Many educators feel a bit of tension about education research. It’s often not because research reveals something with which educators disagree. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. In many cases research uncovers and champions a truth that educators have known about, or at least felt, for a long time because they’ve watched it unfold in their classrooms.

There’s nothing like preaching to the choir.

What is a bit more rare, but desperately needed, is research that presents an idea and couples it with practical advice on how to implement solutions that account for teachers’ real challenges: lack of time, too many students, bureaucratic requirements, and the like. 

The work to reconcile research and the practical environment never ends.

Educators have been using student-centered learning strategies to improve student learning outcomes for quite some time. (DeBoer, 2002; Norte, 2005; Scott & Buchanan, 1998). Personalised learning, too, has been leveraged by schools and universities to give students what they need when they need it. And while it looks like the verdict may still be out regarding the research substantiating personalised learning, or even clarity on what we mean when we say personalised learning, teachers know that the more opportunity for student-to-teacher interaction, the better a teacher can assess how a student learns. This empowers teachers to craft tailored opportunities for each student to grow.

So why, then, do teachers use student-centered learning activities and create classrooms that make more time for teacher-to-student interaction, but still largely assess student knowledge in traditional ways?

The question is a good one, but implies a more corrosive question: why can’t teachers just do it all? Crafting a thoughtful learning environment, that doesn’t just address each student’s needs but provides equitable and intentional opportunities for development is a demanding task. Assessing it authentically is an equally tricky endeavor.

“Authentic assessment focuses on students using and applying knowledge and skills in real-life settings. Authentic assessment helps students contextualise their learning and to see how real-life conditions or situations, in all their unpredictability, ambiguity and complexity, affect their theoretical knowledge” (UNSW Teaching, 2017).

We’ve known about the power of authentic assessment for some time, and especially that it is contingent upon multiple opportunities for practice and feedback (Grant, 1998). Teachers face a series of challenges when assessing, chiefly, creating summative assessments that can be taken across large groups of students for benchmarking, and then marked efficiently so turnaround is quick.

How much students really learn and the enduring skills they can carry with them often fall by the wayside.

Without downplaying the complexity of designing authentic assessment what are some effective strategies for creating authentic assessments? And how can educators be sure they’re measuring intentionally? While notable progress has been made in the survey sciences when it comes to ensuring questionnaires accurately measure their intended purpose, educators don’t have the luxury of rigorous review and feedback from peers when designing assessment. They can, however, implement some of the following strategies:

Start with the end in mind

Simple as it sounds, the principles of Understanding By Design are as important to assessment design as they are to unit design (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998). Stating learning outcomes and designing assessments that specifically address the learning outcomes will ensure continuity, and more importantly, a focus on student understanding. While it might be tempting to look at learning outcomes created at the beginning of a term and build the assessment to match that list, it is important to examine the extent to which those learning outcomes were in service of learning throughout the course. In addition to clarifying how the assessment is tied to outcomes, taking the time to generate a rubric is a valuable exercise in authenticity.

The act of stating precisely what the assessment ought to measure, and the relative weight of each item will provide waypoints in the design process.

Frontloading the assessment design process with clear outcomes and rubric will take longer and be more arduous, but at least there is a structure for success in place. Creating instructional rubrics, or rubrics that are written in student-friendly language and account for typical student error and misconception, have shown heartening results for improving student writing and support student learning.

Stagger the assessment

While using multiple choice question tests can enhance students’ learning outcomes and their appreciation for the quality of learning experiences, this is most true when the test is for formative purposes (Velan et al., 2008). We’ve all taken multiple choice question tests for summative purposes, especially at the end of a class. While the summative multiple choice question tests can be designed and implemented thoughtfully, it is very difficult to do so.

Taking a divide and conquer approach can alleviate some of the challenges of assessment design and ultimately, better serve students. If you must use multiple-choice questions, let students complete that assessment, auto-marked, and then hold feedback and Q&A sessions to provide students with the opportunity to address their misconceptions and seek guidance.

Ideally, multiple choice questions would measure students’ ability to recall facts and not address higher order thinking.  Instead, after providing feedback, administer a project, essay, simulation, lab, etc. that makes students apply their knowledge. By building a feedback mechanism into the assessment, students will receive a critical piece of support in the learning process. They will be encouraged to engage in important soft skills like asking for help and even providing clarification for other students, which are essential not just for success in school and the workplace, but in making learning stick.

Offer choice

One of the most satisfying experiences in teaching isn’t just watching students “get it” but watching them express ideas and solve problems in a novel manner. The more opportunity students have to express original and creative thinking, the more authentic the learning experience. It’s more rigorous, too.

By designing more than one expository opportunity, application question, scenario problem, business case requiring analysis, etc. students will be able to choose tasks that interest them most. We know that intrinsic motivation is essential for deep learning, but accessing intrinsic motivation can be elusive. Providing choice not only enhances intrinsic motivation, but positively impacts effort, task performance, and perceived competence (Patall, Cooper and Robinson, 2008).

By affording students agency in the assessment experience, students can mitigate their stress and concentrate on sharing their insights.

Better yet, by offering choice over time, teachers can develop choice types and then require students to select from certain choice types. For example, perhaps students are meant to develop divergent thinking and synthesis skills. On the first assessment, allow students to select from long form questions that contain a divergent thinking question and a synthesis skill question. On the second assessment, require that students select a long form question that is of a different type than they have selected previously. By balancing opportunities for choice and nudges for growth, students will experience rigorous learning in a supportive manner.

By respecting teacher time, workload and surfacing relevant research, the education community can make gains in highlighting authentic strategies for teaching and learning, and not just assessing for assessment’s sake.    ← show less

Many educators feel a bit of tension about education research. It’s often not because research reveals something with which educators disagree. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. In many cases research uncovers and champions a truth that educators have known about, or at least felt, for a long time because they’ve watched it unfold in their classrooms.

There’s nothing like preaching to the choir.

What is a bit more rare, but desperately needed, is research that presents an idea and co... read more

We are constantly making fixes and improvements to OpenLearning. We're excited to share our newly revamped Help page and new features to make course design easier. 

1. New Help Page

You can check out our new help page here. We’ve also reorganised the Help sub-pages into popular Help topics and Course Creator guides. 

The four Course Creator Help guides include:

• OpenLearning Basics:
  A set of how-tos for admin course settings, such as roles and permissions, different types of classes, setting up certificates, and more.
• Course Appearance:  
  Provides practical tips for setting up course banner, thumbnails, and course navigation.
• Content & Activities:  
  Includes suggestion on adding meaningful activities, such as setting up learning outcomes, and structuring modules in a logical flow.
• Running Your Course:
  Covers facilitation basics including seeding your course, promoting social learning, tracking student activity and progress and more.

You can also use the Quick Search Feature at the top of the Help page to search for a keyword or contact us directly. We are currently working on expanding the search articles database to provide you with more variety of Help documents. 

2. Gallery Pairing

Driven by feedback from course creators, the Gallery Widget is now automatically added to your page along with every Post widget. 

3. New Group System For All Courses

Last month, we've talked about our new group features that have been introduced to courses created after June 2017. Starting from the 15th of August, all courses that are hosted on OpenLearning will be migrating to a new group system where course creators will have more control over their groups. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how these changes might affect you, please contact us at support@openlearning.com and we will try our best to help you.

Bug Fixes 

This month, we focused on fixing student analytics issues that impacted some courses, such as:

• We received reports that Page History for a few courses was showing only up to 2 hours. This issue has been resolved.
• We’ve made fixes to Student Metrics that went missing from mid-May to mid-July. They have since been adjusted. Student analytics data under Course Setup > Analytics is now available. 
• We fixed the institution portal display to only include students and removed the number of course staff as requested by users.

Keep watching this space for more new and exciting features coming up on OpenLearning! ← show less

We are constantly making fixes and improvements to OpenLearning. We're excited to share our newly revamped Help page and new features to make course design easier.

1. New Help Page

You can check out our new help page here. We’ve also reorganised the Help sub-pages into popular Help topics and Course Creator guides.

The four Course Creator Help guides include:

• OpenLearning Basics:
  A set of how-tos for admin course settings, such as roles and permissions, different types of classes, se... read more

Admit it; we all spend too much time thinking about the perfect activity for our learners. Why not include real-world scenarios in the activities that we design? By including real-world scenarios, learners find the relevance of the course they are taking with their lives. This, in turn, will motivate them to engage themselves and perform their best in the activity. As a learner, I love it when the instructor or facilitator uses real-world examples and provides real tasks for me to do.  I remember when I was taking a course on Instructional Design, my instructor asked us to design and develop a learning product for a client. The interesting part was the client is a real client — an author! We had to transform this client’s children’s storybook into an eBook. My team and I learnt a lot from the experience and I really appreciate my instructor’s effort to help us learn from doing real-world relevant task.

Some of you might think that this is easier said than done. It seems easy to implement when the learning is being conducted face-to-face. However, you may ask, is it possible to implement it fully online such as on the OpenLearning platform? My answer is, it is absolutely possible!

Here are a few tips on how to use real-world scenarios in activity design. Some of them might be more focused on the final activity but you can modify this idea to what is more suitable for your course.

Bring the living world into the online space

When designing an online activity, we could ask the learners to incorporate the world that they live in and share it with their virtual friends. For example, if the course is about Animal Welfare, we could ask them to find stray animals and to feed them. Ask them to do this a few times a week, and record a Vlog (a video blog), recording their experience and feelings after helping the animals. The best part, they can actually share the videos with their friends in the online course and connect with others with similar experiences.

Give authentic tasks

Instead of giving tasks just to check their understanding and skills on a superficial level, why not give them a real task that helps them explore the topic deeper? For example, if for a Graphic Design course, we can ask learners to help create a poster or a banner for a family member. They could help design an advertisement poster for a friend to find a tenant for their house. Or, design a logo for a family member’s new small business. Or even a digital wedding invite for a friend Learners can share their experiences with their friends along with their finished designs. As long as the learners do it for a real event and real people, they will feel proud after they have completed the activity. At the same time, they get to experience what designing for a client's real project might feel like!

Publish learners’ works

Final activity sharing with the real world is a great motivator for students to perform well. Since they are aware that their works will be published and be known to the public, they will put in a lot of effort to do it well. A simple example would be to compile and publish poems written by the whole class of a Poetry course. Learners can share the link to their work  with anyone they want. The more people who know about their works, the better! Such an activity can help spread good messages, such as taking care of the environment, appreciating your loved ones and even healthy self-expression. As teachers and professionals in the field, we can even help them to sell or promote their work with money collected being donated to a charity. It is both course-work and work experience in one!

Real-world evaluation

Another way to connect learning to the real world is by asking an expert in the field to help assess learner's works. Continuing with the poetry course example, we could collaborate with a well-known poet and have them assess and review learners’ poems. This activity could make them feel honoured, knowing that their work has been read and noticed by a notable figure in the industry.

Simple is great

My last tip would be not to underestimate any simple activity. Something as simple as asking the learners to share a screenshot of their phone, showing their must-have apps in their smartphones, could be a great real-world introductory activity in a Computer Programming or Game Design course. Learners could discuss their specific app preferences, likes, and dislikes. It can help them break the ice and connect over shared interests which they can continue exploring throughout the course.

How would you include real-world scenarios in your activity design? Share with us in the comments section below! :) ← show less

Admit it; we all spend too much time thinking about the perfect activity for our learners. Why not include real-world scenarios in the activities that we design? By including real-world scenarios, learners find the relevance of the course they are taking with their lives. This, in turn, will motivate them to engage themselves and perform their best in the activity. As a learner, I love it when the instructor or facilitator uses real-world examples and provides real tasks for me to d... read more

Social Learning Conference

In partnership with The Malaysian e-Learning Council for Public Universities (MEIPTA), we are proud to present the first ever Social Learning Conference that will take place in Sydney, Australia on the 27th & 28th of November. The two-day conference will bring together academics, educators, researchers, instructional designers, ed-tech specialists and government officials to participate in lively discussions, keynotes and interactive workshop in the field of computer supported collaborative learning. The conference will be a good opportunity for highlighting new results and directions of the applied Social Learning theory. If you are interested in participating, early bird tickets are currently on sale for a limited time and you can purchase them here!

OpenLearning won the iAwards

We are very honoured to have participated and won several awards at this year’s Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) iAwards! The iAwards is Australia’s leading awards program for innovation in the digital economy. On the 1st of June, our Rethink Learning & Teaching Series have competed in two core award categories and won the Merit Awards in Community Services Market and Infrastructure & Platform Innovation of the Year. OpenLearning will be representing New South Wales to compete at the National iAwards in Melbourne next month.

SoGal's First Public Event in Australia

We hosted SoGal’s first public event in Sydney! SoGal is a global network of diverse entrepreneurs and investors that have attracted more than 50,000 members from over 20 countries. Having hosted events in countries like China, the US, Indonesia and more, SoGal now aims to foster a network of young ambitious women in Australia. At OpenLearning, we support women to pursue roles in tech, encourage them to discover actionable steps for business ventures and educating others with the aim of improving gender diversity in the workforce.

OpenLearning Malaysia Interviewed Dr. Tengku Fadilah

We sat down with Dr. Tengku Fadilah from Universiti Putra Malaysia to learn more about her thoughts on water safety and her experience teaching on OpenLearning. Dr. Tengku Fadilah is a former Malaysian national swimmer. She has been advocating water safety awareness for over 26 years through her work with Universiti Putra Malaysia and Life Saving Society Malaysia. Watch the interview here.

What’s on our blog this month:

• How to Facilitate and Nurture Diversity in Your Learning Community

It’s never too late to join our popular courses:

• Introduction to Growing a Global Business (Mini MOOC)

OpenLearning in the media:

• UNSW turns to former student Adam Brimo for online learning technology in $100 million makeover

Social Learning Conference

In partnership with The Malaysian e-Learning Council for Public Universities (MEIPTA), we are proud to present the first ever Social Learning Conference that will take place in Sydney, Australia on the 27th & 28th of November. The two-day conference will bring together academics, educators, researchers, instructional designers, ed-tech specialists and government officials to participate in lively discussions, keynotes and interactive workshop in the field o... read more

We have some exciting new features to share with you this month!

Our team has been working on ways to further encourage student collaboration and group work in courses. We have also added a useful new help and support feature for course creators to use while setting up courses!

1. New Group Management System

Our new system makes it easier for a course facilitator or admin to manage groups in a course. You can now manage and set permissions in a single 'Group' section located under your Course Setup tab. For more information, you can watch the tutorial on how to create and manage a group here.

Creating group types

You can now define the types of groups that can exist within your course. By default, every new course comes with a type of group called Study Group.

Managing groups

• Under the Add or Manage Groups section you can manually create groups and bulk allocate students using the Import feature.
• Students are also free to create, join, and manage study groups on their own based on the permissions you set up.
• In addition, you can remove group members or promote members to group admins.

Course administrators can also quick-add students into their groups by uploading a .csv document. For more detailed step-by-step instructions, click here.

Creating pages within groups

Students can now create pages within their group. They can use group pages to collaborate and work together on group tasks.

2. Help Widget Integration

It is now easier for course facilitators to get in touch with us when working on a course. Just by clicking on the little question mark bubble on the left you can now:

• Write to us with any technical support you might need.
• Provide us some valuable feedback or if you have any ideas on how to make the platform better.
• Search through our help document database using relevant keywords.

3. Bug fixes:

• We have also made some tech fixes with text editor when using the Cmd/Ctrl + Z keys temporarily erasing content. This has now been fixed.
• Completion up to a specific percentage can now be set on a video uploaded directly to the video widget.

We have some exciting new features to share with you this month!

Our team has been working on ways to further encourage student collaboration and group work in courses. We have also added a useful new help and support feature for course creators to use while setting up courses!

1. New Group Management System

Our new system makes it easier for a course facilitator or admin to manage groups in a course. You can now manage and set permissions in a single 'Group' section located under yo... read more

“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities." — Stephen R. Covey

Have you ever wondered how it would feel to work and learn in an environment where everyone had the same skills, experiences, strengths /weaknesses, and the same preferences in terms of learning topics and projects? How would it make you feel? How much do you think you could grow, learn new things, and develop new skills?

In today’s blog post, we will seek answers to:

• How the human need to belong and fit in affects the way people behave in a community

• What group dynamics is and what fundamental pillars communities are built on

• How we can apply these key concepts to education and help learners learn and grow through diverse environments

• Strategies and techniques you can implement to better understand diversity and improve your personal and professional skills.

Why people desire to belong and fit in

The sense of belonging and the need to be accepted by the members of a community (work team, learning or study group, family, group of friends, etc.) is one of the core needs people experience. Belongingness not only forms our own identity, values and beliefs but also motivates us to put effort into building positive relationships and to work on our best selves.

When we find a community that we are eager to belong in, we naturally tend to conform with the community set of values, beliefs, behaviours and expectations. The more they match with our own sets, the more confident and accepted we feel in the group. This is a good thing, however, in some instances too much conformity can do more harm than good.

Group dynamics and its impact on community

Conformity sometimes referred to as a groupthink. means that we accept and identify with the social norms of a community we are part of. Members whose behaviour goes against the expected behavioural norms risk conflict or social rejection by the social group. Communities are like living organisms and keeping in mind the dynamics will help you create an inclusive, accepting and unique learning environment.

Promoting diversity as a core community value

The principles above reflect the dynamics and fundamental pillars communities are built on. This includes sense of belongingness, acceptance, social norms, risk/fear of social rejection, common values, behaviours, beliefs and expectations.

Communities are rarely ever homogenous environments, whereby everyone has the same values, experiences, strengths, weaknesses and skills. The question is how communities accept differences and encourage diversity among its members, and how comfortable its members feel to express a different opinion or attitude. There is a large spectrum of communities, from diverse-promoting to conform-expecting.

Imagine you are part of a work community where everyone likes playing chess. You seem to be the only one avoiding it, it’s simply not your thing. In a diverse-promoting community, your other likes and strengths are encouraged, whilst in a conform-expecting workplace, you’ll probably learn to like chess (because it’s expected if you want to fit in). Facilitating and nurturing diversity will help everyone be themselves, inspire others, grow personally and professionally, help your community improve as a whole and achieve its goals more effectively. The benefits are limitless!

How to facilitate and nurture diversity in a learning community

Most often, diversity is linked to cultural differences and similarities. However, diversity is much more complex than that. In a learning environment, be it face-to-face or online, you might experience a wide range of differences between students. These may include unique personalities, age, language capabilities, previous experiences, communication styles, aspirations and ambitions, motivations and drivers, expectations, strengths and weaknesses, cultural background, attitudes and mindsets, stress resistance and coping mechanisms, the need to succeed and lead, etc. You have an idea. 

“The real skill of a facilitator and a teacher is to accept differences and help every student in a learning community reach their potential to the fullest.”

To help you begin nurturing more diverse learning communities, we’ve prepared 5 winning strategies and techniques you can apply to face-to-face, blended and/or purely online learning facilitation.

5 Winning strategies and techniques for facilitators and teachers

1. Promote fairness, equity and provide equal opportunities to learn and grow

Promoting fairness, equity and providing equal opportunities to learn and grow for each student in your learning community is a fundamental skill if you want to succeed in creating diverse and inclusive learning communities. 

You might experience different personalities in your learning community, from strongly introverted to greatly extroverted students. I experienced it as a teacher too and one day, I realised how easy it was to overlook introverted students and focus the attention on extroverts who felt more confident to speak up, ask thought-provoking questions, challenge other students and express their opinions and thoughts loudly. Reflecting on my own teaching practices and on students’ needs helped me to create a much more inclusive learning community.

What could have happened if I had not changed the course of action? Introverted students may have perceived extraversion as being a desired social norm and they might have tried to conform and become extraverted in nature. This goal is almost impossible and would have most likely, lead to students  experiencing a sense of  failure and discomfort.

Promoting diversity in this particular learning environment means that introverted and extroverted students are given equal opportunities to learn and grow. Make sure that their voices are listened to equally so everybody feels accepted, involved respected.

Powerful techniques and strategies you could consider and implement are mentoring, pairing up students, group activities, guiding students to develop better social and communication skills, empathy, self-awareness and social awareness, reflecting on social situations you and students experience in learning, using drama and literature to solve social paradigms, and enhance two-way communication within your community of learners.

Creating a non-judgemental and respectful learning environment

This is a good space to mention the importance of creating a non-judgemental learning environment. Diversity, in essence, means accepting differences and perceiving them as community strengths rather than weaknesses. Only in a non-judgemental and respectful community, students can feel confident to express and accept their differences in opinions, likes and dislikes, attitudes, values and behaviours.

How can you create a non-judgmental and respectful learning environment? The most effective techniques and strategies you might like to put into practice are building rapport with students, being respectful towards students and role modelling behaviour, setting the tone, setting positive communication flow between you and students and being empathetic.

2. Learn and upskill yourself/your team of facilitators

Every relationship requires work, effort, time and determination. If you want to build strong, respectful and positive relationships with your students, it will require you to work on it continuously. The time and effort you invest will lead to great returns. 

After identifying skills you’d like to improve, you might like to join a short online course, face-to-face course, attend an evening workshop, meet with an expert doing a presentation, your options are infinite!

3. Get in touch with people from different cultural backgrounds

Have you ever experienced talking with a person from a different cultural background, where you tried to convince them that your arguments and ideas were correct? In many cases, most of us have been in this position.

If you live in a culturally diverse community, don’t be shy to reach out.  The more you talk to people from different countries, the more you’ll be able to understand how they see the world, you’ll learn to look at things from different perspectives and truly understand what they’re trying to say to you. Most importantly, travelling will help you accept different values, behaviour, beliefs and expectations and see them as important as your own.

If you’re not surrounded by people with different backgrounds, you can benefit from travelling. At first sight, this might seem a bit odd but travelling is one of the best things you can do if you want to broaden your horizons and open your mind to different things in life that you simply couldn’t experience in your everyday life.

4. Overcome your own stereotypes and biases

Stereotypes and biases can be huge drawbacks in creating a diverse and inclusive learning community. Think about one common stereotype and how it affects the way you perceive it. Got it? Increasing self-awareness of stereotypes and biases in everyday situations can help you overcome them and be more open to new things in life. In the end, your attitudes and the way you look at differences, will be projected into the learning community and have a significant impact on your students.

5. Create a collaborative and sharing space to learn

The last strategy encapsulates everything we discussed so far. Creating a collaborative sharing space to learn will help students become more confident and connected learners. Giving them space to express their true selves, what they like and dislike or what their thoughts are, will encourage them to share not only what they learn but also who they are.

An online learning community is a good place to create activities that encourage students to share what relates to their own lives, experiences, passions or knowledge. You might like to ask for a feedback or learning reflections so your students will know that their voice matters to you.

What are your thoughts on diversity in learning community? Share with us in the comments below! ← show less

“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities." — Stephen R. Covey

Have you ever wondered how it would feel to work and learn in an environment where everyone had the same skills, experiences, strengths /weaknesses, and the same preferences in terms of learning topics and projects? How would it make you feel? How much do you think you could grow, learn new things, and develop new skills?

In today’s blog post, we will seek answers to:

• How the human need to belong and fit in aff... read more

For this month’s Educator Profile, we sat down with Dr. Tengku Fadilah from Universiti Putra Malaysia to learn more about her thoughts on water safety and her experience teaching on OpenLearning.

Dr. Tengku Fadilah is a former Malaysian national swimmer. She has been advocating water safety awareness for over 26 years through her work with Universiti Putra Malaysia and Life Saving Society Malaysia.

Her mission is to go beyond teaching people how to swim to educating the public about the risks and safety involved with and around water. She is now going online to teach more people about how to be water safe. Here’s what she had to share:

What are your hopes for the course as it transitions online?

I hope that I can penetrate to places where they don’t have access to practical training in water. For example in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia or places like that, but even they have oasis there and they have paddy fields, they have swamps there, they could still be water safe.

Tell us your experience in designing an interactive online course?

It has been positive all the way. I feel like this is the new way to reach out to students nowadays. It’s quick, it’s interactive and you get unexpected pleasures by meeting new friends online.

How does the online experience compare to conventional methods?

Students get to share and they get to suggest ideas -- and then they start to think critically. We now know that youngsters are all very incline to learn and this is the fastest way, by sharing.

Dr. Tengku Fadilah has been working at the Sports Studies Department, Faculty of Education Studies since 1995. She is also a former national swimmer for Malaysia in the early 80s herself and is still actively participating in National Masters Swimming Competition. In 2004, her expertise lands her the post of Technical Reference Expert to set up the National Fitness Council, and also the Expert Consultant for the Ministry of Youth and Sports for the research on sports associations in Malaysia. She was also appointed by the Minister of Youth and Sports as a member of the Board of Directors of National Instructor Board of Malaysia. Dr. Tengku Fadilah is also the Vice President of Malaysia's Life Saving Society for two straight terms. In July 2005, she wrote the book 'Parental Guide to Water Safety' as a manifestation of her grave concern on the issues of drowning among children. ← show less

For this month’s Educator Profile, we sat down with Dr. Tengku Fadilah from Universiti Putra Malaysia to learn more about her thoughts on water safety and her experience teaching on OpenLearning.

Dr. Tengku Fadilah is a former Malaysian national swimmer. She has been advocating water safety awareness for over 26 years through her work with Universiti Putra Malaysia and Life Saving Society Malaysia.

Her mission is to go beyond teaching people how to swim to educating the public about ... read more

At OpenLearning, we are always working tirelessly to make the platform more efficient and easy-to-use for both educators and students. Our recent platform improvements are focused on advanced settings course designers can use for their courses or institutions.

1. Institution visibility settings

Good news for all institutions on OpenLearning! As an admin, you can now turn your institution ‘Private’ or ‘Public’ from your Institution Settings. To display your institution’s marketing or promotional pages to members (people you invited to the course), select the ‘Private’ setting. If you wish to display marketing promotion pages to anyone with the link to the page, select the ‘Public’  setting. To change the settings, go to “Institution Marketing” and then press “General” to access this setting.

2. Marking in reports

As an assessor, you can now add negative adjustments to student reports to denote things like late submissions.

3. Fixes to embedded media

We’ve made stability fixes to embedded media on the platform. If you haven’t yet embedded any media in your course, it’s a great time to do so! You can add news articles, opinion pieces, and engaging videos in your course to support your content and make it more interesting and relatable.

What's next on OpenLearning

You can look forward to big changes around group allocation, data exports and overall site performance improvements in the near future! ← show less

At OpenLearning, we are always working tirelessly to make the platform more efficient and easy-to-use for both educators and students. Our recent platform improvements are focused on advanced settings course designers can use for their courses or institutions.

1. Institution visibility settings

Good news for all institutions on OpenLearning! As an admin, you can now turn your institution ‘Private’ or ‘Public’ from your Institution Settings. To display your institution’s marketing or ... read more

ACYPI Sydney's Young Entrepreneurs Forum at OpenLearning

Back for the third year, OpenLearning was proud to host the Australia-China Young Professional Initiative (ACYPI) for their annual Young Entrepreneurs Forum event last week! This year’s panel boasted an impressive line-up of entrepreneurs, investors and coaches from HelloFresh, Airtasker, BMY Group and Investible.

SoGal First Meetup in Australia

We proudly partnered with SoGal to host their very first Australian event! SoGal is a global network of diverse entrepreneurs and investors that have attracted more than 50,000 members from over 20 countries. Having hosted events in countries like China, the US, Indonesia and more, SoGal now aims to foster a network of young ambitious women in Australia. The event focused on inspiring women to pursue roles in tech, discover actionable steps for their business ventures, meet role models in technology and entrepreneurship, and educate others with the aim of improving gender diversity in the workforce.

Adam Brimo Begins Term as CEO@Faculty for UiTM

Our CEO and Co-Founder Adam Brimo has been appointed as the new CEO @ Faculty for MARA University of Technology (UiTM) following his previous stint at Sultan Idris Education University (UPSI). CEO@Faculty is an industry-academia collaboration introduced with the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 to reduce the mismatch in supply and demand between employers and fresh graduates. Adam spoke to the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry about Heutagogy and he will be visiting more UiTM campuses for more talks.

OpenLearning as University of Science, Malaysia Official MOOC Platform

We are honoured to announce our latest formal partnership with the University of Science, Malaysia (USM). USM has already created 6 MOOCs on OpenLearning since joining our platform in 2015. We are looking forward to continue working with the passionate educators at USM, to bring Malaysian higher education into the global arena. USM is now planning to develop 12 more MOOCs that will be launched on OpenLearning this year! 

What’s on our blog this month:

• Why 'Voice and Choice' Matter To Your Learning Design & Teaching Practice

It’s never too late to join our popular courses:

• Active Learning: from Delivery Towards Facilitation

OpenLearning in the media:

• Our CEO and Co-Founder Adam Brimo is featured as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia

ACYPI Sydney's Young Entrepreneurs Forum at OpenLearning

Back for the third year, OpenLearning was proud to host the Australia-China Young Professional Initiative (ACYPI) for their annual Young Entrepreneurs Forum event last week! This year’s panel boasted an impressive line-up of entrepreneurs, investors and coaches from HelloFresh, Airtasker, BMY Group and Investible.

SoGal First Meetup in Australia

We proudly partnered with SoGal to host their very first Australian event! SoGal is... read more

In an era of educational transformation, as we shift from traditional to more personalised teaching and learning approaches, the concept of voice and choice can significantly improve the way we teach, learn, express ourselves and experience the world around us.

The concept of voice and choice, in essence, emphasises the importance of encouraging students to speak and discuss, collaborate, share, and most importantly, make their own decisions and regulate the process of their own learning. 

The concept is not a stand-alone approach but rather a method which can be easily implemented into any learning environment, including face-to-face, blended and online learning.

“In education, student voice refers to the values, opinions, beliefs, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds of individual students and groups of students in a school, and to instructional approaches and techniques that are based on student choices, interests, passions, and ambitions.” (The Glossary of Education Reform)

What does voice and choice have to do with motivation?

You might ask: “What does voice and choice have to do with intrinsic motivation?” 

Let us give you a simple example.

Imagine that you’ve enrolled in a course ‘Yo hablo Español’. You are excited and enter the course highly motivated to learn Spanish. You envision the course will include role plays,reading and discussing Spanish blogs and news articles with other students, watching Spanish news or TV shows, joining Spanish and Latin meetups and much more! 

However, soon you find out the classes consist of a set of exercises in a Learner’s book, that only involves listening to short recordings and drilling into new vocabulary. By the end of the course, you might have learned how to speak Spanish on a sufficient level but the chances of you enjoying your learning process are quite low. This is in contrast to the amount of learning and enjoyment you could have had from a course that implemented the voice and choice concept.  

As a result, you might drop out of the course or you might keep learning because you already invested in it,  made a commitment, or may have a pay rise at work. 

Now you have an idea how easily intrinsic motivation can be replaced by extrinsic motivators. 

This is similar to what often happens in a restrictive learning environment. 

The aim of high-quality education should be stimulating and maintaining student’s intrinsic motivation to learn by listening to their needs, opinions, giving them opportunities to decide and regulate their learning while letting them experience positive emotions during their learning and reflection. 

Emotions we experience during learning affect our future attitudes towards learning. 

In an era of educational transformation, as we shift from traditional to more personalised teaching and learning approaches, the concept of voice and choice can significantly improve the way we teach, learn, express ourselves and experience the world around us.

The concept of voice and choice, in essence, emphasises the importance of encouraging students to speak and discuss, collaborate, share, and most importantly, make their own decisions and regulate the process of their own lea... read more