Assessment of challenges in developing self-instructional course materials at the National Open University of Nigeria
The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) is Nigeria’s only university dedicated to providing education through the use of distance instructional methods. So far, however, the lack of availability and poor distribution of course materials, which underpin instructional delivery at NOUN, continue to be hindrances to achieving the university’s vision and mission. There are delays and difficulties in developing and distributing materials to students and Study Centres. Many pioneer students cannot graduate because of this challenge. This paper examines the process of developing self-instructional course materials at NOUN. It reflects on the challenges associated with the quantity, quality, and timely production of course materials, labelled “the hills, the wills, and the skills” obstacles. The paper concludes that there is a need for better professional development in order to provide efficient ODL delivery.
Designing Learning Modules for Online Courses: The 5-WH Approach
More and more educators today are joining online teaching with little or no instructional design training. Challenges have been reported in in many regions around the world. In addition, time constraints present another challenge because of the many responsibilities that educators assume as regular faculty members. They need practical guidelines that can help them in designing their online courses, beginning with the module–the meaningful, self-contained, basic building block of the online course. This theoretical paper provides some practical guidelines for this purpose by applying the common 5-WH approach in designing a module for any online course. This approach helps the online educator to address the questions related to who, what, why, where, when, andhow, expected from any complete online course module from a Christian perspective.
Designing instructional text
Page-size basic planning decisions typesizes typefaces space and structure writing instructional text theory into practice the role of illustrations tables and graphs diagrams, charts and symbols forms designing electronic text evaluating instructional text.