latest webinar

Inclusive learning design (post-lock down)

A 45′ webinar for teachers in any setting, in any discipline.

After the fast switch to e-learning, while still in lock-down, you are starting to plan learning for the 2020 Fall term, not knowing what the future holds.

You would welcome some practical ideas to help you design learning (mainly at course level) which is as inclusive as possible in either an entirely online or ‘hybrid’ mode.

This webinar presents a ‘menu’ of practical ideas on: student well being post-lock down, student workload, community engagement, input and output choices and more.

A truly global panel of guest speakers will discuss some practical approaches to learning design (Twitter handle is after each name):

  • Virna Rossi – @VirnaRossi
    Educational Developer – Ravensbourne University – UK
  • Godson Gatsha – @GodsonGatsha
    Director: Research and Innovation – Botswana Open University – Botswana
  • Hedreich Nichols – @Hedreich
    District 6th Grade Tech Lead – US
  • Kaston D. Anderson-Carpenter – @DrKaston
    Behavioral Psychologist – US
  • Gennady Egorov- @Gennady45507156
    Director of Institute of Distance Learning – St.Tikhonā€™s University – Russia
  • Gustavo Espinoza Ramos – @tavoer8
    Doctoral Researcher – Westminster University – UK/Peru
  • Kulvir Bahra @kulvirbahra
    Digital Development Editor – The Open University – UK
  • Azra Naseem – @azranaseemAssociate
    Director, Network of Blended and Digital Learning – The Aga Khan University – Pakistan
  • Derek Jones – @plug103
    Senior Lecturer in Design – The Open University (UK)

Virna Rossi:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to this webinar, we’ve had an amazing response 340 people signed up.

And also we have a wonderful global panel. I’m very, very happy to have everybody join. Some of them have had to get up very early to join. So thank you so much for this and I’m going to start sharing my screen just talk to you about what this webinar is going to be about.

So of course the theme is ā€˜inclusive learning designā€™, but I think we do need to define what this ā€˜inclusiveā€™ means. Because traditionally when we talk about inclusive many people think about learning difficulties or neurodiversity and how to include those students in mainstream education.

However in recent years inclusivity has taken a much broader meaning. And this is really what we’re talking about today. So in actual fact it is ā€˜good teachingā€™ from an inclusivity perspective.

So it’s like an ethos, really, it’s a value that we want to embed in everything we do really in education.

Ā And to better understand that I’ve just said I have drawn a tree. I’m not so good at drawing, but just a representation with a tree because the roots, we could say, are these facets of inclusivity.

For example, an inclusive learning design promotes well-being, because it’s holistic. It’s co-created with students, if we see students as partners, a real collaboration.

It’s community oriented and socially responsible. Itā€™s diverse and decolonized as much as possible, which by this we mean that the Western world and what are typical let’s say, traditional, resources and ways of learning, which belong to the Western world, perhaps should not be really the center of it. They can be part of the picture, but we want to broaden their horizons and we want to look at other perspectives, global perspectives, like we’re doing today.

In fact, this will also make it culturally respectful.

And also it’s about providing voice and choice to students and this is very much to do with Universal Design for Learning and some of the presentations will really deal with this.

We also have to make it balanced so balance in terms of the types of activities as well as in terms of the workload for the students.

And of course, accessibility is very important because if students canā€™t access it, then they will miss out somehow.

And then weā€™ll talk about ā€˜connectionsā€™ as well in a special way in this webinar.

So these are just some ideas to give you the feel of what type of inclusivity we’re talking about. A much broader view than learning disabilities. And so the presentation today will address these different ideas:

How do I support studentsā€™ mental and emotional well-being post-lock down and I think we all have to really put at the core the pedagogy of care.

Planning for interactivity, student led collaboration. How can this happen in practice.

Inclusive design and social responsibility so that we are really working together with the community and with the things that are happening in society.

Inclusive learning input design: What should we consider? So in terms of the input. So the content or the ā€˜deliveryā€™.

And then let’s talk about the output or, assessment choice as part of inclusive learning design.

And then inclusive design: activity types and students workload. This is really important to be inclusive.

And what about in terms of accessibility. If we have students with unstable or even no internet and old devices. What do we do then?

And then finally there’s going to be an interesting presentation about us, for teachers and support/connections for us because we are obviously faced with a very big challenge to make our learning design inclusive. In this situation, because we’re having to switch the type of provision that we normally offer the students from onsite to remote, for most of us. So this is a very big change. So what support and connections can we create to help us do this. So, this will be the last part.

And just finally, just to say why I chose a tree because I thought a tree is living is something that grows and also changes through the seasons. So inclusivity is hopefully something which is growing more and more which can last well almost forever I think, and last. Again, it can change according to the situation. Also because many trees bear fruit. And if you think about a fruit. The fruit has got a seed inside and that seed in the ground will produce new trees. So basically I’m just trying to indicate the fact that perhaps there can be an ecosystem, we could say, let’s call it that way, where inclusivity fosters more inclusivity.

And so these ideas and these principles, perhaps can create more inclusive teachers, institutions, systems so that every single student can thrive. Really, this is what we’re aiming for.

So this is just an overview of this webinar and every presenter is going to have only four minutes. They’re going to be very short.

We’re going to finish their stop the recording at 45 minutes. Hopefully everybody will have done their presentations.

Ā And so then you’re free to leave or you’re free to stay for a few minutes for a little check at the end. Perhaps we can pick one or two questions that people have asked

So this is the end of my presentation, I’m going to stop sharing and then straight away pass on to the first presentation, which is Godson Gatsha from Botswana. So it’s to you

00:07:11

Godson Gatsha:

Good morning, good afternoon to all the participants wherever they are, and it’s a pleasure to be with our panellists. I would like to start by saying all of us very much alive have been affected by the adverse effects of COVID-19Ā and everyone has been affected and our students have been affected, even more. So my brief presentation is basically on supporting students mental and emotional needs in course lockdown education. The key to supporting them it’s appreciating the context, the profile of your learners and being aware of each learner mental and emotional needs. And this can be done by undertaking a rapid assessment of each learner during the course of COVID and when they return to school.

And some of the issues that you might actually come across as you make this assessment and include their lived experiences in terms of grief in terms of anxiety in terms of coping with a stigma in terms of trauma and loss of their parents, employment, loss of their friends and so forth.

So in order to actually come up with strategies or ways of actually making appropriate measures for each unique lived experience it is critical that we have a framework that ensures that the learners can trust us, we exhibit kindness tolerance, empathy, compassion, and we inculcate in everyone in the school, including levels perceptions or attitudes that ensure that we align to the diversity of our learners and cultural sensitivity. Above all it is critical to adhere to the WHO protocols healthy protocols and obtain an orientation that ensures that students of all levels appreciate the protocols, including social distancing it as part of the new culture.

Having saying that it would be critical for teachers to ensure that they support all learners, including those from vulnerable and marginalized society. And we know that our some of our teachers are not trained as grief counsellors or in social-psycho support, but under the COVID-19 circumstances we expect teachers do that role and they can do that provided they adopt strategies that are user friendly.

And for instance, whilst we are aware of the needs and mental needs of the students and emotional needs it will be easy to actually allow them to open up so that they can talk about the lived experiences the emotions.

Talk aboutĀ their experiences, the teacher can create an outlet that can help them process their feelings for example journaling.

So that instead of the teacher actually offering how they should feel allows them the platform where they can actually expressĀ their feelings distress and so far. So, it is also critical to offer a platform where the teacher can have a one to one, a talk with the learner in the one to one. Check ins, and also to make video or telephone calls to those students who might be excluded because of certain circumstances or to follow up support when they have left school.

Virna Rossi:

Thank you so much. I’m so sorry. Unfortunately we have to keep going. Your, your contribution is so important because we really have to address these and your visual aid is very, very good, very clear, I think. But I’m very sorry we have to keep going. But thank you very, very much. Very interesting points very relevant.

So now we go to Hedreich Nichols and she’s going to talk to us about student led partnerships, please.

00:12:34

Hedreich Nichols:

Good morning Godson if you would give me screen sharing. Oh, there we go.

Got it. All right.

Ā I am from Texas. So I’m barely awake. There’s no coffee this morning, but I think I can do this. If you had followed or read my blog, you’ll know that I usually use song titles and this goes right with the theme. So the first one I’m going to talk about is get loose, get loose.

Ā Come on. One of my favourite songs. Tick tock thing.

Student led collaboration is super important because we’ll have probably half of classes in classroom and half at home.

And so you’ve got to think broader than here’s a worksheet complete this give it back. And I want you to when I say get loose. I mean, loosen up how you howĀ much control you keep over the way you plan and design and planning and design your instruction for example backwards design is your best friend.

The first thing I want you to, if you think about it, define your learning goals because we are probably going to have some back and forth a lot of hybrid learning this year.

Um, if you know what your students need to learn, once you define that outcome you can decide on how an assessment looks and assessment can beā€¦ if you think of how you work with your special populations as an assessment can be a lot of things to show mastery.

If a child tells you something that can show mastery. If a child writes something that can show mastery. If a child does a dance, a video that shows mastery, the sameĀ objectives, the sameĀ standards, you can assess in a myriad of ways. And that’s something you can actually begin to loosen up onĀ because you may not have a bubble sheet. You may not be able to get that kind of assessment instrument. If you use online tips there are problems with equity their problems with achievingĀ there’s so many different issues. So if you loosen up on what assessment looks like you’ll probably be able to be more inclusive and a lot more flexible.

And the last step if you if you know the backwards design theory, you get you’re designing your learning goals to start deciding on your assessments and designing instruction.

And then you see I’ve got this big, huge ā€˜no, noā€™ over the design instruction. And if you think about it, what Virna said about the whole tree thing. One of the roots was co-creating

Ā and we, I think we spent a lot of time spoon-feeding our kids. The children who have fared well under the system where children who are used to owning their own learning a lot more the children who are used to. This is what you do. This is how it looks. This is how it has to be completed. This is what it needs to be completed by those kids struggled. And I think that going forward, that’s one of the things that we can really change.

To make learners, be able to own their learning more. Let them co-create when you design at the beginning of the year.

Ā It needs to have a rubric to decide what mastery looks like.

Ā But for example, my sixth graders do a solve any problem unit. And in that unit they pick day daily problems.

Ā Things that annoy them and they have to build an actual products for it. When they build that product it can solve a problem any kind of way. I had one kid solve the problem of ā€˜my mom and makes me, go get a glass of water from way across the roomā€™. He made a Nike box into a water dispenser.

Another girl made a hidey-hole thing. Her parents let her take out the plug and put in an actual little box with a socket cover so that she could hide things from her little sister, her favourite candy.

So what I needed to assess did they use design thinking. Did they use the design process. What that looked like?

Ā The students co-created that. I gave them voice I gave them choice. And those are those big concepts that will really allow your students to own their learning and be more passionate about the things they’re passionate about. So say yes.

If it shows learning. Look at your rubric. Look at what you really need to assess and do that last one move over. Let your student be leaders, take control five groups five leaders and then let them manage those groups and work together and build those talents. Thank you, from Texas.

Virna Rossi:

Thank you so much. Wonderful. In terms of timing as well. Yes. Very interesting backward design. Yes, exactly. We need to define the goals first and then everything else can follow. Yes, I love this.

Thank you very much. So straight on to Kaston Anderson-Carpenter also from the US. Thank you for waking up early and you’re going to talk to us about social responsibility.

00:17:37

Kaston Anderson-Carpenter:

Ā Good morning everyone.

I’m going to talk a bit about inclusive design and social responsibility. As I was thinking about this topic, I identified three major components of integrating inclusive design to address social responsibility and those areas are: community engagement, Global and multi-cultural perspectives and lifting every voice.

I’m going to go through each of those separately. One thing I will note is that these components or ingredients are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, they are integrated as you can see by the Venn diagram.

So with community engagement it is really about working collaboratively with other groups to meet or address a common issue. And so as we think about how to integrate this into the classroom, we can look at having a class activity where the class creates a social media campaign to engage the community in social issues.

Or a small group activity. If you are teaching a class that is rather small less than 30 people or so they can get together and even smaller groups or as a class to conduct online town hall meetings to really get a sense of what are the community needs and that could be a small group activity or a class project.

Another area is lifting every voice. And so this is really about highlighting the stories from marginalized groups. So in my own teaching I use this a great deal. It’s about bringing people

Ā into the classroom to share their stories and for as instructors for us to share the stories of people whoĀ aren’t reallyĀ given notice inĀ teaching, in the curriculum.

So that could be people from the Romani, or Roma culture. It could be the LGBTQ+ community, people living with HIV. People who are homeless, people who use substances. Not onlyĀ highlighting those communities ourselves but also bringing representatives from those communities into give virtual lectures about their experiences. So our students can really see for themselves what it’s like. Or to have a better understanding of what it’s like to live in those conditions and live with those conditions.

The third area is global and multicultural perspective. And this is really about highlighting non Western theories models and frameworks, so for example, we could highlight the models and theories and frameworks from indigenous cultures from across the African continent or from Eastern thoughts, and not only highlighting those in the classroom, but also integrating global research into the curriculum, just as we would do with lifting the voices of marginalized groups, but it also is about applying these multi-cultural perspectives.

In real world settings providing opportunities for students to practice using these theories are applying these theories frameworks and models to real world problems to develop solutions.

So when we integrate all three of these areas, this is when we can get to inclusive design and social responsibility and doing it not reactively but proactively, where we’re programming it in from the start.

And so it’s not very long. And I wish I had more time to really delve into this a little deeper. But this is an overview of what it looks like to design a classroom in the inclusive manner, while also having an eye towards social responsibility. Thank you.

Virna Rossi:

Thank you so much. Excellent. Again, and then interesting because there. Yes, it’s not inclusive to think of a classroom as something separate from the rest of the world, you know, we need to have that connection with the real society and communities. So, very good. Thank you very much.

We are now going to Russia.

So we’ve got Gennady Egorov. Please tell us about inclusivity and input, what should we think about.

00:22:40

Gennady Egorov:

Hello everybody. Let me show my screen.

I start my presentation with a short story. I discovered on our online Course on the history of Russian church singing was being studied by a deaf student, a girl from the US. I knew that because I had taught her before. But the teacher didn’t even know that this student couldn’t hear. And she didn’t expect student to take this course at all. I asked the girl how she did it. And she said that she was studying the theory and her mother listened to records and then tells her.

This story teaches us the way learning materials are presented is largely determined by the nature of the phenomena and experience to be learned.

I have highlighted the phenomenon and experience here for a reason.

They define different kinds of restrictions. In my story a student was not able to interact directly with the reality been studied. But she was able to get involved in other people’s understanding and experience of it.

If we keep the distinction in mind, but we’ll see more options for making learning more inclusive.

Another problem that we will have to address is our limited resources, the student may not have our classes or quality access to the internet or even a sustainable power supply.

Even if all this is available, they may have a job, a family, which also creates limitations and this in this case live video lectures does not seem to be the best solution. Some people find it easier to read the text because it’s much faster. Some prefer to listen to it on their own or in their home affairs.

But this isn’t just about students, a teacher can have the same problems, especially now that most people work at home.

Teachers have also limited opportunities often overloaded and simply unable to create all kinds of inclusion, we have to keep this in mind also.

And the third point of my presentation does imagine that as subject can be presented in many differentĀ ways, and we do not have any resource constraints. What else should we consider.

We should consider ourselves. Each of us has special needs strength and weakness, at least at the level of psychology, for example, as a student. I prefer to read and have little memory of what I’ve heard.

But as a teacher and much better at managing thought when I talk than when I write. So it is difficult to require a teacher to be equally successful in creating all kinds of learning input.

Ā If possible, we should try to combine the efforts of several people with different preferences.

One more important point for many people performance depends not only on dimensional of perception, but also on social relations. Not every teacher, who is able to perform well in the audience can just as

Ā easily record video or other, along with the camera and microphone.

When students enrol, some of them necessarily call to make sure someone is there despite the fact that the University website has comprehensive information very forums and we have a good reputation in our territory.

Therefore, our instructors provide students with an easy way to communicate with them directly and also have an introductory online conference with students at the beginning of the course. This is optional for students because there are also those for whom socialization is a barrier for successful learning. Inclusivity does not require us to be technically sophisticated, but the wisdom and understanding on who we are, what we do and for whom and what obstacles will may encounter on our way. I’m finished. Thank you very much for your attention.

Virna Rossi: Thank you very much. This is a very good point, actually, because just to give an example I really like video feedback, to provide video feedback. So I do screencasts. And then a colleague of mine is trying to do the same. And he told me was an absolute killer for him, it just didn’t work for him. So as much as he thought he was inclusive and maybe the students would prefer it, it just didn’t work. So it’s true, we have to also bear in mind what our preferences are and what we can do, and especially in this situation. So thank you. Good reminders. Thank you very much.

So we’re going to keep going, with Gustavo Espinoza Ramos, from Peru I think. Are you based in Peru right now?

00:27:36

Gustavo Espinoza Ramos:

No, I am living in London.

Virna: Ah you are in London, so you are from Peru but you are in London now. Sorry.

Gustavo: Okay, let me share the screen. Yeah, there wasn’t enough time to go back to Peru. Okay, so let me see if you can see the information. Yeah, I think so. Okay.

Well, my name is Gustavo Espinoza, I’m a lecturer in the University of Westminster and the title of my presentation is about the choice of output in assessment.

Now first we need to understand that traditionally in order to do the assessment in a university. It usually the lectures plan between one, two, maybe three components of assessment for each module.

Now, and the students have to do this assessment. But in this case of the choice of output is a different way. The chair or the lecture they define maybe up to three components of assessment and for each of them you are going to provide alternatives of assessment. Could be one or two alternative assessments.

And why is that is because a the students have different learning preferences and this learned his preferences and they have

Are going to be related to the expression of how they demonstrate knowledge. So at the end, the students have different strengths based on these different learning preferences.

But now, in order to identify the alternative assessment within each component. So there’s two options that we can select whether they are going to be the traditional type of assessments or the maybe the non-traditional type of assessments. In my experience, I have used traditional ones, but not traditional ones I have used simulation game.

But I think so, in the last webinar there was an interesting presentation about the using of podcasts. So that was also very interesting topic as well.

But now the second challenge after this is going to be if you sue a combination of two alternatives, the level of complexity, the effort and the time invested for the students and that’s the most difficult part know, how’d you going to make a balance between these different components in each type of assessment, of alternative assessment.

All of them have to be related to the learning outcomes. So it basically means what we would like the students to learn.

Ā When we defined that, then we can define what is going to be the type of assessment that we want to develop.

Another challenge is going to be related to the transparency, the marking criteria. If we’re going to have any of these ones here well, are they going to have the same number of criterion? Are they going to be the same?

How we can make this equivalence? Based on the on the word count? Based on the time invested? They hours invested into the assignment. Also, we need to think about whether it’s going to be individual or group assessment.

In the assessment briefing, we need to think whether we’re going to do exemplars for each type of alternative. Whether we’re going to create a space for a peer-feedback. So students actually can become an assessor of their own performance when actually doing these different type of assessment.

Finally, in the last part, I want to talk about an experience in the Business School that I had. This is for second year undergraduate students.

And we have two components of assessment here. We have assessment one was a report and these report was based on a simulation game that the students have to individually play

But the assessment two, was in May, that was the deadline. And then we have two different type of alternative one option in May was to do an exam or to do a report.

The only issue here is what this question, the students actually had a personal choice because if the student wants to do a report in May instead of exam. They have to provide a clear justification to the Registry. So the teachers didn’t have any kind of voice to select that.

The idea is that for the new academic year make this actually a proper choice for the students. So we allow it. It should to empower the students. What is the most suitable assessment that they can demonstrate their skills.

(timer) And that’s actually good timing.

Thatā€™s why you can see a different type of result for the students. Because it wasn’t a proper choice. But thank you very much now.

Virna Rossi:

Thank you. Thank you. This is very, very interesting because thatā€™s Universal Design for Learning. Yes. So choice of outputs is very important, but at the same time as you’re saying we have to think it through very, very thoroughly. Because sometimes when you give a lot of choices and you don’t do properly, it doesn’t actually give an advantage to the students, but the opposite. It can be counterproductive. So thank you very much for highlighting them.

So straight onto Kulvir Bahra. So we need to talk about something to do with when we design a course right now, at this stage. How can we make it balance in terms of types of activities and student workload. So to you.

00:33:01

Kulvir Bahra:

Thank you. Hi there. Just to explain see my thinking on the screen. So it’s really all about preparing to teach online and I felt historically, we’ve had a mixture of both lots of expert educational technologist, instructional technologist out there in the real world classifying learning. So we are looking at historically Conole, Diane Laurillard who are both proposing learning to be a mix of learning activity types and the Learning Design taxonomy.

So what I’m actually proposing is that we could have a perfect course that would be of these elements a mixture of four of Conoleā€™s thinking.Ā  And I was thinking of adding two of my own.

So what I’m suggesting is that you canā€™t have courses that are purely assimilative that would be I mean, you canā€™t have purely reading, watching and listening to content without learners actually collaborating with the content in your discussion.Ā  So that brings me quite nicely to what courses should be evenly balanced.

And the classic thing is that itā€™s really important because lots of learners can actually learn from each other in their cohorts. So by having scaffolded learning and having an element of discussion and conversation is very powerful I often learn a lot from my peers in the Masters that I studied at The Open University.

So with that we’ve got the world of productive. So I’ve put that on the screen as I thought thatā€™s quite an important thing for learners to actually do.

So in terms of their learning, it’s very important that they’re able to reflect but also to source and produce a response to that in a discussion point, it could be a big question they have to answer.

It could be an artefact that they have to produce, or a blog. The most important thing here is that you offer the learners the choice, not all learners are going to be able to actually respond in the forums religiously, they may need some variety. So do offer them an opportunity or choice in the option to do a blog posts. It can be in the form of video vlog. It could be a podcast recording their thinking or it can be to do a presentation or something that key thoughts are present their thinking in a PowerPoint.

But we don’t always assume that learners are going to be able to do this all at the same time. So these are all kind of six elements, that will be in a very dynamic way they are not all of equal parts, by the way.

The other good thing about online learning is that you can get them to think about doing some of their own research. So for that I would always suggest itā€™s good to have finding handling information.

Whereby they actually go out there and search, they should research, common known ideas or things that go on in the real world and bring them back here in the course into their thinking. Thatā€™s quite a successful way of flipping the learning onto the learners.

So with collaborative learning. We’ve got applied learning. So itā€™s all very well doing online learning but itā€™s a good idea to be able to apply this to the real world situation.

So for that I always suggest itā€™s good that they think about employability and think about how they can actually embed this into their goals of what or how this will be working with their real day to day job or a job that they are aspiring towards.

Now, the assessment is quite important. We normally assume they run at the very end. When everything obviously is in your online environment. And now I think assessment is going to be done continuously as you go along iteratively. So I always suggest signposting your little bits of learning to that – this could be used for the big assessment at the very end which is very important too.

The reason why I created this was because to give you an idea of what a well-balanced course would look like. And I think that these are the winning mix of what goes in there.

Thank you.

Virna Rossi:

Thank you so much for this. This is a very good point as well. Every presentation has been very good of course, but because yes we need variety. You can just shift the whole course and do everything PowerPoint. Okay, and then death by PowerPoint. So it’s good that you highlighted this, we need a variety of activities for different purposes, of course. And then that will also help the students have different workload and maybe to plan their learning and understand the different phases like applying etc. Thank you very much. And then we come back to some of this later on, actually.

Ah, so we’ve got two more.

Ā So I think a lot of people are looking forward to this one. Azra Naseem. Because it doesn’t matter which country we are in with the global pandemic and sudden shift to online learning in every single country even in the so called ā€˜richā€™ countries there have been parts of populations of student population they have actually struggled because they didn’t have or they don’t have Internet access. Or they have old devices.

Ā So in every country, we’ve had this situation. So we’re going to hear Azra Naseem how she’s been handling this because it’s part of her role. So thank you.

00:38:20

Azra Naseem:

Thank you very much. Thank you for bringing all of us together. So let me just share my screen.

Okay, so I work at Khan University and the university has campuses in Pakistan Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. So, my team and I we book we support faculty members on all our campuses to incorporate technology into teaching and learning and also during this period, we have helped faculty go online.

So one of the challenges that we have come across quite frequently is the lack of appropriate devices and internet connectivity now. The lack of internet connectivity and devices could be the result of, you know, students not having the right data plan, the speed of the internet, not having the right device. And this could also reflect the studentsā€™ inability to afford all of this. But there could also be some cultural reasons which limit students access to certain devices and internet connectivity.

So if this is the reality, then what can we do?

So I’d like to propose five ideas for inclusive design in this situation.

One is include students as your co-designers and I think this is a theme that has come up in these talks previously as well. It’s, it’s really important at this point to involve students in the design of your teaching, learning and assessment activities rather than just, do you know, creating the course for them.

Find out where the students are what sort of time commitments, can they commit for the course. Find out about their living environment, the type of device they have data plan. So help them figure out what is their internet speed and as you can see on my slide I’ve got some suggestions of, you know, the kinds of tools that you can use.

I think, then the second important idea that I’d like to highlight is that it’s extremely important to keep it low tech because if you design for low tech environment, you will be able to meet needs of a very large number of people. So what does that mean, so you can create first of all files or your content, which is good on small size. Keep it simple, use more text, images, infographics use audio if you really want to, you know, send out material to students who have only 2G connections use animated GIS instead of videos you can create your own as well.

You can get your students to create. So these are some of the ideas that you can have. There’s another tool that I’d like to share with you. Exe. It allows you to create all your, your entire course module off-line. And it’s almost like a website that you have created and you can send out this entire package on a USB or an SD card or students can download it if even if they have very slow internet.

So these are some of the, you know, things that you can do to create offline accessible content. There’s no reason, even if you’re designing for low bandwidth or, you know, for old devices, there’s no reason why you can’t do live teaching.

No matter what the situation students do expect to have live conversation with the teachers and the peers. So what are some of the things that you can do. Yes. Use SMS but also use conference calls on your phones use what we have found that a lot of students can use WhatsApp. Have your live conversations using WhatsApp.

(timer) OK, I can hear. So here are some of the other ideas: you can plan be very flexible and have very regular communication with your students. Lastly, just remember you can’t do this alone and you’re not alone. So you need to collaborate. You need to reach out and so that’s it. Thank you very much.

Virna Rossi:

Really, honestly, this would have been worth maybe an hour discussion with so many interesting points. So thank you so much for putting that together. Actually it is very important low tech. Yes.

So, I am sorry, because we are slightly over time. So I understand some people may not be able to stay but we are not going to stop the recording of course because we want to hear from Derek, our last presentation.

And in fact, and this will follows exactly from the last point that Azra mentioned the fact that we as teachers, we need to be in networks, support networks to be able to do this so I’m passing the word to Derek Jones from the Open University UK. Go!

00:43:28

Derek Jones:

Thank you and I’m just going to pick up exactly where Azra left off. In fact, I’m going to go right back to the start Virna and I’m going to cut this presentation, short and just going to end, so you can come back in.

Going to go right back to your tree analogy. If you imagine that we’ve already kind of looked at some of the things that connect the roots to the branches of the tree.

You could think of this as the trunk. So this is a piece of work we’ve been doing for distance design educators to support them. And this is basically a lot of the things you need to think about if you’re creating a distance course. And again, the reason I’m putting in here is not I’m about to embark on, you know, seven and a half hour lecture on what all of these things are. It’s that it’s a lot of work. It’s a heck of a lot of work, because thereā€™s a lot of stuff to do. And at the Open University, we will take years to design a single course years sometimes will spend hundreds of thousands of pounds.

You can’t do this all on your own. So just to back up, Azraā€™s point, you don’t have to. You are part of a community.

So it’s worth understanding how you can actually support yourself. And that’s what this little mini diagram here was all about.

Starting here. These are the kind of skills, if you like, of support that you should look for whether it’s global international resources that are completely open and that maybe you don’t have to be creating your own all the way around.

To the stuff that you are able to contribute yourself that’s really quite specialist unique to your context of a lot of the different stories that you can bring to learning.

That then feeds back in to the global expertise. It’s a really virtuous circle. OK, so I’m not going to lecture on the detail of this. I’m just going to this is a bit of a curve from the UK government, shall we say, obsession with graphic design and short communication messages. I’m just going to beg you all as colleagues of mine: don’t get isolated. We say this to our students but we have to think about ourselves.

Okay, don’t isolate yourself stay connected. Make your connections visible.

And then, you know, support each other. Help yourselves. Think of your own mental health and well-being, just as much as your students. Okay, put your oxygen mask yourself first, before you help other people.

Please keep connected in these communities.

On that I’ll just pass back onto Virna who may be suggesting ways in which we are going to keep connected in the future. I won’t go into any detail. But you can have a look at this. If you want to in further detail. That’s the link in there and I’ll post the link in the text box again, sorry about this I’ll let you take over.

Virna Rossi:

Thank you so much. And, and I just thought, you know, so interesting, shame you know for the time. And I’m thinking that actually we can maybe stop the recording now just to say thank you to everybody.

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A menu of practical lesson activities
(in e-learning mode)

webinar series

You have had to switch to e-learning fast, because of the pandemic.Ā  In your current e-learning mode, you likely have some synchronous and some asynchronous lessons. You would welcome some practical ideas for activities in e-learning mode.

You will be equipped with an international toolkit of (evidence-based) effective activities that you can implement within your course(s) in e-learning mode.

A menu of practical lesson activities (in e-learning mode)
1/3 videos
1
Lesson starters
Lesson starters
31:47
2
Main activities
Main activities
31:55
3
Lesson closures
Lesson closures
30:41
In this webinar, these international guest speakers will discuss some practical options to use at the start of lessons in e-learning mode:
  • Virna Rossi – Educational Developer – Ravensbourne University London (UK)
  • Flavia Belham – PhD in Neuroscience, Chief Scientist at Seneca Learning – (Brazil/UK)
  • Punya Arora – Senior Educator and Academic Developer – New Delhi (India)
  • Maha Bali – Associate Professor of Practice – American University in Cairo (Egypt)
  • Tim Fawns – Dr, Deputy Director, MSc in Clinical Education – Edinburgh University (UK)

In this webinar, these international guest speakers will discuss some practical learning activities to use for lessons in e-learning mode:

  • Virna Rossi – Educational Developer – Ravensbourne University, London (UK)
  • Vicki Dale – Senior Academic and Digital Development Adviser, University of Glasgow (UK)
  • Dustin Hosseini – Senior Teaching Associate – Lancaster University (UK)
  • Chris Baldwin – Application Manager (Education) – Nord Anglia – London (UK)
  • Steven Kolber – Humanities Teacher – Brunswick Secondary College (Australia)

In this webinar, these international guest speakers will discuss some practical options to use at the end of lessons in e-learning mode:

  • Virna Rossi – Educational Developer – Ravensbourne University, London (UK)
  • Stephan Hughes – Adjunct lecturer/Doctoral student/Teacher Trainer – Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  • Dayamudra Dennehy- ESL Faculty, City College of San Francisco (USA) & Creative Director, Jai Bhim International (India)
  • Mays Imad – Professor at Prima Community College – Arizona (USA)
  • Flower Darby – Director, Teaching for Student Success – Arizona (USA)

In this webinar, these international guest speakers will discuss some practical options to use at the start of lessons in e-learning mode:

  • Virna Rossi – Educational Developer – Ravensbourne University London (UK)
  • Flavia Belham – PhD in Neuroscience, Chief Scientist at Seneca Learning – (Brazil/UK)
  • Punya Arora – Senior Educator and Academic Developer – New Delhi (India)
  • Maha Bali – Associate Professor of Practice – American University in Cairo (Egypt)
  • Tim Fawns – Dr, Deputy Director, MSc in Clinical Education – Edinburgh University (UK)

In this webinar, these international guest speakers will discuss some practical learning activities to use for lessons in e-learning mode:

  • Virna Rossi – Educational Developer – Ravensbourne University, London (UK)
  • Vicki Dale – Senior Academic and Digital Development Adviser, University of Glasgow (UK)
  • Dustin Hosseini – Senior Teaching Associate – Lancaster University (UK)
  • Chris Baldwin – Application Manager (Education) – Nord Anglia – London (UK)
  • Steven Kolber – Humanities Teacher – Brunswick Secondary College (Australia)

In this webinar, these international guest speakers will discuss some practical options to use at the end of lessons in e-learning mode:

  • Virna Rossi – Educational Developer – Ravensbourne University, London (UK)
  • Stephan Hughes – Adjunct lecturer/Doctoral student/Teacher Trainer – Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  • Dayamudra Dennehy- ESL Faculty, City College of San Francisco (USA) & Creative Director, Jai Bhim International (India)
  • Mays Imad – Professor at Prima Community College – Arizona (USA)
  • Flower Darby – Director, Teaching for Student Success – Arizona (USA)