Category: Blended Learning
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The Share Drive Episode 13: Shannon Bence: The Ultimate Online Learning Survival Guide
After witnessing the fear many of her students were experiencing in the transition to online learning, Shannon asked herself the question, “How can I help?” And the answer that came to her was, “I know! I’ll get up before my toddlers and make some videos about how to be a successful online learner!” In this…
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Student Digital Learning Experience: Requirements for Learner Success at Vancouver Island University
Digital technologies are an essential part of student learning. The student digital learning experience encompasses the required technology services, supports, infrastructure, access and learning tools for ensuring graduates of post-secondary institutions have the necessary digital skills, knowledge and abilities to thrive in the world. Students need a robust, reliable, flexible, and accessible digital learning experience for…
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‘Daylight’ Has Come and Gone: VIU’s Experience Moving to D2L’s New Responsive Design Interface
On April 30, Vancouver Island University switched its learning environment, called VIULearn, to the “Daylight Experience” from D2L. Daylight is a change in the look and feel (colours, buttons, icons, text), but it really updates the learning environment to one that is designed to be responsive/resizable to varied screen sizes and mobile devices. Daylight is…
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Enhancements to VIULearn: My Home, Course Home and Nav Bar (April 30)
On April 30, VIULearn will undergo a change in terms of look and feel as we upgrade to a new version called Daylight. We are also going to slide in a few enhancements to the My Home, Course Home and the Navigation Bar to take advantage of this update. Here is what is happening. My Home…
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Best Practices for Facilitating Online Learning: VIU Community of Practice Recap
We hosted our first fully online VIU community of practice discussing best practices for facilitating online learning last Friday over lunch. While the initial group was small the session went very well. We had established some structure to and prompts to guide the discussion however we ended up having a vocal group of faculty who…
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Teaching Excellence Video Series: Jessie Key on creating video lab tutorials
Jessie Key from Chemistry discusses his use of video tutorials for lectures and labs.
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Teaching Excellence Video Series: Louis Mattar on getting to know students, gathering feedback and flipping the classroom
Louis Mattar from Sport, Health & Physical Education shares his strategies for getting to know students, gathering feedback and flipping the classroom.
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Mobile Education – Lessons from 35 Education Experts on Improving Learning with Mobile Technology
Mobile Education – Lessons from 35 Education Experts on Improving Learning with Mobile Technology from Studio B Productions, Inc. This is a great presentation (which actually reads like a book) providing a number of excellent ideas for using educational technology to improve student learning and experiences. A group of 35 experts from around the world,…
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Fast and Furious Learning – An Overview of Desire2Learn Fusion 2013 – Part 1
For the past few months I have been busy converting a multitude of courses from Moodle to Desire2Learn at VIU. When I heard that I was going to have the opportunity to go to Desire2Learn’s Fusion 2013 (Website).I was ecstatic! Not only was I going to learn a great deal I was going to have…
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Wiggio: Online Group Collaborative Learning Tool Coming to Desire2Learn
In March, Desire2Learn acquired the company, Wiggio (http://wiggio.com/). Wiggio creates a product to help students self-organize campus groups. Desire2Learn is working on integrating Wiggio into their Learning Suite, and are aiming to make Wiggio available to all clients in the Fall (although a specific date has not yet been given). So what exactly is Wiggio…
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Achieving Better Balance: Learning First, Technology Second
There is a better balance yet to be achieved – between technology and learning in higher education (well K-16 education for that matter). I don’t believe we are there yet. There is a lot of “technology talk” these days….. technology training, technology tweets, technology blog posts, technology spending, technology conference keynotes, technology hype, technology expenses,…
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Design Alchemy: Transforming the Way We Think about Teaching and Learning – in Online Courses
Review of Talk: EdMedia (Victoria, BC, June 2013) Keynote: Design Alchemy: Transforming the Way We Think about Teaching and Learning Presenter: Dr. Rod Sims (Senior Lecturer, Online Learning), University of South Queensland YouTube Capture of Keynote: One of my staff attended the EdMedia Conference and was telling me about this keynote talk. Wow…what a great…