"It was a very productive day, where I was able to make substantial progress with redesigning a module, and I enjoyed the interactions with other colleagues".
Over the project lifespan we have adopted a range of strategies in the engagement and support of staff. We have ensured board stakeholder engagement through a variety of channels, for example hundreds of staff have been involved in consultations, feedback and surveys, and have shown how valuable this has been to informing the development of our software tools and visual approach.
"The thing I enjoyed the most was that we had the chance to work in teams on other people's modules. I really enjoyed chipping in ideas and suggestions to my team, and helping out with the design of another person's module. This is something which it seems to me would be good more often?"
Workshops are a popular and useful means to raise awareness and help staff acquire important skills and understandings. We have presented workshops within the University and also many workshops to external audiences. Each has enabled us to reflect on how workshops can be successful and the challenges in terms of ‘learning about learning design’ they present. Similarly, each has helped us hone ideas about what structures work and what useful workshop objectives and key themes could be.
The learning design toolbox has been used very successfully in preparation for a number of events and workshops, including the Blended Design Challenge at Brunel, a Learning Design ‘Lite’ workshop for PGCE students at the Open University called ‘Using technologies in teaching’ and a two-day workshop held in Vancouver.
"Thank you for running a whole day event. I think we needed this time to really become familiar with the motivation and nature of the course and to develop close cross curricular links with other collegues, a secondary but immensely valuable side product".
It is proving useful in three respects:
- For the workshop organiser, it provides a means of seeing at a glance the full set of LD resources and making informed choices as to which are appropriate.
- In negotiation with planning events, as a means of guiding through and discussing which tools and resources might be most appropriate to suit a particular delegate audience.
- For workshop attendees to be able to see an evolving workshop cloudscape in advance of the event.