Syllabus

What is this course about?

Teaching with WordPress (TWP15) is an open, collaborative online course on using WordPress for teaching and learning in higher education. But choosing WordPress as a platform for teaching is only one part of the process in developing an rich, thoughtful, open learning environment. Join us to talk about and experiment with, among other things:

• Open education, open pedagogy and design.
• WordPress as a highly customizable framework for teaching and learning.
• Examples of instructors and learners using WordPress sites in many different ways for multiple purposes.
• Plug ins, applications and approaches for creating, discussing, sharing and interacting with each other.
• A guide for weekly reflection/self assessment based on a rubric for understanding (Wiggins and McTighe).

• Week1 :Open Pedagogy and Design 
• Week 2: Sketching on the Blank Slate: Affordances of WordPress
• Week 3&4: Pulling It All Together: Cohesive Course Design in WordPress.

Here is a list of some curated readings on the themes of the course.

As an open course participant, you will decide how and what you will learn from the course and each other. We will be learning with you. We hope you will take the opportunity over the next four weeks and beyond to:

• Evaluate the affordances of incorporating open pedagogy into one’s own approach to teaching.
• Understand how WordPress can be used as an open tool for teaching.
• Connect with a learning network for on-going support.

We'll connect with each other over the course of 4 weeks. Each week's activities will be based around a different theme:

• Week 1: Introduction to Open Pedagogy and Open Course Design.
• Week 2: Sketching on the Blank Slate: Affordances of WordPress.
• Week 3&4: Pulling It All Together: Cohesive Course Design in WordPress.

During each week, you will be invited to engage with a set of curated resources like so:

 On your own

 Read: a set of curated and recommended readings on the week's theme
 Watch: curated video resources on topics related to the week's theme
 Create/Build/Design: in your WordPress course environment - using what you are learning to shape the design.
 Reflect: on your own understanding using the self assessment and rubric provided. Provide feedback on it's usefulness.

 With others

 Participate: in weekly webinar/online chats.
 Discuss: post to comments in weekly discussions and/or reflections on your own blog.
 Contribute: an assignment that you would use in your course that uses affordances of WordPress and open.
 Share: your design process/decisions via comments (with links to your site, screencasts or videoblogs).
 Tweet: resources, reflections, news items pertaining to the themes of the course and using the hashtag: #TWP15.

The time you commit to the activities and interactions related to the themes in the course should roughly correlate with what your learning goals are. If you are aiming to meet the intended learning outcomes we have laid out, you will likely need to set aside 4 or more hours each week for connecting, reflecting and building activities related to the course themes.

Prerequisites

This course is open to everyone interested in the topic. However, participants should be minimally familiar with WordPress and understand basic functionality such as posts, pages, tags, categories, menus, etc.