Level of Support: 1:1 Consultative Support

Highlights:

Dr. Paula MacDowell wanted her Instructional Design students to collaboratively develop an open textbook around Project Management for Instructional Design as part of her ETAD 874 class. We were able to suggest Pressbooks as a supported open textbook publishing platform from the USask LTE. We built the textbook shell in Pressbooks so that it would be properly integrated into the Canvas class in Banner to ensure that when her students were registered in the class they would automatically be given editing permissions on the textbook and so that the textbook would be accessible from within the Canvas class.

How the GMCTL Helped:

• Met with instructor to discuss their assessment needs.
• Recommended an appropriate and supported LTE tool that would integrate with Canvas.
• Built the Pressbooks textbook shell with appropriate LTI settings for integration.
• Embedded the Pressbook in Canvas class using LTI.
• Provided guidance and consultation to instructor around navigation and tool usage.
• Provided links to additional resources for students to access as they learned the tool.

Check it out:

• Project Management for Instructional Designers – First Canadian Edition. ETAD 874. (Textbook)

Level of Support: Cohort Support

Highlights:

EADM 990 is a required non-credit seminar for graduate students that provides them with information, guidance, and skills needed to succeed in their program of studies. Each section of the course is tailored to program-specific aspects of topics like seminar participation, scholarly writing, library use, computer applications, and research contexts. For the version of EADM 990 in the M.Ed. in Health Professions Education program, the graduate chair (Michael Cottrell) and other program administrators and support staff wanted to create a common resource to replace their older PDF “graduate handbook” with something that would be easier to share, update, and learn from. They also wanted to expand what the resource included to scaffold some common learning activities and discussion topics to support seminar instructors in their teaching. The solution was to create an online book using Pressbooks, and the resulting resource lands somewhere between a graduate handbook, open textbook, and facilitator guide.

How the GMCTL Helped:

• Created a Pressbooks shell and a basic chapter framework that would work for the seminar instructor, incorporating room for optional learning activities, course requirements, and discussion topics.
• Coordinated a team of content creators to collect materials on subtopics, which were organized into 7 chapters within Pressbooks.
• Collaborated with content creators to discuss their learning activity ideas and generate some common approaches that could be flexibly incorporated into the delivery of EADM 990.
• Built and published the final product in Pressbooks.

Check it out:

• Essential Skills for Graduate Studies (HPE) by Roberta Campbell-Chudoba; Michael Cottrell; Alison Kraft; Julie Maier; Dirk Morrison; Vivian R. Ramsden; and Scott Tunison.

Level of Support: Collaborative Project Support

Highlights:

The Department of Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour and the instructor for this course approached us to assist in the revision and expansion of COMM. 304. COMM. 304 was previously offered as a face-to-face (F2F) class, and was being prepped for online delivery Fall 2023.  GMCTL was asked to enhance this online, asynchronous course through the development of interactive learning activities. A challenge for this project was taking the instructor’s F2F learning activities and finding an appropriate way to use them in the online environment.  

How the GMCTL Helped:

• Met with subject matter expert (SME) on a weekly basis to discuss activity content and iterate on most effective delivery modes.
• Developed new interactive learning activities by breaking down complex concepts into more manageable information and revised F2F activities for learners to apply module skills and knowledge in a suitable online format.
• Developed multimedia to be used in conjunction with interactive activities.
• Transformed resource materials using visual design principles.
• Developed step-by-step activity instructions for both the instructor and students to ensure successful facilitation and completion of learning activities.
• Provided technical support by ensuring proper embedding of activities, running user tests, providing instructor access to activities, and fielding questions.
• Provided project management to ensure timely completion of tasks.

Check it out:

Explore some of the activities found in COMM.304.

• Business Law Adventure (Gamified Escape Room Activity)
• Drag the Word (H5P Activity)
• Question Set (H5P Activity)
• Crossword (H5P Activity)