Promoting Engagement and Success: Meeting Learners by what they have not where they are

Audience Level: 
All
Session Time Slot(s): 
Institutional Level: 
Higher Ed
Streamed: 
Streamed
Abstract: 

The COVID-19 pandemic caused us to quickly adapt our on-campus courses to online delivery and created motivation to adopt trends in course design and delivery to close education experience equity gaps.  Explore strategies for meeting your learners where they are by focusing on mobile, flexible, micro, and personal course design.

Extended Abstract: 

The COVID-19 pandemic that caused institutions to quickly adapt their on-campus courses to online and alternate remote delivery forms exposed gaps in equitable delivery assumptions and created the motivation to quickly adopt emerging trends in course design and delivery. Courses designed with content such as high-resolution videos and images are not accessible for learners with limited or low-speed access to the Internet. Learners without Internet access often also have limited access to a late model computer, if at all. Many families share the same device for work, study and entertainment. In this context, to provide an equitable learning experience, instructional design and delivery should focus on mobile, flexible, micro and personal. Community College students are disproportionately affected by Covid-19. Access to College, already a challenge, became more difficult when the majority of the courses moved from physical places to online. Covid-19 was the catalyst for change. It provided an opportunity to expand the list of best course design and delivery practices. There is an emerging education philosophy that advocates creating student-ready colleges rather than college-ready students. Similarly, rather than meeting students where they are regarding technology, we need to meet them with what they have.  What many learners had this March were smartphones first, tablets second, then computers. In this session, you will learn how to modify a topic for mobile delivery. You will learn the benefits of mobile, micro, flexible, and personalized learning.

 

The strategies shared in this session support and overlap one another. Personalized learning supports flexible learning options, mobile learning is an ideal platform for delivering microlearning. Together, micro- and mobile- offer learning opportunities throughout the day - anytime and anyplace. Importantly, this approach to course design is supported by brain science. Mobile and microlearning facilitate frequent, small bursts of learner-content engagement. Learners may view and practice with the content in a variety ways. Timed-repetition is one strategy that builds long-term memory. Learner choice promotes student attention and motivation. One aspect of flexibility lowers student progression barriers for when life happens.

 

The presentation will include polling and present examples of microlearning lectures, mobile design, and personal and flexible learning strategies. You will view the process of creating a microlesson for mobile delivery from a typical traditional lesson. In addition, you will be encouraged to keep the conversation going after the session via a discussion forum. The session slide deck and design tip sheets for creating mobile and microlearning will be posted on the conference website. The presenters will introduce you to the impact of mobile, micro, flexible and personalized learning on learner success. Polling will be embedded throughout the presentation to help you digest and better remember the information. You will view a demonstration of the process used to create a microlesson designed for mobile delivery from a traditionally designed lesson. If this session is presented in-person, teams of participants will have the opportunity to teach 1-minutes activities. As a virtual session, participants will receive sample 1-minute activities from the conference website.

 

But wait, there’s more: You will have the opportunity to access a sample microlesson during the session. After the lesson, you will have an opportunity to complete a live feedback survey and ask questions in chat.

Conference Session: 
Concurrent Session 4
Conference Track: 
Instructional Design
Session Type: 
Education Session
Intended Audience: 
All Attendees