A Designer’s Log Case Studies in Instructional Design- P23:This book deals with the design of distance education at an emerging dual-mode university, that is, a university offering courses both on-campus and via distance education or online in a variety of manners. It was written from the point of view of an instructional designer (ID) working alongside university professors in designing their courses for distance delivery | The professor immediately saw the advantage of establishing contacts with her peers about online publishing and freely sharing resources and she said it was something she intended to do. I told her that she could even create a forum for professors who taught the same course across Canada North America or anywhere in the world. This discussion invigorated us elevated our vision and inspired us to move on and complete what was left in the design of her course. She raised the issue of guest speakers that she would often invite to her course and problems that inevitably cropped up every year due to various turns of events such as sickness dangerous winter driving conditions etc. If a guest were to not show up on the planned class date she would have to completely change everything. She asked me how technology could help her. Since her course was at least for the time being being delivered via videoconferencing I simply proposed the idea of from now on her having guest speakers come to the nearest videoconferencing location. The advantage of doing this was a it would mean the guest wouldn t have to travel too far and b that the talk could be taped and archived for future use. However this arrangement would most likely add an extra cost to the course depending on the speaker s location. I considered getting my university to subscribe to a synchronous desktop teleconferencing platform which would allow speakers to participate in her class regardless of where they were without even having to leave their office or home. Furthermore she would not have to restrict her choice of speakers based on travel costs. By having access to a Web-based synchronous platform she could invite people from anywhere in the world to speak to her class show slides and field questions from students. If time zones were an issue she could decide to interview the person using the synchronous platform record it and then either play it during a given plenary session or stream it from her web site .
