home

=Neil Davie= =Patchwork Text produced for assessment for the module EDU11150 Applied Practice in Blended and Online Teaching= =MSc Blended and Online Education= =Edinburgh Napier University Trimester 2 2011/12=

Introduction
I consider myself to be very much a practical person rather than a theorist and as such the Applied Practice in Blended and Online Teaching module was one of the ones I had been most looking forward to since starting the MSc Blended and Online Education programme. Unfortunately this trimester largely took place during the semester break at my university so I was unable to use my own students as subjects. This is a great shame as it would have been an excellent opportunity to explore some more new aspects of online and blended education with them whilst at the same time satisfying a requirement of the course. As an alternative I initially wanted to be an online moderator for the annual conference of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language. Unfortunately this also fell through at the beginning of the trimester so I was left to find a new focus again.

After much discussion with Keith it was decided that I should conduct two activities teaching and supporting other students from the BOE degree programme. Firstly, I would prepare a webinar on mobile learning for other members of the course and secondly, I would be a mentor helping a fellow student on the Customised Study module of the course.



As you can see, these three different activities actually fitted together very well and I learnt more about mobile learning as well as hosting webinars and being a mentor despite it not being one of the stated aims of the module.

Mentoring
As a student support activity it was agreed that I could act as a mentor to Nicky Howard-Kemp, a fellow BOE student currently completing the Customised Study module. This seemed a good choice as I have already completed the Customised Study module myself and had chosen mobile learning as my topic, the same area that Nicky is investigating. Mentoring someone online is obviously different from face-to-face mentoring so it was my task to evaulate the effectiveness of online mentoring and create some guidelines for successful e-mentoring.

Webinar on mobile learning
Again building on my work on mobile learning I decided to present a webinar to fellow BOE students to educate them to the potential and limitations that m-learning offers for higher education. As the financial situation is very difficult for many instituions in Europe I decided to especially focus on cost-effective means of implementing m-learning. The students were also asked for feedback after the webinar to evaulate its effectiveness and any room for improvement.

Select a heading on the right to go to the various sections of my applied practice in blended and online teaching. My original blog entries are all available online here: [].