
What is involved in an online course?
It is a reasonable expectation that students
spend between six to eight hours each
week working on an online course. This includes both class time and time spent
at school in study periods as well as essential homework time.
The online delivery of our courses includes:
1. Live Lesson / Tutorial Sessions. These are
an essential part of the teaching/learning process and involve students logging
in with the teacher to a ‘live’ online discussion of course work for a one to one and a half hour session each week
outside school time, usually in the evening.
2.
Pre-recorded Lessons. These are also an essential part of
the teaching/learning process and involve students logging in to view lesson
content pre-recorded by the teacher for a specific topic or area of study.
Students are able to view these recordings either at school or at home in their
own time. Each recording would have activities attached to complete later.
3.
Weekly Quizzes and/or Homework Exercises. These involve short questions that are answered online and
deal with essential concepts in the course. Student responses to the quiz also
act as a “roll call” component, indicating that the students have logged onto
the course website, at least once in the week.
4.
Weekly Tasks. The course
websites present a schedule of weekly readings, tasks, forums and journals
throughout the course. The solutions to these tasks are also available.
Students are expected to complete all tasks to the best of their ability. Some
tasks are self assessed. Students then seek help, through email messages or
during tutorial sessions. This is unquestionably the most important process in
the online delivery of the courses.
5. Topic Assignments. During and
at the completion of each topic students may be required to submit for marking
an assignment which will focus on the material from the preceding weeks’ tasks.
The assignments will contain HSC examination style questions.
6. Formal Assessment Tasks. There are up to five formal tasks which
combine to produce the course assessment mark. These include tests, projects,
essays and a final exam. The assessment schedule will show you the dates,
content and value of each of these tasks. It is available on each course website.