Notepad:Learning Tech
The current team
Production: responsible for building and maintaining ~300 wholly online Open Learning courses. Managed by Carolyn Teare.
Media: build custom multimedia elements for TRU online courses. Recent example here. Provide support for campus users for video and media production.
Learning Technology - One developer (Troy Welch) working on UX, help documentation, special projects.
Challenges: Support for Moodle and other learning technology (staffing, resources, model). Managing migration to Moodle on top of existing (growing) production workloads.
What we've done
Initiated Documentation:Learning_Environment project, with goals of moving TRU to a single, enhanced learning management system, and to identify and address other needs.
Re-organized support model, initiated migration of OL courses to Moodle without any additional resources. (But we really need additional resources to achieve the goal as quickly as needed.)
The KUMU wiki. Single-source documentation for support materials, other relevant uses. Example... this wiki page is rendered here. This page lives here. A single wiki page can live in multiple contexts. When wiki is updated, it applies across all contexts.
Developed for open online courses (rMOOC, SHIFT), provided support for public-facing web resources such as ePortfolios (Alan Levine, Brianna McIlquham), or online web projects (https://juanazeme.wordpress.com/, https://abetopia.wordpress.com/).
Recognized challenges with introducing users to WordPress, and respecting privacy, Alan Levine developed and piloted SPLOTs here at TRU. http://splot.ca/
- http://l21c.trubox.ca/
- http://imagery.trubox.ca/
- http://biol1210.trubox.ca/
- http://podcast123.trubox.ca/
Ready for takeoff...
Thanks to TRU IT for supporting the BC Open Ed Tech Collaborative. Giving us access to EduCloud was crucial. Current active institutional partners are BCCampus, TRU, UNBC, JIBC, uVIC, and Royal Roads. We have individual participants from every public post-sec and beyond.
Goals of the BCOETC
- a collaborative WordPress installation, centrally provisioned, but with instances managed by individual institutions.
- a community of practice to communicate, share code and applications (ready to run), best practices and new ideas (this is from Reclaim Hosting, another vital part of our global community of collaborators).
We are also utilizing H5P framework and tools, looking for ways to extend its use.
Should we be thinking about a shared service for online video for our community?
We want to use learning analytics in creative and ethical ways to enhance our practice.
What I fear
We are critically short-staffed presently, and even with reinforcements expect that time will always be a challenge. Since assuming oversight of Production and Media, I've been struck by how these teams are always looking for ways to enhance our efficiency. We will be applying what they have learned to learning technology support for TRU. Nonetheless, the coming months will be crucial and difficult.
What does our community want and need? ACTAC focus groups and survey being developed for fall and winter of this year. Our hope is that TRU faculty members will lead this consultation round, but we will provide logistical support and work to identify emerging actions.
How do we communicate with our community? We struggle to get the word out to instructors in our current environment.
Can we provide training in more inventive, engaging, and flexible ways?
How do we support the adoption of Open Textbooks and open educational resources? This is an obvious and practical way to enhance learning and reduce costs for students. TRU's Student Union is planning an advocacy campaign, it may draw on (previous efforts.) How can we be ready? Shouldn't we help?