The Teaching and Learning Academy have been a bit quiet on the blog for the last couple of weeks. We have been really busy preparing for new academic year and are very excited to tell you about some new developments:
Teaching Live Delivery and Video Conferencing Solutions
The team are currently trialling and evaluating a number of video conferencing solutions including Teams, Zoom and Big Blue Button (Conferences in Canvas). An announcement about Video Conferencing solutions will be made in the coming weeks.
Course Checklist and Minimum Specification
We have developed a Course Checklist and Minimum Specification to help you develop your course for the new academic year.
It offers guidance and recommendations about Module Information, Course Access, Course Content and Assessment, but don’t panic, you’re already doing most of this. This document simply good practice in course design and some helpful reminders of what to add and when.
Active Blended Learning Guide
Learning is characterised by students having both cognitive and social presence in the learning environment. Current approaches tend to the classroom as the ‘location’ of presence, with the VLE in a supporting role to offer materials for independent learning. A future approach has to ensure that cognitive and social presence is a feature of both online and face-to-face teaching. Active blended learning is offered as an approach.
Active Learning Course
We have developed a course to help you identify new ways of working and encourage student engagement within your own Canvas courses. It’s designed to take you from first steps to developing an active blended learning approach. It is designed to get you thinking about how active blended learning will work for you and your students. The training provides you with examples of good practice and encourages you to share your ideas with your colleagues. It is an active course, so we will ask you at each stage to share your ideas and explore those of your peers. This will not only help you plan but encourage you to connect with staff from across the institution to learn from them.
Key Module Information Area
A new Key Module Information Area will automatically be added to your Canvas Course. The new design allows students to access key documents in a consistent way across a program. The new area will contain the following resources for students to access:
- Delivery Hours
- Assessment Details
- Learning Outcomes
- Reading Lists
- Module Proforma
- Module Evaluation
- Teaching Team
The new design should be available in your course in the coming weeks.
Technology to Support Learning Website Developments
You may have noticed that there have been a few changes to the Learning Technology website to help you find out more about tools and enable you to browse themes more easily. We are also in the process of adding additional good practice guides alongside existing content to help you get the most out of your course.
You may also have noticed that there is a section labelled ‘Things to think about this month’ on the homepage which provides better access to help and information . We’ve also added a ‘TEL Updates’ section to help keep you informed about new developments and Teaching and Learning academy announcements.