Title: Book: How to Set Up an AOD on non LMS Platforms
Course: FLO MicroCourse: Write a compelling discussion prompt 2024 > Section: DAY 3 - CHOOSE YOUR OWN PATH

Designers: If you plan to experiment with platforms other than an LMS discussion thread for your AOD, here are some instructions for setting up your discussion on some of the platforms we experimented with on Day 1.

How to Use This Book

This book is a resource for those who have chosen to pursue the Designer path.

Each chapter consists of a video tutorial showing you how to set up an AOD on a platform external to this LMS.

Padlet

Setting up an AOD on Padlet is probably the easiest of all of the platforms in this book.

Instructions for doing this are provided in the video below.

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Dotstorming

This is an EASY whiteboard tool to use.

It is sort of like a Padlet, except that it specializes in facilitating dotvoting (or dotmocracy) activities. This AOD is typically facilitated in two rounds.

- In Round 1, participants contribute ideas to the whiteboard in response to a prompt.
- In Round 2, participants vote for the ideas that most appeal to them.

The free Dotstorming account gives educators access to one board.
Here are instructions for setting it up.

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Flip

Setting up a Flip group and discussion is relatively easy. What takes a bit of additional work is setting up the board so that anyone with the link can access the discussion board, without the need to log in and provide personal information.

Together, these two steps would make this platform an Intermediate Level of expertise in setting it up.

Here are the instructions.

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Canva

Setting up an AOD on Canva requires an advanced level of comfort with technology.

Canva would probably not be my first choice in creating a whiteboard discussion. Platforms such as Miro are much more intuitive to use, both as an educator setting up the discussion and as a learner trying to make a post. However, Canva is the only tool that allows users to add sticky notes without asking participants to login. (Note: Miro and other tools have this ability, but only make it available once you subscribe to one of their paid memberships).

Below is an instruction of how to do it.

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SPLOT

This requires an advanced level of comfort in using technology.

TheOpenETC website makes it easy to request a website and host it. Just go to their site and click Get Started. You must be a BC Post-Secondary staff (with a BC post-secondary email address) to have access to this free service.

You want to select one of the Wordpress templates that are compatible with a SPLOT (i.e., a blog where anyone can add a post). The ones that begin with the word TRU are splots. The SPLOT Collector is the one we used in this course as an example on Day 1.

Instructions are provided in the following video.

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