Embracing the Digital Classroom – our experience with the Digital Learning Institute

Authors: Annabelle Betz, Melissa Sonnino, Joanna Perry, Daniel Heller

Facing Facts, coordinated by CEJI, works to better understand and address hate crime and hate speech through training, research and advocacy. Since 2015, we have embarked on a new journey to make quality training more accessible to our hate crime and hate speech community of practice. This is why we created our eLearning platform Facing Facts Online. With the goal of professionalising and standardising our approach to online learning, we, the Facing Facts Team, decided to follow two courses on Digital Learning and Instructional Design offered by the Digital Learning Institute.

A Personal Perspective: Navigating the Digital Learning / Instructional Design Landscape

From the Facing Facts Team, Melissa and Joanna participated in the Course Professional Diploma in Digital Learning Design, while Daniel and Annabelle joined the Course Professional Certificate in Instructional Design. Select each tab to read on for our individual experience.

How we applied the course insights to our work

1. Starting from a common base
   
   Taking the course together as a team allowed us to use a common language and refer to concepts that everyone was knowledgeable of. This led to more efficient workflows, while ensuring high-quality educational standards.
   
   
2. Standardising the process
   
   We developed the capacity to  provide an  adequate framework for our internal work and for our subject matter experts. For each course, we start with an analysis of programmatic needs. We ask: what is the business case for this course? What are the learning needs that it needs to address? We move on to scoping and analysis, outlining ‘SMART’ learning objectives. We map out the course by using templates that set out the learning assets screen by screen. This not only helps to visualise and assess the course flow, but also contributes to more efficient communication with subject matter experts, instructional designers and digital learning developers.  If you want to contribute to course development as an expert, you can contact us. 
   
   
3. Innovating our courses
   
   Artificial intelligence is a game-changer in the world of online learning. We are strategically taking advantage of the benefits that AI offers, for instance by automating the creation of our learning personas with tools of Generative AI. We also experimented with AI tools that can assist in content creation and we will closely monitor the rapid developments in this area to identify the best applications for our context. For example, Articulate’s recent overview of how AI will be integrated into its digital development tools was particularly interesting for us.
   

Updates: What You Can Expect In Our Upcoming Courses

Navigating within the latest Moodle Version 4.1

Since our platform restyle in February 2023, we had already focused on:

– Making the platform more user-friendly 
– Simplifying the course overview and menu
– Facilitating navigation in the courses
– Improving the accessibility of our courses 

The update to the new Moodle Version 4.1 and the new design of our online platforms makes the navigation and design of the eLearning platform more appealing.

Integrating new tools 

Using a multitude of new tools, we ensure that learners can be guided smoothly through their learning experience. For our latest course co-developed with our member CLAIM on anti-Muslim racism, which took place in October 2023, we implemented Articulate as an authoring tool. From our evaluations, learners were very satisfied with this authoring tool, praising its innovative and dynamic side. We also experimented for both synchronous and asynchronous activities with tools such as Genially, Mentimeter and Miro Board.

Updating self-paced courses by bias

With the knowledge gained in the courses, and the experience of our Digital Learning Developer Rennier, we plan to develop two new modules on antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias based on the two already developed in 2019.

The impact of the course on our elearning strategy

The impact of the course on our team has been transformative. It not only guided us in approaching course development from a strategic angle, but also played a pivotal role in identifying roles and responsibilities within the team. What followed was the creation of a new position – our digital learning developer, Rennier, who joined our team in August. 

We also integrated a new project management tool to facilitate collaboration within our team. Following the template of the course, we built the segments of our project based on the different parts of the instructional design process. This allows us to attribute tasks and ensure that we keep track of revision processes.

Approaching the instructional design process from an analytical perspective has informed our future strategies and the way we approach our work. This has helped us in taking decisions and evaluating constantly for further improvement. For our course, checking our programmatic needs, our learning personas and learning outcomes, allows us to minimise risks and to be more aligned with our learners’ needs, which we place at the centre of our endeavours.

Have your say: what is your experience with our courses?

Join us on this educational journey as we continue to evolve, innovate and empower our learners. Our research findings inform our online learning endeavours. As we are currently researching what supports and motivates our learners best, which we outlined in our policy briefing, our researcher Katalin Józan is conducting interviews with learners that have followed one of our Facing Facts Online courses. Contact us to share your experience and help us improve our training offer.

Would you like to be informed, once we open new courses? You can join our waiting list to be contacted as soon as we open registration. In 2024, we will open two new courses. “Police Discrimination and Hate Crime” and “Understanding and responding to Hate Speech”. Submit your contact details here.