Let me start by saying thank you to John Brady, Director of Professional Development, and our fantastic leader of Online Studies, Cheryl Kohen, for the opportunity to attend this year’s D2L Fusion conference. Okay, now let me share some insights with you all.
How was the keynote?
John Baker, President & CEO of D2L (pictured above), shared an inspiring vision on the current landscape of teaching and learning. He discussed several trends including the global learner, reimagining study, and preparing learners for an ever-evolving jobscape. He began by redefining soft skills – integrity, communication, adaptability, teamwork, leadership, etc. – as “durable” skills learners need to acquire as the job market changes to include brand new careers. He continued by emphasizing the origin of the term "study" as an enthusiastic process rather than "settled knowledge" and suggested we leverage technology to help free up our human creativity for better engagement.
What about the sessions?
A session titled “Magic of Community and Collaboration in Online and Blended Classrooms” provided quite a few practical ideas and pro tips to increase engagement. Some ideas were to “set the stage” with your course home page using custom widgets to share your instructor profile, the best discussion subject line of the week, a weekly dad joke, etc.. Another best practice is including a Start Here module as an orientation. Additionally, the session “Distinctive Design: How to Brand your Online Program in Brightspace” recommends a “Coffee Shop” discussion forum for learners to share questions and provide peer-to-peer support (while in turn cutting down mass emails regarding common questions).
Another session I attended was "Web Accessibility Concerns of Using External Tools with Brightspace," which advised avoiding tools with little to no accessibility support; otherwise the best practice is to provide another version that is accessible. Prezi and Wordle are both tools to avoid as they have established they are not actively working on improvements to accessibility. In the case of Prezi, you would have to provide an accessible version in PowerPoint. The question to ask yourself is “should I use it” rather than “can I use it.” Check out more resources provided by Barry Dahl of D2L.
Getting back to basics, I attended “Be a Quiz Master: 25+ Tips and Techniques for Building Better Quizzes.” A few simple tips were the best use of the description vs. the introduction, previewing your question to ensure feedback makes sense to the learner (overall vs. answer feedback), why a header and footer may be helpful, using sections and page breaks to create more structure, etc. This session also included some advanced tips for the more experienced and technical users to allow different spellings or common misspellings in questions where learners must write in the answer.
So where do we go from here?
I’m excited to try out what I’ve learned and share it with you during your next visit. Feel free to leave a comment below to keep the conversation going and be sure to subscribe for the latest tips and tricks from the FIC!
Jasmine Checchi
Instructional Designer, Division of Online Studies
jasmine.checchi@daytonastate.edu
386-506-4278
http://www.daytonastate.edu/onlinestudies/