Whether you have existing content that you want to adapt for online learning and teaching, or you are sourcing content from various locations, or creating digital content from scratch, this tip sheet identifies two essential design considerations for having engaging digital content in your FLO topic.
What is digital content?
Your FLO topic is online, so consider all content in your topic as digital content. This includes:
- text/written content
- graphical elements such as graphs, charts, diagrams etc.
- videos – either created by you or someone else in Studio or embedded onto the page from YouTube (or other source)
- podcasts or other audio-only content
- interactive activities – some of the recommended types include H5P, FeedbackFruits, interactive videos (Studio), and open education resource textbooks
- assessments/quizzes
- seminars and tutorials (Teams)
Tip 1: Personalise the experience
A personalised experience is one where students have a choice in how they learn and how they engage with content. Personalisation is also about how you communicate to students (the way that you use language in all its modalities) so that whenever a student engages with content, it “speaks” to them. We can refer to this second element as guidance or teacher presence.
Choice
Personalised learning is closely linked to student centred learning and involves both individualisation and differentiation. In terms of offering students choice, how they complete a task or assessment can vary provided that the same learning outcome is met through the choices that you offer.
For example, if the learning objective is to Create a framework for how you would teach 3-to-5-year-olds how to read, you could leave it up to your students to choose how they complete the task. To demonstrate the approach they would use, you might suggest:
- Microsoft Sway to create an engaging presentation.
- their mobile phone to film themselves explaining the approach, or
- a short multimedia (audio visual) presentation.
Guidance
“A learner-centred approach is a key issue in online learning models, but it does not eliminate the teacher. A learner-centred environment facilitates a more collaborative way for students to learn, and the teacher acts as a facilitator, providing feedback and answering questions when needed. The teacher should design meaningful learning activities, based on authentic learning, contextualizing learning situations as much as possible.” (Rapanta et al 2020, p. 934)
Guidance equates to presence. You can personalise content by phrasing things in a way that states what the student (as an individual) is going to be learning, why it’s important for them to know, and how it is relevant to the student’s future employment prospects.
Resources that can help
- Self-paced workshop: Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
References
Rapanta, C., Botturi, L., Goodyear, P., Guàrdia, L. & Koole, M. 2020/10//, "Online University Teaching During and After the Covid-19 Crisis: Refocusing Teacher Presence and Learning Activity", Postdigital Science and Education, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 923-945.
Tip 2: Consider the learning sequence
“… instructors cannot assume that learners have the learning strategies, knowledge, and attitudes to learn effectively in an online environment. Learners may get lost due to the navigation aspects of the interface, become de-motivated or fail to make connections in the knowledge they have constructed; as a result, they become disengaged from the learning process.” (Lim 2004, p. 17)
A learning sequence could be a series of pages in FLO that address a core concept; or it can be the content on an individual page. The key to designing engaging learning sequences – whether they are across multiple pages or on a single page – is to consider the most effective way to convey the details i.e. firstly, decide what content to include and then decide what form/modality each part of the content should take.
Often referred to as ‘chunking’, considering the learning sequence as a series of smaller pieces of information that have been dismantled from a larger original form (e.g. a 50-minute lecture), reduces the cognitive load required to understand the details. Using FLO as the mechanism for teaching and learning enables you to further chunk the content across several pages (if appropriate).
“Chunked information can be stored, and the connected pieces retrieved more readily than non-chunked, arising from the reduced cognitive load.” (Humphries and Clark 2021, p. 3)
This could mean varying how information is presented. For example, you might:
- record a short video with an overview of the learning sequence, framing what the student will encounter within the learning sequence
- use written content (text) as the primary form of conveying details on a page
- include activities such as H5P content to either
- teach new content or
- enable the student to engage with content to sense check whether they have understood key details (e.g. a formative quiz or activity), and
- augment further learning for gaining a deeper understanding through additional videos (either created in Studio or by linking to YouTube).
“Of the 12 lectures remaining to be delivered, 11 were broken into three mini-lectures and the other into 4 parts. Quiz questions were added to each mini-lecture at key points to test understanding of concepts as they were covered. After students submitted each answer, they received text-based feedback stating the correct answer and a brief explanation. Additionally, a verbal explanation of the answer was given by the instructor in the video timeline.” (Read, Barnes and Wilson 2022)
Resources that can help
To get more inspiration join the Canvas Community of Practice site and see H5P examples and exemplars of topic design.
References
Guidelines to construct a Learning Design Sequence, University of Wollongong
Humphries B. and Clark D. (2021) “An examination of student preference for traditional didactic or chunking teaching strategies in an online learning environment”, Research in Learning Technology, 29. doi: https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v29.2405.
Lim, C.P. (2004). Engaging learners in online learning environments. TechTrends, 48(4), pp.16–23. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02763440.
Read, D., M Barnes, S. and J Wilson, P. (2022). Student perspectives on online lectures during the Covid-19 lockdown. New Directions in the Teaching of Physical Sciences, (17).
Next steps
For a deeper understanding about how to personalise digital content and create engaging learning sequences in your FLO topic, contact the Learning Designer in your college.
YouTube, accessed 2024, Strategies for Enhancing Instructor Presence in Your Online Classroom (2023), Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, Northern Illinois University
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