Dealing with uncertainty

In the meeting this morning the issue of whether we would have the 900 hours of course resources available by the deadline date featured predominantly. It appears that we were likely to have 500 hours definitely in the bag and that there were an additional large number of hours. This would take us way in excess of the 900 hours. These however are at some stage along the process, or possibly simply identified and cleared but it was more tricky to give a clear indication of the actual number of these hours that would be available by the launch date. Somewhere along that line seemed to be the best situation available. Of course one hopes that ‘somewhere along the line’ just happens to be at about 900 hours by 25th October.

Other issues raised included the nature of the interactivity that these units would present. It seemed that this would be relatively low at this stage. My own thoughts on this are:

1. interactivity is an important issue although student action in terms of 'doing' is more important
2. interactive tools would eventually be available in MOODLE for students to use e.g. blogs, discussion groups etc
3. greater interactivity would be added to the site at a later date

My thoughts are that there should be something to do other than read content. It is important to also allow the possibility of interpersonal interaction, content interaction, and tool interaction.

The integrity model of transformation does however provide a pragmatic approach in order to aim for the targets.

Will we hit the 900 hour target…I suspect not but there will be a conveyor belt of content coming through…almost as a continuous process rather than a batch wise approach…I estimate 750 hours…let’s see how things transpire.