As a designer of learning experiences and a proponent of digital pedagogy, I regularly explore the intersection between educational technologies and learning design. How can we use technology responsibly to bring instructional plans to life and create captivating experiences for our learners? While there are many facets to consider in this intersection, the following few strongly resonate with me:

Design

No matter what medium I used, art has always been the way I’ve expressed myself and my interests. It has developed my ability to be creative, explore new techniques, and communicate messages in innovative ways. So, it is natural for me to gravitate towards integrating visual elements into learning experiences in a way that blends visual intrigue, purpose, and function.

However, when the word “design” is used, the visual aspect often comes to mind first. But, to me, design is multifaceted and goes beyond the mere visual aspect. When creating learning experiences, I design for: 

  • Care. Does the experience emanate empathy and care by considering the individuals’ learning journey? 
  • Function. Is the experience functional allowing learners to navigate efficiently and intuitively?
  • Accessibility. Does the experience provide multiple ways for learners to engage in a way that suits their needs and abilities, supporting universal design? 
  • Inclusion. Does the experience integrate multiple perspectives and provide opportunities for learners to see themselves represented in the curriculum?
  • Purpose. Does the experience provide interactions that are meaningful and impactful?
  • Retention. Does the experience feature strategies that capitalize on how human brains learn to encourage retention?
  • Openness. Does the experience provide open access to knowledge, where possible, to create a community of shared learning?

Creating Experiences

I believe that designing quality learning experiences, in post-secondary environments, is both an art and a science. Decisions should be grounded in evidence-based theories and practices but reflected in a way that is creative, innovative, and engaging. 

Thinking about my own educational experiences, my undergraduate degree in education helped prepare me to teach while my graduate degree in instructional design helped me appreciate how people learn. This has led me to become fascinated with learning how human brains work to better understand how people learn. It helps me understand the “why” behind teaching and learning practices so I can integrate these strategies into my own teaching and when supporting others. 

Learning

I am a lifelong learner so I seek new opportunities that push me outside of my comfort zone to foster growth. Through these opportunities, I am introduced to new communities, values, people, and approaches where I learn and unlearn things about myself. This helps shape my personal and professional identity and is revealing my most authentic self in the process. I develop my professional practice by reading to learn about different perspectives and attending conferences to learn alongside other dedicated individuals. I am listening to and learning from Indigenous people to work towards my reconciliation and decolonization journey. 

As a Coordinator, Educational Technologies, I believe my role is to critically examine the use and application of educational technologies in learning experiences and encourage faculty I work with to do the same. Together, we can develop learning experiences that are accessible, learner-centered, inclusive, collaborative, and open. In the end, I look forward to the opportunities where I can weave digital pedagogy and learning design practices together to create experiences that guide learners down an intentional pathway that encourages them to engage in meaningful interactions along the way.

My work as a Coordinator, Educational Technologies within the Learning Technology & Innovation (LT&I) team generally falls into four main areas:

1. Individual support with learning technologies (help desk, office hours)
2. Program development and delivery
3. Project support
4. Resource development

While the time spent in each area fluctuates with varying demands and needs, the above categorization generally reflects how I prioritize my work. 

1. The majority of my workload consists of providing individual support for the use and integration of learning technologies in educational experiences for faculty, students, and staff. Examples of learning technologies I’ve provided support for include Moodle, WordPress, H5P, and Sli.do. This support takes the form of answering tickets that come to our help desk, sending emails, making phone calls, leading virtual or in-person meetings, and running weekly virtual office hour sessions. 

2. The next most significant aspect of my workload is program development and delivery work as it typically spans across multiple months. For the period under review, this has mainly taken the form of leadership in instructional design. Examples of program development work include:

  • Inclusive Digital Design course
  • Open Learning Student Guide (Moodle course)
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) programming collaboration with Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT)

3. Next, project support work often stems from working one-on-one with faculty members when answering tickets or running office hours. Once it is determined that the project is multifaceted, it evolves into a project that requires coordination, technical expertise, and pedagogical consideration. These kinds of projects can range in length, depending on complexity. Types of project support work I’ve been involved in this year include: 

  • Working with faculty members and their classes to support the use of WordPress for open assignments 
  • Working with students to support the development of a WordPress site
  • Working with faculty members to develop their technical expertise, guided by pedagogical considerations, in areas including test development and online course design

4. Lastly, the LT&I team creates resources that support faculty with learning and using educational technologies. This year, I’ve designed a number of informal instructional resources and contributed to the development of a hub site that will organize all of our resources. We intend to have our hub site open for faculty use this year. Resource development is an area that is constantly evolving for our team as we respond to the needs around us. Types of resource development I’ve led or collaborated on include:

  • Developing informal instructional resources to support technical skill development (annotated screenshots, instructions with supporting screenshots, updating the Moodle Orientation site with new information)
  • LT&I hub website
  • LT&I template website
  • LT&I TRUBOX template page

Over the years, one thing I learned about myself is I understand things better when I have a visual representation of them. So, I create and utilize organizers to manage my overall workload and individual projects (where needed).

For the general, day-to-day management of my workload, I utilize two planning documents.

First, I use a project organizer that is categorized into themes that suit my role (e.g. projects, faculty help, group/team work, student support, etc.). Under each category, I write my current projects and update them as they begin or conclude. This provides me with a big-picture view of all the projects I have on the go which helps me determine my capacity and monitor alignment with institutional and provincial initiatives.

Second, I use a weekly organizer where I write the smaller tasks I need to complete for each project and assign them to certain days of the week, based on their priority. While these tasks often get moved around during the week, this strategy helps me keep track of everything to ensure my projects are moving forward. Then, for more time-bound work, I utilize my Outlook calendar to set meetings with others or block time off to complete certain work. To minimize paper use, I include multiple weeks on one page, separated by a line.

Overall, these two organizers and my Outlook calendar have helped me immensely with prioritizing, managing, and completing my workload requirements. It’s a system I’ve developed over the years but I had to figure out how to adapt it to this role and determine which project categories to use. But, at the end of this academic year, I can say I am happy with the categories I chose. I will continue to use them and will revise them as necessary.

As mentioned above, individual learning technology support gets prioritized before other kinds of work because it’s a core value of the LT&I team – to provide timely assistance and guidance to faculty, staff, and students. Also, the tasks are often urgent, smaller in scope, and can be completed relatively quickly which makes them easy to prioritize. On the contrary, program development, project support, and resource development work is often much larger in scope, involves multiple moving parts, and extends over longer periods of time. To help ensure this kind of work progresses, I develop and utilize a schedule for big projects to keep me on track. For example, I developed a schedule for the Inclusive Digital Design course development (which is described further in the “Projects” section). Then, I integrate the tasks for that project into my planning documents described above to ensure I’m completing work to move the project forward. 

Having multiple organizers and strategies in place can be difficult to keep up with since they require frequent updating. But, I’ve realized that taking the time to update these documents ultimately frees up mental capacity that I can spend on completing the actual work, not the planning/management of it.

The period under review reflects a year of learning for me. Beginning a new role at TRU in July 2022 meant I had to learn new technology-related systems including: Moodle, TeamDynamix, and WordPress (how TRU uses WordPress since it varies from what I was familiar with). 

A challenge this year was learning the systems myself while also simultaneously providing support for them for other TRU colleagues. I realized this very quickly when helping faculty members in virtual office hours without taking notes. This meant I had to rely on my memory to keep track of who I was helping and what I was helping with which was not effective. So, I began taking Office Hour notes that included their name, the course they were inquiring about, and what they wanted to achieve. This way, when I needed more time to explore their question, I had their information and would follow up with them later that day. I tried to document the solution or action taken after they left the session but sometimes got distracted and forgot to do so. This is something I will try to be more diligent about moving forward because it’s helpful information to look back on and determine patterns or areas of need for future resource or program development. Also, making these notes helped me build relationships with people who visited more than once as I was able to recognize their name and be familiar with what I assisted them with last time.

Over the past 10 months in this new environment, I’ve enjoyed meeting new people, building connections, and engaging in new learning opportunities. It has allowed me to lead and participate in a variety of projects that align with my passions and help the TRU community. It has been rewarding, challenging, and exciting all at the same time. One project that stands out to me is leading the program development for our Inclusive Digital Design asynchronous course and developing some of the content for it. Our team invested a lot of time, energy, and effort into the development of this course, so it was wonderful to see over 60 registered participants when it began in May 2023. The anecdotal feedback we have heard so far is positive and people have been finding it helpful. To be involved in a project that aligns with our team, institutional, and provincial values has been a memorable experience.

In addition, on a personal level, I am proud of the organizational and workflow strategies I put into action when starting my role (described further in the “Reflection on How Time and Workload Was Managed and Prioritized” section). It helped me feel organized throughout the year so I could focus my effort on learning, supporting faculty, and engaging in project work. I look forward to experimenting with some of the features in Outlook calendars (i.e. colour categorization) to enhance the organization of my time-bound engagements.