IUA – Page 2 – Digital Learning Dispatches

While there has been a steady growth in demand for online courses in the last decade, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the uptake of online education across the globe. With millions of people starting or continuing their higher education online this year, there has never been a greater need for a course that teaches the essentials of being an online learner. DCU’s latest online course developed by a team in the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) in partnership with FutureLearn addresses just that – the fundamentals of being an effective online learner.

A Digital Edge: Essentials for the Online Learner is a two-week course designed and facilitated by experienced online educators and digital education researchers at DCU working in collaboration with the DCU Students’ Union and the Irish Universities Association (IUA). Funded as part of DCU’s Covid-19 Research and Innovation Hub, this free online course is available to people worldwide.

While there are a handful of similar courses already available online, DCU’s course is unique as it was co-designed to be ‘for students, by students’. This means that while the facilitators are seasoned online educators in the NIDL, the course has been reviewed by IUA student interns from 7 Irish universities and is being co-facilitated by a team of DCU Student Ambassadors. These students will be sharing their own tips, advice and valuable first-hand experiences throughout the course to enable participants to optimise their own online learning journey.

Based on contemporary theory and research along with DCU’s considerable experience in designing online education, the course aims to help students thrive in the new digital-era. It promotes healthy online learning habits and the concept of digital well-being to flourish as online learners for the new digital future. The course helps learners to understand how to truly harness digital tools and resources to maximise their learning and to develop online support networks. Learning to work effectively online in collaboration with peers is a important theme throughout the course. Another key area discussed towards the end of the course is the need to establish and manage a professional online identity.

Led by Professor Mark Brown, NIDL, Director, Professor Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl, Head of the Ideas Lab, and Dr Eamon Costello, Head of the Open Education Unit, the course draws on UNESCO’s Learning Compass 2030 and is anchored in the European LifeComp Framework. It is structured around four key themes and builds on DCU’s strategic collaboration with FutureLearn following the launch of a pioneering new micro-credentialing initiative earlier in the year.

Mark Brown says,

“Online learning is now an important life skill. Even before Covid-19 the level of demand for online education was growing exponentially, worldwide. We hope this course will make a valuable contribution to students starting their online learning journey at university for the first time.”

The course should also be of value to existing students and help people irrespective of age take advantage of new digitally-enabled models of life-long learning.

DCU is a proud pioneer of digital education in Ireland having hosted last year’s ICDE World Conference on Online Learning and has established a strong footprint on the FutureLearn platform, with a series of free courses on Irish Language and Culture, along with a suite of new micro-credentials currently in development. A Digital Edge: Essentials for the Online Learner is a continuation of DCU’s role in leading the digital transformation of teaching and learning in today’s brave new world of higher education.

By Rob Lowney

Life in this pandemic is surreal and anxiety-inducing, so it’s perhaps unusual for me to say that I feel like my work life hasn’t changed that much at all.

Pre-pandemic, my days would be filled with meetings, designing and delivering professional development (PD) to academics around learning technologies, responding to learning technology queries… and that’s still how my days are filled. The volume is now much greater, but strangely I’m grateful for that. A busy work day keeps me occupied and I forget about this pandemic for a while.

Each day I get up and make the arduous commute to my desk in the corner of the living room. While waiting for the coffee to percolate, I do a short breathing or meditation exercise, using the app Stop, Breathe and Think. I don’t miss travelling on a packed Dublin Bus every morning, but I do miss that time I have to myself to get my brain oriented, so I try to start my day off well each morning.

Working from home hasn’t been much of a change for me. Pre-pandemic, I could be working on any of DCU’s campuses any day of the week, so I’m used to going without an office. So long as I have my laptop and some wi-fi, I’m good.

The first task is to scan my email and our helpdesk tickets to see if there are urgent issues to be addressed. If there are, I get to them straight away or contact my colleagues in the Loop VLE Support Team. At the other end of these emails is usually an academic who has little experience of teaching fully online. A query might seem small or simple to me but it’s of huge importance to them – and therefore their students – so I strive to treat it as such. Throughout the day my eye is on my email account, alert to anything that might arise. Not ideal – I should be focussing on just one thing at a time – but needs must.

A core part of my role in DCU is acting as one of the project leads – with my colleague Suzanne Stone – for the IUA Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning (EDTL) project, launched in 2019. Never a more apt time for such a project! Although most of my day is spent on frontline support and PD related to the crisis, it’s still important to keep ‘normal’ projects going. Our project focus is developing academics’ capacity in technology-enhanced assessment. Every day contains an EDTL task – a catch-up with the national project team, a virtual coffee break with our participating groups of academics, designing and delivering online workshops, evaluating our activities, and so on. Our participants have adapted nimbly to the online format for project workshops, and they too are glad to keep going with ‘something normal’.

The Teaching Enhancement Unit’s output of PD activities has increased dramatically during this crisis. Each day we provide up to three webinars related to remote teaching and using the Loop VLE effectively. Most days I deliver a webinar on a Loop tool that can be used for assessment, or co-ordinate with a colleague who presents. It takes time to prepare these each morning but it’s time well spent. PD for academics during this crisis is vital.

Each day usually involves a call with some other members of the Loop Support Team and our head of unit, Mark Glynn, to assess the situation, discuss issues, plan new PD activities, and as the semester draws to a close, to discuss alternative assessment arrangements.

I certainly feel spent by the end of each day, but looking out my apartment window I see St James’s Hospital and it puts things in perspective. My busy work day pales in comparison to the heroic duties our healthcare workers are fulfilling.

Rob Lowney is a Learning Technologist in DCU’s Teaching Enhancement Unit (TEU) in the National Institute for Digital Learning. Rob’s account of his typical day was first published in a special edition of the National Forum’s eZine.