Bootcamps are usually designed to get participants up and running quickly with a new skillset provided they’re willing to use plenty of elbow grease. Imagine, if you will, a kinder, gentler bootcamp. That’s what Dr. Lindsay Benes and Dr. Joanne Olsen had in mind when they teamed up with Instructional Design & Technology Specialist Ben Kahn (the co-host of this podcast) last summer to create a professional development opportunity for School of Nursing graduate faculty. Using the new UP Boost online learning platform, faculty were treated to a two-week self-paced online course that covered best practices for communicating with students at distance, effective design for online courses, and strategies to use digital tools in Moodle effectively. The result? Faculty got a taste of what it’s like to be an online student (which brought more than a few “a ha” moments to the surface) and they got a portfolio of efficient learning technologies to employ in their own classes.
“In the industry side of healthcare, [professionals] are using all of these different technologies so making sure our students come out with the skills they’re going to see in their employer is very important.” Joanne said.
Going beyond a standard workshop format where faculty learn about a new tool, try it out once but often forget how to use it shortly after the workshop is over, the bootcamp’s extended format offered a deeper learning experience. The material covered in the course remains online for faculty to access at any time. Topics are easy to find and all of the course resources are compiled in one area.
“The part of the bootcamp that really make it effective for me was that we had assignments to complete,” Lindsay said. “Until I actually do something… that’s the time when I really learn how to do it. That last piece is what really sealed it for me. “
The bootcamp addressed a need for standardization in the SON graduate courses taught in a hybrid format and it also enhanced teaching practices used by the graduate faculty. In fact, Dr. Olsen expects to see some time recovery by using rubrics for grading, standardizing formats, and establishing “Moodle norms” in the SoN graduate school.
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Read: Full episode transcript in PDF format
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Joanne picked SkyView for digitally augmented astronomy and eclipse-watching
Lindsay picked Moodle rubrics to make grading digital student submissions smoother and more consistent (learn how to use them yourself on UP MediaSpace)
Maria was updating her OS and trying to free up some space
Ben picked Microsoft To-Do, a new tasklist app that works with Office 365
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Continue the conversation at the Teaching & Learning Community Blog: https://sites.up.edu/tl
UP TechTalk is a bi-monthly podcast with cohosts Ben Kahn and Maria Erb of Academic Technology Services and Innovation at UP that explores the use of technology in the classroom, one conversation at a time.