The University of Central Florida's (UCF) Center for Distributed Learning (CDL) offers the Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository (TOPR) as a public resource for faculty and instructional designers interested in online and blended teaching strategies. Each entry describes a strategy drawn from the pedagogical practice of online/blended teaching faculty, depicts this strategy with artifacts from actual courses, and is aligned with findings from research or professional practice literature.
Type of Material:
Reference Material
Description of the strategy, and depiction of this strategy with artifacts from actual courses. Each strategy is peer reviewed and is aligned with findings from research or professional practice literature.
Recommended Uses:
Independent study
Working in teams
Explore what other faculty and instructional designers are doing to enhance their online courses.
Technical Requirements:
Current web browser
Web browser to be able to play video files
Identify Major Learning Goals:
This compilation of strategies presents strategies for faculty and instructional designers to enhance online and blended classes.
Target Student Population:
College General Ed, College Lower Division, College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional, Faculty and Instructional Designers involved in designing and teaching online and blended courses.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
University level
Some understanding of academic references
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
There is an editorial board at a large US university so some quality assurance is implied.
The authors are from academic institutions from around the world, not just the Western world.
All material is curated and tagged, so it is possible to navigate to suitable material easily using keywords.
Not just text but videos and multimedia are used appropriately
Academic referencing is suitable, how to cite is on each page and allows further reading.
Article references link to journal articles, with no links to weak academic sources included
Some updating has taken place where dead links are highlighted as dead.
Concerns:
Whilst showing dead links, it would be useful to link to an archived page rather than be taken to a dead page.
It's very much quality over quantity so there will not be many articles to read
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
It is made clear of the layout of the course: "Course Content, Interaction, and Assessment." so signposting to appropriate resources is a quick, simple process.
The articles are relevant and suitable for reading. All pages follow the same format (Description at the top of the page) which speeds up the processing of a page to check for relevancy and to facilitate student understanding.
All page revisions are visible so the user can see how the page has changed over time
Concerns:
Not all references are hyperlinked. Some links bring up an error page.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
Colour scheme suitable
Very easy to navigate around
No issues around stability issues
Menus are well laid out. Videos explain how to use the system, get connected and access the repository. Artifacts are sorted by categories and can be searched.
Consistency of all pages and layout helps the user settle on the site quickly
Concerns:
None
Creative Commons:
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