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"[At] this moment, we should start by designing for the least privileged, most marginalized students, the ones with the least access."
Jessie Stommel
Teaching, Learning and Students (TLS) Virtual Teaching and Support (VTS) core group have been working with your help to research and identify practice for supporting learning remotely - from TLS and beyond - and to agree standards which our support must meet for our learners and ourselves. We feel that the above quotes from critical educator Jessie Stommel neatly summarise how would like to offer VTS, and why. You can read more about the approach here. |
| This framework outlines our proposed approach to creating teaching materials online. Click each element in the stack to expand and read more. |
| Who is it for? |
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| Even if the request is for a specific area, it is likely there are existing elements you can use to help build your resource. Also consider that any new content created is also reusable. |
| Content |
| What content are you going to include in your resource? Consider accessbility - does this content require a computer or can it be used comfortably on a mobile phone? Does it requre any downloads or considerable bandwidth? Are you able to provide a transcript? Are you able to provide an offline version?
All content (including media, or downloadable files such as PDFs), should be accessible around the world. If it's on manchester.ac.uk, it's safe. Anywhere else, contact the eLearning team who will be able to upload a copy to manchester.ac.uk and provide links and guidance. You do not need to do this if the content is part of an MLE embedded session plan - when it passes QA, this already happens automatically. Ask eLearning with any questions. Content examples: Podcasts, videos, images |
| Practice |
| Include an opportunity to practice new knowledge asynchronously through activities. |
| Assess |
| Ensure that there are opportunities for students to assess their understanding asynchronously
Assessment Examples: Question set, quiz |
| Community |
| How will students experience community now that they are no longer in the room with others learning the same skill?
Community examples: The comments section below a blog post, or Blackboard Discussion Board |
| Further Reading |
| What opportunities are there for further reading?
Further Reading examples: journal articles, book chapters, videos etc. |
| Check-in |
| What mechanisms will there be for students to ask questions proactively? What mechanisms will there be for you to check in on people taking the resource? Make sure that this information is communicated with the wider team. If students will be getting in touch via Library chat or another enquiry service, is the relevant information availalbe to all staff who might have to answer the query?
Check-in examples: Students can ask questions via library chat or LibAnswers. Facilitators can check-in through the community for this resource. |
| Check Accessibility |
| Ensure all materials are accessible so they can be accessed by people using screen readers, with limited connectivity, using a mobile phone etc.
Ensure all materials are inclusive, using clear, layman’s language, will all specific terms defined, and with an awareness of the needs of international students and those from disenfranchised and atypical backgrounds. |
| Synchronous Elements |
| Do students need time-specific access to a facilitator?
What is the best way to provide that? ie. Library drop-in via video conferencing.
Ensure parity of access for those who can access synchronous content and those that can't. Check out this twitter thread |
| Evaluation |
| How will this resource be evaluated by students?
Evaluation examples: quick post-resource survey (1-3 quick questions), emailed survey
What measures will you use to consider whether your resources has achieved its aims and objectives? How will you attempt to measure student engagement and progress? |