Week 5 assignment-Review of an Open Course

History 210:  The Early Middle Ages, 284-1000

Professor Paul Freeman

http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-210

Open Yale Courses (OYC) provides lectures and materials from selected Yale courses free of charge to the public.  No credit or certificate is earned by taking the course.  The purpose of the program is to encourage learning and to allow Yale students to audit a course before taking it.  For the application this week I chose the course The Early Middle Ages, 284-1000 and analyzed its effectiveness for distance learning.

Before analyzing the course, it is important to note in the introduction that OYC has two objectives, encourage learning and to serve as a course audit.  The fact that many students are auditing the class becomes very clear in the first few minutes of the introductory lecture when Freeman notes scheduling of study groups will depend on how many students return for the next session.  Because this course is serving as an audit, and not an actual class taken for credit, there is a definite feel that this course has been shoveled into an online format with little consideration for distance learning.

Freeman’s lecture portion of the class is very well thought out and structured.  There is a logical structure to his lectures as he discusses the major themes of the time period.  The introductory lecture provides a good overview of what the class will cover.  The syllabus and course reading files provide a wealth of content that is referenced in the course.  After skimming several of the recorded lectures it is obvious that Freeman knows a lot about the early Middle Ages.

Although the content is solid, there is little evidence of thought being given for the course to be used effectively by distance learners.  The recorded lectures are informative, but feature a static camera on Freeman as he lectures continuously for the full class period of forty minutes.  The lectures are thoughtfully divided into sections so a viewer can skip to a topic of interest, but the length and lack of any editing makes the experience very dry and not engaging.

The course ignores many of the recommendation for online instruction as listed in chapter five of the text.  For starters, the course takes Freeman’s lectures “off the shelf” and shovels them into an online format.  Freeman’s lecture may be appropriate for a face to face course that utilizes study groups, but they do not translate to a distance learning environment because they are not engaging because Freeman is not thinking visually in his delivery.  Names and dates written on the board are not clear because of the camera and Freeman is delivering his lecture to his class and rarely makes eye contact with the camera.  Finally, there is no thought given to access of course materials.  Although they are listed, it is up to the distance learner to find them and based on the lecture they would provide considerable insight for the learner and increase their ability to follow the lectures.

There are no course activities provided to enhance the learning.  The course simply provides a syllabus, course readings list, and the video of his lectures.  The fact that this course has been put online to serve as a course audit helps explain the lack of course activities.  Still, with a minimum of work an activity could have been designed.  A simple example would be a series of reflection questions on each lecture that the learner would answer.  Although this is not interactive, it would help learners auditing the course to understand the level of difficulty the course had.  If the course was being offered for credit online, this idea could be translated to a discussion forum where learners view the lectures and then respond with their own insights and questions.  The discussion forums functioning asynchronously would serve as a learning activity that increases active participation in the course.

In conclusion this particular course through OYC does not follow good practice for online learning.  It would be valuable to a Yale student considering taking the course by saving them the trouble to audit it in person.  A student taking the course for credit may also find it beneficial as a supplementary resource since they would have the ability to go back and review portions of the lecture if needed.  The structure of the course exists in the syllabus, reading list, and Freeman’s lectures.  An ID working for Yale could take this framework and mold it into a course that involves more interactivity.  One example mentioned was using discussion forums to follow up lectures.  Other possibilities an ID could pursue would be to make an advance organizer using Prezi to create a visual learning map of the themes the course will cover before viewing the lectures.  A final suggestion would be to take the massive course reading list and trim it down to essential readings that the learner could access online.