As eLearning technologist (or as Oxford Brookes University term, a Digital Media eLearning Developer), understanding the constraints and benefits of different technologies is fundamental to my role as I am responsible for:
- Supporting the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development (OCSLD) department Educational, and Staff Development staff in the selection and use of appropriate technologies to support their model of delivery and learning materials.
- A member of a University wide team of DMeLDs to advise, decide and recommend what technologies are included in / on our eLearning platforms.
- Deciding and recommending what technologies are included in our currently under development University wide, staff development programme (titled Staff Learning).
- Managing a small team of developers to create a university wide (Brookes) Learning Teaching Exhibition and Conference. Deciding and recommending which technologies and platforms to use and how they are utilised in conjunction with internal systems and processes.
BLTEC
One such decision was on platform choices for the Brookes Learning Teaching Exhibition and Conference. As this was an exhibition (over two weeks) and a conference (for a day), I decided that separate platforms were needed for the best experience of both.
With a limited budget, which was mainly going to be used for purchasing a conference package (as due to COVID-19 every platform had raised their prices considerably), I decided to use a free (or close to) option for the exhibition. After considering several options for viability, scalability and affordability, it was decided to use ArtSteps as (although resource hungry) it best immerses the visitor and engages them with the teaching and learning exhibits.
Below is the ‘call for contributions’ exhibition to showcase and display the type and format of the exhibits.
The choice of conference package was a completely different matter, not only had the prices for these platforms dramatically increased, they also included several differing technology implementations and offered different partnerships with our own platforms.
Eventually it was narrowed down to Hopin as they:
- Offered one of the more competitive value for money.
- It scaled quite well with the amount of participants.
- Integration with MailChimp for email correspondence.
- Integration with Eventbrite for gathering registrations.
Essentially it was a ‘all in one’ conference platform that was (at the time) value for money.
DSE online module
Every member of Oxford Brookes staff is required to attend a DSE course as part of their formal induction, additionally it was decided that as a majority of staff were now home working, everyone should have a ‘refresher’. These courses were originally taught face to face, obviously this could not continue due to the outbreak of Covid-19 so, working with the Health and Safety teaching staff I developed the DSE online module. This course covers everything in the face to face course and includes several extra sections not typically covered to combat the stress and fatigue of staff while they were and are still remote working. Given this course was to be for all staff (~6000) I built it to be self directed.
I needed to develop the course so that it could easily be administered by the Health and Safety team, but also capture completions and export data for the staff induction checklist. This provided several constraints and as this course was going to be opened to all staff I also needed to differentiate between ‘new starter’ staff and ‘refresher’ staff.
Using ‘activity completion’ within the course I created a number of elements that needed to be ‘completed’ (marked automatically) before the final quiz appeared. This provided a fully self directed course and allowed the Health and Safety team to concentrate on other factors within the University when their time was at a premium.
Additionally as the Health and Safety team were incredibly busy with providing COVID-19 advice on site, I needed to create a simple method to produce the needed reports. To answer this constraint I developed a custom Visual Basic spreadsheet. When a report was needed the team could, export completions from Moodle and import into this spreadsheet, additionally they can import the new starter list (provided by HR) and finally produce a breakdown of all facility / decorate (and new starter) staff.
Although this process is not ideal (as it still involves a manual process), it is the best option to sustain reports on over 6000 entries (staff), it also offers scalability as the report generation is the same process regardless. I chose this method as it provided the easiest technological solution for the team to implement, but also retained the evidence of completions and the report export functionality.
Reflection
Understanding which technologies and methods are appropriate to deliver different modes of learning underpins the advice I provide. My role as a eLearning technologist allows me to ‘be down in the trenches’ and make real significant change, not only to the learner journey and pedagogy, but also how the staff interact with their course and materials.
I think there is a absolute benefit for eLearning technologists to use the systems that they provide for others, As such I have formed a close bond with other eLearning technologists and we invite each other to critic our own work, especially other courses that we create. I find this method a great ‘sounding board’ to improve my (and others) work. This has also led me to adapt my ways of teaching, learning and development. My work has directly impacted every member of staff within Oxford Brookes University as six of the seven mandatory courses (that all staff are required to complete) I have created.
The Brookes Learning Teaching Exhibition and Conference, taught me to evaluate all options, as you can see in the above spreadsheet we evaluated several different platforms. Some of which were completely unknown to us and others were completely different to what we were used to. When choosing this technology, we needed to look at the scalability, viability, how it interacted with our current platforms, sustainability, and its value for money. Sadly given the time constraints and the ever increasing price (almost daily) of these platforms, we were limited with our research however I believe we did make the right choice.
Particularly, the creation of the DSE online course really taught me the impact of the agile and efficient use of the right technology (in that case Excel) and how it can have a key role in how the entire course functions and its learning design. Management and report generation of this course could not take place without that key technology.