National Forum – Page 3 – Digital Learning Dispatches

A wealth of useful guides, resources and blog posts for moving to online teaching in a more planful manner have been produced over the past few days. A great effort by many educators! We have been trying to keep up and keep track of many of these resources by reading, reviewing and listing them on a new “Swiftly Moving Online” NIDL webpage. Hopefully this compilation of resources will help more people to become aware of the many helpful tips, ideas and suggestions available to educators to plan and successfully pivot to online teaching and learning.

Understandably, our NIDL team at Dublin City University (DCU) was busy last week preparing for the potential scenario of having restricted campus access. Accordingly, we offered several online professional development workshops for staff using Zoom and refreshed and/or updated many of our previous online teaching resources. We have included links to some of these resources at the start of this new page to provide examples of what one institution is doing in response to the current crisis, although more specific staff and student guides appear in Loop — our VLE.

photo-1521175776577-f8e0c1e5ecb7 As previously announced, we will be offering a webinar for educators new to online teaching on Monday 16th March at 12 noon (GMT) in partnership with the European Association for Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU).
Our #OpenTeach team will also be offering a free online course starting on Monday 23rd March as part of an Irish National Forum funded project. We have also produced a Padlet wall to help collate and share top tips for teaching online, which we hope other educators will contribute to over the next few days.

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In terms of the list of external resources, we hope some of the quality checklists are helpful with the team at Quality Matters in the U.S. having produced emergency online teaching guides for both schools and those who teach in higher education institutions. In Ireland, the National Forum has shared a Google doc which contains a list of community sourced resources for Irish educators. Also, in Ireland, the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST) has also been quick to respond to the current situation by adding a special Distance Learning page for schools to their website.

Our own list of general teaching online resources contains more than 25 links to a range of tips, toolkits and takeaway guides from around the world. One weakness which we hope to address is the current limited number of guides and resources for students new to online learning. By the middle of last week, DCU quickly prepared a “Keep Learning” guide for students and also reminded people about our suite of free online courses in Discover DCU along with our “Who Can I Ask?” tool for online learners who may be in need of wider support. We are also pleased to be able to offer our 24/7 online study coach and assignment writing service through Studiosity to our DCU Connected learners and targeted campus-based students.

Additionally, we share a number of more specific guides and examples of business and academic continuity plans from various sources. Moreover, the resource includes a growing number of free online courses available to educators on the topic of online teaching, including two normally restricted courses opened up by Epigeum and an EdX course on Pivoting to Online Teaching which starts on Wednesday 18th March.

Lastly, this resource bank lists a number of blogs, news stories and opinion pieces related to the so-called “Great Onlining of 2020”, which we reported in a previous blog post some commentators describe as a black swan. Time will tell what the current crisis means for the long-term future of education but many people agree that “online learning” has changed forever. Mindful of this claim, our team aims to keep updating the webpage with additional resources as time permits and as they are published over the next few days and weeks. In the meantime, we trust this a useful resource and contribution at such a difficult and challenging time.

You can find lots of information about November’s ICDE World Conference on Online Learning in the latest edition of the conference newsletter. Read more about our unique walking tours ending with “pedagogy in the pub” and the significance of the conference theme as we celebrate Samhain and the change of seasons. The newsletter also shares a set of principles for conference participation, which serve as a guide to delegates in order to create a really welcoming, courteous and respectful professional learning atmosphere.

Belinda Tynan.jpg If you are waiting for more information on the day/time of your presentation at the World Conference, then the newsletter provides a progress report and shares more details on the presenter guidelines and this Friday’s webinar for authors and contributors. The newsletter also profiles another plenary speaker who will focus on strength in diversity and transformative leadership for changing times. More specifically, in her keynote Professor Belinda Tynan will address the major contribution that women can make in leadership roles and this important theme then continues over a panel discussion.

The newsletter also reports a number of linked events, with the formal launch of the IUA-led project on Enhancing Digital Capacity in Teaching and Learning, and a follow up ePortfolio workshop organised by Eportfolio Ireland on Monday 11th November. The ICDE World Conference is supported by over 30 partner organisation from around the globe and this week’s newsletter acknowledges the great local support from a number of Irish professional bodies, including the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education as a valued Bronze Sponsor.

Lots more to read in this week’s conference newsletter and make sure you keep an eye out for our next issue, and of course register ASAP for this major international event as we aim to help shape the future of education for the new online and digital world.