Making Digital Decisions: Changing the pedagogy
‘to prepare for online facilitation I discovered that perhaps the course models were not interactive enough. There was a need to make them more user friendly so that it is easy for the students to be guided – and they really, really needed guiding.’ (Faculty member)
‘teaching and learning now is not teacher dominated, and the students have ownership, which is one of the advantages of blended learning.’ (Faculty member)
Digital technologies and online learning create the potential to teach in different ways. Substantial effort is needed to make these changes, but there are plenty of resources to help on the journey.
Learning design
Decisions in the creation of courses can be guided by principles and resources for learning design, and it has been found that different learning designs have a significant impact on student performance and satisfaction (Rienties and Toetenel, 2016). Important activities in learning design include:
- identifying the goals of the course and defining learning outcomes
- considering who the students are, their motivations, experiences and contexts
- representing the workload and balance of activity types used in the course
- adopting common language and tools so that course designs can be understood by all staff, and compared and evaluated.
Adapting to online teaching
It could be tempting to transfer the elements of an existing course into a digital form as simply as possible, but the question of quality emerges when we think about the strengths of an online approach and how to make learning more flexible and engaging. Areas for decision making include:
- finding, sharing and curating quality OERs rather than creating all course materials yourselves.
- planning for a balance of interaction types (student–student; student–teacher; student–content) to keep students engaged.
- exploring ways to build high-impact practices, such as learning communities and structured collaborative assignments, into online learning.
- exploring the features available that could support engagement and give early forms of feedback on learning during a course, such as quizzes and peer support.
Assessment
Online and blended learning lends itself to continuous assessment throughout a course. Although forms of examination can be carried out online, other common forms of online assessment are written assignments, quizzes and engagement with discussion in forums (Kearns, 2012). Activities that offer chances to test knowledge during the course encourage students to gain experience and confidence with the assessment approach.
Example – changing the frequency of (formative) assessment:
‘One of the good practices for online learning that I came across was that you have to always have a constant assignment for students. You put the students always on their toes. If you give assignments, almost weekly assignments, they can keep abreast of what you are teaching them.’ (Faculty Dean)
Key decisions
- Agree and adopt a consistent approach to the design of courses, using frameworks such as those found in learning design.
- Move away from final exams to continuous assessment that provides students with opportunities to show and gain feedback on their understanding as it develops.
- Decide on how course materials will be created and how existing materials such as OERs can be reviewed and used.