Course Syllabus and Calendar

Course Information: 

Instructors:
Liz Homan
(ehoman@bostonpublicschools.org) &
Ed Considine
(econsidine@bostonpublicschools.org)
Phone: 617-635-9392



Link to Course/BPSLearns

Link to Course Calendar


Be sure to complete the Orientation Activity before our FIRST MEETING on January 8th!

Orientation Activity:

  1. Visit and edit your profile in BPSLearns! Login, click on your name in the upper right, and go to preferences --> edit profile. (For an example, check out Liz's Profile. ) Be sure to:
    1. Add a profile picture.
    2. Provide a description of your position/work in BPS.
    3. Describe a few of your interests. 
  2. Respond to the forum in BPSLearns, introducing yourself to other participants in the course.

Introduction:

Welcome to the BPSLearns Facilitator Learning Course, brought to you by the OIIT Digital Learning Team. This course introduces you to the basics of designing online courses using Learning Management Systems: specifically, the new BPS Learning Management System, BPSLearns.

Throughout the course, we will model what the principles of online learning design and implementation and prompt you to integrate your learning into your own BPSLearns course. 


Course Objectives:

  1. Understand the principles behind designing engaging, collaborative online and blended PD
  2. Integrate Web 2.0 technologies into their design and implementation of PD opportunities for educators.
  3. Create a PD course of their own within BPSLearns, using the collaborative and interactive tools available.

This series is divided into six week-long topics: 

  1. Week 1 (1/5-1/11): Overarching Principles of Online Learning
  2. Week 2 (1/12-1/18): Planning and Design of Online Professional Development
  3. Week 3 (1/19-1/25): Creating Collaborative Experiences for Users in Online Environments
  4. Week 4 (1/26-2/1): Managing Content and Identifying Supporting Resources
  5. Week 5 (2/2-2/8): Creating Interactive Experiences for Learners
  6. Week 6 (2/9-2/15): Assessing Learners and Collecting Data in Online Learning Environments

Course Expectations:
This course calls on you to not only place professional learning materials for educators in an online environment, but to design an online learning experience for educators using the capabilities of Web 2.0 technologies and Learning Management Systems like BPSLearns. This is not an easy task! Online learning is tricky -- it can be hard to hold users' attention, difficult to make the content feel engaging and interactive, and frustrating to learn the intricacies of a new online system. However, the design of online learning content can also be a lot of fun, requiring you to think about your goals and to truly become a designer of web and learning content!
We have designed this course to enable as much facilitated play as possible. By this we mean we have built into this course as many opportunities as possible for you to work within the BPSLearns tool, "playing" with the available options while receiving support from us. Part of this involves face-to-face workshops on Thursdays for the last four weeks of the course (see course calendar). We have also scaffolded the online learning design process by having you first plan, then develop, various parts of your course. The success of this model depends largely on you! Keeping up with course expectations will enable us to give you timely feedback as you design your online content. At the end of the course, you should walk away with an online course that you can implement and use with educators!
In order to successfully complete this course, you will need to:
  1. Complete Part 1 of each module prior to Thursday of each week.
  2. Complete Parts 2 and 3 (if applicable) of each module prior to the start of the next week.
  3. Complete Weekly Assignments by Sunday night each week. You will receive feedback before you start the next assignment only if you turn in assignments on time!
  4. Engage in Interactive Tasks throughout the week, including forums and other activities within each week's module.
  5. Reflect regularly on your learning and ask questions when you have them by either posting to the news forum or emailing Ed or Liz with your questions and concerns!
  6. Attend the first day course launch session on Thursday, January 8th from 3-5 PM at English High School.
  7. Attend AT LEAST ONE of the face-to-face workshops taking place on Thursdays from 3-5 at English High School during the last four weeks of the course.
Course Calendar: