For the second round of #DigPINS, an online faculty development course, I made a few changes. I decided to have our course base in Slack instead of our LMS. I found that during the first round the discussion felt like we were sitting in a rigid classroom environment, orange chairs and all, and there wasn’t much discussion happening. Slack did end up being a lot more comfortable and although it was a different group of participants, there was much more conversation generated.
Another change was starting with the Virtual / Resident Mapping Exercise. This helped to generate conversation around what digital identity could include, especially how important interacting with others, both known and unknown audiences, factor in to one’s digital identity. It is not just what people see about you, but where and how you choose to interact can help shape who you are online.
I learned from the first round that having a synchronous meet was important for participants to feel like a connected group, even though most people knew each other outside of the course. We ended up having two sessions as a way to check in with each other and just talk about how it was going for everyone. Some advice from those more comfortable in the spaces that we were exploring happening more during the synchronous sessions than in the Slack channels.
I also shifted the structure from the first time running the course. The first course I had four different weeks that focused on loosely on Pedagogy, Identity, Networks, and Scholarship, bringing in other topics related to developing online presence like different ways to use video. During the second run I took the PINS of DigPins and spent a week on each one.
The course also served as a model of how to run an online course and create both teacher and social presence. Working in Slack, I shared a document each week with all needed resources for that week including a video that was addressed specifically to the group participating the course, readings, and expected activities. All four weeks are all linked below.
In week 3 Catherine Cronin was our special guest, talking to us about her experience with Digital and Open Pedagogy.
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