POCKET

On Tuesday 30 September POCKET Content Author, Louise Buxton and I tested some of the Customer Skills units on a group of 19 students at Buxton.  The students were only three weeks into their course and were therefore very new to the university and to each other. For this reason, and because the session only lasted one hour, Louise and I thought more feedback would be gained if the students worked in groups and discussed the units together.

The session lasted one hour and took place in the computer lab at the Buxton campus. The students were split into 5 groups: 4 groups of 4 and one group of 3. Four groups looked at two units and one group looked at one unit and therefore the groups were labeled and assigned the following units:

• Group 1: Responding to Customer Needs  (1a) and Writing a Report (1b)
• Group 2: Introduction to Customer Service (2a) and Analysis and Presentation of Data (2b)
• Group 3: Analysis and Presentation of Data (3a) and Responding to Customer Needs (3b)
• Group 4: Market Research Methods (4a)
• Group 5: Introduction to Customer Service (5a) and Market Research Methods (5b)

Learner profile

• The 19 students were all studying NVQ Level 2 in Hairdressing at University of Derby, Buxton
• There were 2 males and 17 females
• The ages of the students ranged from 16 right up to 35 + with the majority (almost two thirds) of the students aged 16 – 19.
• The previous qualifications held by the majority of students (nearly 80%) was school qualifications, with 1 student having no formal qualifications and 2 students having degrees.
• The average time spent on the Internet each week by the group was 1 – 5 hours
• The learners used the Internet for a range of purposes: the most common being finding general information and contacting friends. Four out of the five groups said that they used the internet to help with their studies.

Feedback
The groups that looked at units that specifically concentrated on Customer Service (Introduction to Customer Service and Responding to Customer Needs) agreed that it was a subject that they were interested in, whilst the groups that looked at more data focused units (Market Research Methods, Writing a Report, Analysis and Presentation of Data) disagreed and strongly disagreed that it was a subject that they were interested in.
All groups, except for 1a, 2a and 5a, disagreed and strongly disagreed that they enjoyed learning online in this way.
There seemed to be a mixed reaction to the content of the material with a range of responses to whether the material would be relevant/helpful to their studies, and the most number of groups disagreeing that the would want to look at the material further.
The most number of groups agreed or strongly agreed that the material in the units was new to them, with only one person in one group strongly disagreeing with this.
Market Research Methods appeared to be the unit where learners picked up new skills as both groups that looked at this unit agreed with this statement.
Navigation of the units did not appear to be a problem, with all groups (except from Group 2a) agreeing or strongly agreeing that it was easy to find their way around the unit.
All groups except Group 3b and 2a agreed or strongly agreed that the information was presented clearly.
The majority of groups also agreed or strongly agreed that there was enough activities in the units, however 3 groups disagreed that there was enough variety of activities.
Most of the groups were not sure whether useful feedback was provided for all activities and only Group5 agreed with this statement.
No groups thought that the units were too easy for them: Group2 answered that both units that they assessed (Introduction to Customer Service and Analysis and Presentation of Data) were challenging as did Group 1b who assessed the unit Writing a Report.

When asked to state good points about the units the responses were fairly varied.  The most common factor, with Groups 1b, 3a and 5a mentioning this, was the large volume of information included in the units. The animations and other activities were highlighted by Groups 1a, 2b and 5a. Only Group 3b stated the fact that the units were available online and accessible from anywhere as an advantage.
When asked to state what could be improved on the units the response was much more unified and concerned the readability of the units. Groups 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b and 4a all said that the font size was too small and difficult to read. Groups 1b, 2a and 2b also added that there was a lack of space in the units, which also made it hard to read.
Many learners commented to me during the session that they were unable to fully feedback on the units because of these reasons.
Other comments included that the appearance of the units was too formal and the groups would have preferred to see more colours and more images. Only one group mentioned that having audio in the units made it difficult when access to speakers was limited.

Overall findings
There were certain limitations to how this feedback session can help evaluate the POCKET materials so far, which include:

• Only the Customer Service module units were assessed
• The POCKET units have been taken from Higher Education Institution material and the learners in this feedback session were just beginning to study at Further Education level.
• The learners assessed the units in groups for reasons previously specified, however the units are designed for learners to use independently.
• The feedback session only lasted one hour, so groups had limited time to work through the units.

Feedback to be taken forward from this session includes:

• The units that include audio should have subtitles for when learners do not have access to speakers or headphones.
• Readability of the units, including font size and colour and also layout, need to be looked at. Factors such as font size and colour are dictated by the OU XML Schema so cannot be changed by contributors to OpenLearn. If possible, it would be more accessible to have the option of changing the text colour and size on each page of the OpenLearn website to suit individual learners.

The RLO-CETL is the Centre for Excellence for the design, development and use of learning objects. The partner institutions are London Metropolitan University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Nottingham.

The CETL develops, shares and evaluates learning objects and leads on innovation in pedagogical design.

This Web site gives access to a rich set of learning objects, tools and information developed by RLO-CETL.

The Informing Science Institute’s open source Learning Objects Repository (ISI OSLOR) is an Open Source LOR created by a team of 5 individuals. The source code is available to download  as a model to use, expand, adapt, modify, and/or enhance the LO repository.

Today I had a very useful meeting with the E-Learning Development Team at the University of Derby. I met with Pete Radcliff, Adam Bailey and Glenn Mcgarry to get their thoughts and opinions on the materials we had produced so far for POCKET. The following points were raised:  Transferring the materials to a VLE 

• We briefly discussed how the materials could be transferred to a VLE like Blackboard and the option of using RELOAD was suggested.

Material content

• A list of technical requirements could be included in the Introduction section of each unit (eg. This unit contains audio, Flash files…) Maybe include a list of websites where any necessary software/plugins can be downloaded
• The glossary tool that is included in the OU XML Schema could be used more to explain complex terms and definitions, particularly in the law units.
• It was suggested that another academic who is a specialist in the field should look over the materials. This will be done through the final review forms.
• There should be a consistent use of acronyms on every page (this applies to the law units)

Multimedia

• More explanation should be provided for the ‘high’ and ‘low resolution’ options for the video media.
• Contact Lyn Pearson at the Interactive Media Unit or guidance on accessibility (eg. high contrast versions)
• Create different silhouettes (different genders, ethnicities) for the ‘quantitative and qualitative data’ animation
• Photograph interaction: state the number of hotspots, maybe differentiate the different hotspots more clearly, make the arrows more prominent, increase readability of the text.
• Activities could include more detail in the instruction and to let learners know the kind of activity (ie. research, interaction, animation, film). This could be a series of headings.
• Activities should be a way of encouraging learners to think about the subject.
• All activities should give learners a positive experience. (ie. Having ‘wrong answer’ feedback might not be encouraging
• Is there a way of creating more space between activities when they are displayed one after another?
• The ‘most valuable customer’ interactive quiz should contain more information to help learners complete the quiz (ie. Contained in the preceding text or on a splash page at the start of the quiz). Other ideas included having hint boxes, showing all of the customers on the same page so that they can be compared, having a range to ‘rate’ the customer instead of just three levels (high, median and low) and having a summary to sum up all the information for reflection.
• It was felt that the law units could benefit from more real-life examples to aid understanding of the material.
• For example, to explain bilateral and multilateral economic regulation.
• Hard and soft law drag and drop activity: draggers could be moved to the middle to make the interaction work better
• Multiple choice questions: it would be helpful if the learners had to commit themselves to an answer to stop them revealing the answer straight away (the EDO team might be able to provide some code for this). It would be helpful if the answers provided more reflection for learners - for example if it explained why the other answers were not correct. The answers are not always provided in the preceding text, so this should be noted in the question (ie. ‘This hasn’t been directly covered in the preceding section, but see if you can work out the answer anyway’)
• The multiple choice questions could be designed in Flash, an example of this can be seen in the OpenLearn unit: Exploring the English Language
• The interactive map showing the countries who signed the Bretton Woods agreement should have mored instructions. It would be helpful if there was an option to show all the countries who signed as well as showing them individually - regions could even be selected instead of individual countries. This would also shorten the long list of countries which are currently named individually on separate lines. The learners could be asked to select which countries they thought signed the agreement and then the answer could be revealed. Instead of using a modern map, use a map from the 1940s.
• Look at animations from the BBC news for inspiration  

Sarah and I have a meeting next week with the University of Exeter to begin the transformation process of their module material. To prepare for the meeting I have read through all of their module material and made notes about how the material can be transformed into open content. This led to the creation of a new content development plan which details the process of the transformation of module material into a single OpenLearn unit. I have uploaded this map onto our POCKET collaboration space on OpenLearn.

The Creative Commons website also has a page on case studies of projects that use Creative Commons Licenses. At the end of POCKET we might consider writing about our experiences on the project here, as the Creative Commons Licenses is an important part of the project.

On Tuesday I went to the Buxton campus to visit Louise Buxton, content author of the Customer Service Skills module. Progress is going well on this module and there are currently three units uploaded onto OpenLearn in various stages of development: Introduction to Customer Service; Responding to Customer Needs; and Market Research Methods.

Louise has rewritten a lot of the material to address the copyright issues of quoting from various websites and books and also to provide feedback on various activities included in the material. Louise has also rewritten the introductions for all of the units to make them more detailed.

We discussed some of the longer external articles that are included in the material for various units and Louise has said that she will pick out the relevant information and rewrite them to avoid any further copyright issues.

We also discussed the tagwords that can be included in the metadata file: I will take keywords from the unit material and include these in the metadata file and if there were any other tagwords that Louise wanted to add she would let me know.

We agreed to meet in two weeks time and in the meantime we’ll stay in touch via email.

On Monday I met with content author, Antonios Platsas who is writing the International Economic Law module from scratch for POCKET. We both agreed that progress on this material is going very well and that the POCKET team and Antonios have a very strong working relationship. Antonios has even said that he would be very keen to write another module (based on European law) to be broken up as units for POCKET.

There are two units from this law module currently uploaded onto OpenLearn: Introduction to International Economic Law and The World Trade Organization. Antonios has also written all the six units and there are only minor changes and expansions to make. These changes include the writing of all the learning outcomes for each unit. We arranged to meet again in three weeks time, although we will stay in touch by email until then.

The WTO have some interesting interactive learning material on their website:

WTO Distance Learning Gateway

WTO eTraining

This is very relevant to the law module module being developed for POCKET, as unit 2 is all about the World Trade Organisation. The interactive activities contained on these two sites will hopefully give us some inspiration and ideas for our POCKET material. I have sent a link to the content author and we can discuss it further during our meeting on Monday.

Today I began to fill out the initial review forms for the POCKET material: one form for the Introduction to Customer Service unit and one form for Introduction to Economic Law. I plan to discuss the form with both academics when I next meet with them, as their input will be very valuable.

Yesterday I had a meeting with content author Louise Buxton at the Buxton campus. We discussed the development of her module material and viewed the two units that are currently uploaded onto the PlaySpace: Introduction to Customer Service and Responding to Customer Needs.

I informed Louise on the feedback from the meeting with Tina Wilson at the OU last week, namely: that websites included in the units should be contacted for permission; a clearer structure on activities; the need for a ’sales pitch’ introduction for the LabSpace; and the calculation for the units’ study hours.

From the equation that Tina recommended to calculate study hours for a unit, Louise and I worked out that unit 1 (Introduction to Customer Service) would be:

6 hours (time originally allocated to the section) + 0.3 (5% for new learners to the topic) = 6.3 hours
6.3 hours + 3.55 minutes (lengths of video and animation) + 6.75 hours (activity time) = 13 hours (rounded up)

I will update this study time in the metadata file for unit 1.

Louise and I agreed to meet again in two weeks time on Tuesday 8 July at Buxton. In the meantime Louise will write a reading list for each unit and will also write feedback on various activities. Louise sent me an updated version of the units today in word format.