For this topic, we shift our focus from participation in a learning environment to the perspective of the educator in the design for learning. Over this fortnight, you will have the opportunity to explore current practices in Learning Design that have been informed by research to create engaging blended and online learning experiences for your students. Understanding how to design learning for student retention, active learning, collaboration, inclusivity, sustainability; and how to translate this into pedagogical action are some points that will be considered.

Enhancing community-building and promoting student engagement and ownership in learning becomes essential for blended and online learning. Learning design thus needs to be informed by a set of principles that considers approaches that focus on student engagement like Active Learning, Community of Inquiry, PBL, Collaborative Learning and Networked Learning.

You will be encouraged to reflect on your own experience of what constitutes good learning design as well as consider how you can design and support flexible, active, networked and community-based learning in your own teaching practice.

Activities for all learners

Webinars

For this topic we are very happy to have Dr. Robin Kay with us for a webinar on Tuesday 22 November 13:00-14:00 (CET). Based on his long experience in online and blended learning, he will discuss different aspects of learning design and how to thrive as an educator in online teaching and learning (view the event page)

Individual reflection
Towards the end of the topic, finalise and share your reflections in your individual reflection space and have a look around how others have captured their stories. Suggested themes for individual reflection:

• Reflect on your current practice and reason about possibilities for development of online and blended learning designs. You may want to use the “Community of Inquiry Educator Survey” as a tool for reflection on your own teaching practice. You can view the survey here).
• Reflect on how you can provide support, facilitation and scaffolding for students in online and blended learning environments.
• Are there opportunities for further development in this area that you have identified as a result of your own experience as a learner in the ONL course and of your engagement in this topic?

Feedback on individual reflections
One essential aspect in designing and supporting learning is to regard the importance of feedback. We would therefore like to encourage you view and comment on other participants individual reflections – remember how motivating constructive feedback can be!

PBL group work

For guidance on PBL group work including the FISh design please see Learning activities.

SCENARIO:

“ During the Covid-19 pandemic, we were forced to work online with the implementation of emergency remote teaching and learning. It seems that in many instances we may still be approaching our teaching practice in the same way without using any of the existing models of learning design for blended and online learning to inform our practice. How do we draw on current best practice and review how we design blended and online learning to promote active learning; and how do we combine synchronous and asynchronous activities that encourage students’ engagement and learning?”

AIMS

By the end of this topic, you will have had the opportunity to:

• discuss pedagogical approaches; possibilities and challenges in designing online learning environments
• apply models for design and facilitation of online and blended learning.
• reflect on how to design for learning and support learners in your own practice.

COURSE SYNCHRONOUS ACTIVITIES

Webinar
Tuesday 22 November 13:00-14:00 (CET)
with Robin Kay from  the Faculty of Education at Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, Canada.

CHECKLIST

During this topic I have:

• Contributed actively to the group work on the scenario
• Commented on some colleagues’ individual reflections posts
• Written my individual reflections on topic 4
• Studied the recommended resources for this topic.