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<\/a> Figure A.7 Resources[\/caption]\r\n\r\n![\"Print\"](\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/teachinginadigitalage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2015\/01\/Wei-2.jpg\")
<\/a>\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nAs in the case of\u00a0learner characteristics, you\u00a0may not have a lot of control over the resources available, but resources (or the lack of them)\u00a0will impact a great deal on\u00a0the design of teaching. Fighting for appropriate resources is often one of the most challenging tasks for\u00a0many teachers and instructors. The influence of resources on design is also discussed throughout the book, but particularly in:\r\nAs in the case of\u00a0learner characteristics, you\u00a0may not have a lot of control over the resources available, but resources (or the lack of them)\u00a0will impact a great deal on\u00a0the design of teaching. Fighting for appropriate resources is often one of the most challenging tasks for\u00a0many teachers and instructors. The influence of resources on design is also discussed throughout the book, but particularly in:<\/p>\n Teaching assistance refers to\u00a0adjunct or sessional instructors, teaching assistants, librarians, and technical support staff, including\u00a0instructional designers, media producers and IT technical support. An\u00a0institution may have policies or guidelines about how many support staff an instructor\u00a0can have for a set number of students.<\/p>\n It is important to think about the best way to\u00a0use\u00a0supporting staff. In universities, the tendency is to chop a large class into sections, with each section with its own sessional instructor or teaching assistant, which then operate relatively independently, with often large differences in the quality of the teaching in different sections, depending on the experience of the instructor. However, new technologies enable\u00a0the teaching to be organised differently and more consistently.<\/p>\n For instance, a senior professor may determine the overall curriculum and assessment strategy, and working with an\u00a0instructional designer, provide the overall design of a course. Sessionals and\/or teaching assistants then are hired to deliver the course either face-to-face or online or more often a mix of both, under the supervision of the senior professor (see the\u00a0National Center for Academic Transformation<\/a>\u00a0for examples). Flipped classrooms are another way to organise resources differently (see\u00a0Blended Learning in Introductory Psychology<\/a>\u00a0as an example.)<\/p>\n Furthermore,\u00a0online learning may bring in\u00a0more revenues through government grants for extra students and\/or direct tuition revenue, so there may be economies of scale which would enable the institution\u00a0to hire more sessionals from the extra revenues generated by the additional online students. Indeed, there are now examples of fully online masters programs more than covering the full cost, including the hiring of research professors to teach the program, from tuition revenues alone (the University of British Columbia’s online\u00a0Master in Educational Technology<\/a>\u00a0is one\u00a0example). Thus design can influence\u00a0resources, as well as the other way round.<\/p>\n This refers primarily to physical facilities available to an instructor and students, such as classrooms, labs, and the library. These may provide constraints on the teaching, because for example\u00a0the physical set-up of a lecture hall or classroom may limit opportunities for discussion or project work, or an instructor may be forced to organise the teaching around three hours of lecturing and six hours of labs per week, to ‘fit’ with broader institutional requirements for classroom allocations (see\u00a0How Online Learning is Going to Affect Classroom Design\u00a0<\/a>regarding attempts to re-design classrooms for the digital age.)<\/p>\n Online learning can free instructors and students from such rigid physical constraints, but there is still a need for structure and organization of units or modules of teaching, even or especially when teaching online.<\/p>\n The development of new technologies, and especially learning management systems, lecture capture, and social media, have radical implications for the design of teaching and learning. This is\u00a0discussed in much more depth\u00a0in Chapters 6, 7 and 8, but for the purpose of describing an effective\u00a0learning environment, the technologies available to an instructor can contribute immensely to\u00a0creating interactive and engaging learning environments for students. However, it is important to emphasise that technology is just one component within any effective learning environment, and needs to be balanced and integrated with all the other components.<\/p>\n The greatest and most precious resource of all! Building an effective learning environment is an iterative process, but in the end, the teaching design, and to some extent the learning environment as a whole,\u00a0will be dependent on\u00a0the time available from the instructor (and his or her team)\u00a0for teaching. The less time available, the more restrictive the learning environment is likely to be, unless the instructor’s time is very carefully managed. Again, though, good design takes into account the time available for teaching (see Chapter 11, Section 9<\/a> in particular).<\/p>\n Nothing drives an instructor to distraction more than trying to manage with\u00a0inadequate resources. Certainly, if a teacher or instructor is allocated a class of 200 students, in\u00a0a large lecture hall,\u00a0with no additional teaching support, then the\u00a0instructor is going to have\u00a0difficulty creating a rich and effective learning environment, because the\u00a0lack of resources limits the options. On the other hand, an instructor with 30 students, access to a wide range of technology, freedom to organise and structure the curriculum,\u00a0and with support from an instructional designer and a web designer, has the luxury of\u00a0exploring\u00a0a range of different designs and possible learning environments.<\/p>\n Nevertheless it is probably when resources are most scarce that the most creativity is needed to break out of traditional teaching models. New technology, if properly used and available, does\u00a0enable even large classes with otherwise few resources to be designed with a relatively rich learning environment. This is discussed\u00a0in more detail in\u00a0Chapter 12, Section 5<\/a>. At the same time, expectations need to be realistic. Providing adequate learner support with an instructor:student ratio of 1:200 or more will always be a challenge. Improvements are possible through re-design – but not miracles. (For more on increasing productivity through online teaching, see\u00a0Productivity and Online Learning Redux<\/a>.)<\/p>\n![\"Print\"](\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/teachinginadigitalage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2014\/08\/Resources-2.jpg\")
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A.7.1 Teaching assistance<\/h2>\n
A.7.2 Facilities<\/h2>\n
A.7.3 Technology<\/h2>\n
A.7.4 The instructor’s time<\/h2>\n
A.7.5 Resources, class size and control<\/h2>\n
\nActivity A.7\u00a0What resources matter?<\/h3>\n
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