OL Town Hall 2020: Learning Technology & Innovation
Production:
There is never a “slow” time with this group. But these past months have presented unprecedented challenges. Immense volume of course development and maintenance has been taken on, while the team works remotely.
A particular challenge has been the rapidly deployment of new exam processes, as the existing ones largely became inoperable. OL courses either needed to shift to secure online exams (more than 300 ProctorU exams created), as well as assessments.
In the context of more staff variability than normal. It is impossible to capture all of the contributions this group has been making.
Current status on the “campus” side: barely hanging on.
Snapshot statistic: Moodle Support Help Desk Tickets, first two weeks of September.
2019: 125
2020: 411
Maintaining a 100% first-response rate within twenty-four hours of ticket being filed; the vast majority of tickets are also resolved within twenty-four hours.
If anything that statistic under-represents additional workload. The nature of Help requests have become far more complex as Moodle and other supported Learning Technologies move from being a “complementary” piece to being at the core of virtual delivery. There are also immense cultural shifts in play with returning faculty. And this semester, a significant number of new sessional instructors, many being hired later into the semester.
Maintaining virtual office hours for drop-in help, as many one on one consultations as can be accommodated.
We have been fortunate that two major enhancements were underway when COVID hit last spring: automatic course shell creation and enrollment; and the Kaltura video platform (8626 videos created by TRU users as of today). Both had to be rolled out to the wider community under less than ideal conditions.
Summer Flashback
We did not take it off. Spring/Summer courses began almost immediately after Winter 2020 ended. Support needs for this round were substantial.
But we did have Summer Camp!
Each session drew 50-100 attendees. In total, 331 unique attendees took in at least one Summer Camp session, whether synchronously or asynchronously, with the vast majority attending at least two. 143 people earned our Certificate of Digital Competency for attending at least 8 workshops, and 17 earned a special “Perfect Attendance” certificate for attending all the sessions. We awarded 2018 badges over the course of the six weeks of programming.
Summer Camp was just one of our programming streams that contributed to resource development in our Faculty Support space. We also did extensive Moodle training, and recently added the eBook Teaching without Walls at TRU: a practical guide with tools, tips, and techniques by Melissa Jakubec and Michelle Harrison
Launched a new student help site in Moodle: Learning without Walls.
Worked with ITS on to implement whichever system enhancements that could be accommodated within their own overwhelming set of demands.
There have been some “perfect storms”. BigBlueButton videoconferencing was overwhelmed on the first day of classes as a number of unusual effects converged. ITS moved it to a more robust environment this week. (Almost-live screenshot above.)
LT&I is maintaining a very high level of performance, ongoing sustainability of this model is a grave concern. There is no slack in the system.
On more upbeat notes:
BCcampus Grant to develop H5P multimedia resources for open textbook for first year English classes.
Brenna Clarke Gray Co-Investigator SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, Amplify Podcast Network, concerning knowledge mobilization and scholarly podcasting.