Highlights:

• Creating a sense of community online using student photos and bios ('people gallery')
• Strategies for embedding a teacher presence online
• Using Padlet for group allocation
• Using Turnitin voice comments for faster, easier marking
• LEO template use for improved user experience and reduced cognitive load.

Hear about Sebastian’s experience…

ACU Case study: Student focused online presence in business - BUSN110 Responsible reasoning and communication - S.Krook (2016)
Many thanks to the Faculty of Law and Business for the use of their Pop-up Studio equipment to record this interview.
Length: 9 mins.

Unit design

This introductory unit has been designed, explicitly, to develop students reasoning, critical thinking, and communication skills.

Visual design

The LEO template was designed to have a consistent naming of sections and heading hierarchies. This will aid ease of navigation and reduce cognitive load. Sebastian particularly focused on providing the unit essentials, rather than providing too many options. The aim is to make things easy and seamless for the students.

Structure

Assessment

The above assessments may have been designed before the latest update to the ACU Assessment Policy. See Assessment Policy for up-to-date advice on designing your assessments.

Scroll through these examples to see some highlights from the unit.

Technology

This is a list of some of the major tools used in this unit.

Tool	Rationale	Resources
Echo360	Recording face-to-face lectures and making available to students on LEO afterwards.	See the LEO ECHO360 guide See the eLearning 101 webinar, Embedding Kaltura and YouTube videos in your units
Adobe Presenter, iMovie, Adobe Voice on iPad	Adobe Presenter was used for short screen recordings. Sebastian edited them in iMovie on an iPad, and sometimes added in a film clip that was recorded on his iPad as well. He used Adobe Voice for short “lecture overviews”, it’s a really handy tool that works on an iPad, and is ideal for short recordings.
Glossary	Every time a student logged in there was a picture and bio of a fellow classmate (different each time) - a 'people gallery'. This helped create a sense of community and break down the sense of online isolation. Sebastian achieved this through using the LEO glossary and block features. He instructed students to upload a photo and a bio into a glossary on LEO. Once the glossary was created, he created a LEO block ('random glossary entry' type), set it to draw from the bio glossary and located it at the top right-hand side of his LEO unit.	See LEO glossary guide See LEO blocks (see under Resources)
Choice	Sebastian used the LEO Choice tool to record attendance in lectures. Students used their laptops/smart phones, and this avoided having to send around a paper sheet for attendance. He also used the tool to conduct polls in the lecture. Students can see their result and classes’ summarised result.This is formative feedback for the student, and the teacher able to see what areas the students may need for cover in greater detail and provide further support.	See LEO choice guide
Turnitin voice comments	Time is saved in marking by using the Turnitin voice comments.	Here is a short video about how to leave a voice comment on a student's paper in GradeMark, Turnitin: Voice Comments in GradeMark(Lee 2012). Read about one academic’s experience using Turnitin voice comments, Using audio feedback in Turnitin – one academic’s experience(Catherine 2014)
Quiz	Five multiple choice questions at the end of each lecture with feedback.	See the eLearning101 webinars, Quizzes in LEO part 1 and 2 See LEO Quiz guide
Padlet	Sebastian used this virtual whiteboard for facilitating students in the allocation of themselves into groups for assignments. He embedded the unique Padlet URL within a LEO ‘label’ feature.	Here is an informal introduction to Padlet, Collecting Student Ideas Using Padlet (Paperless classroom 2013)
Camera	Students worked on Marketing Plans on butchers paper in a tutorial. Photos were taken of the plans and turned into a collage on unit page. This personalised the unit and showcased the student’s work.

Support

These are examples of the kinds of support the academic staff building this unit drew on.

• Faculty Educational designer introducing new tools
• Colleagues who have tried different tools sharing their knowledge.
• Those involved in building the unit drew on the FLB Blended Learning LEO template. It has different sections that guide and instruct those building units.
• Creators drew on the FLB “digital core” (minimum digital use guidelines) which encourages the academics to have a common base for their digital approach.

Lessons learned

• Narrowing a unit down to its essentials, 'decluttering' and avoiding bells and whistles.

Next time

Sebastian would like to focus on the following for future iterations of the unit:

• Integrating fieldwork into the unit, rather than having everything classroom based.Taking students on an excursion, asking students to document using phone cameras etc. Uploading the images for students to showcase, and analyse further.
• The learning experience becoming more dynamic, and not split between online and face to face, but an intentional, seamless integration.