technology
Uni Melbourne to offer Semester Online courses
Vice-chancellor, associate professor praise flexibility, engagement in virtual study abroad platform. By Dallas Bastian
Australia has joined the growing list of countries contributing to the virtual study aboard program Semester Online. The University of Melbourne has become the first local institution on the platform.
The consortium of 10 universities includes several US institutions, such as Northwestern University, Washington University at St Louis, the University of North Carolina and University of Notre Dame. Trinity College in Dublin is the only other international institution providing courses for the program.
Students participate in discussions, exercises, online lectures and peer collaboration.
“ It’ s a different kind of international experience,” University of Melbourne deputy vice-chancellor Pip Pattison says.“ We’ ve been enthusiastic about it from the start, mainly because we think it provides an alternative way by which students actually engage in more international classrooms.
“ It gives our students access to courses and ways of teaching that they might not otherwise experience.”
Pattison adds that different systems teach and deliver in slightly different ways, which adds depth to learning.“ A basic course in chemistry is going to look very similar in different places, but some of the humanities and social sciences courses will have a kind of flavour that’ s going to vary across institutions.”
Semester Online is the first program that develops courses particularly suited to undergraduate students, Pattison says.
Each class runs for 14 weeks, followed by an assessment period. Eighty minutes is spent engaged with online material in an asynchronous way, with a further eighty minutes dedicated to live class time as the synchronous component.
“ It’ s much closer to a face-to-face course than a typical online [ option ],” Pattison says, adding that the small class sizes build student engagement and help promote learning.
She says what’ s distinctive about the program is the emphasis on the quality of the live in-class video interaction.“ We think that’ s going to be important for building connection and engagement to the class.”
The University of Melbourne continues to encourage students to take a semester abroad, but Pattison says Semester Online expands the options available for engagement with students and classes around the globe.“ Students might begin a course in the summer … and [ the platform ] actually gives them a bit more flexibility during term time.”
She says this added flexibility, coupled with the international reach, is attractive to students.
“ We would hope that these courses would eventually attract quite international cohorts.”
The first subject available via Semester Online will be classical mythology, taught by associate professor Parshia Lee- Stecum. It launches in January.
“ We will be putting up a couple of new courses for development in the next wave, hopefully for offer later in 2014,” Pattison says, adding that University of Melbourne students probably will not enrol in those subjects until 2015. This gives the university the opportunity to experience the development and teaching of Semester Online courses before the first lot of students enrol.
Lee-Stecum will be teaching the oncampus version of his class simultaneously with the online version and will use some of the same materials and resources being developed for Semester Online. At the moment, subjects are taught only by a single institution, but Lee-Stecum says there is scope for collaboration.
Pattison says,“ I think there’ s enormous benefit in actually engaging with a different kind of expertise and bringing some of that back to our regular offerings.”
Semester Online allows teachers to review the subject they’ re offering, Lee- Stecum explains.“ It’ s a chance to really have a close look at what you teach, why you teach it and the best ways of teaching it,” he says. Looking at the tools available in the various platforms allows for content to be tailored around what is effective.
“ It also gives you a bit of an insight into … what the aims in the subject might be and how that articulates with the mode of delivery,” Lee-Stecum says.“ It really expands the toolbox of teachers.” n
28 | campusreview. com. au