Getting your Learn Ultra courses ready – Insights from Early Adopter Celeste McLaughlin (IAD)
Ahead of the roll-out of Learn Ultra to the wider University, Information Services Group (ISG) worked with a number of colleagues to make the switch to Ultra early as part of the Early Adopter Programme, (opens in a new window). Their experiences provide useful tips for other colleagues. In this blog post, Celeste McLaughlin, Head of Academic Development for Digital Education from IAD (Institute for Academic Development), spoke about the experience of upgrading her course.
Preparing for the upgrade
“It was really good timing to be part of the Early Adopter programme because we were actually undergoing a review of how we integrate digital technologies into the programme and mapping out what we were planning to do.
We took advantage of the training that was offered, and we also had ongoing support from ISG colleagues, so that was very valuable.”
The Digital Education course
“My focus was on the Digital Education course, a ten-credit course, and it was always designed to be a fully online one. We’ve got a different theme for each week of the 6-week course. It is really intended to give the opportunity to explore what it means to be a digital educator, and for students to share their ideas and practices. Most of the activities were asynchronous, but there were also a couple of live virtual classrooms designed into that as well.”
Observations on Learn Ultra
“So, the first observation from me is that it is a much cleaner interface. So, less navigation was required to get to the course material in comparison to Learn Original. For me, that was a really good thing. I made quite extensive use of the learning modules for each of the 6 weeks. The structure carried over quite well I would say.”
Unlearning and relearning
“There are bits and pieces that take a bit of getting used to. For example, I had bullet points in Learn Original to describe what was then in each of the blocks of content. And I couldn’t do that in Learn Ultra. But those are just slight changes and I got used to that.”
Folders
“Within the learning modules, I created folders to hold each of the activities to avoid too much, long scrolling. I found that if I didn’t do that and had it all laid out on the page, it was just lots and lots of scrolling. So, I made use of sub folders as well.”
Template
“I also made some tweaks to the Ultra template as I created a folder with useful documents within it so I could put in key documents that I wanted to refer to during the course, as there are quite a few activities throughout the 6 weeks. In general, when I got a feel for what I was doing, it all moved over to Learn Ultra quite well.”
Virtual classroom sessions
“I also created a space for the virtual classroom sessions. I wanted to collate them all into one space so you could see what date they were taking place and where they were taking place. These I also embedded within the weekly course structure.”
Group work activities
“I had a couple of group activities and I had to rethink how I did these in comparison to Learn Original. I’ve got participants working in small groups throughout the course. And previously, I had used the group functionality to have group discussions and to manage those activities. The new Teams integration meant that I tried Teams for those activities. I would say that that has worked well as it allowed for good dialogue with participants.”
For more information on the Learn Ultra project, resources, training and more, please visit the Learn Ultra SharePoint. (Opens in a new tab.)
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