Matter of Course: Optimizing Online Learning
English course re-developed as part of digital learning pilot program, allows for students to develop skills and engage in high-level conversation
English ENGL-3707H: Literature and Globalization
Dr. Brent Bellamy
A good online course isn’t just merely a great lecture or engaging seminar, delivered via video - digital tools can transform the learning experience.
In the course Literature and Globalization, Dr. Brent Ryan Bellamy has been putting some of these tools to use. The third-year course is one of more than 70 Trent courses delivered online in 2019-20, and one of 11 that are part of the Online Course Development and Redevelopment Pilot Program.
Launched in spring 2019, the pilot program has provided support to instructors from a diverse disciplines to create new online courses and redesign existing courses for online delivery.
“We worked with instructors for a minimum four months. The first few weeks were a very intensive consultation around online course planning and design,” says Maureen Glynn, senior eLearning designer with Trent Online, part of the Centre for Teaching and Learning.
“What are the learning goals and learning outcomes for the course? What sort of online resources support those outcomes? What kind of assessments could you do online to help students understand whether they're meeting course objectives? It takes a combination of planning and design, and lot of that is not necessarily about technology. It's more about thinking through how students might learn, and interact with the course content, the instructor, and their classmates.”
Online tools enable innovative assignments
Literature and Globalization had previously been taught in a classroom setting, in winter 2020 semester, it is being delivered through six online modules. Each module asks students to undertake a ‘field work’ assignment.
Some field work could have been assigned in a physical classroom setting -- researching the energy footprint of a common household item, or asking students to conduct an energy inventory of their lives.
But online tools enabled approaches that would otherwise be impossible.
“I wanted to introduce other ways of communicating, besides reading a blog post or an essay. One thing I tried is a course wiki,” says Professor Bellamy.
“As students learn new terms, they can share it with everyone else. We’ve also used a tool called hypothes.is, which allows students to annotate websites [here] they're able to take the time to think it through, write and revise content.”
Level of student engagement has been high
Prof. Bellamy suggested that students should complete a module every two weeks, and made all modules available at the beginning of the course, to allow students to study at their own pace.
Overall, Prof. Bellamy has been impressed by the level of engagement.
“I wasn’t sure how this would work, it’s been encouraging,” he says.
“Students are having conversations at a really high level. I don’t have to steer discussion in a seminar setting. Instead, the students take up the material in a self-directed way that involves ongoing conversation with others through hypothes.is itself.”