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ONLINE.ACE
Teachers Program
(Dale Pobega)
Summary
Online.ACE is a professional development course for ACE, TAFE and other VET teachers run totally online via the ACENET Flexible Learning
Network; http://www.vicnet.net.au/~acenet. The objective of the program is to initiate both ACE and TAFE teachers into the critical use of net based technologies from week to week based on a central reading text, Online.Ace – Sharing Good Practice (Pobega & Russell, ACFE,
2000): http://www.yarranet.net.au/aceweb/sharing/
Key Features
Over the ten-week duration of the program, participants meet in a Multi Object Oriented Domain (MOO) to conference about a range of net media, flexible delivery approaches and facilitation techniques to which they are being introduced. There is also a strong constructivist component in the course (the Learning Lab stream), with participants being given the opportunity to apply the technologies and facilitation techniques they learn about from week to week by creating the beginnings of their own course shell using the WEBCT package. Depending upon their levels of interest, participants are then given the opportunity to trial their shells with students via the ACENET Flexible Learning Network on TAFEVC.
The course runs from a website on the TAFE Virtual Campus with a java based link to Grassroots MOO, which is located on a server in New York. MOO is considered an important environment for participant activity as it provides an established online community of teachers to continue their learning and network with others from around the world once the program ends.
This program is the only VET course we know of in Australia that makes any use of MOO in particular.
The TAFEVC website is also used for locating a threaded discussion board on which weekly evaluation and reflection by teachers can be found. Logs of all MOO sessions are posted on the board immediately after each session as a record of proceedings and to stimulate reflective postings and use of the discussion board. The website also includes a software/resource archive, detailed course outline, orientation section, directions for download of the Online.Ace book in PDF and suite of chat rooms for program participants of which participants can avail themselves. A course mailing list is also extensively used for organisational purposes and dialogue between the co facilitators and participants.
Participants also work in and with net based media including; IRC, WebCT chat, direct paging systems such as MSN. They are also given the opportunity to work individually and in small groups on a progressive online course project of their own from Week 3 onwards through the Learning Lab project. Further opportunity is provided for the group to negotiate some of their own learning and select media for study and use that they wish to pursue. The current course outline can found at:
http://www.yarranet.net.au/aceweb/eliteracies/onlineace2001.html
Various government departments around Australia have purchased deliveries of the program. On two recent occasions, mentoring arrangements whereby the co facilitators oversee ‘rookie facilitation leaders’ delivering the course, have been organised. In 2002, a joint delivery between the University of Hakodate (Japan), ACENET and E Learning Communities Flexible Learning Networks is planned for a group of Japanese, Chinese and Australian language teachers.
The delivery model of Online.Ace has been used with various adaptations, as a template for developing other ACENET courses, including Spanish Online.
Contact
ACENET web site: http://www.vicnet.net.au/~acenet
ACENET
brochure: click here to download the
PDF version
Online.Ace - Sharing Good Practice: http://www.yarranet.net.au/aceweb/sharing/
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