Welcome to Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities

Welcome to Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities

by Sylvia Currie -
Number of replies: 25

Welcome to Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities! We've had a big hiatus from SCoPE seminars, and it's so exciting to be opening up the conversations again!

About this seminar

There are endless ideas for engaging learners online. However, turning those ideas into activities that can be implemented smoothly is a challenge. There are many details to consider, and potentially overlook!

The idea for this SCoPE seminar developed through reflections on a series of online workshops for educators across the British Columbia post-secondary system. In these workshops we experience the benefits of developing and testing online learning activities in a supportive but critical community of peers. It's time to open up those opportunities to everyone! 

During this 2-week seminar we will explore, discuss, and create engaging online learning activities together. 

Week 1:  Exploring Options, Selecting Approaches
Week 2:  Building and Testing OLAs
There are two webinars scheduled as part of this 2-week seminar discussion. They will take place in the SCoPE Blackboard Collaborate Room: http://urls.bccampus.ca/scopeevents. As always, the synchronous sessions will be recorded for those who are unable to attend. 
 
  • Wednesday, August 5, 2015 11:00 am - 12:00 noon PDT (see your time zone)
    Exploring Ways to Create Engaging OLAs
  • Friday, August 14, 2015  11:00 am - 12:00 noon PDT (see your time zone)
    Sharing Our Creations

About our facilitator

Sylvia Riessner is an educational consultant, Instructional Skills Workshop (and Facilitating Learning Online) facilitator. She is a long-time SCoPE member, and has spent most of her career teaching and supporting educators in British Columbia and Yukon, and online. Sylvia has a passion for finding ways to use technology and connectivity to provide options and enriched learning for people in small, geographically dispersed communities as well as in major metropolitan centres. She writes about education, openness, social media and new approaches to learning and teaching at educomm.ca

Participating in SCoPE Seminars

SCoPE seminars are free and open to the public, and registration is not required. You are welcome to come and go according to your schedule and interests. To contribute you will need to create an account on the SCoPE site -- a quick process. Are you new to SCoPE or wondering how to manage your participation? Check this resource.

If you have any questions about participating in SCoPE don't hesitate to ask here in the forum, or get in touch with me directly:

Sylvia Currie
scurrie@bccampus.ca 

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Welcome and Introductions

by Sylvia Riessner -

Well, thanks for the introduction SylviaC! It's great to be in an open SCoPE seminar again - and this time the topic is really relevant as we're heading into August and it's not too many weeks before the start of a new term for colleges and universities. If you're teaching online or in a blended course environment, developing engaging online learning activities should be high on your list of priorities right?

So, have you read the seminar description and you're still not certain what we're doing? Take a look at the Prezi I've created (be patient, it seems to load slowly ) You can advance it yourself using the arrows. Make sure you've got headphones or speakers to listen to the audio (and adjust the volume to a comfortable level).

I've introduced myself and tried to explain my hopes / intentions for the next two weeks. After you've had a chance to listen/watch it, why not post a response and introduce yourself.

Tell us a little about yourself and what you're hoping to learn/practice/build? Do you have an online learning activity (OLA) that you want to repurpose, improve, restructure? Or do you need to create something fresh to help students master a difficult concept or think critically about a journal article or video?

I'm looking forward to exploring and building together.

Cheers

Sylvia Riessner

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Viviana Chiorean -

Hello everyone,

I am thrilled to be able to participate in this seminar, and I look forward to a productive two weeks!

Here is a little bit about myself, in a Prezi as well, and I look forward to meeting everyone else!

http://prezi.com/hftj2lu8-aiy/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Thank you Sylvia, for facilitating this seminar! I look forward to an exponential learning experience!

Viviana 

 

In reply to Viviana Chiorean

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Sylvia Riessner -

Nice to see you again Viviana. I enjoyed the new Prezi (it's a fun and flexible tool!). It will be great to have your enthusiastic, curious approach to help keep the discussions focused and interesting.

I've been having so much fun collecting and organizing ideas and examples; now we get to roll up our sleeves and do stuff. My favourite part.

Enjoy...more to come tomorrow.

In reply to Viviana Chiorean

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Leonne Beebe -

Good to be learning with you, again, Viviana,

I look forward to your energy and imitative in exploring new tools and activities.

Out of confusion comes clarity,

Leonne

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Alice Macpherson -

Alice Macpherson here!

I am always interested in how we can make the online environment more inviting and easier for folks to engage and stay engaged with! I am deeply involved with Peer Tutor education and training, including online resources and activities in an asynchronous Moodle environment..

Besides my day job at KPU as a Learning strategist where I work with students and faculty around learning strategies and issues, I am also an ISW facilitator, run a community kitchen (https://www.facebook.com/groups/CanoeCreek/), garden intensively, and play with my dogs.

Always curious to learn more (you can never learn less).

 

In reply to Alice Macpherson

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Sylvia Riessner -

Welcome here Alice!

How is your garden weathering the drought conditions? Our part of Vancouver Island is a mixed bag; parts are at Stage 4 Water Conservation (no outside watering!) while others are allowing limited watering overnight. And we just got back from Whitehorse - they're having one of the wettest summers I remember - their gardens are loving it.

Glad you could join in; looking forward to your questions and suggestions.

Cheers

Sylvia

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Alice Macpherson -

"Only" Stage 3 here. :) So, I can still hand water.
The garden has been very productive this year, but requires careful monitoring, much like an online learning environment!
Grew some beautiful cherries that have been pitted and made into pies and jam.

 

Attachment Cherries15.jpg
In reply to Alice Macpherson

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Leonne Beebe -

Hello Alice,

I'm looking forward to learning with you and from you for the next two weeks, and I am particularly interested in your work with learning strategies and peer tutoring.

Out of confusion comes clarity,

Leonne

In reply to Alice Macpherson

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Viviana Chiorean -

Hello Alice,

Nice to meet you! I look forward to an engaging two weeks!! The cherries look delicious!

Viviana 

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Leonne Beebe -

Hello Sylvia R and fellow participants,

I'm learning how to teach online and have taken both the FLO and FDO courses with the Sylvias.  In June, I co-facilitated the UFV FLO first ever course, which was a challenge and most rewarding.  I'm attaching the PP Intro I used for this course, which I plan to adapt for my Fundamental Level Math courses for September.  My goal is to take the activities I did for my FLO/ FDO courses and adapt them to my Fundamental Level Math courses.  I will use a "tech enhanced" course format only, not fully online, so I can introduce my students to using online activities. I particularly want to adapt the FLO  participation self-assessment rubric to a study skills self-assessment rubric to be used with the review and reflect journal for student learning self-assessment.

I look forward to the next two weeks and learning much from this group.

Out of confusion comes clarity,

Leonne

In reply to Leonne Beebe

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Viviana Chiorean -

Hello Leonne,

I look forward to a great two weeks of learning! I am thrilled for this new journey!

Viviana 

In reply to Leonne Beebe

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Sylvia Riessner -

Welcome Leonne! I'm glad you are able to participate - you've had a whirlwind of learning / teaching the last couple of months.

How was the Harrison Festival of the Arts? 

Cheers....SylviaR

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Jeffrey Keefer -

Right, and to my own introduction, I am thrilled to see SCoPE active again out here in the wild. I will be teaching a couple online graduate courses this Fall, and am rusty at best with online activities. I tend to focus around my own Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and tend to somehow assume others, especially students have them in place (somehow making activities not quite needed).

Nothing like lots to learn real fast!!  :-)

In reply to Jeffrey Keefer

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Sylvia Riessner -

I'm happy to see SCoPE open sessions again too. I've experienced a lot of "Oh really????" and "What a great idea!" kind of moments in previous open seminars.

I hope you'll find this seminar helpful - sounds like you're experiencing the "Tension" principle  ;-)

SylviaR

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Jeffrey Keefer -

Sylvia, thanks for the welcome Prezi; great and interactive opening of this SCoPE seminar!

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Lucas Wright Glad to Meet You

by Lucas Wright -

Hi everyone, I look foreword to participating with you and learning from you in this seminar. I have some experience as an instructor of the ISW at UBC as well as recently as the coordinator of the course Teaching in a Blended Learning Environment. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to help make the online environment more engaging and how to track what we mean by engagement. Sylvias I love the creative that you brought to past seminars and I am looking foreword to exploring with all of you. 

Lucas

 

In reply to Lucas Wright

Re: Lucas Wright Glad to Meet You

by Sylvia Riessner -

So glad you could participate Lucas. I know you'll have lots of great ideas to share and I hope you'll find something to inspire or challenge you to create an OLA using a new approach for learning.

Enjoy!

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Silvana Carnicero -

Hi everyone!

I'm Silvana from Argentina and I took part in SCOPE Seminars some years ago and now I regard this topic as very interesting for my present teaching situation. I am an EFL teacher and last year I started teaching blended EFL courses and this year I am teaching online EFL courses so dealing with engaging online activities  is something I am very interested in. Just to start sharing, one of the OLA I usually do to make students introduce themselves is to make them create a collage with pictures that represent them and I start the introductory forum with a collage about myself.

I am very glad to be sharing this learning experience with you all

Silvana

 

 

In reply to Silvana Carnicero

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Sylvia Riessner -

Hi Silvana and welcome!

Thanks for sharing your icebreaker activity. As I was reading I was wondering if this activity would work in an open whiteboard or bulletin board tool like Padlet or Popplet. Both allow you to upload images and invite collaborators to do the same. Might not work for a large group - I'll go and check. Thanks for sharing your introductory activity.

Enjoy the seminar - so much to learn in a short time but that's why we called it a "JAM".

In reply to Sylvia Riessner

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Vinod Kumar Kanvaria -

Hi, Itz Vinod here from University of Delhi, India. My areas of interest are Educational Technology, ICT in Education and Pedagogy of Mathematics. To know more about me and my institution, please visit: http://www.cie.du.ac.in Greetings to all....

Vinod

Assistant Professor

In reply to Vinod Kumar Kanvaria

Re: Welcome and Introductions

by Sylvia Riessner -

I'm glad you could join us Vinod. Thanks for sharing the link to the place you teach - what a beautiful building.

Looking forward to learning more about what you teach and what kinds of learning activities you want to develop.

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Welcome to Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities

by Dr. Nellie Deutsch -

Thank you for organizing the seminar, Sylvia and Sylvia. Great to be back on Scope. I'm looking forward to learning together and seeing what i come up with. 

Here's a bit about me. I like to explore and find ways to make students feel wonderful about themselves. I have over 30 years of learning to teach behind me. I've been using the Internet and whatever was out there in my EFL and ESL classes since 1992. I started in the computer lab and now require students to BTOD. You'd think that after 23 years, that students and teachers would be more open to teaching-learning with the current technology. I'd like to see more openness to the use of technology in high school and higher education as a tool for teaching as a way to learn. I believe that as long as tests drive school, things won't change. 

For more, check me out on google or read this.

 

In reply to Dr. Nellie Deutsch

Re: Welcome to Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities

by Sylvia Riessner -

Nice to see you back in SCoPE again Nellie. I know you're always an active contributor and I look forward to your participation in this seminar.  Thanks for sharing your background and experience. 

Hope you enjoy the seminar!

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Welcome to Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities

by DR. ILA ALLEN -

Greetings from Chicago (Hey Sylvia!!)!  It has been a while since I have attended a seminar so hopefully this time I can really chime in.  I have taught online for about 6 years. My course curriculum was not my own and pretty well scripted by the universities that I worked for.  I would like to get a grasp on how to engage students for I find it difficult at best. I was an online student for my Master's and doctorate program so I've been on both sides of the coin. I would assume (and could be wrong) that the "for-profit" schools in which I facilitated would be different than a "non-profit".  Therefore, I would like to know/learn how to engage these students especially when it comes to participation.

Ciao

Ila

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Welcome to Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities

by Carlos Ortiz -

Hello Sylvia Currie, Sylvia Riessner and everyone. 

I'm very happy to participate in this seminar and have huge expectations about all I'm going to learn. I've arrived a couple of days late, but I'm doing my best reading all the posts because I want to catch up.

I'm Carlos Ortiz from Colombia S.A. and I had the great honour to meet Sylvia Curry personally when she came to our University of Ibagué for a conference about virtual learning communities entitled "Learning where it happens" which was a great successand has guided our university to many changes.

I'm retired now but continue interested in these developing my teaching kills, so here I am ready to learn from all of you.

Best regards

Carlos