Exemplar of site layout

A site that integrates multiple modes of interaction

Lidia Xynas - School of Law

MLC 712 Taxation (a unit run as part of the Graduate Certificate of Chartered Accounting Foundations) is a wholly online unit where the Deakin Studies Online (DSO) website is used and provides the portal for interaction between students and myself as lecturer. The DSO site is customised to integrate a number of technologies, where I provide:

• an interactive daily discussion forum for lecturer and students
• weekly announcements from the lecturer
• weekly tutorial exercises, including a student discussion forum
• access to study resources including unit and study guides, library resources and weekly PowerPoint presentations
• access to weekly video-recorded lectures recorded using Camtasia
• access to two real time, interactive revision workshops run outside business hours, recorded using eLive and subsequently published.

Download Video (21 MB). View transcript (32 KB).

MLC712 home page (click link to enlarge picture)

Advantages of providing multiple modes of interaction

This online learning environment offers interesting and diverse ways of structuring personalised learning. The online experience can give the student a sense of control over the pace, sequence and form of the instruction and it can allow for more variation in experience than may be available in face-to-face environments.

The integrated use of diverse technologies such as the DSO website, eLive software and Camtasia directly responds to the needs of off-campus students who are learning in a wholly online environment by:

• improving accessibility of study resources and materials
• providing off-campus students regular opportunities to be involved in the unit and to be able to interact with myself as lecturer and also other students, via the discussion boards on a weekly basis and also in real time during the revision sessions.

One additional strength of this approach using DSO and the associated technologies to deliver discussion and other materials is that students are able to engage in ongoing, weekly activities. This encourages time-poor participants to stay involved and keep up to date with topics on a week-by-week basis.

Providing feedback

I provide feedback on a daily basis and also ensure that model answers for tutorials are posted up at the end of each week so that the students have an opportunity to gauge their understanding incrementally. Similarly, the two revision sessions, that I run in eLive, give students the chance to interact with their peers and myself as lecturer and allow me as lecturer to quickly gauge students' understanding of material.

Please send us your comments:

Can you suggest another exemplar of online teaching at Deakin? Comments will be forwarded to the Institute of Teaching and Learning.