Week 3 & 4: Pulling It All Together: Cohesive Course Design in WordPress (2 weeks)

In weeks 3&4, we will:

Understand how WordPress can support their teaching goals
Identify “advanced” teaching and learning functionalities in WordPress
Use course structure as model learning network for support
Experience working with WordPress and leave this course with a beginning of course/project shell

Curated Readings

Pedagogy and the Class Blog-Mark Sample shares a simple rubric and discussed how assessment can drive participation in a course blog using WordPress.
Vanderbilt's Centre for Teaching shares a resource resource on course blogging, discussion boards, assessment and student expectations about technology and learning.
'Narrate, Curate, Share': How Blogging Can Catalyze Learning Description by Gardner Cambell about some of the ways and reasons for using blogs in teaching and learning.

WordPress Functionality

Feed WordPress 101 - the Basics
Students to Do the Reading: Pre-Class Quizzes on WordPress - an older post from Derek Bruff on using WP comments as pre-class quizzes
How To Use WordPress As A Learning Management System - Long overview (somewhat vendor-ish) article on using WordPress as an LMS]
10 Ways to Use Blogs in Teaching and Learning from UMW Overview from the University of Mary Washington about ways of using blogs in teaching and learning. Includes some great examples.
WordPress and Accessibility This post from the Chronicle of Higher Education, discusses ways of making your WordPress course or blog site more accessible. This is an important consideration when teaching with WordPress .
Password Protecting PDFs on Course Blogs: nice how to from Mark Sample at Davidson College.

WordPress ePortfolios

Using WordPress for Educational ePortfolios Guide to setting up an educational ePortfolio using WordPress

Assessing Your Open Course

Stephen Downes' Evaluating a MOOC. In reference to assessing the success of a MOOC, Downes poses questions about process (does it satisfy criteria for successful networks: autonomy, diversity, openness, and interactivity?) and outcomes (Did the MOOC as a whole produce some new insight, or recognize some new phenomenon in its area of study? ).

source: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Documentation:TWP2015/Readings/Week_3

On Your Own

Develop a teaching and learning project or activity using WordPress
Read a selection from the recommended readings, which consist of a curated list of resources on open education. Choose what you're most interested in, and read as much as you have time/desire for.
Sign up to showcase your project either on the course site or in a short video.

With Others

Share an open resource that we use in our teaching or that informs our thinking about openness.
Describe your learning project in a post on your own blog; comment on someone else's post
Attend an in-person drop-in clinic or synchronous video/audio chat for WordPress support
Provide support to your fellow participants using the course twitter hashtag or discussion forum

Activity Support Notes

In weeks 3&4, we will:

Understand how WordPress can support their teaching goals
Identify “advanced” teaching and learning functionalities in WordPress
Use course structure as model learning network for support
Experience working with WordPress and leave this course with a beginning of course/project shell

Topics

Topics to be covered in weeks 3&4 include:

The lifecycles of WordPress Courses: creating new sites each term, using the same site, archiving
Incorporation of external tools (i.e. Twitter, etc)
Managing content strategies: separating content from the presentation layer
Best practices for designing multi-platform learning pathways and minimizing confusion for students in working through multiple spaces

Learning Activities:

In weeks 3 & 4, we will:

Develop a teaching and learning project or activity using WordPress
Describe your learning project in a post on your own blog; comment on someone else's post
Attend an in-person drop-in clinic or synchronous video/audio chat for WordPress support
Provide support to your fellow participants using the course twitter hashtag or discussion forum
Sign up to showcase your project either on the course site or in a short video.
Attend showcase synchronous video/audio chat

source: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Documentation:TWP2015/Syllabus/Weeks_3_&_4:_Pulling_It_All_Together:_Cohesive_Course_Design_in_WordPress_(2_weeks)