The EdTech Instructor Gathering (December 2016)

Back in December twenty-four hardy souls braved the snow and ice to attend Ed Tech’s Instructor Gathering, one of our best turnouts yet. The broad theme of the event was tech tools and practices that benefit learning and each session proved a valuable mix of knowledge sharing and practical tips.

Ed Tech Advisor and Business Instructor Marianne Gianacopoulos kicked off proceedings by outlining the key principles of UDL (Universal Design for Learning). Delivering content in multiple ways, for example, can help us move beyond the traditional model of students as passive learners towards a far more active, engaging and personalised model of teaching and learning. Nowhere is this more evident than
in student assessment. Karen Budra (Ed Tech and Film Studies Instructor) illustrated this by showing examples of student films and other artefacts from her English 1130 (Intro to Film, Poetry and the Novel) course. Because she believes in the importance of education as a two-way process she substituted two non-standard assignments in place of essays, asking her students to engage with characters in novels and create a one-minute film using whatever technology they had available. The resulting films were incredibly creative, sensitive to their audience and reflective. They fully justified Karen’s decision to be guided by the principles of UDL when designing course assessments.

Next up Julian Prior from Ed Tech introduced the practice of Podcasting in education, a session which involved a quick-fire quiz testing participants’ knowledge of this popular method of delivering audio content automatically to an audience. As well as showcasing the hardware and software needed to create a podcast, there was some great sharing of knowledge around educational podcasts available on iTunes and other platforms, including Every Classroom Matters, Ted Talks and The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

Tom Fulton, Bryan Breguet and Giselle Lemay then talked through their use of polling software Socrative, https://socrative.com/, an app that promotes student engagement through pre-prepared or on the fly quiz questions delivered to students’ mobile devices. Students log in on the website or through a pre-installed app by entering the name of the virtual classroom chosen by the instructor and their name.  Students do not need to set up a Socrative account and can participate in a quiz without providing personal information.  They can also participate without being in class. Tom, Bryan and Giselle offered lots of ideas for using Socrative to check students’ understanding, prompt discussion and lead into other course activities.  Want to learn more? Check out the how to guide https://www.socrative.com/materials/SocrativeUserGuide.pdf

Finally Daryl Smith from TCDC gave an exciting preview of the My Student Success course in D2L (Brightspace), an online course designed to ensure students have a smooth transition to Langara and learn the skills needed to maximise their chances of academic success. As well as employing the principles of UDL, the course draws heavily on multimedia, particularly video, animations and infographics. The goal of creating the course was to produce high quality engaging multimedia which the authors of the course have certainly done. Initial feedback from the pilot in Biology is extremely encouraging–data shows a clear correlation between students’ completion of the My Student Success course and improved performance on their other assessed work.

Thanks to Marianne Gianacopoulos, Sarah Bowers and Sue Evans from Ed Tech for all of their hard work as well as our inspiring guest speakers for ensuring the morning was a great success.

 Photographs courtesy of Craig Madokoro.