Beyond the blend: practical approaches to designing fully online learning

Editor's Notes

• #3: Tell you a little bit about the the institution I work at – UCEM Look at what is different when we experience fully online teaching & learning Ale and Jackie have explored two areas – community and active learning that are very much at the heart of our model of fully online education Describe how we have approached the design of our online programmes in the past two years – which I brlieve is a process that can be scaled up or down even to the indidividual Do a little work in dispelling a notion I know is gaining momentum in HE that we need to invest heavily in external learning providers address the current challenges, at a risk of loosing our institutional identity and community, but rather it is possible to do distance education really well by building internal capacity and that is much more sustainable and resilient, it is ensures that we always humanize teaching and learning. Then share a few of the practical learnings and resources we have made available.
• #4: We are the leading provider of supported online learning for the Built Environment; with 100 years’ experience in providing learning opportunities for the industry. We have own own degree awarding powers, and are considered a public institution. We run 13 undergraduate and graduate programmes in subjects such as construction management, building surveying, quantity surveying but a common feature is that the theme of sustainability runs throughout our provision and we take our role in influencing sustainability in built environment very seriously. UCEM works closely with the leading professional bodies in the built environment to ensure that our programmes provide the knowledge and understanding required to achieve chartered status and approach the challenges we are facing in the industry. We have 4000 students enrolled at any one time, from 50 different countries. 3% study full time Until 20 years ago we were predominantly a correspondence institution. And actually moving that online has encountered very similar challenges to moving on-ground education online – initally we saw a large focus on resources which students we asked to engage then do an assessment. Embedding sustainability at each academic level within our provision which reflects UCEM’s practice based focus and helps identify UCEM as a leader in education for sustainability Undertaking applied, real world sustainability research and partnerships aligned with the needs of local, national and international agendas. E-library Disability & wellbeing Resilience is a term I struggle with when used in education if we take it to mean students achieving good educational outcomes despite adversity. For schools, promoting it involves strategic planning and detailed practice involving the whole school community  Being a fully online university does not mean you do not get affected by global pandemics. We have been required to change working and teaching practices, we are concerned a bout student recruitment. But we being online we do have a degree of resilience
• #6: It requires technology to exist It can’t do everything (yet) So, what defines online education? Firstly. Most obviously, it needs technology, or a suite of technology, transmitting across a network of nodes - to be able to exist. But it does foreground some quite important questions about how we see our students – as data points, usernames or humans, about the role technology plays in bringing together teaching, learning and assessment. It’s not just about the IT. We are still in a period of not-yetness – on-ground education has been around 1000 of years, we can’t compare it to 30 odd years of online. There are things that we can’t do yet and having worked for many years in a more traditional russle group uni I’m fully aware of the difficult decisions some institutions are having to address because what they do can not be translated to an online space…we do have the labs … but this is an opportunity to come together as subject communities. There are greater opportunities, especially around flexibility to learn any time and where. This is also down to the fact the most online education is frontloaded, the content of entire modules in launched on day one. Fully online education is not protected from scenarios such as global pandemics, but the flexibility it provides is the thing that makes it more resilient in the face of adversity and to make change to delivery models quickly if required. Online education can disadvantage the very people it seeks to support. Those who require flexibility to study also need to develop the cababilitities to keep learning momentum, to stay engaged, productive and safe online without the physical presence of peers and tutors. It is hard work. You know those online webinarys you gave yesterday or the back-to-back online meetings you attended – its exhausting without the rewards of f2f, the breaks walking between rooms or buildings. No matter how well we reach through the screen to engage our students, that screen is tiring. We don’t have the cues of the on-ground learning space, of the presence of other students around you studying. When you walk into a lecture theatre or a room set up a caberet style – you know what to expect. We don’t have those online. There is a sense that everything online is more seen, more visible – our communications, our teaching, the hidden curriculum is not as hidden - and thus we become more accountable.
• #7: AT UCEM module development is based on our educational framework In a move to online its easy to be concerned about the loss of culture, identity and tradition, something that may already be difficult to define in larger universities with large numbers of programmes across disciplines. We are Guild HE institutions, and we are at an advantage here. We are more likely than many others in the sector to know who we are, what we stand for, our purpose, the priorities and principles we teach by. We can stand on a balcony and look towards the future and imagine quite clearly how we will be impacted by a crisis. And whilst there may be practical challenges presents (the lab, the studio, the performance etc) We are more able to reimagine what we can be because we understand why we matter and can tell the world who we are. Who we are as an institution – set up to provide technical education…. Our purpose is to provide a better built environment with sustainability at its core and not exclude anyone from education. Our students today work ft, largely in the industry, an industry which has a lack of diversity and the most challenging levels of metal health illness in the UK This is very much at the heart of our approach, and everything else provides scaffolding around that Our students are focused on specific goals and are time poor, so the LD model that we employ drills down to what it is our students need to be able to do to succeed. We approach the design of our modules from the learning outcomes, then through the assessment design and work back from there through the creation of learning activities and selection of study resources. This ensures that everything in the module is relevant and has a role to play in students demonstrating evidence that they have achieved their learning outcomes. In terms of how we teach and how students learn - We are focused on moving fully into participatory learning – where students become active participants in the process rather than receivers of transmitted information and are able to focus on their own personal goals and needs. In particular for our discipline field approaches such as problem solving, social learning, authentic learning, situated learning – reflecting on experience is an important part of their education. Presence online is crucial so that students feel supported and part of learning community – so when we design modules we are always thinking about elegant ways for both students and tutors to be there both in real-time and asynchronously. --- We have designed a set of learning types that have been localised from work done by Professor Diana Laurillard, these are aligned to the types of learning we need our students to undertake and are really helpful in helping to describe and discuss the student learning process.  Because everything is so visible online and because of the need for a level of consistency we have developed a quality baseline that outline the key elements that need to be present. This is not so much a rubric to rank how good a module is, but a framework that enables flexibility within it to capture the character of the subject being taught and the voice of the tutor. UCEM Padagogy Wheel A tool to help educators think which puts the pedagogy first Technology mediates the student experience – bringing together assessments, learning experiences, support, social spaces. And finally we think about the technology to host and enable the assessments, the learning activities, and the social spaces. Which we have found tools to map to the learning types defined. We are also increasingly looking to use tools that reflect those our students will use in industry – Slack, MS Teams, VR – their relevance is important. Technology plays an important role in mediating the student experience.
• #9: The actual practicalities of undertaking the design of a new module, or a redesign of a module is actually quite fun. We have adapted the ABC Design model and resources from UCL to storyboard the student learning experience. We take those learning types I just mentioned and stack them into learning activities with steps to scaffold the journey to learning outcomes and arrange those over the duration of the module. Those activities form elegant blends synchronous and asynchronous experiences - and will also feature presence and interaction in varying ways. It’s here that we see that bringing together of experts – subject experts, educational designers, learning technologists, media professionals, library, student support
• #10: The actual practicalities of undertaking the design of a new module, or a redesign of a module is actually quite fun. We have adapted the ABC Design model and resources from UCL to storyboard the student learning experience. We take those learning types I just mentioned and stack them into learning activities with steps to scaffold the journey to learning outcomes and arrange those over the duration of the module. Those activities form elegant blends synchronous and asynchronous experiences - and will also feature presence and interaction in varying ways. It’s here that we see that bringing together of experts – subject experts, educational designers, learning technologists, media professionals, library, student support
• #12: There are different ways to incorporate teaching presence and opportunities to be connected. The solution to teaching online is not to post a video of yourself delivering a standard lecture in a classroom or a live presentation. The physical energy gets lost in that medium, too. Instead, capture teaching, personality, passion in ways that are different from what we might do in person, yet are authentic. There are a number of ways to be present for students which does not involve a live lecture. The notion of contact hours is much more complex online, but this is not a negative thing. The time of the teacher can be embedded within the spaces that best suit the approach of the institution and the students enrolled. Engaging students discussions, in conversations, in debates, encouraging them to show their work, providing feedback (be it individual or cohort) is all part of teaching but is not confined to a specific block of synchronous time. Examples are contributing to forums (which can be used in a number of ways), tools like slack or teams, setting up slots in your diary which students can book using tools like youcanbookme.com, setting up time for groups to be online at a certain time Being present online means communicating naturally - Using things like emojis and reaction gifs is ok, using what is available to communicate effectively amongst yourselves is incredibly important. If you have audio or video options to communicate that can be even more effective. I’m not a big fan of the way discussion forums are often used – post 300 word response to this q, then comment on two other posts with 150 words. It just doesn’t feel natural. Nobody actually talks that way. Nobody discusses things that way. People don’t change minds and have good ideas that way, organically in person, so why try to replicate that on the screen? Written content is inevitably part of any online course, but strive to use a unique voice in your writing. Mini-lectures, assignment instructions, answers to questions, weekly announcements — you can write those in such a way as to represent your true self: We’ve also reached out to communities that were underserved and brought more people in that may not have the secondary preparation that they really need for college work. The other stream of students that I see coming into college are people that have emotional and mental health challenges. All these different combinations have put, I think, more pressure on teachers to widen their scope of teaching approaches and do a better job at connecting with students who have different needs and who learn in different ways, different modalities. [00:16:31] Bonni: You described students who are compliant and you used the phrase ‘more well-behaved, more traditional’. From everything I know about you, I can guess, perhaps, that you wouldn’t want to go back to that. Is that a fair assumption, that that wouldn’t be a group you wish you had teaching today because of what today’s students offer? [00:16:54] Dale: I would say that it was good for me at the beginning because it was less challenging. It was more like the background I grew up in. I went to school because my parents told me to. I worked hard because my parents said I should. I worked hard because my teachers set those goals for me. You’re absolutely right. I would never want to go back to that. I am a really enthusiastic, passionate, committed educator, and I want everyone to be educated. I want everyone to see themselves as a lifelong learner. I want information and knowledge to be accessible to everyone. I think excluding people from the educational process is a tremendous tragedy, and so, no, I would never want to go back to that kind of a environment.
• #14: The flexibility, thus the resilience of online education is threated without trust,
• #15: Tell you a little bit about the the institution I work at – UCEM Look at what is different when we experience fully online teaching & learning Describe how we have approached the design of our online programmes in the past two years Then share a few of the practical learnings and resources we have made available.