Challenges

The strategies and methods mentioned in the Inclusion section have been specifically selected to fit in with Chisholm's goal of creating Inclusive online/off campus learning environments, but there are still some challenges that need to be overcome.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

E-learning Champions program

The E-learning Champions program is a Learning Journey that has been designed so that educators can learn about the tools that are available within our Moodle, with sessions that start with the basics and cover topics such as Copyright, Building Assessment only sites, Universal Design for Learning, Design Thinking, and Accessibility. There is also a Moodle specific to the e-learning Champions program that has forums, relevant links, resources, and access to our e-learning mentors. The e-learning mentors are available as a support to the educators in the program and are from our Learning Design and Technology department.

This shows that Chisholm is committed to ensuring that Moodle continues to grow and cater to our students who come from a range of diverse backgrounds.

Challenges

So what are my challenges or barriers in implementing the Certificate III in Business for Trainees online?

1. Management Support - In theory, I have management support, BUT with staff shortages and a huge influx of Trainees, my available time to work on this has become limited and progress is slow.

2. Support of the other trainers - We have some very progressive trainers who see the many benefits of using Moodle to reach out to our Trainees. We also have some that are quite happy to continue delivering the units via email and begrudge the use of technology and Moodle. How do I involve them to the point that they will be excited to have Moodle available for their Trainees? 

3. Time - Finding the time to work on the Moodles. Using UDL takes quite a bit more time at the development stage, especially as I have to adapt our purchased resources and turn them into Moodle Books. This is a time consuming process.

4. H5P - Having access to create H5P resources and include them in Moodle. This has been resolved by one of the E-learning Champions mentors and I have access to Chisholm's H5P.com login, but at the moment I am the only one that can use these tools.

Management Support

My manager actually asked me to look at this as a project and so support is not really an issue. In my Workplan review, which has just been completed, we have allocated time that I can use for Moodle development during Term 4 with the view that they are available for the start of 2023. There is a lot of work to be done, some of it quite simple and outside of Moodle, such as preparing the purchased resources so that they can be imported easily. This is a matter of ensuring that the Word documents have been styled appropriately in MS Word.

Support of the other Trainers.

The best way of gaining their support is to include them in discussions and highlight the many benefits of using Moodle for the Trainees. I will also include some simple training sessions for those that are interested and get them to work on the Word documents and apply the various styles. This should be something that most of them could do without assistance, but I will also be included this in a training session. Direction could also come from our Educational Manager to demonstrate that they support this initiative and would appreciate all educators that have Trainees to get involved. As they say "many hands make light work".

Time

By sharing the load around with the other trainers, some of the less complicated tasks can be accomplished in a much quicker time frame, leaving me for the more complicated tasks such as duplicating the activities using H5P. I know that I will have to allocated time to support and mentor the other trainers, but this is worthwhile as it gives them some ownership of the sites and allows the units to be shared for further updates and as a part of our Continuous Improvement Plan.

H5P

I have access to be able to incorporate H5P for the formative assessments and chapter activities. To ensure that it is not just left to me, I will run a couple of sessions on setting up some simple H5P tasks such as true/false quizzes or simple Image Hotspots. I know a couple of trainers that would take this challenge on and hopefully encourage others. It is critical to involve as many of the trainers as possible so that we can continue to keep the sites updated with minimal effort

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay