HRD 575 Innovations in e-Learning
Time: Wednesdays from 9 am to 1150 am
Location: 215B DKH
Instructor: Dr. W. David Huang (wdhuang@illinois.edu)
CRN: 62334
Course Description:
This course is designed to provide you with resources that will familiarize you with ongoing innovations in Web-based electronic technologies that can be used to deliver e-Learning content across organizations. You will critically review ongoing e-Innovations that you may be able to integrate with your content in today’s e-Communication and e-Learning environments.
The first strategy is for you to stay informed of emerging technologies, as indicated by The Horizon Report. The Horizon Report is a joint publication by New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, who each year identify and describe six areas of emerging technologies that are likely to exert major effects on learning in higher education within 1–5 years. The report draws on the ongoing discussion and research efforts of the advisory board’s members in the fields of business, industry, and education. During your second week of instruction you will be introduced to EDUCAUSE and the NMC. You will read this year’s Horizon Report and those of the past two years.
Although The Horizon Report focuses on emerging technologies for teaching and learning, it is ultimately up to you to decide which technologies you will use to facilitate e-Learning. Thus, this course’s goal is to expose you to multiple technology genres.
The second strategy of this course is to keep you updated on e-Learning technologies, organized by genres. Technologies are emerging and advancing faster than we can grasp. This course is organized to help you focus on the diversity of technology genres. (A technology genre is a set of conventions organized by similarities.) Although genres are usually discussed more in the fields of literature and art, in this course we will be talking a lot about technology genres. This approach will help you understand how the different Web-based technologies are categorized, and will also help you organize current and emerging Internet- and Web-based technologies for e-Learning. These can include social virtual worlds, social networking, mobile access, multimedia development, social bookmarking, and educational games. Many more Web-based technologies exist—and who knows? You may be able to identity a Web-based technology genre we don’t discuss in even this course.
These strategies will help you stay as current as possible with ongoing innovation in Internet- and Web-based technologies for e-Learning. This course will introduce you to these strategies in greater depth and help you apply them in your own life.
