PPODL/EDT4OL Curriculum Outline

Brief

Design, develop and facilitate an online capacity development intervention comprising five cohorts of 30 students to become “Master teachers” during 2022 – 2023. The proposed course will focus on building capacity for developing online content using the Mediawiki to WordPress Multisite open authoring and delivery platform. Building capacity using this Free and Open Source Software ecosystem will have many benefits for developing countries including the flexibility to reuse and remix course outputs and the ability to host their own low cost infrastructure to deliver online learning.

Design and implementation considerations

1. We recommend that COL avoids the concept “Master” teacher, which is not gender inclusive and could have colonial undertones associated with a “Master-servant” dynamic. We propose: “Empowered digital teacher for online learning” (EDT4OL), as a working title for the course.
2. A course of this nature would require administrator privileges on the WordPress Multisite as well as the ability to acquire intermediate web publishing skills. Consequently, limiting cohorts to 30 participants is an appropriate strategy. Facilitators would need to provide hands-on support. A course of this nature would not scale for large group cohorts.
3. We recommend that entry into the course be dependent on successful completion of suitable prerequisites. This will improve the likelihood for successful EDT4OL completion. We recommend the following:
   • Require prospective students to have gained the Participation Badge for the Digital Skills for OER Sharing (DS4OERS) course plus one or more badges. Students who have gained the DS4OERS Certificate of Completion will exceed these minimum requirements. This will ensure prerequisite knowledge of copyright, OER and basic digital skills necessary for success. It would also serve as indirect marketing of the DS4OERS course.
   • Require students to publish a personal blog post on course blog site providing justifications for taking the course as an entry requirement. We will develop self-study support materials for learners to achieve this requirement which will demonstrate basic capability to publish online content. We need to minimise registrations from candidates that don’t have the basic skills for digital semantic markup. For instance, many DS4OER learners could not create hyperlinks.
   • Design a basic learning contract that outlines actions the learner promises to undertake in the course. In return, we will document our minimum support commitments for this free capacity development opportunity. It may be worth requiring their immediate supervisor to also sign the learning contract to promote accountability. We believe that this is a fair and reasonable requirement for this kind of training that needs facilitation from skilled and experienced course developers. This would also improve return on investment for the funder.
4. Design for multiple learning approaches to support students working in teams or as individuals. Fortunately, the version history of a wiki can accommodate this requirement.
5. Provide flexibility for teachers to work on their own content, or opt in to convert and improve existing OER materials originally developed through COL (or others) for online teaching
6. Implement a digital messaging platform to provide direct support to specific learner queries and mirror an authentic course design and production environment. (Discussion forums don’t work well in this context, and if there are teams working on content, they will need team spaces for connecting with each other.) We recommend installing Rocket.Chat on the “pacificopencourses.col.org” server. We are confident that the existing virtual server will accommodate this load (based on monitoring server performance during the DS4OERS course.) In the event that traffic loads become a challenge, it will be trivial to commission a higher specified server. Direct cost for a bigger server would be in the range of $30 - $40 per-month on Digital Ocean, but we don’t anticipate that this will be necessary.
7. Install the H5P plugin, create a dedicated site and page space for each student or team to author H5P interactive objects for inclusion in their online course. This will enable students to improve interactivity of online course materials.

Badges

Implement badging model for 5 badges and Certificate of Achievement. We recommend the following badges:

• H5P Author
• Wiki author
• Online course designer (for completing a storyboard)
• Online course developer (for completing a published learning sequence on WordPress Multisite)
• EDT4OL Participant badge (for completing basic knowledge test)
• Empowered Digital Teacher (Awarded for completion of the preceding badges)

This is a hands-on skills course. Participation and competence is demonstrated by publishing online learning materials. The course does not cover theoretical concepts and consequently does not incorporate quizzes or a knowledge test for participation.

Learning outcome

On successful completion of this course learners will be able to:

• Design and publish an online learning sequence using a Mediawiki-to-WordPress-Multisite toolset, incorporating H5P interactive content elements and rich media.

Learning objectives

1. Develop intermediate wiki skills for collaborative development of OER online content
2. Use social media and digital messaging tools for peer learning and technical support
3. Design and publish a storyboard for publishing an online learning sequence
4. Sequence and chunk information for publishing an interactive online learning sequence
5. Design and publish selected H5P interactive content objects
6. Integrate pedagogical elements into online course materials
7. Publish a learning sequence as part of a WordPress Multisite course website.
8. Apply best practice for online security and interpersonal communication on a shared professional platform.

Course prerequisites

Minimum requirements to gain entry to the course:

1. DS4OERS participant badge, plus
2. At least one of the following DS4OERS badges:
   • OER image,
   • OER Diagram Remix, or
   • OER Audiographic remix or
   • Candidates who have gained the DS4OERS certificate of completion exceed these minimum requirements, and will only be required provide the verification code printed on the certificate.
3. Submission of an application portfolio, published as a blog post on the course blog site, providing links to evidence of the minimum requirements. This requirement will demonstrate digital capabilities for online publishing.
4. Signed digital learning contract

Note:

Each facilitated cohort will be restricted to 30 students. In the event that individual cohorts are oversubscribed, candidates who meet minimum requirements will be added to a waiting list to gain preferential access to future cohort offerings.

Course outline for Empowered digital teacher for online learning (EDT4OL)

Basic wiki skills

(Optional content for students who don't have wiki skills before the course begins. This guidelines are designed to assist students in preparing their application portfolio)

1. Overview
2. Video signpost - Wikis in plain English
3. Why use a wiki
4. OER reuse and remix (highlighting the practical challenges for collaborative editing and benefits wiki technology provides)
5. Basic wiki skills challenge
   • Text formatting
   • Headings and subheadings
   • Image manipulation and placement

Submit application portfolio

Prospective EDT4OL learners are required to submit an online application portfolio to demonstrate digital capabilities to successfully complete the EDT4OL course.

1. Basic wiki skills challenge
   • Create account on WikiEducator and publish a personal wiki userpage which:
     • Contains biography photo
     • Demonstrates elementary text formatting (subheadings, italics or bold text, bullet or numbered list and hyperlink to external website)
2. Select design project
   • Select what OER online content the individual or group will develop to achieve a minimum of two learning sequences using one of two approaches:
     • Creating new online content incorporating existing OERs
     • Converting existing online resource for the OERF open source delivery platform (eg COL OER resources).
3. Submit learning contract
   • Submit signed learning contract, which documents:
     • actions the learner will undertake to achieve learning success, and
     • obligations of the facilitation team to support the learner.
   • Learner will designate if working co-cooperatively with a team or individually. In the case of team collaborations, all members of the team must sign the same learning contract.
4. Personal blog challenge
   • Establish a personal blog (or use an existing blog) demonstrating basic web publishing skills to:
     • Document motivations for taking the course and reasons why the candidate should be accepted
     • Providing evidence of the prerequisite requirements.
     • Sharing a public record of the learning contract.

Establish PLE

• Overview of EDT4OL platform (Remix existing content)
• Implement open source password manager - Bitwarden (New content which will be propagated through to existing PPODL online courses)
• EDT4OL forums (Remix existing content)
• EDT4OL social network (Remix existing content)
• Open source digital messaging platform for development - Rocket.Chat (New content for EDT4OL)

Developing a story board

1. Overview
2. Introduction
3. Selecting learning pathway / learning sequence topic (Online lesson)
4. Video signpost
5. Storyboard structure
6. Storyboarding tools
7. Storyboard challenge

Outlining a learning sequence

1. Overview
2. OERF web publishing model
3. Sequencing and chunking
4. Design constraints
5. Wiki subpages
6. Outlining site structure challenge

H5P interactive content objects

1. Overview
2. Video signpost
3. H5P Basics
   • Accordion
4. H5P Quiz types - Learners to create two different question types selected from:
   • True false
   • Multiple choice or single choice
   • Drag the words
   • Fill in the blanks
5. Multi-media - Learner chooses one of the following
   • Interactive video or Course presentation
   • Timeline
   • Image hotspots

Intermediate wiki skills

1. Overview
2. Pedagogical templates
3. Wiki formative quiz objects
4. Embedding video
5. Embedding H5P objects
6. Transclusion
   • Basic text translusion
   • Using WEnotes comment feature
7. Intermediate wiki skills challenge

Authoring a learning sequence

1. Overview
2. OER inventory challenge
3. Wiki conventions when authoring online learning materials
4. Incorporating learning activities
5. Learning sequence challenge

Publishing an online course site

The process of publishing a learning sequence to a WordPress multisite

1. Overview
2. Video signpost
3. Reviewing outline page
4. Publishing first snapshot
5. Customising a course site
6. Troubleshooting
7. Course site challenge

Open questions

1. We are keen for learners to develop an application portfolio of blog posts which will be used to assess achievement for the badges, while developing online publishing skills. One option is to set up a dedicated blog Multisite for EDT4OL learners for this purpose. It will simplify management and support for learners (as opposed to using free commercial services like wordpress.com) Issue - this would result in additional cost of US$46 per month - is that doable for COL?
   • I had originally anticipated learners publishing their course content to https://pacificopencourses.col.org, which in hindsight is probably not a good idea having learners publish to a production server for the project. It would probably be better to spin up a new Multisite like edt4ol.col.org or edt4ol.oeru.org or edt4ol.oerf.org where learners can publish their content while practising and this site could also host individual course portfolio blogs.