, effectiveness, reasons for recommending this course….)

The course is flexible for learners as they can take the course according to their own learning speed. Also, the medium of instruction is simple English that learners can understand the learning materials more easily. Moreover, the videos are not more than 10 minutes that the main points are told to the learners. They are not too long and boring.

I will not recommend this e-Learning course to others because of the following reasons. First, there is no specific feedback to learners that they cannot get any advice about what they have learnt or done. Also, there is no assessment in the course, the whole picture of how the learners have learnt and what they have understood does not exist. Moreover, there is no any system checking the learning progress of the learners who may not really spend 18 hours of the course. Besides, for the discussion forum, most of the content is just the opinion of the learners. We do not know whether the information is correct or not.