Notepad:TRU LT Intro
First, a little about you...
What is your experience, comfort level with digital and networked learning technology?
What are some learning goals you would like to support with digital tools?
What specific questions or skills represent "immediate needs" that we should discuss today?
The TRU learning technology team
We are a newly-formed team, and expect to evolve. At present we are:
- Providing support for Moodle and other learning technology. Initiated Documentation:Learning_Environment project, with goals of moving TRU to a single, enhanced learning management system, and to identify and address other needs.
- Production: responsible for building and maintaining ~300 wholly online Open Learning courses.
- 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 working on UX, help documentation, special projects. And me, Brian Lamb blamb@tru.ca
Essentials of Moodle
- Your Moodle space: administration.
- Basics of course space set-up.
- A note on copyright and linking to as opposed to copying articles. Vast amounts of open educational resources across all disciplines are available.
Going further, getting help
Email: moodlesupport@tru.ca
- Excellent collection of videos curated by J. Randolph Radney
Non-Moodle
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.
WordPress has been used 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/). Relatively simple online presences can have significant impact.
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.
The hypothes.is annotation framework: https://hypothes.is/about/ https://hypothes.is/teacher-resource-guide/
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.
The Future
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?
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.
What is the best model for F2F support? Can we provide training in more inventive, engaging, and flexible ways?