Category: Learning Design

Fundamentals of Digital Teaching and Learning – March 2021

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bbacademy.blackboard.com

I just completed my Blackboard Academy certificate on Fundamentals of Digital Teaching and Learning, and thought the course was well organized and an excellent and up-to-date review of the topics, which include:
> What we know about learning
> Introduction to digital teaching
> Digital teaching approaches and the LMS
> Designing e-learning courses
> Developing e-learning content
> Principles of learner assessment and feedback
The instructor, Cynthia Crenshaw, was super engaged and encouraged me to get the most out of the course.

I was asked to take the course to learn more about the Ultra Base Navigation which the College is in process of transitioning to; additionally, I was pleasantly surprised at how the course served as a review of ideas and practices that I am quite familiar with in my daily work. The timing was interesting too—to take a course during an avalanche of work associated with helping an institution transition from in-person to remote learning is a bit crazy! So I started looking at the course as a resource to help in the planning of workshops, in the curating of content to support new-to-online instructors, and in many other ways in my daily work. The discussion posts from other participants contained valuable insights, ideas, and links to resources. Taking the time to post my thoughts in the Discussion forums served as a welcome reflection time too. I used the assignments to review a course I am designing, and found the prompts useful in that process.

#LetsAdvanceLearning #BlackboardAcademy #DTLS

Digital Humanity: Professing in Novel Times—Episode Four

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This week Steven and I met up for a virtual hallway chat with Eamonn O’Laocha a Douglas College Faculty Member in the Department of Business Management. Among other things, Eamonn is working with the Douglas College Facilitating Faculty Online Group and kindly shared some of his observations about the challenging path facing faculty. In addition, Eamonn spoke to some of the work he is doing to address tech inequity and access to education.

To learn more about his work check the full article  https://www.douglascollege.ca/about-douglas/news-and-media/news/2020/May/digital-devices-donations. Eamonn’s interview is full of excellent insights and reminds us all of the importance of understanding the ‘novel’ times we are in. 

We would like to acknowledge that we live, learn, work, and play on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples of the QayQayt and Kwikwetlem First Nations.

Dr. Eamonn O’Laocha
Dialogue with Eamonn, Lisa, and Steven—June 23, 2020

Eamonn referred to the work of Paulo Friere in the recording; here is a link to more information about Friere: https://infed.org/mobi/paulo-freire-dialogue-praxis-and-education/

From in-person to online course delivery within a short timeline

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Technology interconnects us, as this snapshot of world-wide internet activity shows.
Image from The Opte Project
 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

“What would you do if you suddenly had to deliver your face-to-face class online, and with minimal preparation time?”
This was the question Michelle Jickling, Instructional Designer and E-Learning Developer for Douglas College’s Training Group, and Steven Bishop, Douglas College Learning Designer, discussed in the first of a series of episodes exploring digital literacies.

We used Blackboard Collaborate online meeting software to model the solutions we were proposing, since we were both at different locations. Here are the topics, images, and links discussed during the session:
Top Five Essentials for going from face-to-face course delivery to online delivery:

  1. Organize and collate the (existing) essential deliverables into a logical pattern (e.g., navigation information, weekly content folders, and assessment descriptions).
  2. Decide what kinds of communication are most practical (e.g., course messages, email, synchronous online meetings, and asynchronous discussion forums).
  3. Work backwards from the (existing) means of assessment to develop the assessment tools, Grade Center, and communication of grades and feedback to students.
  4. Set up the course for basic delivery (e.g., create content areas, folders, items; upload files).
  5. Deploy Blackboard tools as appropriate for all of the above.

Additional Considerations:

  • Student communications: synchronous meetings may be limited due to bandwidth, or access to reliable online services.
  • Means of assessment: other than proctored examination, Blackboard assessments would primarily be useful as open-book quizzes and formative assessments.
  • Instructional presence: an essential consideration not addressed in the list above.

SAMR = Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition

How Technology Can Improve Learner-Centred Teaching

Douglas College Blackboard Faculty Resources

DEN (Douglas Educators Network) Blackboard Organization

Blackboard Collaborate online meeting software—Help for Moderators

We would like to acknowledge that we live, learn, work, and play on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples of the QayQayt and Kwikwetlem First Nations.

Designing learning experiences

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Part 1 of a series

by Steven Bishop

Michelle Jickling, who is currently working as an Instructional Designer and eLearning Developer with the Training Group at Douglas College, and I sat down for a conversation about the essentials of helping subject-matter experts and instructors with course development. We specifically addressed some of the initial concerns with translating the expert’s knowledge to an online environment, such as the Blackboard LMS currently used by the College.

Our discussion touched on:

  • Starting from scratch: storyboarding, assessing learning needs, organizing existing content, reviewing the learning goals
  • Meeting desired outcomes vs. delivery of information
  • Scaffolding into advanced knowledge
  • Iterative processes and updating content
  • Discipline-specific priorities
  • Synchronous and asynchronous modalities – how best to meet the student where they are
  • Modern educational and life challenges for students
  • Relevancy in course design and assessments
  • Balancing an expert’s knowledge with time constraints (the 80:20 rule)
  • Time expectations
Listen to the 8:30 minute recorded dialogue

We would like to acknowledge that we live, learn, work, and play on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples of the QayQayt and Kwikwetlem First Nations.