During semester 1 staff and students across the University have made an enormous effort towards creating a digitally-enabled learning environment.
For semester 2, we want to emphasise some essential aspects of the Principles of Digitally Enabled Learning, and suggest some small interventions that will add maximum value to the student experience. These directly respond to student and staff feedback, and will help focus time and effort on key activities.
The essentials are:
- Continue to build a sense of community
– Introduce course level weekly informal Teams events, such as ‘Community Cafes’
– Add or set aside 10 minutes at the end of Teams sessions to give students the opportunity to chat informally with staff and/or each other. - Support students to understand what they need to do when
– Use the Announcements or Tasks tool in each module area in My Studies to communicate to students what activities they need to engage with on a weekly basis. - Reflect on the balance of materials and activities in My Studies and Teams
– Based on your experiences and student feedback, consider the most effective use of asynchronous materials in My Studies and delivering live in Teams, bearing in mind your capacity and the time taken by students to engage with asynchronous materials.
Follow the links to find out more about the Essentials, and further ideas and activities that support them.
The Essentials are captured in this Postcard .pdf [Postcard .ppt] – and in this 4 minute video introducing the Essentials and the reasons why they are important.
Please feel free to circulate to other staff and use in staff development.
This is also an opportunity for you to share your experiences – by sharing case studies of What’s Worked for you and your students, and some quick feedback on your challenges, successes and what you want to retain in your teaching practices from this time. Both of these will be really useful in supporting our ongoing changes in digital learning.
Image credits:
- Photo by Xavi Cabrera on Unsplash Lego
- Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash Signpost
- Photo by Saffu on Unsplash Flower
- Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash Digital pattern