Exploring E-learning



Overview

This 3-week introductory course is designed to familiarise you with concepts and tools for creating engaging and interactive online learning activities.

The course has been designed for those already teaching online who want to explore ways to introduce more interactivity and collaborative work to their teaching.

The focus will be on designing learning activities that align with your existing teaching approach, and your students' needs.

By the end of the course, you will have created one or more new e-learning activities ready for you to use immediately, to replace or complement your classroom teaching.

Both real-time and asynchronous activities will be explored, within and beyond your VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), allowing for a diverse variety of student-student and student-teacher interactions.

You'll collaborate to discover and evaluate a variety of EdTech (Educational Technology) tools, enabling you to make an informed choice when adding new technology and activities to your repertoire.

You will receive expert guidance, but the emphasis is on active participation and learning by doing.

Note: this course is open to University of Oxford staff by invitation only.

Programme details

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

  • List the learning objectives of a learning activity for your students
  • List EdTech tools with the potential to be useful to you
  • Evaluate how well your proposed EdTech tools meet your and your students' needs
  • Create an online learning activity using one or more of your chosen tools
  • Describe what the students and you will do before, during and after the activity.


Schedule (all sessions run 10:00 - 11:00):

  • Week 1, Tues 15 and Fri 18 September
    Introduction to concepts and tools, define your personal learning goals, and share your proposed learning activity
  • Week 2, Tues 22 and Fri 25 September 
    Collaborate to identify and test appropriate EdTech tools for your group's chosen learning activities
  • Week 3, Tues 29 September - Fri 2 October
    Work solo to create your new learning activity, submit it to the showcase, and give feedback to your peers

You will need to commit to 2-3 hours of collaborative/solo work each week, at a time to suit you.

In addition, there will be two one-hour real-time video sessions (using Teams) scheduled each week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.

In weeks 2 & 3, the Tuesday video sessions will be optional problem-solving clinics.

Fees

Description Costs
Course Fee £0.00

Tutor

Dr Lucy Tallents

Dr Lucy Tallents is the Founder and Director of VerdantLearn, a UK-based e-learning and data science company which focusses on enabling academics and tutors to develop interactive and collaborative online learning activities. 

She also works to enhance the technical skills of environmental conservationists globally. 

She earned Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2011 and has won awards both within Oxford University and beyond for her innovative e-teaching methods. 

Her joint passions of wildlife conservation and teaching, and desire to open up opportunities and remove barriers to learning, led her to explore the potential of online courses. 

She views learning as a collective activity, and aims to make her training inclusive, flexible and accessible. 

She is always eager to learn from those who work alongside her, as everyone has a unique perspective and experience to share - that includes you!

Before creating VerdantLearn, Lucy set up the PGDip in International Wildlife Conservation Practice at Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and taught online and face-to-face courses for Continuing Education and the Environmental Research Doctoral Training Partnership.

IT requirements

To participate you must be familiar with using a computer for purposes such as sending email and searching the Internet. You will also need regular access to the Internet and a computer meeting our recommended minimum computer specification.
It is advised to use headphones with working speakers and microphone.

Terms & conditions for applicants and students

Information on financial support