This video takes you through a quick tour of our online learning environment, including the course learning platforms and the course structure and organization.
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So welcome. We are so glad that you’re here and we’re looking forward to learning with you this semester.
How does this online course work? You know, at this point, you’ve all likely had some experience with either a hybrid or an online course developed in response to the pandemic and the switch emergency remote teaching. And probably one of the things you’ve learned by now is that, you know, an, online courses look different by different professors and their different pedagogical approaches and the technologies they choose to use.
So in this video, we wanted to tell you a little bit more about how this online course is going to work so that you can feel comfortable in navigating our online learning space.
So this course, as as we said in the syllabus and and in some of the emails that we’ve shared with you, we have designed as a facilitated asynchronous course. So asynchronous means that the course material, the course activities and assignments are spread out over time.
So you will be interacting with one another. You’ll be interacting with us, your professors. You will be completing activities and turning in assignments just as you would in any other course. But all of these will be spread out through the week. There are no required live meetings for this course. And if you look on the Web site, under our inclusive design and design justice approach, we talked a little bit about why we designed this to be a primarily asynchronous course and how that dovetails with some inclusive design approaches.
We will, however, be hosting optional live video meetings once a week. And that’s a place where we will not be introducing new content. But you can come and ask questions, chew through ideas, just say hello. And so we’ll be holding that space for for you and for those conversations each week.
Now, our online learning environment for this course is made up primarily of two two technologies, two places on the Web. The first is our course Web site, which is at inclusive design dot middcreate, dot net, slash course. You’re gonna wanna bookmark that page and you’ll be coming back to it frequently.
The course Web site is really our home base for this course. It has a lot of information. Everything from general information about the course, syllabus, course objectives, those sorts of things to all of the course content, including readings, including videos that that you may be watching, including activities and assignments. And it includes the instructions for completing your weekly activities and assignments. We’ll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.
So if you have a question about what you’re supposed to be doing or where you’re supposed to be doing, how you’re supposed to be doing it, go ahead to the course Web site. And that is your starting place for answering some of those questions.
The second major sort of platform that we will be using in this course is Teams. So if the course website is sort of the home base for content and, you know, sharing our content with you readings, things like that, Teams is our community and connection space. Some of you may have used Teams already. It’s a Microsoft product. If you haven’t used Teams yet, it’s very much like Slack, if that’s something else that you might be familiar with.
It is a space that has a more sort of synchronous style back and forth chat kind of messaging system, as well as, so we’ll, so we’ll be using it for that. We’ll be using it for some small group discussions and some informal conversation. We’ll also be, it will also be the place that you’re turning in announcements. It will have a channel for you to ask questions and get answers about the course. And it will also be the platform that we’re using for our live video calls that I talked about, the optional live sessions, we’ll be using Teams instead of Zoom because there is a video function built right into Teams. And so it’s kind of nice to have that all in one place rather than having to go out to yet another platform.
So, you know, you may have used Canvas previously for some of your online courses. And and Canvas is a is a good platform that has a lot of benefits. For this course, we’re using the course Web site at inclusivedesign dot middcreate dot net slash course, and then this Teams space, to do the kinds of information sharing and community building and communication that you may have done previously in a Canvas site.
We’ll also be using some other technology platforms to assist us in some of our course activities. You’ll hear a lot more about these when you are asked to use them. There will be instructions for how to engage with them and how to get connected.
But just to give you a bit of a preview, we’ll be using a tool called Hypothesis for social annotation of some of the texts that we’ll be reading, that are online based texts. And this social annotation tool means that you can read and highlight and take notes and ask questions and wonderings and make connections and share ideas right in the text itself. And you’re doing it with your classmates. So you can actually also have a conversation about the text right there in the text.
We’ll also be using Padlet, which is a Web site that provides a bit of a collaborative space, and we’re gonna be using that for an ongoing activity where you can identify and share exclusionary designs.
So if you have more questions about any of the technology tools that we’re using for this course, any of the platforms, you can find out more information about them again on our course Web site at inclusivedesign dot middcreate dot net slash course slash technology dash tools.
So that’s a quick sort of run through our major platforms and how they interact with one another. The course Web site is your starting point. It’s got all the information about what you’re supposed to be doing, due dates, deadlines, content readings, things like that. We’re going to ask you to discuss the readings, to interact with one another, to ask questions and communicate and build community in Teams.
And so I wanted to spend a little bit of time going over how we have structured this this online course. How do how do I know what to do and when to do it and where to do it?
So. The notion of weekly activity is sort of the organizing structure for this course. The course is is organized by week in other words. And on our course Web site, as you can see in the screenshot on the slide, there is a menu, a top level menu there called weekly activities. And for each week, there’s a page that has a weekly overview for that week. There’s a page that has a weekly to do list for that week and a page called Weekly Detailed Instructions, Week one detailed instructions, week two, et cetera. And so this is really the meat of your information about what the activities and assignments are, how to engage with them, where to turn things in and all of that good stuff.
So the weekly overview page is a pretty short page that gives you a bit of an orientation to the general topics and approaches for the week.
The weekly to do list offers a quick look at your activity and assignment windows and due dates for the week. So as you are trying to organize yourself, this is a really good place to go, to each of those weekly to do lists, and write down those due dates in wherever you keep track of your of your coursework, in your organization, in your planner, in your bullet journal, in your online calendar or whatever you use, whatever technique that you use. The weekly to do lists are meant to give you a quick view of the due dates for each week.
And then the weekly detailed instructions is a place that you’ll go for specific information on how to complete the week’s activities and assignments. And this is really here, you’ll notice there’s a lot of detail, because what we’ve done is really walk you through what you’re supposed to be doing when you’re supposed to be doing it and where you’re supposed to be doing it.
It is entirely possible that you will have questions about what what you’re supposed to be doing, that we may have missed something or forgotten a detail that’s needed, which is is inevitable and is totally fine.
And please always feel free to ask questions about anything related to the course in the Teams channel, the Team s Q and A channel is a great place to do that.
So you’re probably getting the sense that this this asynchronous course, which has activities that are spread out through the week, is actually pretty structured. You’ll notice, as you look at the to do list, that there are what we’re what we like to call activity windows and also set deadlines throughout the week. So in the screenshot on this slide for the to do list for week one, you’ll see that the activity window and because week one is actually a short week, it begins on Tuesday instead of Monday and Tuesday.
The first activity window Tuesday, Wednesday is to, a window of time where we suggest you complete the assigned readings and annotation of the readings, where you complete the assigned video viewing. And then there are a couple of other little assignments that are also due within that activity window. The specific instructions for completing those are on your week one detailed instructions page.
And then for week one, your activity window, Wednesday to Friday, you’ll be engaging in small group discussion. There’s actually two deadlines within that activity window, a deadline at the end of the day Wednesday and then another deadline at the end of the day Friday.
We’ve put the structure in place in order to both help you organize your time, we’ve put the structure in place so that we’re all moving through the material somewhat together so that we can actually engage with each other in discussion and in thinking through some of these topics together.
And then on Sunday, the last sort of activity window, it’s sort of a deadline is, is that you will have certain individual assignments to do on Sundays, including a weekly reflective journal.
One question I think, comes up frequently in especially with these types of asynchronous online courses is, where are the professors? Am I doing this course myself? Is this a self study course?
And there are certainly, you may have taken a type of asynchronous self study online course before, those exist. But this course, this is why we called it a facilitated asynchronous online course, is that we professors are very much involved in the course, from the design, of course, certainly. But then as the course unfolds, we’ll be creating videos like this for you. We will be creating weekly video conversations, which are overviews of some of the main takeaways and sort of a framing of the content for each week. We’ll be checking in on and participating in your small group discussions or your discussions in Teams. We will be giving timely feedback on assignments. We’ll be hosting the optional live sessions. We’ll be answering questions in the Question and Answer channel in Teams. We have weekly office hours and the times for those were posted on the syllabus.
So we are here and we’re we are working with you through this material and through the course. And there are lots of opportunities to interact with us and with your peers in this online course.
So the next step then really is to dive in and get started. What’s my next step? I would suggest if you haven’t already had to the weekly activities section of the course Web site, carefully review the week one overview and to do list.
And then follow the instructions on the week one detailed instructions page. It will step you through what you need to do for that week and how to accomplish the activities and assignments.
If you need help at any time, you know, I think that in in an online course, in any kind of online course, one of the most important things I like to say to students is communication is key.
Just communicate, communicate, communicate.
So if you have any kinds of questions about anything, please ask that question and ask it sooner than later. We don’t want you to be out there feeling like you’re alone and by yourself and that you can’t get help.