Live demonstrations on applications of online instructional design as well as industry best practices were featured during the latest installment of Globe myBusiness’ E-skwela online learning series.
They were also joined by Globe Education Industry Lead Mark Arthur Payumo Abalos who served as a moderator for the webinar.
Together, the panel of experts discussed and presented key concepts and teaching strategies on the topics of Learning Experience Design and Digital Storytelling to help onboard basic and higher education instructors on how to set up an engaging digital classroom for students.
Creating meaningful online learning experiences
The role of teachers has seen the biggest shift during the pandemic, in what Abarentos describes as an evolution towards becoming effective learning designers. To overcome instructional challenges in online and remote learning, she explains that by learning how to transform content into something more interactive can significantly level up student engagement.
According to the web designer and developer, such as the essence behind Learning Experience Design, that is, to design course content that achieves learning outcomes through the ‘creation of meaningful experiences’ and using varied learning tools and teaching approaches.
To achieve this, Abarentos demonstrated how she takes a course outline syllabus and transforms it into a Learning Experience Design Plan by using a Learning Management System (LMS) on top of other online tools. She highlighted six main steps in the process: Discover, Define, Curate, Develop, Learn, and Evolve.
To know which best strategies in teaching to apply, Abarentos encouraged teachers to first discover and assess the learner/students’ needs through personal sessions or through a survey.
Lastly, through the processes of learning and evolving, teachers can measure if learning outcomes are met by assessing student engagements and then revising their syllabus based on the outcomes of the assessments.
Abarentos believes that learning institutions should take the current times as an opportunity to upskill themselves by learning how to design better learning experiences for students.
Storytelling in the Virtual Classroom
A teaching strategy that teachers can employ in their Learning Experience Design Plan is the use of digital stories.
In his presentation, Garcia highlighted the idea of narrative-based learning where the use of stories and storytelling can help students better understand concepts and digest lessons. Applying the same concepts in Learning Experience Design, being able to skillfully optimize digital stories can level up student engagement, especially in settings where flexible learning is needed.
Digital Storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories, explains Garcia. He further explains that digital stories—not more than five minutes long and only using twenty images at most—can be effective in contextualizing concepts and in allowing students to absorb and reflect.
Creating a digital story begins with writing an engaging story. The run, or the body of the story, must be the longest part of the story that will build-up to the climax.
Garcia is encouraging teachers to experiment with their stories by using engaging music and creating unique characters.
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