Meridith Davis

OMDE 608 9040

11/06/16
Activity Unit #2

Unit 2 posed more of a challenge for me than the previous unit mostly due to time
constraints. I found that I was being pulled in many directions, both personally and
professionally this month and it put a strain on my time for course work. I was happy to
complete all of the reading for this unit, as they were of great interest to me. During the
course of this unit I was paired with Ingrid to complete a presentation on the topic of
Staff Development. While I was happy with our choice of topic I had some trouble
connecting with Ingrid on the presentation. She volunteered to create a PowerPoint for
our group so I acquiesced, although I have extensive knowledge in multimedia. I
provided Ingrid with my portion of the project and entrusted her to create the
PowerPoint presentation. I was only able to see the final result after she posted it to the
class discussion board. I was left frustrated with the choices she made on the
presentation of the material as I felt that there could have been just 1 presentation that
balanced the text with the graphics instead of 2 separate presentations. In the end, I
feel confident in the content I presented and the feedback from the class seems to be
mostly positive.
During the course of this unit I found out many things. First I found out that learner
support comes in many forms in order to accommodate the many groups of students
that participate in online courses. While I have considered the diversity of learners that

take part in ODL I had not given thought to their place of study, specifically incarcerated
students. I still dont have many facts about the percentage of incarcerated students
who take online course, or the percentage of online students that are currently
incarcerated, but this demographic of student makes many aspects of learner support
more challenging. Incarcerated students have less frequent access to the Internet and
other support materials and these students may face challenges that traditional students
dont (loss of computer privileges, lack of family support, financial barriers, etc.). Another
thing I found out was the extent to which corporate culture plays into the success of etraining. Many articles in this unit (for example Hoey, et al., 2014, Macdonald & Kozak,
2010) mention that without managerial support e-training will not be successful for
employees. Finally I found out how important evaluations are in online distance learning
courses as they give faculty the opportunity to assess and adjust course offerings for
future semesters.
My interest was sparked in many areas in this unit. I was immediately interested in the
staff development section because I am responsible for a lot of staff development at the
school where I work. I was particularly interested in the idea that a company culture
must adopt an emphasis on innovation in order to be successful in the use of e-training
(Gregory & Salmon, 2013). This is an idea that I am hoping to bring to my workplace in
order to get more support from administration and faculty in the use of online training. I
was also very interested in the use of learner characteristics for designing learner
support. I am currently in the process of creating online courses for our school to being
next fall and the list of learner characteristics will be very helpful in designing support
structures for my students. Although some of the categories listed (geographical

location, place of study) wont have as much bearing on our students, they are good
items to note for future consideration.
Going forward into the final unit of this course I still have several questions about the
financial aspects of learner support, staff development, and evaluation. These questions
pose a significant purpose for me as I need to make a budget for the online courses I
am developing. I would like to know what percentage of the overall course costs go into
these fields so that I can apply my funds appropriately. I also worry that since these
fields are all on-going in nature that the funds will need to be replenished each
academic year so the courses can be modified and updated as needed.

References
Gregory, J., & Salmon, G. (2013). Professional development for online university
teaching. Distance Education, 34(3), 256-270.
Hoey, R., McCracken, F., Gehrett, M., & Snoeyink, R. (2014). Evaluating the impact of
the administrator and administrative structure of online programs at nonprofit
private colleges Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 17(3).
Retrieved from
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall173/hoey_mccracken_gehrett_snoeyink
173.html
Macdonald, I., Bullen, M., & Kozak, R. (2010). Learner support requirements for online
workplace training in the South African furniture industry. Journal of Asynchronous
Learning Networks, 14(3). Retrieved from
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ909882.pdf