GMCTL | Online Teaching & Edtech ideas
Instructional design ideas, online teaching tools, and best practices for learning from the USask Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning
We know that learners bring a wide range of knowledge, skills, backgrounds, and experiences into the classroom. As educators, we can expect to find variability in our classroom. The USask Learning Charter lists, as one of the Educator Commitments and Responsibilities, to Strive for Excellence in Teaching. This commitment means that educators work to develop respectful and inclusive learning environments that support student learning. Honouring this commitment requires that educators co-create with students a shared space for learning in which all participants feel respected, valued, and empowered to contribute as they achieve their goals and share the gifts of their identities in relationship with one another. This approach is also part of the work that comes to embody the word manacihtowin (Cree) / manachihitoohk (Michif) (i.e., respect of all individuals). When we don’t respond to the variability in our classrooms, we make our educational experiences exclusive.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a powerful set of approaches that allows you to make sure the greatest range of students can access and engage in learning – not just certain students. A new open educational resource (OER), authored by a collaborative team of TLSE staff members, is available for USask educators to learn more about UDL: Universal Design for Learning: One Small Step.
Continue reading “Announcing a New OER – Universal Design for Learning (UDL): One Small Step”
In this post we’ll look at a brief case study of a USask Department who, working in collaboration with the Distance Education Unit (DEU), invested quality time in the full instructional design process to develop a set of strategic online courses that aimed to permit several certificates and a three-year degree program to be completed entirely at a distance. We’ll look at how these courses serendipitously served the department during the emergency remote measures of 2020-2021 and how the courses are now stored, administered and maintained through a private departmental Canvas Commons group. Continue reading “Protecting your Development Investments with Canvas Commons”
In this Bridging the Distance Contest entry, Dr. Kalyani Premkumar describes the launching of the Masters of Health Professions Education program. She describes leveraging the strengths of online course delivery and collaborating with on-campus support units, the challenges of delivering courses to an international cohort of students from all around the world and showcases the use of ePoster technology and ePortfolios for online assessment. Dr. Premkumar concludes the article by outlining an impressive variety publications and presentations that resulted from their program launch and shares her lessons learned and some experience-based recommendations. Continue reading “Bringing Health Professions Educators Together During a Global Pandemic”
In 2005, now Emeritus Professor, Richard Schwier, Educational Technology and Design, USask and Dean Emeritus at the Faculty of Extension, U of A, Katy Campbell, along with two other authors, published a literature review of What Instructional Designer’s Do.
In this post we attempt to summarize and demystify some of those findings as they relate to the work of the Instructional Designers (ID) here at the Distance Education Unit. We’ve condensed the multitude of roles that an ID performs into 4 categories:
Continue reading “The Many Hats of an Instructional Designer”
Program administrators often desire a feeling of commonality and a cohesiveness of the learning experience across the various courses of their program. However, when each course might be designed, developed, and taught by a different instructor, this can be tricky to achieve. This post will offer an example of how Canvas Commons can be used for building shared elements across the different courses of a program, and how even entire online courses might be built in a similar manner through this tool. Continue reading “Creating a Custom Course Template: A Canvas Commons Case Study”