Specialist Area 5

5b: Producing learning materials and content  

By balancing my time as a Learning Technologist, Content Developer, VLE administrator, Learning Designer and English for Academic Purposes Lecturer at the various reputable UK H.E Institutes, I was given the opportunity to conceptualise, plan, project-manage, build, test, deploy and monitor, online, F2F, and Active, Blended Learning interventions for a large number of BlackBoard, Moodle, Canvas and D2L Brightspace courses, thus actively contributing to the production of multiple degree qualifications.

In this section, all examples will focus on my direct involvement in producing learning materials and content at Brunel University London. During my time as a Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) Adviser at Brunel University, I was given the opportunity to create a great number of short courses that focused on key aspects of Academic Life. 

The first example project involved working with the department of Computer Engineering, to very quickly setup a non-credit bearing module on our LMS platform (Blackboard), and deploy a low-maintenance quiz that would lead to the SAS Certification. The peculiarity of this project mainly revolved around the fact that this elective, non-credit bearing module did not have an annual instance and was not subject to an annual rollover. As such, using Blackboard Quizzes/Assignments or using Wiseflow - which requires constant monitoring and follow up in terms of resetting flows (exam links) and marking and/or troubleshooting - was out of the question for the very busy computer science academics that were in charge of this elective module. By using Articulate Rise, I was able to very quickly develop a freestanding scorm package that was comprised by a Quiz and some accompanying content. The turnaround for this was literally less than a week, with the scorm package requiring zero maintenance or resetting. As an added bonus, due to the fact that this intervention took place just 4 months before the migration to a new VLE platform (Brightspace), I was able to very quickly re-deploy this again in the new Brightspace module by uploading the scorm package (please see section 1). 

The second example project involved working with the College of Engineering, Design and Physical Spaces (CEDPS) at Brunel University to very quickly develop 3 instances of the Academic Misconduct Quiz. During the time of Covid-19, statistics showed a sharp increase in cases of student plagiarism and academic misconduct during dissertation submission. The CEDPS Panel of Education, along with other stakeholders such as the Library Services and the University Research Ethics Committee, developped the guidelines for a short course that students had to undertake and successfully pass before undertaking any studies or submitting any final, dissertation work. I was tasked to use these guidelines that came in the form of a PPT presentation that had achieved sign off by all stakeholders and I was given a week to develop a fully functioning, self-sustaining module on Academic Integrity Matters. This module was also comprised by a Quiz at the end with a pass rate at 80%. Upon successful completion students would get a badge and a certificate that they would then need to include in their final dissertation or in the instance of PhD researchers and freshers, before the commencement of their studies. Due to the fact that this module, had 3 instances that contained minor differences and due to the fact that both the content and the quiz required copying across several target modules and community pages, I opted in for the use of Articulate Rise to quickly develop and deploy these 3 instances. It is worth mentioning that this project evolved each year with minor changes and after the successful migration from Blackboard to Brightspace, I was able to finally redevelop these 3 modules as a streamlined community page in Brightspace, moving away from third-party tools such as Articulate Rise. (please see section 2) The Academic Integrity Quiz 3.0 had definite improvements as it was able to use Intelligent Agents to alert students that had not taken the course via an automated email. 

The third example project involved working for "Diverse@Brunel" to very quickly create a community page that would contain content and a summative quiz that was mandatory for all students. The rise of sexual harassment across all UK Institutes (a reported 62%), led to an initiative to develop a short, mandatory course called "Expectations of behaviour at Brunel". By using our paid licence of H5P.com and merging the use of html templates in the text editor, I was able to quickly produce a self-sustaining module that contained a quiz at the end. The use of Interactive Video Quizzes (H5P.com), the use of a Brightspace Summative Quiz, and the use of html templates that introduced content accordions, flip cards, drag and drops, as well as, drag and drop activities, created a very dynamic learning enviroment for all of our students. The use of intelligent agents, made sure to remind to all of the students that had not completed the quiz that this is a mandatory module, and the use of a lovely badge and a certificate made sure to gamify learning.  

Reflection

The common denominator when it comes to producing learning material and content in any eLearning platform is a thorough understanding of the possibilities but also the boundaries that technology has. Even more so, it is imperative to be in a position to provide workarounds or to always have a plan B. When it took the decision to use Articulate Rise instead of a Blackboard Quiz, I had in mind that Brunel University was migrating all content from Blackboard to Brightspace and there was a very good chance that all quizzes, grades and student interactions would not be migrated to the new Virtual Learning Environment. Neverthelss, and even though, I was able to use Articulate Rise to quickly develop and deploy both the Academic Integrity Quiz and the SAS Base Training and Certification in both VLEs (Blackboard and Brightspace), I was not able to predict that due to the new setup/deployment of our new VLE (Brightspace) some of the integrations for third-party tools would not work 100%. More specifically, some teething issues with third-party LTI tools integration (LTI 1.1) caused all scorm packages to not report grades into Brightspaces' Grade Book, causing some issues with Certificates and Badges being issued to students. Due to the fact that this was a high-stakes module that contained a summative assessment, I was fortunate enough to be in a position to impersonate student accounts and rectify the issue, by manually issuing the badge and certificate (upon having attested that the student has indeed taken and passed the Academic Integrity Quiz). Ultimately, this fuelled my decision to move away from third-party tools and quickly redevelop all modules using all of the potential that our VLE provided.