In the Spring of 2021 we shared news of a Virtual Learning Strategy (VLS) funding program by the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities, to expand and enrich learning through development of online course content, modules and open textbooks.
As these projects come to a close we wished to highlight a few examples of the work to come out of this initiative. Our colleagues in the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program created the Developing Your Teaching Dossier series; a four-module series for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows exploring strategies to reflect on their teaching and develop their teaching dossier. The series is comprised of four 60-minute self-paced modules:
- Module 1: Reflecting on Your Teaching Experience: An Introduction to Teaching Dossiers
- Module 2: Articulating Your Teaching Values and Practices: Developing Your Statement of Teaching Philosophy
- Module 3: Connecting Narratives and Evidence: Developing Components of Your Teaching Dossier
- Module 4: Looking Ahead: Telling New Stories About Our Teaching Experiences
The resource was co-developed with four other institutional partners—Ryerson (X) University, University of Waterloo, University of Windsor, and Western University. Of importance in this highly collaborative approach was the inclusion of graduate student and postdoctoral fellow perspectives–they became the protagonists, guides, storytellers, and mentors on this journey of reflective practice.
The team leveraged H5P, a relatively new elearning technology, in developing the interactive learning objects. Speaking with one of the project leads, Mike Kasprzak notes:
“”eCampusOntario’s H5P Studio offered the technological framing for our story about teaching dossiers. By providing a range of content types, it allowed us to design and develop an engaging, accessible and interactive learning experience for diverse users. Most importantly, it afforded a high degree of customization to anyone trying to adapt the series to their institutional programing.”
Visit the Developing Your Teaching Dossier series website to learn more. This open-access resource is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License.
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If you are not ready to sign up, explore the catalogue to find out about the different ways educators are using this tool. You can even link to existing catalogue H5P content without an account.
Search the catalogue by title/description, type, keywords, subject, and even by author.
To adapt content already created, select the desired content from the catalogue by clicking on the title. Then click on “Reuse” on the bottom left of the selected H5P content. Another window opens, with two options: download the file or copy. Choose to copy the content.
Once you are ready to create your own H5P content, click on “Create” in the top navigation (you must be logged in). Then you have the option of starting from scratch or adapting content already created.
Once in the creative studio, and if you have copied existing H5P content, click on “Paste” on the top right to start customizing the content to your needs.
Give your work a descriptive title, pick an appropriate subject category (if in doubt, choose “Reference”), and add a short description (optional).
There are tutorial videos and examples accessible right in the edit view for each H5P interactive content type.
Remember to save your work on a regular basis!
Once your H5P content has been created, you can link to it or choose to use the embed code to seamlessly incorporate it into Quercus or another platform.
