Conveyor Belt Production of Course Material - a Case Study in Sri Lanka.

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Bibliographic Details
Title:	Conveyor Belt Production of Course Material - a Case Study in Sri Lanka.
Authors:	Mozelius, Peter¹ mozelius@dsv.su.se, Hatakka, Mathias² mathias.hatakka@oru.se
Source:	Proceedings of the European Conference on e-Learning (ECEL). 2009, p406-412. 7p. 2 Color Photographs, 1 Diagram, 1 Chart.
Subject Terms:	Information technology education, Bachelor of science degree, Curriculum, Educational programs, University of Colombo (Colombo, Sri Lanka). School of Computing
Geographic Terms:	Colombo (Sri Lanka), Sri Lanka
Abstract:	In this paper we study the content development process for an external bachelor degree in information technology (eBIT) at University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) in Sri Lanka. The eBIT degree program was started in the year 2000 and has since 2004 been funded from both the European Union (EU) and from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Since the start of the project one of the main focuses has been on content development. Content development at UCSC is instrumental and hierarchal where different actors are responsible for different parts of the content development process. The different roles are Subject Matter Experts (SME) who decide what material that the course should be based on and what knowledge that should be transferred to the students; Instructional Designers (ID) are responsible for organizing the course and material, they decide the pedagogy to be used and how the instructions should be structured; Content Developers (CD) are the ones that create the actual content based on the instructions and material provided by the SMEs and IDs. This study is mainly based on observations that have been done since 2005 but also on interviews, both formal and informal, with UCSC staff. Since 2005 12 field trips have been done by the two authors - each lasting between two and three weeks - so an extensive understanding of the development process has been achieved over the years. The study is mainly descriptive as we explain the development process at UCSC which can be seen as a conveyor belt production of course material, but we also analyze the benefits and disadvantages this approach results in. Findings show that benefits of this approach are a high production of material and the model has also proved to be both time and cost effective. To further speed up the production the development process is highly dependent on templates, e.g. flash templates for learning activities and SCORM templates to design course and lesson structures. The use of templates to speed up the productions does, however, pose a disadvantage as there is a low degree of variety in activities in the produced material. Because of this the content does not fully support the pedagogy strived for in the eBIT program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database:	Education Research Complete

Description
Abstract:	In this paper we study the content development process for an external bachelor degree in information technology (eBIT) at University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) in Sri Lanka. The eBIT degree program was started in the year 2000 and has since 2004 been funded from both the European Union (EU) and from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Since the start of the project one of the main focuses has been on content development. Content development at UCSC is instrumental and hierarchal where different actors are responsible for different parts of the content development process. The different roles are Subject Matter Experts (SME) who decide what material that the course should be based on and what knowledge that should be transferred to the students; Instructional Designers (ID) are responsible for organizing the course and material, they decide the pedagogy to be used and how the instructions should be structured; Content Developers (CD) are the ones that create the actual content based on the instructions and material provided by the SMEs and IDs. This study is mainly based on observations that have been done since 2005 but also on interviews, both formal and informal, with UCSC staff. Since 2005 12 field trips have been done by the two authors - each lasting between two and three weeks - so an extensive understanding of the development process has been achieved over the years. The study is mainly descriptive as we explain the development process at UCSC which can be seen as a conveyor belt production of course material, but we also analyze the benefits and disadvantages this approach results in. Findings show that benefits of this approach are a high production of material and the model has also proved to be both time and cost effective. To further speed up the production the development process is highly dependent on templates, e.g. flash templates for learning activities and SCORM templates to design course and lesson structures. The use of templates to speed up the productions does, however, pose a disadvantage as there is a low degree of variety in activities in the produced material. Because of this the content does not fully support the pedagogy strived for in the eBIT program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	20488637