Welcome to Learning Technologies. This session is for your course orientation. In terms of the course characteristics, I want to be very clear in the very beginning, so, this is not a technical skill development course. If you're interested in enhancing your skills, in using a certain, for instance, E-learning authoring tools, you certainly can access lynda.com for its three content if you have a NetID from the University of Illinois. Another reason for me not to position this course as a technical skill course is that the tools for offering e-learning applications are changing very rapidly. We want to make sure we are going to focus on the foundational aspect of the learning technologies regarding its design and development evaluation and improvement. So, the course content and activities are grounded in design and learning theories in order to inform and improve the practice of learning technologies, E-learning, and technology-enrich and enable learning environments, I used the acronym TEELE. In this regard, I see learning technologies, this course would help you with strategic thinking in order to improve the process of selecting learning technologies, applications, the process of designing, the process of developing, the process of integrating learning technologies into individuals; organizations, communities, routines, and problem-solving processes. It's also the strategic thinking for you to manage the impact of learning technologies. Finally, this strategic thinking will help you maximize the value of learning technologies. In terms of the open content of the course, we will begin with the introduction to learning, design, and technology to understand the foundational relationships among these three components. They are essential to align learning needs with the design process, therefore, creating or selecting appropriate technological applications in order to deliver the intended learning experience. The second topic that's open to all is the evolution of learning technologies, a brief history of how learning technologies has been advancing themselves for years. The third topic is the designing of technology-enriched and enable learning environment, TEELE. This is a very broad topic because you can see TEELE almost everywhere in personal learning environments, in organizational learning settings, even in community-based learning environments. So, we'll cover several topics under this category. To conclude the open content, we are going to introduce several theoretical grounding to help you understand the essentials of designing multimedia-based learning environments. Specifically, we're going to cover the cognitive load theory and its implications on E-learning. Let me conclude this orientation with three helpful links in particular for students who have NetID assigned by the University of Illinois system. First and foremost is our library system. We have a very substantial collection of literatures and train magazines, reports, digital artifacts in our library system. A lot of them can be accessed online. I strongly encourage you to take the opportunity to take a look at what we have at the UIUC library. Second link is the lynda.com portal through UI. As long as you have a NetID, you have free access to lynda.com, the site that provides many online tutorials, many different sets of skill development. For instance, you'll learn how to write certain type of computer programming codes such as Python, ther are many tutorials for that through lynda.com. Or if you're interested in learning the principles, the basics of freelancing management skills, you can also find them on lynda.com. Finally, an important link is for students who have special needs. You can contact the Disability Resource and Education Services through the link provided on this slide. I want to welcome you to the course again. It is a very rare opportunity for us to be able to share our perspectives and expertise through this platform. We have prepared many interesting topics for you to experience. I hope you'll enjoy the course. Thank you.
