#4 Tool of Learning: OpenLearning
Description of the tool
The OpenLearning platform runs as a web-based social learning platform and mobile application which has been built from the ground up on solid educational foundations since its inception. The goal is to provide a very social learning environment in which students feel empowered, deep learning experiences are fostered, students are intrinsically motivated, and passionate communities of practice flourish through well-designed constructive experiences. This has been realized with the latest social technology and is designed for a global, connected society. Additionally, OpenLearning is an innovator in the field and extends the existing educational theory to not only the design thinking behind the mechanics of the platform but by providing a launch pad for new academic educational research with the ability to continually experiment with novel educational mechanics for both educators and technologists.
Features of the tool
Course Authoring
· Build Rich Multimedia courses: Drag-and-drop Content Widgets to add rich multimedia content of any type: Text, Video, Audio, Files, and Images. Flexibility to embed external learning resources.
· Create constructivist-style activities with Interactive Widgets: Empower the students to be active in the learning experience with the Share Widgets (Post Text, Post Image, Post File, and Share Anything). Students can actively share, collaborate, interact or be social with each other.
· Support any type of Online Courses: MOOCs, Free or Paid courses, Private courses, and Self-Paced or Scheduled
· Group Work: Groups allow a number of students within a course to share, discuss and collaborate within a smaller community. Students can create new group or course administrator can create these groups and allocate students to them.
Student Engagement
· Course Feed: Keeps track of a course with a real-time activity stream, including comments, content and social interactions.
· Progress & Kudos: Students are rewarded for quality contributions (as determined by their peers) with a kudos point system.
Facilitation
· Student Progress: Track individual student progress. View high-level statistics for your course encompassing activity completion and course content. See how many comments have been made on each page, which page has the most activity or average time spent on each page.
· Course Statistics: View high-level statistics for your course encompassing activity completion and course content. See how many comments have been made on each page, which page has the most activity or average time spent on each page.
· Course Feed: Keeps track of a course with a real-time activity stream, including comments, content and social interactions.
Assessment
· Learning Outcome Assessment: Align activities to course learning outcomes for assessment. Assess learning holistically by aggregating students’ evidence.
· Portfolio: The Gallery displays any Post Text, Image, File or Page shared by students. Facilitates peer review and enable students to comment on each other’s activity submissions.
· Automatic Grading for Quizzes: To reduce repetitive assessments, all quiz related activities (such as Multiple Choice Questions, Crossword Puzzle, Category Matching, Fill in the Blanks, and Matching Answers) can be auto-marked.
Certification
· Certificates of Completion: Automatically or manually issue customized certificates to students upon completion of a course. Every certificate has a unique identifier that will enable you to verify and track the certificate back to OpenLearning.
· Badges: Upload your own badges or choose from our library of badges. Badges can be issued to students automatically on completion of activities, courses or based on student engagement.
· Micro-credentials: OpenLearning’s badges and certificates are designed to support the micro-credential movement by enabling multiple credentials to be issued to students quickly, efficiently and in line with the Mozilla OpenBadges standard.
Marketing
· Course Branding & Landing Page: Create a course that reflects your brand by customizing the look and feel of your course with your logo, banners, and color scheme. You can even customize the navigation bar. Simply drag-and-drop to create your course landing page.
· Support International Payment: Accept MasterCard, Visa, and American Express cards, accept PayPal payments, and support payment in AUD, USD, and MYR.
· Certificates: Create and customize certificates and badges in your course so that they are in line with your branding guidelines. Charge students fee for a Certificate of Completion or provide it free as part of your marketing efforts.
Learning Analytics
· Access Student Data: See all your students in one place, view their progress, activity completion and peer interaction data. Available to course facilitators, teachers, and administrators.
· Export Student Activity: Rich student interaction data, including posts, comments, and user-generated content and completion data are all available for export by course administrators so you can analyze data in your favorite tools.
· Stream Data to an LRS via XAPI: OpenLearning supports XAPI so that activity completion data can be streamed into a Learning Record Store for further analysis by your team.
Branded Institution Portals
· All courses in one branded portal: Control the way your institution portal looks and feels, list all courses and qualifications in one portal under your custom domain.
· Unlimited Qualification: Create qualifications by grouping courses into pathways to larger qualifications.
· Export Student data: Export Student Data & Completion Statistics across the institution.
· API & xAPI: Export Student Data & Completion Statistics across institution.
· LTI integration for single sign-on: Export Student Data & Completion Statistics across the institution.
· OpenLearning places greater value on providing interactive community experiences which encourage meaningful reflections.
· OpenLearning values authenticity in teaching to provide learning experiences which are situated in the same, or an analogous context to that in which the learning is then applied.
· It gives students the opportunity and encouragement to connect to other students and teachers as peers, providing an encouraging and comfortable environment to share their voice and express their ideas
· Giving students the power and encouragement to take ownership over their learning promotes intrinsic, rather than extrinsic motivation which in turn leads to deeper learning and understanding of a topic.
· OpenLearning encourages students to be actively involved in their own process of learning, through meaningful interactions with both the platform itself and the community of students and teachers that it connects.
· OpenLearning encourages learning experiences and online activities which help students to become familiar with situations, problems, or scenarios so that they can reflect meaningfully, construct and discuss their own solutions and concepts, and then creatively apply this new knowledge in meaningful ways.
· Go to openlearning
Type in the URL: http://www.openlearning.com/ The OpenLearning screen appears:
· Creating an account
Click the Signup button in the upper right corner. The Signup screen appears.
· Creating a course
Go to https://www.openlearning.com/courses/create/. Type in the name of your course and you're ready to go!
IMPORTANT NOTE: Course URLs cannot be changed once created.
· OpenLearning Basics
· OpenLearning Basics
Once you have created your course URL, you might like to set up the roles of who will be involved in the course. If you aren't sure yet of these, you can set this up later. Users can be either students, facilitators or course admins. Students can access the course only once it is life.
A course admin is someone who is involved in the designing, building, and editing of a course. They have maximum permissions within a course and access to all tabs (Course Setup, Administer Students, and Assessment).
A facilitator is someone who is involved in facilitating the course once it is live and accessible to students. A facilitators' primary role is to engage and interact with students. They cannot edit or modify content. You might be both an admin and a facilitator, or you might have different people undertaking these roles. A facilitator has access to the Administer Students tab only.
How to add a course admin
To add someone as a course admin, go to Course Setup > Advanced and type in their OpenLearning username. If your course is within an institution, you will need to add them to the institution before adding them as a course admin.
How to add a facilitator
To add someone as a facilitator, go to Course Setup > Roles and type in their OpenLearning username. Tick their role to be a facilitator.
· Private and paid courses
Course Type
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FREE
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PAID
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OPEN
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This is a MOOC. Students from all over the world can enroll for free.
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Any student who is willing to pay for the course can enroll.
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PRIVATE
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Students need to be invited to the course or given an activation code to access the course for free. It isn't publically accessible or searchable on OpenLearning.
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Students need to be invited to the course or given an activation code, along with paying to access the course. It isn't publically accessible or searchable on OpenLearning.
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You can update these settings by going to Course Setup > General
· Setting course dates
Setting a course start date means students cannot access the course until this date arrives. You can also set staged release dates for particular modules, or release them all together.
TIP: Turn your course promotional page live a few weeks prior to the course start date so you have plenty of time to promote your course and boost enrolments.
Setting the course start date
To set the course start date, go to:
Course Setup > General > Change Class
Update the "course material available date"
Updating the timeline
If you want to edit when a module is to be released (i.e. accessible for students), do so by going to Administer Students > Timeline
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