It’s been a hectic week or so. No entries in my blog last week. Although I was in CHCH for the whole week working at Ultralab, the days were full and I didn’t have access to the internet where I was staying in the evening which is when I generally find time to complete an entry.

Over the past couple of days I have been attending the ASTE conference in Wellington titled “Professionalism Online”. This morning I presented the keynote on the topic “Quality eLearning and what staff need to ensure it”. What a mouthful. Not my choice of topic, but a useful challenge to create a presentation that explored ideas around the definition of eLearning, notions of quality in education and eLearning, and ideas about professional development.

I chose to focus on the difference between an institution-centred approach to eLearning and a learner-centred approach, pointing out that the ways in which we would consider quality measures in each scenario would differ greatly. I then looked at principles of powerful learning as a basis for designing an effective professional development approach for staff, which models the sorts of things an institution may be trying to achieve with its students.

My powerpoint presentation will be uploaded soon onto the ASTE website and I’ll create a link to it from my blog when that happens.