In the previous posts, we may have leaned towards the cautionary side of using external tools and apps. But you can use third party tools to enhance teaching and learning. In today’s post, we talk about some apps and platforms that we recommend and how you can use them. Collaborative […]
Apps and other platforms can add a lot to teaching, but can also eat up a lot of time and energy dealing with issues that can arise. In this post, we’ll look at how you can mitigate some of these issues by thinking about the sustainability and openness of tools […]
Welcome back to the last day of this coffee course. In today’s post, we discuss some of the common challenges faced in facilitating discussions and how certain risks can be reduced or mitigated. “We are not natural facilitators.” Most teachers in higher education are not trained teachers or facilitators – […]
Part of the goal of the coffee course blog is to build a social learning community (see below for more information). For this first (fun!) activity, take a photo of an object which represents an effective online discussion, post it here and tell us why you’ve chosen the object in […]
Insofar, we’ve been talking about learning spaces in the context of physical spaces. However, we are increasingly reliant on online means to teach and communicate with students – using emails, forums, tweets, etc. Unlike the supporting role online spaces used to be, they are now vital to successful learning, taking […]
What do spaces tell us about the relationship between teaching and learning? In Day 1, we briefly discussed the theoretical underpinnings of learning spaces. The importance of space and its configuration to learning is like headphones/speakers to the enjoyment of music – not forgetting that this is spatially situated as […]
Why do we need to think about sustainability? When designing online learning environments, it is easy to get carried away when you are trying to make your site visually appealing and intuitive for students to use. While learner experience may be enhanced at one point in time, overly complex course sites […]
Good morning! We had some wonderful discussions on yesterday’s post. One observation we made from your comments is that there is a focus on the broader aspect of course and interaction design. What’s interesting is that visual design (i.e. web design, layout, use of colours) of course sites are often […]