START Here: Welcome and Instructions for week 1

Let me welcome you again to a great learning journey in this course!

Instructions (for easy reference, you might wish to copy these instructions into a personal file or print it)

NAVIGATION: to navigate through the Course you need to click on the title of the sections. There are also restricted areas that you cannot access until you've done earlier work. To mark an activity as complete, click in the box on the right of the activity. 

1. Watch the week 1 introductory video - remember that you can choose "Fullscreen"

2. Read the Course Outline (located in the resources of the Top Section); “About the Course”; and the “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)”

3. Introduce yourself in the “Welcome and Introductions” forum: provide your name, department,and interest in this course

4. Review Blended Learning, student engagement through Active Learning, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Constructive Alignment, and the TPCK model in the "Key pedagogical concepts" book

5. In the Week 1 Forum post the strengths and weaknesses of a. face to face (F2F) and b. online learning and teaching, and c. how blended learning blends the strengths and weaknesses of both

6. Discuss the rationale for selecting your course for blended delivery in the Week 1 Forum, and respond to other postings (if available)

7. Create an appropriate basic course structure for your course by clicking the Gear menu/cog icon top right, then <Edit settings> either using weeks OR topics to be formatively assessed by the facilitator (FA1), who will set and announce the date and time. Read the "Moodle structure and functionality" book.

8. Explore Moodle and its functionality/affordances (including plugins) through (a) reviewing the "Moodle structure and functionality" book and (b) <Turn editing on>, <Add an activity or resource>, and clicking on each activity and resource in Moodle's activity chooser and read through the list. Explore <More help> in the descriptions if needed.

9. Exercise: start to add appropriate activities and resources to your course, move these around, copy one of these, delete another. Also update your learning design/blueprint accordingly

10. Work further on the learning design/blueprint using constructive alignment deciding which elements of the course would be done online and which elements F2F

11. Upload course learning design/ blueprint as a "File" resource to "Submit learning design/blueprint at the end of Week 1", to enable the facilitator to easily locate and review it

12. Complete formative quiz “End of Week 1 Quiz: Course Structure” at the end of week 1 related to learning objective 1 (FA2)

13. Review and implement holistic and brief individual feedback that the facilitator provided on your actual course, and on your learning design/blueprint

14. Reflect and report on key lessons learned and queries in the Week 1 Forum and in the synchronous session

15. End of week: synchronous online session (1-2 hours):

• participants share key lessons learned and queries in the plenary, based on the corresponding posts in the Week 1 Forum
  
• participants break into online groups and discuss Moodle activities and resources that might be appropriate for their respective courses
• participants then report back in the plenary on what they have learned from the group session
• next week’s activities are then discussed