Level of Support: 1:1 Collaborative Support

Highlights:

An instructor approached us about a delivery approach for an insect collection assignment. In order to collect a reasonable amount of insects before winter set in, students would need to start as soon as they had registered in the summer months. Because this online course was being delivered (built in Banner) by our online delivery team, we were able to flag new registrations and send them an invitation and instructions for the assignment as soon as they registered. The instructor had previously used a PDF multi-page handout to provide students the information they needed to complete which needed to be updated to improve motivation. We took the PDF and developed a WordPress site that could be emailed to students and provided easily accessible hyperlinks and videos to better inform students on the assignment requirements. Dr. Nina Mohr and our team took the time to reimagine a text-based assignment guidelines document into a more visual presentation of information. The result was a WordPress site that allowed students to navigate through the guidelines with more visual information helping to support understanding and stimulate motivation.

How the GMCTL Helped:

• Revision of assignment details to better motivate students.
• Development of a WordPress site.
• Student communications upon registration.

Educator quote:

“The site is used for every session I teach, and I have even incorporated the information in it in a short “pre-course” quiz that students have to pass before accessing the course proper. This ensures they know what is expected as far as the insect collection goes. With its open access, students can look at the information and decide ahead of time if they are willing to put the work and effort into the field portion of the course ahead of time, before they register.”

–Dr. Nina Mohr

Check it out:

• PLSC 350 Insect Collection Guidelines (Website)

Level of Support: Cohort Support

Highlights:

The School of Environment and Sustainability (SENS) was looking to conduct a program review of its online course offerings to identify opportunities to improve the student learning experience around navigation and user experience. Our team provided a course review template and coached a small group of students to review the courses and report their findings. Upon completion, our team worked with a faculty cohort to develop a set of deliverables to define and address their goals for teaching. Once defined, our team designed a Canvas Course Template including module templates, common graphic elements, and a common navigation structure for instructors to organize their learning materials with. This template ensured a common “look and feel” for the SENS program and reduced the cognitive load needed for students to navigate the course materials.

How the GMCTL Helped:

• Facilitated cohort conversations to define deliverables and teaching and learning goals.
• Facilitated a student-led “Program Review” process and provided a custom course review template/rubric,  coached the student team in the review process, and supported their reporting.
• Designed and developed a SENS program-specific Canvas Course Template with school-branded graphics and other common elements to be shared across the various courses offered by SENS.
• Developed a “SENS Online Course Toolkit” with a template user guide to help educators use these materials.

Check it out:

• School of Environment and Sustainability (SENS) Canvas Course Template (or search “SENS Template” in Canvas Commons)

Level of Support: Collaborative Project Support

Highlights:

The instructor for this course (Carol Greyeyes) had started to develop an online course design plan and had engaged with Media Production to produce several high quality videos, but was struggling to find a way to organize the selected learning materials into a quality learning experience. After discussing how students in the face-to-face class would work together to develop “productions” as a final assessment, we chose to base the course in WordPress. Each student would have their own blog to contribute a voice to, and these posts would be syndicated to the main course site for students to comment and discuss. The sites would also provide a creative platform for students to submit their final assessments in and provide interactive and embeddable tools for polling the class for the “best of” awards. 

How the GMCTL Helped:

• Collaborative design and development of a WordPress course shell.
• Syndication of student blog assignments into the main course site.
• Development of introductory module videos.
• Design and development of assessment activities and blogging prompts.
• Designing the structure of course navigation within WordPress.
• Developed embedded interactive tools throughout the modules for student interaction.

Educator quote:

“It certainly was an excellent collaborative process putting it together and the course itself continues to be enjoyed by students. It has “legs” as we say. It was prescient in its development too, since we could offer a practical online course in Drama well before the pandemic (and they said it couldn’t be done!). Drama 108 was also significant because it attracted students from outside the Fine Arts stream, and the course allowed them to be creative, collaborative, and to build community in a unique way.
[Working with an Instructional Designer allowed us] to translate our course materials and the creative process into something that could work in an online format, where the emphasis is on student engagement with the curriculum in an active and flexible way. This can be difficult to achieve in a remote learning environment, but I feel that Drama 108 accomplished this.”

–Carol Greyeyes

Check it out:

• DRAM 108 Course Site