This was my first time using Canvas. It was also my second time building a virtual classroom. And it was my first time doing the work totally alone (thanks to the Oak group for their support!).
My objective was quite simple: I wanted to build a short course for PhD students and early post-docs that would expose them to the theories and practicalities of the research-policy communication. My objectives were as follows:
- The course should be not-for-profit course that stirs students’ interest and opens up their minds to this particular set of skills all researchers must develop in their career.
- The course should be a short, intensive course, to support a better focus of the group.
- The course learning outcomes should be equally distributed among the conceptual and practical skills.
- The course should not impose any disciplinary context, it should be wide enough for researchers from various fields to be able to draw valuable lessons from it.
- The course should create a community of practice, a node of a network these young people will develop further in their careers.
In my approach I got inspired by Anderson (2008a). It is clearly community-centered in the sense that the course takes into account and facilitates the birth of a certain community of practice. The community of practice, as a learning context is a powerful idea that has been very important also in my own professional life. Then the course is learners-centered because it focuses on development of practical skills of each individual framed as individual approach. It does take into account the specific culture of learning that PhD students and post-docs already have that is different from that of a general public: it is more academic (deliberative and formalized) and focused. E.g. at this academic level individuals are able to read the assigned readings with more intellectual freedom and thus are more likely to actually argue with the notions presented to them, using their intellectual disciplinary baggage in the discussions. The course is also knowledge-centered, making it very clear it is set within the domain of public policy. It is however less assessment-centered in a traditional way.
As regards assessment, I had to deviate a bit from the requirements. This course could not possibly finish with a quiz, because of its internal logic adapted to the target group (Gibbs and Simpson 2005): first goes the theoretical background (Module I), then a mixed theoretical-practical Module II, closing with a very hands-on Module III. The rhythm of the course serves to take a rather cerebral and theory-obsessed group of people on a journey they would not stress about too much: from a familiar book-based Module I to the hands-on tasks in Module III.
Since the final quiz was not possible, I decided to come up with incremental self-assessment quizzes for Module I and Module II, while Module III finishes with a tasks that will reflect the learning process throughout the course. So my choice has been a series of formative assessments with two objectives: to motivate students along the way and to give them feedback (Bates 2014). For the Assignment 3 I built a quiz for the mixed Module II.
As regards the question on course communication, i.e. synchronous vs asynchronous, I deliberately favoured asynchronous for my specific target group of very busy people (Anderson 2008b). I posted a description of my related ice-breaker a few weeks ago.
I must say I learnt a lot during this Assignment, mainly as regards my own limitations and managing my fear of new software. I also had to come up with last-minute solutions. For example, some pictures were shown as broken links in Canvas until recently. I linked them with course content anyways, only to lose these internal links when the picture-bug got repaired (so I had to re-link everything). As regards the quiz, for some reason the “blank” questions kept disappearing from my list in Chrome. I had to re-invent them as short essay questions and to meet the requirement of 4 types of questions I went for a T/F question. Just frustrating a bit.
REFERENCES:
Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
Anderson, T. (2008b). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
Bates. T. (2014). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/5-8-assessment-of-learning/