Introductory Module of a Course Prototype

You may choose to work on this assignment as a group or individually. All group members will have the same mark. If you choose a group option you will also have to do the Assignment #3 as a group. If you choose a group option, use the Students’ Cafe discussion (BbConnect) to invite the participants, and use Assignments Groups link on a sidebar to sign for your group (BbConnect).

Assignment #2 has four parts: Design a structural outline for a course, Write Project Documentation, Publish both and Reflect – summarize your experience.

Design

(1) Choose your primary LMS and design a structural outline for a course prototype

• logical succession of the elements – units, or lessons – organized in a pedagogically relevant and logically connected way;

(2) Design the front page – Introductory Module – of your course and add content

• course title, course description, the course learning objectives, and general information with the guidelines about the course schedule and activities;
• description of the assessment schedule and assessment methods directly related to the course learning objectives;
• description of the communication format, communication activities, and the guidelines for using external applications when applicable.

Write Project Documentation

Describe briefly (1) the organizational context and pedagogic rationale for your choice of LMS; (3) the course audience and expected enrolment size, e.g. small, large, massive; (4) the course objectives. Describe how your course structure and its elements will facilitate optimal learning experience. Describe the role of the instructor(s), formats of the course communication and the assessment methods. Explain the pedagogical purposes of the elements of your course design:

• structure of the course
• learning activities, assignments and communication (the structural elements of each unit);
• embedded elements and their characteristics: titles, fonts, colour management, information icons;
• media objects: graphic, video, audio, multimedia;
• navigation: when inserting links use descriptive phrases that help students know where they are going. Phrases such as “click here,” “see more,” and “click for details” provide no information when read out of context.

Consider the security risks when using the open access tools. If you use a locally hosted LMS (BbConnect, Edge EdX, Word Press or Moodle) and still plan to incorporate some external (communication, assessment, multimedia or survey) tools, your design a course on a cloud based LMS (Eliademy), or use a combination of open access tools for your project, then you have to explain in the Project Documentation what risks to the individual privacy or organizational security this may incur. Explain what preventive measures you plan to introduce for your course, or what rules on protecting individual records and organization’s data security are already established in your organization. Consider, for instance, (1) FOIPPA privacy requirements, for the BC publicly-funded educational institutions regarding the students record keeping practices; (2) individual exposure risks on social media; (3) data aggregation practices of the governments and private companies conducted through the cloud-based services; (4) optimization of the costs of IT support within an organization; (5) license fees.

Summarize your decisions about the structure and pedagogical objectives of your course in a text document. Maximum 2000 words (online word count tool).

Publish the Course prototype and the Project Documentation

(1) Make your course prototype project available online and post your project’s URL to the Discussion forum for peer feedback. Make sure that your project is not locked for the student view, locked projects will not not be marked. For the group projects: each group member should have an individual copy of the course prototype project (which may or may not be identical with the rest of the group; in a latter case, you have to describe the reasons/purposes for designing an alternative course structure in your Project Documentation).

(2) Publish the Project Documentation on your Word Press ePortfolio, use the designated page named: “Introductory Module“. For the group projects: each group member should have identical Project Documentation published on the individual ePortfolio. The links to the texts published on the media other than the UBC Word Press are not accepted.

(3) Submit the assignment #2 using the Assignment Dropbox (Bb Connect). In the submission message include the URL of your Course Prototype with Introductory Module and the URL of your Project Documentation. For group projects, include the names of your peers. All group members will get the same mark. No file attachments are accepted.

Reflect

Write about your experiences with designing the Course prototype and its Introductory Module, post your notes on your ePortfolio Home page (this will become part of your assignment #4).

The instructor will be using the following criteria in assessing your assignment:

1. Whether the the course structure is coherent, and easy to navigate through;
2. How clear the course learning objectives are translated into the elements of course structure and the introductory module design;
3. Whether the suggested assessment and communication methods/tools fit the course learning objectives, and whether the reasons for using these methods/tools are clearly explained;
4. How appealing the overall look of the Introductory Module is, and whether the graphic elements are used appropriately and optimize the learning experience;
5. Whether the navigation tools and design elements work properly;
6. Whether the project settings make it peer-accessible in this course section.