The focus of this workshop was to continue the progress that has been made in previous workshops and to promote sustainability of the approaches that have been pushed for during the project. With a year reamaining on the e-LICE project it is important that KCN and MCHS are able to implement their own plans for how to continue the development and implementation of e-Learning in their curriculum.
Rather than running 2 parallel sessions with beginners and advanced participants we made the decision to combine both sets of participants together. This allowed people to work within their departmental groups to share ideas and learn about e-Learning from some of their more experienced colleagues.
The feedback received about this approach was very positive, and we observed that the speed that people learned the skills in Articulate and the CMS was much faster than any previous workshops.
The first 2 days of the workshop was focussed on learning the different tools in Articulate and how they can be used to create exciting and effective learning materials. We took the approach to avoid using curriculum specific content to create our early creations as this can often be a barrier. Instead we used different aspects of owning and operating a car as our main content focus us this was familiar to all participants.
Once participants were familiar with the software they began to work with their departmental colleagues to identify where new resources could be made. We continued to present some key elements to the groups on creative approaches, good practise, and reviewing your materials.
In addition to looking at Articulate, the CMS was another key element to this workshop. It was important that KCN participants were familiar with their role in the CMS, how to login, and where to find their materials within the system.
Where possible we tried to encourage the participants to support one another, and we had a number of very good presentations made to the whole group by people who had uncovered new skills in the e-Learning process. In fact the workshops have been an excellent way for people to improve their computing skills in general, some of new skills included:
- Creating images using Paint or PowerPoint
- Using screen-capture tools
- Saving files in a meaningful structure
- Avoiding problems caused by Copy & Paste
All of the training materials and support documentation has been uploaded to the CMS so it can be accessed by KCN staff at any time. By making these materials available it will enable these successful workshops to continue without the involvement of the University of Edinburgh.
Some of the key materials used in the workshops can be found in the workshop materials section of the website.
