 Hello, I'm very happy to be here, very excited to be joining fellow Moodlers as we talk about one of the things that ties us, it connects us and today we're going to be talking about reflecting innovation in Moodle course design. I'm just going to share some ideas, but you're also going to find me asking a whole bunch more questions than I may be providing answers for because one of the core fundamental things I believe in is that the knowledge and wisdom, especially at Moodle Moods, is often within the room and so having an opportunity to have dialogue with each other is really important. So part of this next bit of time that we have together is going to be having a chance to connect. So if you're sitting at a table by yourself at some point I might just ask you to consider moving to be able to have that dialogue in that important time together. One of the things that you'll need by the end is just one of those pads of paper that are on many of the tables if you need one. Please just let me know before we need them at the very end. I'll be sure that you get one. So today we're looking at different entry points to consider Moodle course design in an innovative way. And it doesn't seem to matter if you're in workforce, if you're in higher education or if you're in K to 12 education, innovation shows up. It shows up in the learning plans, the district reports. It shows up in some of the institution plans. So innovation is a really key thing. So we're going to be talking quite a bit about that. But before I get going too far I just thought I would give some context. And this first slide is about perspective. And so I come from a Canadian perspective. I live in Calgary, Alberta in Canada right along the Rocky Mountains. So to go from cold winter weather to here has been absolutely lovely. I'm fifth generation educator. So my great-great-grandmother was a teacher. My great-grandfather was a school trustee. My great-grandmother, my mom, we were all teachers. So I'm fifth generation educator. So teaching and learning has been at our separate table conversations for a very long time. When I think about education, I think about being a parent. I have three children, I have three girls, and I also have a granddaughter. And so welcoming a new generation and starting to think about what's education going to look like for her children and her grandchildren. And when I think about education, I also think about being a teacher. I taught junior high and high school. I think about my students and what my role was as a teacher to support their success. In whatever way that success looked like for them. When I think about education, I also think of my experiences. I had the opportunity to develop and design a provincial First Nations Métis and Inuit professional learning project. So looking to see how can we help support, you know, 44,000 teachers, 8,000 school system leaders as well as superintendents. And then finally, experiences, what is it like designing a graduate school program within one specific subject area? What does that look like when you're trying to create something where there's nothing? And some of you might know what that experience looks like if you've ever looked at a blank Moodle page or a blank Moodle course. And so some of the things that I've been able to figure out or some of the questions that I've been able to ask, the people who have the answers, I'm going to share some of those with you today, because again, I truly believe a lot of that wisdom and knowledge is within the rooms. So this slide here is about spaces. And this is from about an hour and a half from where I live. And it's called the Valley of the Ten Peaks. And it's a sacred site. It's a gathering area for a lot of indigenous people from their territories around where this is. And I think about Moodle Moods and how important it is to have these gathering spaces and how much I've really enjoyed being able to come here to Mumbai. I really appreciate Sandeep was able to take us out and introduce me to this country and just to be able to see community members. It was just a wonderful experience. So I'm really happy to be here today. And thank you for the warm welcome. When I look at this picture, I think about educators and I think about the resilience of educators. And I think about that rock and that foundation and I think about Moodle. And then in the background, you can see all of the trees. You can see that forest and that's like the Moodle community. Even today, I don't know how many times somebody's had a question or somebody has brought something forward to the group. And there are hands up, so many answers, so many replies, so much support within that community. And I think that's really special and really unique out of all of the different kinds of conferences and education that I've gone to. There's nothing like a Moodle Moodle to be able to gather. This is about the journey. So I'm quite new, if Tom was saying I just joined a few months ago to the Moodle HQ team. And so I constantly feel like I'm one of those teachers that just knows a little bit about something. There's always something more to learn. I'm definitely on that learning journey. I'm not the person who has all the answers. But I'm learning a lot and some of the things that just absolutely fascinate me about the Moodle is how many different ways it can be adapted. And I'm hoping that no matter what your role is here, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a system leader, whether you come from university or from the workforce, that some of the things and some of the processes that we're going to share, you'll be able to relate it to your personal situation. And this is about gathering. This is a little squirrel from very close to where I was born, where my family comes from. And so I'm hoping that throughout your conversations that you'll be able to gather some little bits that you can bring back to your education community. And also, we're looking to gather. We're gathering feedback, especially as we move forward with our Learn Moodle program. And your feedback is really important because I think when we look at education, when we look at the legacy of education, and we ask the question, whose voice is it and whose voice is missing? And often it's people who are the learners in a program that don't have a voice. So we're going to definitely want to get some of your feedback as well. But before we get going, I'm just going to introduce some of the inquiry process. And I'm going to start off with this question. And I'm going to ask you to have a table conversation about the answer to this question. When you are in your table conversations, there isn't going to be a right answer. But one thing that you can do is you can approach it and thinking, how can I provide the voice for everyone at the table to be able to share your opinions, to be able to think about something perhaps in a different way, to maybe reconsider your perspective? So here's the question. Does taking pictures make me a photographer? So now you can talk about this at your table. We'll give about three to four minutes for this. I absolutely love this question. And if ever you attend another session where I'm presenting, I might use the same question. But I can almost guarantee you'll have a different conversation because it's about who's in the group and who's in that dialogue. Some of the things that often come up, I'll hear people ask. Well, it depends if you're getting paid. Well, it depends if you're getting paid, if it's how you're making money. That's one of the common things that come up. Another one is, well, what's your certification? Like, you know, who else recognizes you as a photographer? What are some of the other... Well, there's a whole bunch. But there are some key things that usually come up. I use this question to talk about inquiry and to talk about dialogue. And also to talk about the ability to share those perspectives. And I think that's one of the amazing things about Moodle, is that there's so many different ways where you can have a chance to have that voice and to learn from the other people within the group. And so the fundamental kind of foundation to this question is, how does what you do relate to who you are? So it's connected to that identity. And so I think one of the most important things we can say is, you know, I don't need you to agree with me. It took me a long time of taking pictures in order for me to start to view myself and to connect my identity to being a photographer. Taking photographs is now how... And sharing photographs is part of how I communicate, how I make sense of things and the relationships that I draw to things. And so, you know, as we're looking through this, I really want you to think about yourself as an educator and how does what you do as an educator impact who you are and your professional learning. Because I think that's creating that space for professional learning for your own professional growth that's only attached to your identity and how you view yourself and your role in your community is really important. And I know in busy lives and busy professions, that can be difficult to do. In the next few minutes, I want you to kind of push pause and take some time to be able to do that to explore some of these questions. So earlier, there was a question about research. So the relational model for teaching and learning is my thesis. And it has really informed a lot of the work that we do. You'll be seeing some questions and some background that relate directly to the model. And, you know, when I was listening to Tom speak, I did lean over to Martin and go, yeah, that's pretty cool. Like, these are ideas and concepts that came largely from being able to work with communities, Moodle included. And it's nice to be able to share them with you. But what's really important is the process. Because when you think about, you know, the 100 million users of Moodle and how education is connected literally around the world, what are some of the processes that we can engage in that are the same, no matter what area, what context that you're in from. So I'm going to be sharing some of these. This model just serves as a qualitative narrative approach to reporting achievement. For the most part, in education, often achievement is how a student does on an exam. And they're using that as a measure for the educator or the teacher. So many things that impact student success that just how students do on exam isn't the full story. And it doesn't always give the kind of information that an educator can use to improve the next time they teach the program. So these next few steps, these next few slides are just going to be a really quick introduction to some of the phases that we use within the Learn Moodle program so that we can get that information, we can get that data to help improve and to continually look at ourselves as learners as well. We can learn from our mistakes and learn from our successes and create better programming most importantly for our students. So one of the questions we look at what makes something innovative in a Moodle course. So we go back to that root word of innovation. What does innovation and creativity look like? And sometimes that change management from going from what you've always done into something that is transformational is a really difficult process. So we've introduced some steps and some phases that can really help that process along in that striving to be an innovative educator and to also look at course design in an innovative way. When we're looking at what makes a Moodle course work we're looking about that responsiveness and Tom mentioned that earlier as well. How can we be responsive to our students' needs? How can we be responsive to their feedback? If they're letting us know you know what, if we could only change one thing to this course this is what we would do. Sometimes it's the simplest of things that our minds couldn't think of. We needed to actually hear from the students because that's often the voice that's missing. And so also responsive to programming. When we look at how it's empowering different than delegating. When you even look at yourself and think you know, when was a time I was delegated something? You know often people's response you just see some arms crossed and some head turning. I remember I was delegated that. And it's a very different response to you know when you felt empowered to do something and you were able to take that initiative and that intrinsic desire to be able to really contribute something. So when you have a Moodle mission to empowering educators to improve our world this really connects. What does empowerment look like? And one thing that I've found is that if somebody has access to tools and resources to support their learning that's where that empowerment comes from. That's where they start to feel okay I have the resources and tools that I need and that's really what we're hoping that we can help support with the Learn Moodle program. How is giving different than contributing? When we look at all of the opportunities that we have to connect at a Moodle Mood I think this is really important as well because you're connecting with the content but then you're also connecting with each other and other educators. And sometimes when we have a chance to share our learning and our experiences it might not be the most successful thing it might be something that you tried and you know oh my goodness I will never try that again I will approach it in a completely different way. But there's a lot of opportunity where we can learn from that if we're prepared to share some of our learnings along the way. When we start looking at what have you already achieved it provides that strength based approach to be able to move forward with. I know sometimes you're starting with a long list of deficits and it's hard to be able to motivate yourself to move forward if we start to look to see what have we already done what have we accomplished with student learning. When we take that appreciative inquiry approach it gives us a really strong foundation especially when we start considering what are you prepared to share. So you've heard about Learn Moodle you're hearing about MoodleNet what does it mean when we have a systemic way we have a set process that we can share some of the things that have really worked for us that's where we can start to tie in some mentorship opportunities as well. When we're looking at what are you prepared to share I think it's also really important to share the processes that you went through and the products. So today a lot of this conversation is about the process piece. What are some steps that you can take so that you can help somebody else take those same similar steps in their journey. When we're talking about products do you have some templates do you have an example do you have exemplars that you're prepared to share so that I could just have a look sometimes that's all you need it's like a diving board you just need that launch that extra little jump to get moving and bring those rich ideas into your own teaching and learning. When you have a bank of what you've already done it's easier to look ahead and think about what are we going to focus on where do you want your professional learning to go that's an important phase because then you're starting with a context of where you're going and what you're going to do next. So the next little bit we're going to talk about designing professional learning and we're going to go through a series of questions. So if we think about the phases the first phase is asking those questions what does innovation look like what does it mean when we're successfully responding to our student needs do people feel they have the agency and they feel empowered to be able to change or to transform their teaching practices what does it mean when we're engaged to the content and with each other so if we start to have that vision of success we have a bank of resources and an inventory of what we've already done we know what we're going to focus on then we get into the teaching and learning aspect and I think this is where we have the chance what does it look like when we have student voice so what would it look like if we told our students at the end of this course we're going to ask four questions and I want you to start thinking about this from the student perspective now as a student in any of the courses that are involved in your institutions what if they knew on the very first day that at the end they had the chance to say you know how are you best able to demonstrate creativity and they were able to say you know I thought this was a chance where I really you know got to express myself in a way I haven't been able to before there was an open-ended question in a forum I could ask anything I could contribute anything I could talk to anybody in my class even though we're countries apart another question how are your learning needs best supported wouldn't that be a valuable input to have from our students to find out what do they think success is, what really worked well for them or how about what were the critical moments when you best demonstrated your understanding of the content and skills so this is where we're starting to think about course design and maybe some of the departures so an example would be when I taught high school sometimes there were questions that I just needed a brief response and typically I would have just asked for a paragraph please submit a paragraph or 250 words and upload it and you know, I'll grade that and get that back to you but what if writing was an obstacle what if they were able to really explain something a lot better so what I actually had them do is I had them phone me they phoned my school telephone number and the way that our voicemail messages went it went right to my email and I said just keep pushing you know erase and re-record until you're happy with your answer and then just push pound and I'll have your response and then I have an electronic copy where you have demonstrated your achievement so we're starting to think about different ways how can you start gathering evidence and what are the ways that your students can best demonstrate their understanding so if they have the chance to respond to that I think that also will give an educator a really rich collection of what's working well in the class and finally what if every student knew that at the end they were going to tell you when they felt most profoundly connected with each other with the content and with other educators and sometimes it can be the most unexpected thing oh well it was somebody's there was a special event in someone's in the class and so we just took an extra time at lunch or we started acknowledging everybody's birthdays and it was just you know something that a teacher might have done that they wouldn't have expected would have such an impact but when the student has a chance to have that voice it's really exciting to see what can come out of that so if we start thinking about previewing the feedback tool the students know at the very first day they're going to have the chance to report back on this then what that can serve is a really rich data for the educator to be able to use this as a reporting tool so they can look at all of the student feedback and say in my teaching and learning this is when I've really demonstrated creativity this is what I've heard from my students and I can confidently say this is how I've been able to demonstrate that in my program or this is when I best met my learning needs of my students and I was most responsive this is how my students really felt that they had a chance or maybe I took a risk so early in some of the presentations that was some of the things that came out well we've always done things in a certain way what if there's a way we can gather feedback when we take a risk to know did that work out did we have that did we get it right so this is one of the things that we can be doing and finally sometimes when something happens unexpectedly maybe it's in a form maybe the conversation really grew into this great rich resource space where students kept going back to that and they kept commenting that this actually had a huge impact on their learning and their understanding in the course this is an example that a professor or a teacher or a facilitator could use as evidence that this was really successful in my practice that is beyond how a student does you know on a set project or a set exam so knowing that students are going to have the chance to have that feedback and the facilitator or instructor is going to be able to gather that put that together and have some key findings on their success what if we take it to the next step and we start thinking about this in terms of planning so in my planning these are how the I'm designing my course so that I can really demonstrate that I'm being really creative and innovative this is what it looks like in my planning this is what it's going to look like in my course the second question how are you best planning to support the diversity of learning needs and the participants this is where you could say it could be as simple as I'm using the ADDO editor making sure that everything is is going to be able to be read by a screen reader that's how I'm making sure that I'm responding to the diverse learning needs in my group maybe under agency what opportunities are you planning for for participants to demonstrate their creativity and innovation and their achievement and their understanding let's say you know there's an instructor really putting themselves out there they're taking that risk and there's somebody maybe there's an instructional support person who can take a look at this planning sheet and go oh maybe we need to think about these things so if you've been that person where you've gone through the planning and you see something that just puts up a little bit of a red flag and you know that's something that could really quickly escalate and out work well this is where this planning document is also a wonderful entry point for those people to come in instructional support to come in or maybe it's also a time where that mentoring can come in where you see somebody who's really trying to do something differently and you've tried that before and you know oh yeah we just need to add this or have you tried this or if you actually organize your course you can get to exactly what you're intending to do in this section and then finally how are you planning to provide opportunities for participants to connect and so sometimes when you've designed a course and you get to this question you realize oh I haven't I've provided all the resources I have all of the assignments I have all my grading I haven't done this what does that look like and so you can also see some of the entry points when Thomas talking about all of the different patterns in the middle courses this is where this can start to really support building that really strong curricular program but I've been talking for a few minutes now and we need to get back to our table dialogues so on your tables you have half sheets and there are these four questions that are on the slides in case you can't see them what I want you to do is I want you to you know choose a question that really resonates with you and maybe you have an idea that worked really really well for you that addresses one of these questions or maybe there's something that you were thinking about as I was going through them this is your chance to share those with your group so in your planning what do you think are some of your most successful practices that address one of these four areas of innovation, responsiveness, agency and engagement and then at the end we'll just have a large group dialogue if you have something that really you thought that we should share as a group I want to save some time at the end to be able to do that so let's take about 10 minutes until quarter after 5 and to go through these questions any questions about what we're doing the next 10 minutes so sharing your successes and having that conversation with your table mates so thank you for letting me join in on some of your conversations as I walked around it was funny that very first question does taking pictures make me a photographer the noise level was up there there was all these opinions and ideas and conversations and now we get back to work and it's about education well it was a little quieter little bit quieter and then slowly the conversation started and I heard some incredible things happening so we have some microphones if there's a piece of your conversation that you'd like to share with a large group we're just going to take about 5-10 minutes to capture some of those does anyone have anything they'd like to respond to with some of the questions I mean to say for the planning I have to discuss this same framework I used it for my own course where the physics students are struggling for making the understanding of circuit diagram and connections for class 9 and 10 students so I downloaded the simulator of circuit the simulator and just integrated with the module and when they logged in I had given the assignments to have the virtual connectivity so I demonstrated how the circuit can work and they started thinking of differently and they added all the tools taking registers and all all combinations they started working on and they come with the new ideas that series and parallel even though I have not taught them they came across how do we get the series connection after comfortable zone I took them to the real physics lab and then I started giving the connections then they started struggling some wires they are not keeping tight somewhere the key is not tight so there is a difference between the virtual reality and when we are working on and they slowly come to know that once we start working on once we get concept clarity then we can get into the real world so that is what I practice and I am successful in giving such type of education to my children and now they are very comfortable with the circuit these are connections that is what I did it in my area Thank you That's a wonderful example of a couple of things that creativity and innovation piece because sometimes you just need that spark and this is where the students had that time and dialogue to really think about what does creativity look like but then also to be able to connect with each other and get that playfulness and really get engaged in the content to be able to transfer that learning to a new situation so thank you very much wouldn't that be great to be able to start capturing some of these things not only in reporting but to use ideas that we can apply in our own planning or anything else I like I mentioned earlier we teach creativity specifically related to advertising and I come with an advertising agency background so I know what the creative hot shop looks like and feels like on a daily basis and there is an intense competition a lot of activities are very secretive you know so invariably what happens is if a team is working on a project they come up and show it to the creative director before go back and do it again or somebody else is already working on this why are you wasting your time there is a lot of back and forth and a lot of heartache and a lot of heartbreaks when we do the same thing in a classroom invariably it reflects the same process invariably small groups of students come up with work and then you have to reject it or ask them to change it I put a model into the process and the whole thing has now become so transparent that everybody knows what everybody is working on so there is no duplication there is no chance of stealing there is no method of saying I put it up first because there is time stamp on it so to that extent blended learning for us works beautifully using the available features nothing innovative we have not created any new features but we have used the features I would say cleverly yes I agree and what a great way to really role model what those little values look like when we are respecting each other's ideas we are open and we are being transparent in the learning that we are doing and so yes thank you very much for sharing that experience is there one more first of all congratulations for using the engagement part of the guiding element in innovation in this course or workshop there you are able to engage all of us in this large group otherwise it happens routinely that in large group we are not able to engage and do not have a bi-directional discussion and secondly we discuss in our table regarding innovation for learning we can ask them to prepare some videos or we can ask them to prepare a crosswords for particular topic and in that way they will prepare that and they will also remember and it will also open their thinking process yes and sometimes it is trying to transfer what would you do in person if you are in a blended learning environment like in Moodle course design one of the things I like thinking about is what if we could bring project based learning what if we all had a shared activity we went through an experiential game or a simulation of some sort and then collectively tried to think of what would that look like in Moodle how would we do the same experience and transfer it into a blended or an online learning so I think there is a lot of opportunity and we are really hoping that through the learn Moodle program we will be able to capture some of those things so thank you very much we spent a lot of time thinking about how can we empower educators and I also like to think about empowering educators as a title we are empowering educators where we are trying to find ways through our teaching and learning to help other educators do the same thing in their own education environments so this is the part where when we had the squirrel and the squirrel was gathering this is where we want to gather some of your feedback and some of your ideas and so if you could grab one of those line sheets of paper that are on your tables and I am going to ask you three questions and this is feedback that we will collect at the end and they are very very easy well there are simplistic questions with complex answers here is our first question what if you had access to any resource to support your professional learning about Moodle what would that one resource be so this is a what if question so we are inviting you to imagine with us as we are going through these stages of designing the learn Moodle program what if you had one resource you know sometimes if you ask a group of grade 7s if you could have one resource what would it be it would be to leave my pen in class so that it is there the next day something that I wouldn't have thought about as a teacher who handed out however many pens in any given school year but oh a place to just keep okay I can do that so now we are talking about learn Moodle what if so that will be the first question so even if you just want to write what if what if to any resource what would that be second question if only if only if only you had the opportunity to design your own professional learning about Moodle what would that opportunity include so it's about the resources so the tools the products but it's also about the the process please so what would you want those learning opportunities to look like what's important to you what are some aspects that you know work really well how do you want that to look in learn Moodle so the what if that's any resource if only if there's one aspect about the professional learning that you would really really like and then finally this is the last piece what what has been most significant so what are some things that maybe sparked your thinking today or maybe you went through a process that you want to bring back to your school communities maybe you're a system leader and maybe all of a sudden you have an idea oh okay if we go through what are you doing in your planning what was the feedback from your students how are you changing it next time maybe this is introducing a new way that you'd like to introduce to a cohort if you want to share that so what if if only and then your most significant what were your most significant things and just if you could draw a couple of quick things down I'll give you about four minutes just to respond to those and you know finish your your slips of paper will be at the door collecting them but we do have another activity that's coming up right next and Tom will be introducing that and I really look forward to sharing some more ideas and information tomorrow morning for the keynote so thank you very much