We need to get online learning right before the next crisis hits

George Veletsianos recently contributed an article to The Globe And Mail about being proactive in investing the time and effort into online learning. Besides the COVID-19 Pandemic, climate-related crises have and are likely to continue disrupting the much-preferred mode of in-person learning.

“Design makes or breaks online learning, which is the exact reason why much of the online learning that happened during the pandemic – what researchers have dubbed emergency remote learning – was indeed awful. It was designed and delivered by professionals who were never trained for it, who never signed up for it and who were doing it while dealing with grief, loss, anxiety and the broader repercussions of the pandemic. What students need more than access to education is access to well-planned and purposefully designed education.”

Read the full article – https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-need-to-get-online-learning-right-before-the-next-crisis-hits/. George Veletsianos is a professor of education and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University.

Making Your Course Available to Students

Making your course available thumbnailEach semester, Brightspace course sites must be activated as all courses are set to “inactive” to prevent students from seeing unused course spaces. Where possible, instructors are encouraged to leave their course start date as is (the default start date) to allow students to see introductory content, such as a welcome announcement and the syllabus. Otherwise, instructors are encouraged to delay commencing significant course activity until the semester begins.

Making Your Course Available to Students [PDF]

What all academics should know about the growth mindset: your science-based superpower for success

Bailey Sousa and Alexander Clark (June 23 2022) recently published an article in University Affairs about mindsets and their influence over success and failure. “While most people reading this will still believe they have dominant growth mindsets, unless you devote at least an hour a week to your personal growth, be careful of this conclusion.” The authors list four simple changes one can make to strengthen a growth mindset:

  1. From proving to improving
  2. From better than others, to better than before
  3. From demonstrating to developing skills
  4. From failing to succeed to successful failure

“While we continue to luxuriate in reassuring ourselves that we embrace learning, many practices in academia both show and reinforce fixed mindsets in ourselves, our workplaces, and in our students. Yet, our cultural preoccupation with talent holds us back en masse from the very successes we seek.”

What all academics should know about the growth mindset: your science-based superpower for success, by Bailey Sousa and Alexander Clark – https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/effective-successfull-happy-academic/what-all-academics-should-know-about-the-growth-mindset-your-science-based-superpower-for-success/

Why and How to Teach Teamwork

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Why and How to Teach Teamwork written by Jane S. Halonen and Dana S. Dunn (November 15, 2021), provided some great suggestions on how instructors could improve the structure and design of group projects. “We ask students to exercise their leadership and interpersonal muscles, but we rarely offer any instruction on how to operate effectively in a group.” There is great value in improving students’ experience with working in groups, and adopting even one of their suggestions could make a huge difference.

The article requires a username and password (access is free), but the key takeaways are:

  1. Link group projects to future success on the job.
  2. Improvise a model of a dysfunctional group.
  3. Have students practice how not to cooperate in a group.
  4. Guide their group discussions with a structured list of questions.
  5. Dedicate precious class time to group projects.
  6. Enlist students to provide feedback to one another.
  7. Ask groups to rotate the leadership role.
  8. Conduct equity reviews at the end of major projects.
  9. Require self-assessment.

Why and How to Teach Teamwork, by Jane S. Halonen and Dana S. Dunn – https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-and-how-to-teach-teamwork?cid=gen_sign_in

Preparing for Return to Campus – A Trauma-Informed Approach

BCcampus recently published a short article providing suggestions for a compassionate transition for instructors and students as we head into the fall semester. Whether classes will be face-to-face, blended or online, recognizing the impact that prolonged stress can have on the “ability to process information, make choices, and stay focused” (Joudrey, 2020), we can better support students by incorporating trauma-informed pedagogy. This includes establishing consistent routines and offering flexibility.

Source: Preparing for Return to Campus – A Trauma-Informed Approach (https://bccampus.ca/2021/07/28/preparing-for-return-to-campus-a-trauma-informed-approach/)

Resources:
Joudrey, Susan, “Trauma-informed Pedagogy: What It Is and How It Can Help Now,” Focus, November 23, 2020. https://focus.clt.dal.ca/blog/trauma-informed-pedagogy-what-it-is-and-how-it-can-help-now

Debbie Zacarian, Lourdes Alvarez-Ortiz, and Judie Haynes, “5 Essential Trauma-Informed Priorities for Remote Learning,” ASCD, April 7, 2020. https://www.zacarianconsulting.com/2020/04/08/5-essential-trauma-informed-priorities-for-remote-learning/

Template Changes for Fall 2021

Educational Technology & Design’s Brightspace templates, as defined in a previous blog post, are “visual and structural design guidelines that can help instructors organize courses and create consistency for students”. The templates were heavily used in the 2020-2021 academic year and appeared to have achieved the intended goals. To affirm this achievement and to inform our template revision process, ETD was keen to speak with students directly to hear what they had to say.  

The Faculty of Agriculture’s Winter 2021 templates were modified based on results from a (Faculty of Agriculture) student survey conducted in Fall 2020. The survey provided valuable feedback, but by engaging students in user testing, ETD would be able to obtain real-time feedback with the opportunity for both sides to ask questions. With the Assistant Dean, Students’ (Nancy McLean) assistance, an email was sent to students asking for participants. Three students were randomly selected from the respondents and in early July 2021, ETD ran three separate tests with students sharing their screens via Microsoft Teams as they navigated through a test course site in Brightspace.  

Screen shot of Test Site in Brightspace


The test course site (shown above) was a fictional but realistic blended-format Faculty of Agriculture course, and the scenario was Day 1 of classes. The students were asked to explore the course homepage, the course centre, and module 1 within the course, all while being encouraged to think out loud, sharing what they saw and how they felt.

Key takeaways from the user testing: 

  • All three students read the Announcement on the homepage and stated its importance; preferred a shorter announcement with visual cues (bullets, bold text) over a “wall of text”.
  • All three students appreciated a welcoming and short instructor bio with photo and detailed contact information on the homepage. 
  • After leaving the homepage, all three students looked for the Syllabus to either print or download. 
  • All three students appreciated the concise and consistent course navigation (shown below).

Thumbnail screen shot of the navigation in the test site
The key takeaways greatly confirmed our best practice recommendations and ETD will continue to encourage a thoughtful and welcoming, detailed but not wordy homepage, an easy to find Syllabus, and an organized and consistent layout.
 

The design template is something to which we have a degree of control in Brightspace, and it was important to obtain feedback in this area. Template feedback was not unanimous, but the students agreed that visual interest, consistency, and introductory text was all helpful. 

Specific to the template, ETD made the following changes: 

  • Changing the “Course Centre” to “Syllabus and Course Centre”, to clearly communicate where the syllabus could be found.  
  • De-emphasize the Student Help Resources module, to include it in the “Syllabus and Course Centre” module but to designate the content links as “not required”. 
  • Streamline the colour progression in the submodule description areas, to minimize visual surprises.

Thumbnail of the two templates for Fall 2021 at the Faculty of Agriculture

This was an exciting project this summer for ETD, and the student feedback greatly helped to affirm our best practice recommendations and informed our decisions on the template modifications to focus on for Fall 2021. 

 

Updated ETD Winter Templates

ETD’s Templates are visual and structural design guidelines that can help instructors organize and prepare courses for students, and have been specially developed by and for our campus. Prior to COVID, templates were used heavily in all online courses developed with the ETD unit, and have now been used successfully in many of our Fall 2020 courses. Beyond ‘colour boxes’ and structural consistency, the templates reached deeper into content pages and provided courses with their own unique, visual identity.

Streamlining our selection of templates was a strong initiative in the fall. Valuable student and instructor feedback gathered through surveys and through support requests helped ETD determine which changes were necessary in the deployment of three updated Winter templates.

Key changes made for Winter 2021 include:

Consistent and condensed suggested layout for Content
Students indicated confusion with different course layouts and designs. Our goal is to help inspire instructors to establish patterns early in how content is organized and articulate the instructor’s style of assessments and communication. The suggested layout won’t work for all courses, and is therefore fully adaptable.

Use of the Brightspace Calendar
Although use of the calendar tool was widespread in the fall, ETD is making a stronger effort to encourage its use this winter. Students reported relying on the calendar and found the courses that used this tool created far less stress. All that’s needed is to add start, end and/or due dates for all assessments and other critical dates or milestones within the course. We can help you with this, or show you how.

Encourage clearer language in Content links
Providing context by using descriptive titles (i.e. “6.2 Different Vertebrate Skulls [22:39 mins]”) when linking content is a simple but effective step that helps students prioritize, time manage, and gain a level of control in their learning. In this example, a student knows how much time they’ll need to view this lecture video and what topic will be discussed.

Link Assessments within Content
Assessments can always be found within their associated tool (i.e. Assessments/Quizzes), but when they are also linked within Content amongst related topics, students are more apt to find and engage with the assessment when they need it. Additionally, it can be helpful to link all Assessments within the Course Centre (as suggested in the Winter templates) to further reinforce their importance.

Create an Open Discussion for students to talk amongst themselves
Many students described feeling isolated from their classmates. One option ETD explored was to create a discussion forum where students were free to engage with each other and feel a sense of community.

Student Resources and Help module in content
Students expressed confusion with some of the features in Brightspace. ETD created additional Student Help Documents this semester to be included as part of the template package. This module includes links for IT and Brightspace student help, and Student Services and Mental Health links. Instructors can remove any documents they feel are unnecessary.

To provide instructors with additional explanation to our template thought process, ETD created three short videos linked inside each template. Linked in a hidden Information for Instructors module and also embedded in an Announcement (set to disappear prior to the start of classes), these videos provide helpful tips on using the template sites.

The videos can also be viewed using these links (Dal Login required):

Part 1 – https://dal.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=0f10fd96-c520-4b3c-9290-ac6b0120cda7

Part 2 – https://dal.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=8a513a0d-51e9-4634-a172-ac6b01224fe0

Part 3 – https://dal.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=05295312-fbec-4e5a-82a2-ac6b0123136c

To have a template added to your winter course, please contact etd@dal.ca. We can also set up your course structure and create placeholders for your content, if you attach a course outline.

Course Planning for the Winter 2021 Semester

Feedback from students during the Fall term has demonstrated that course planning/mapping is an essential step in preparing to offer a course online. Many instructors (and their students) benefitted significantly from taking the time, before beginning development, to map out how the course will be structured, how learning outcomes will be assessed, and what content & activities will guide student learning within each module/unit. By planning the contents of each unit or module, we can ensure that we are only including essential content and avoid overloading students with too many items to view or too many assessments to submit.

A Course Plan Template document (Course Plan Template) is one way to map out how you will organize your course and what resources you plan to include in each unit or module. This will help provide a clear picture of what the course will include from start to finish and will help simplify things when it comes time to create content. The first page of the template document provides an example of a completed plan for a module/unit and the subsequent pages have blank placeholders to fill in. You should feel free to use another template or method if you wish – this document is only one way of doing it.

Once you’ve created a course plan or updated course outline, the ETD office can assist in creating placeholders for your content within a Brightspace template. Email your documents to etd@dal.ca and we can help get your course space set up.

The Faculty of Agriculture’s Move to Online in Fall 2020

This blog post will be followed by subsequent posts, where we will elaborate on topics introduced in this post, as well as other topics, in our attempt to provide an overview of online course development.

It’s true, this summer will be like no other. Never before have so many instructors on our campus endeavoured to prepare their coming fall semester courses for delivery online. Although this is new territory for many, the tasks ahead are far from impossible, and Brian, Sondra, and their summer assistants are ready to help guide you along the way.

What will matter the most in the months ahead is understanding what is required to design, develop and deliver online learning at a high quality. Allow your experience in teaching a course face to face to provide some comfort but embrace the unfamiliar as well. The ETD Unit will work with you to formulate a strategy for the online design, development, and delivery of your course, carefully ensuring a strong alignment between your learning outcomes, communication, assessments, and instructional materials.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes will help pave the way for choosing appropriate assessments and in identifying the overall strategy for developing a course for online. The learning outcomes for an online version of your course should be the same as the in-person version, however your instructional methods may change in the online environment.

This link provides a good general overview of things to think about when moving online: https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-online-teaching

This link discusses how to keep students front and centre while envisioning your move to online delivery: https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/4/student-centered-remote-teaching-lessons-learned-from-online-education

This link from Dalhousie’s Centre for Learning & Teaching (CLT) discusses aligning learning outcomes during online course design: https://qualityguidelines.elearning.dal.ca/course-design-learning-outcomes

Communication

In the online environment, communication is key. The absence of a physical environment in which you share space with your students will drastically change how you interact with them. Even if you arrange synchronous meetings, assignment instructions and due dates will all need to be written out and easily located. Communication with your students includes providing ways for students to ask questions, providing feedback, and building a community within the course. There are a number of communication tools that are built into, or integrated with, Brightspace. We will work with you to help design an environment that fosters communication and connectedness.

This link from Dalhousie’s CLT discusses how and when to interact online, and how to ensure instructor presence: https://qualityguidelines.elearning.dal.ca/interaction

This article from Dalhousie’s CLT discusses tips for building an online community: https://focus.clt.dal.ca/blog/creating-a-virtual-learning-community

Assessments

Online assessments should always be directly connected to the course learning outcomes. In other words, the assessments will provide assurance that students have learned what you have stated they should learn by the end of the course. In the online environment, it’s crucial that your assessments are varied, that the learner expectations are well-defined, that the grading criteria is clear, and that you will provide timely feedback. The choice of assessment will also be driven by the availability of the technology and tools, and in particular, how accessible these tools will be for your students.

This link from Dalhousie’s CLT discusses online assessment: https://qualityguidelines.elearning.dal.ca/assessment-evaluation

For those interested in more in-depth reading on the subject, this scholarly article discusses various online assessment options and the evidence behind each: https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/article/view/1712/544

Instructional Materials

The content or instructional materials that will comprise the course will be determined upon the Learning Outcomes and establishing the Assessments. What supporting content will enable students to meet the intended outcomes and complete the assessments and learning activities? It’s very tempting to provide extraneous information, but by continually ensuring the close alignment of the core elements of a well-designed course, you will be better able to determine what content is essential. You may include supplemental resources but be sure to mark them as optional.

Determine the kind of instructional materials that will best suit your learners, as well as the learning experience you want your students to have. Often, it is a variety of materials and methods, and which you choose should be based on the accessibility (social inequalities, internet or technical access issues, or physical limitations) of that delivery mode.

The instructional materials you decide to use can be a mixture of material that you create yourself (text content, video lectures, etc.), and links out to resources elsewhere on the web. In either case, the instructional materials chosen should meet accessibility standards and the ETD office will help you with this.

This link provides a list of sources of high quality Open Educational Resources (OER) that can searched and incorporated into your course for free: https://dal.ca.libguides.com/c.php?g=257259&p=1717419

Educational Technology and Design will use the blog as a regular stream to communicate with the campus. If you have any questions, please get in touch with Brian (brian.lesser@dal.ca) or Sondra (sondra.mantle@dal.ca).