15 Course Design in D2L with Margene Anderson — 09.22.2015

In the Active Teaching Lab on September 22, 2015, Margene Anderson from DoIT Academic Technology shared how she designs her courses with Learn@UW. She shared the why and the how, with special focus on quick tricks we can easily do to improve our Curriculum Design.

Key Takeaways

• Map out what you want to teach, when you want to teach, etc. — the map might be formal, (e.g. organizational chart), or less formal (e.g. pieces of a puzzle)
• Don’t expect Moodle or D2L to make your course flow nicely – they are for content management, not teaching!
• Embedding links in a narrative summary of the class helps students contextualize
• bit.ly/learnuw100 is Knowledgebase on this topic
• A successful course will emphasize the interconnections of information that form knowledge (the contextualization for the students, so they know that the activity is part of the bigger picture of learning objectives for the class)
• There are many paths up the mountain.

If you’re interested in learning more to get up and running with D2L Course Design, watch the videos below and try stepping through the D2L worksheet we created for the session! Also, check out Margene’s slides.

The Active Teaching Lab, a Faculty Engagement program, provides a safe space for structured explorations of cool teaching tools and techniques that your colleagues are using to engage students and teach more effectively. During the academic year, labs are held weekly and will be listed on the Active Teaching Lab page.

Margene’s D2L Course Design Story