Hello peeps!
Greetings from Johannesburg, South Africa. My name is Derek Moore and I run a small consultancy called Weblearning. I’d like to show you the “Open Umbrella” a professional learning project intended to enhance educator’s capacity to make considered use of technology for teaching within the post schooling education and training system. I’d like to invite you to take three steps and
- Reflect on your course with the self-evaluation tool
- Consult the field-guide and set your own benchmarks and
- Comment on the resource
Step 1 | self-evaluation
The open umbrella offers a manageable framework that delineates between various common practices that occur in a digital learning environment. Once you have worked through the app’s eight dimensions and identified the types of implementation, a picture of the width and depth of digital adoption, in the form of coloured panels set into the umbrella, will emerge.
Step 2 | own benchmarks
The open umbrella is intended to support educators that are currently already working to implement digital on their connected courses and assist with capacity development.
During campus closures, educators had a unique vantage point on course delivery as they designed their own responses to remote teaching. They saw their students’ challenges and explored approaches that worked. They found new ways of reaching students with technology and built grace and flexibility into the routines and expectations. The open umbrella does not start at zero. It seeks to build upon evidence based practice drawn from the literature and from the tangible experiences of educators who had first hand challenge of teaching online, during the pandemic and during #feesmustfall and were able to weave these responses back into their classes.
Step 3 | comment please
We think that the self evaluation tool and field guide might be used collaboratively with all colleagues in a department, tech support and academic development. With top-down support that focuses on the policies, procedures, and climate across institutions, primarily faculty level. And bottom-up peer recognition that focus on practices and successes within specific departments. There would be the opportunity for the individual academics to submit their efforts for peer review and departmental acknowledgement for progress. But we would like to hear hear your thoughts and feedback. And so you are invited to share your thoughts and comments via Hypothes.is
