Between Superbowl Sunday and this rollercoaster, it has been an exciting couple of weeks to say the least! Here at Trent Online, we’re looking to keep that energy alive with some excitement of our own. To start with, we’ve gone viral (kind of)! Our upcoming Extend mOOC has now, officially, generated interest both at home and abroad. We’re overjoyed by the initial enthusiasm and thought now might be a good time to kick off ‘Extend Radio 2021’.
As we work through the modules our goal is to publish a series of podcasts in which we explore and share our experiences with the activities. As well, once the mOOC officially kicks off this coming spring, it’ll serve as a platform which you can use to chat with us, each other, and everyone listening. In our first episode down below, we got together and chatted about our work so far with the Teacher for Learning module (along with some pretty rad song selections to round out all the pedagogy).
This week we tackled the “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM) and the “Like driving a car” activities. WIIFM had us reinterpreting the relevancy of particular learning outcomes, while “Like driving a car” asks that we consider the component skills required of “mastery”. It’s all down below for your listening and reading pleasure. And if you’re interested in letting us know that you’re interested in being a part of the adventure later this spring, you can fill out our statement of interest form right here.
Kristine
For the WIIFM activity, I tried to think through the process I use in Tech Tools to get students to complete one of their first assignments, a course conversion proposal (F2F to Online/Blended). A lot of students struggled at times with the idea of writing an essay in a tech tools class for elearning, but what I outlined was the central nature of good persuasive communication skills in the elearning field as something the assignment asks of students, and as skills for them to develop for their future jobs or work placements. I continued to focus on the Tech Tools class for the “Like Driving a Car” activity in which I breakdown the steps in order to develop a video recording from start to finish. See the WIIFM here and the Like Driving a Car here.
Stephanie
For this week’s activities, I continue to draw from my experience working with Trent faculty in assisting their transition to remote teaching. For the “What’s in it for me?” activity, the student perspective I am using is from the faculty members themselves as they have had to learn how to navigate from teaching in the face-to-face classroom to teaching in the online classroom. For the “Like Driving a Car” activity, I’m exploring the threshold concept in online learning design that online learning can be equal to or in some cases richer than face-to-face teaching. If that piques your interest or if you’d just like to see a GIF of Kermit the Frog riding a bicycle, please visit my responses and feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Christian
I used the WIIFM activity to try and brainstorm different directions for our professional development. Being able to move past the notion of “we need to do this because we have to” allowed me to nail down specifics and identify topics and outcomes that can build skills that will work beyond the LMS (things students will want to learn and build on). ‘Like driving a car’ got me to consider the importance of equipping people not just with “the answer”, but with the ability to creatively get to the answer in new and different ways. I tried a couple different things which you can check out at the usual place.
Terry
Head on over to my Teacher for Learning workspace to see my WIIFM list. It only really has two things (which is I guess the minimum number of things you need in order to be able to call it a list!) I think they are two pretty good ones so I’m happy with calling it a list. And below that, you can see how I think that creating a syllabus is like driving a car and how Maureen Glynn’s Online Course Design for Humans workbook is like the driver’s manual.
What’s Next?
Thought vectors is up next! An activity which Terry describes as “juicy”, we’ll all be reading through the award-winning Ontario Faculty Patchbook, extracting a choice passage that we feel speaks to us, and then creating something with that thought or feeling. It’s very iterative and very cool and we hope you’ll join us next week!
Interested in maybe joining us this spring? Add your name to the growing list of those interested in maybe joining us here!
Image Source: Sacha Verheij via Unsplash
