My area of specialisation is LMS course design and development. As a learning designer, I have personally developed the following courses at higher education level:
- Graduate Certificate in Learning Design
- Western Sydney University – Tutors Conduct.
- Ethical Leadership at UTS
- Social and Environmental Education 1 and 2
- Engaging Adolescent Learners
By developing these courses (and more than 50 other courses in corporate settings), I have developed an understanding of the challenges that face learning designers when they undertake this kind of work. One of the most difficult aspects is ensuring that subject matter experts think sufficiently about both the student experience and the sequence of instruction, as well as the content that is to be taught. This is also linked to ensuring that assessment tasks are suitable for the kind of instruction and content – getting away from the exam or essay mentality.
I’ve adopted a clear approach to overcome some of the challenges. This approach is aimed at building learner engagement from the outset, clear and transparent navigation within the LMS, and flexibility in the way learners access materials and complete assignments. I used these principles when I worked closely with academics as part of the UTS Online Renovation Project and the Learning.Futures Project to set up their subjects on either Blackboard or Canvas.
For the UTS Online Renovation Project, I met with more than 40 academics, all from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, individually, to discuss how best to structure their subject sites on the LMS. In total, more than 100 subject sites were redesigned or redeveloped. I ensured that there was a common navigation structure across all of these subjects, and that students could access the materials they needed in as few clicks as possible. I also assisted academics in developing interactive activities. One good example was the Neighbourhood walk activity where I developed for an introduction to economics course. This used photos and google maps to engage students in thinking about the presence of the economy in their local communities.
For the Learning.Futures project, I ran 3 different workshops, with Education and Law faculties. Each of these workshops had approximately 10 different academics. One of the challenges that I faced was to encourage academics to think about this as a chance to improve and transform their learning and teaching practices, rather than simply migrate their site from one LMS to another. Many academics were looking for a simple, automated process that would move their lecture notes, for example, from one site to the next. However, these workshops were used as a chance to educate academics in some of the principles of blended learning. One effective tool I found was using the bookshelf vs the classroom metaphor. In this metaphor, we talk about how course sites often end up being a bookshelf – just a collection of online resources, like PDFs. This can be intimidating to students. However, by thinking about the site as a classroom – that is, a place where learning happens, academics could proactively plan more interactive activities.