Assignment 5_Designing and Developing an e-Learning Course_Part 3

Assignment 5: Designing and Developing an e-Learning Course – Part 3

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Assignment 5: Designing and Developing an e-Learning Course – Part 3

Learning outcomes for Weeks 4 to 6 of instruction

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes for weeks 4 to 6 of the course include:

Facilitate the implementation of efficient and effective employee recruitment, selection, and retention programs of an organization

Administer and contribute to the development and evaluation of performance management and appraisal programs

Analyze the information needs and use current and emerging technologies to meet the needs and solve the challenges of the human resources function

Take part in the development, implementation, and evaluation of organizational strategies that strive to promote organizational effectiveness in relation to the human resources

Manage personal professional development and that of others by providing leadership to others to help in improving the competence of employees and human resource professional practice

Weekly Schedule

Week 4

Topic: Recruiting

Learning outcomes:

Determining how to forecast the workforce needs of an organization

Identify how to source suitable candidates both internally and internally

Discussion questions:

What is the importance of recruitment in the achievement of the organizational goals and objectives?

What are some of the methods of recruiting employees?

Required activities:

Research from the internet some of the methods of identifying suitable candidates internally and externally to an organization

Week 5

Topic: Employment testing and selection

Learning outcomes:

Know how to test the validity of an candidate

Identify and know how to use various types of employment tests

Know the processes involved in undertaking background checks and other selection methods

Discussion questions:

Discuss the various types of employment tests used in employment testing and selection

How does each of the employment test help in selecting the right candidates?

Required activities:

Case study on employment testing and selection after which the students would be required to answer questions at the end of the case study.

Week 6

Topic: Performance management and appraisal

Learning outcomes:

Define performance management and appraisal

Identify the processes involved in performance appraisal

Identify the methods of undertaking performance appraisals

Understand the impact of appraisal problems that occur due to rater error

Discussion questions:

What is performance appraisal management and appraisal?

What is the role of performance management and appraisal in the achievement of the strategic goals and objectives of an organization?

Required activities:

Assume that you are the human resource manager and undertake a performance appraisal of another student based on how he can performed in this course. What are some of the strengths of the student? What are some of the weaknesses? What are some of the areas that need to be reinforced for future academic and professional success? What are some of the areas that the student should improve to be successful academically and professionally in the future?

Assignments

Essay test:

What is the role of job analysis in determining the types of employment tests that should be used to fill a certain position?

What is the importance of forecasting the workforce needs in enabling an organization to meet its strategic goals and objectives?

Describe some activities that hinder the ability of an organization to undertake effective performance management and appraisals

Writing assignment:

What should an organization do if there is evidence that its employment testing and selection has adverse effects that are “job-related” and are the actions mandatory?

Challenges and benefits with the process of designing and developing a mini online course

Online course creators face several challenges. While creating the online course, the first challenge I was faced with was determining how to develop the course in a manner that would relay all the information I deemed relevant on the course to the students. It was vital for online course creators to develop courses where students can easily pursue their online courses and have the ability to complete their assignments in a timely manner without feeling overwhelmed. As such, it is vital to create a mini online course that is user friendly. Creating a user-friendly online course required me to focus on organization. How an online course is organized, has a significant impact on the time students spend accessing various pages of the online course. It determines whether students will spend a significant amount of time reading content related to the course or whether they would spend a significant amount of time navigating through the online portal just to access the course content. Online course creators should ensure they provide the course in small chunks that the students can easily understand. Bombarding the student with so much information would make it easy for the students to understand the content of the online course. It may make them lose interest in the course (Kapenieks, 2013). As such, I developed the course content is small chunks. In addition, I ensured that the timeline for completing various assignments and other activities related to the course was not overwhelming to the students.

The huge amount of time required to develop the course content was also one of the main challenges I faced as an online course creator. Scripting high quality lessons takes so much time. This requires an online course creator to spend less time on irrelevant content and go straight to the point to ensure the learners understand what is being taught and to ensure the content creator spends as little time as possible developing high quality content. This would save the time and money required to develop the online course. According to Law, Perryman, and Law, (2013), developing high quality online courses requires online course creators to spend a significant amount of time creating the content of the course. The average production ratio of a video is 220:1. This implies that the online course creator has to spend 220 hours to create a 1-hour video. In some instances, the ratio may be as high as 700:1. The time that the online course creator spends scripting the course or developing other material that would be used in the course usually depends on the topic of the course and the desired quality of production.

One of the benefits of creating the online course was that it enabled me to know how to navigate an online learning website as an instructor. Navigation among students, which is what I was used to, is more self-explanatory. It was initially difficult to navigate the online learning website as an instructor. In Particular, it was difficult to create a new online course let alone add content to the online course. It was also difficult to ensure that I placed the right information in the right section. This is because my view of the course is different from how students who would pursue the course would view the course. It was also difficult to provide students with the right access to the course content.

Another benefit of creating the online course is that it enabled me to know how to link readings to discussions questions, assignments, and learning activities. This enabled me to determine how the overall objectives of the course were met. This was vital as it helped me to decide the types of questions and learning activities that I should include in the online course.

References

Kapenieks, J. (2013). User-friendly e-learning environment for educational action research. Procedia Computer Science, 26, 121-142.

Law, P., Perryman, L. & Law, A. (2013). Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. In: Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference 2013, 23-25 Oct 2013. Paris, France: European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), pp. 204–219.