Transcript: Postgraduate Learning Design

Okay. We might get started then. Thanks everyone for coming tonight. Um, before we begin proceedings,

I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands from which our attendees join us today and to pay respects to those elders past and

present. My name is Sita Chopra and I’m the director of short forms of learning and post-graduate coursework here in the faculty of arts and social sciences at ETS.

Joining me tonight is Dr. Keith Heggart, our committed and effervescent course coordinator of the graduate certificate in

learning design that will be providing an overview of the course and its many benefits. In great news we also have two UTS alumni here this evening,

Amy Cotton and Marie-Claude Guilbault, who are both working, learning designers.

Marie recently completed a graduate certificate in learning design, congrats Marie. And Amy,

I believe you’ve completed the graduate certificate in education and digital learning. It’s great to have you both here tonight. Now throwing it to Keith.

Hello everyone, just a quick note that we will be recording the session and there’s some, uh, legalese documentation there. Uh,

and we just record it so that people who can’t make it, but want to know all about it, um, can actually see what we’re talking about.

So just be mindful of that and be careful of what you put in the chat window. Um, as we go through though, uh,

please make sure you put some questions in the chat window, um, and, and just tell us who you want to answer them.

So if there are about the content of the course and that kind of thing, I’m happy to answer them. And if there are about, uh, uh,

what it was like being a student, uh, Amy Cotton, or Marie Claude, are the people to ask about that and anything that I don’t know the answer

to, I’m sure Sita will be able to answer for you all. Yeah but come on, let’s get into it. Uh, let’s talk about why learning design, um,

and why we offer a graduate certificate. We are one of the few universities in Australia to offer a graduate certificate

in learning design. And I think really exciting because it is a growing field.

Uh, we know learning designers are in demand, not just in higher education, um, where they are very much in demand, uh, but across corporate sectors, uh,

school education sectors in not for profits in entrepreneurial areas, um,

and in the non-government sector. Uh, so it is a profession that is growing rapidly.

I think over the next five years, it’s expected to grow by 17%, um, in, uh, in Australia and even more than that internationally, um,

which I think is a fantastic time to get in, um, at the ground level, so to speak. Uh, and we know, uh,

one of the great strengths of our little program here at UTS is that it is meeting the gap in the market. So many of our, our learning designers,

our graduates, um, and even our, our working students are now working as learning designers.

They’ve taken on new roles and, and, um, you know, they put their skills to use. Uh, and I think that’s pretty exciting. Um, and, and,

and testament maybe to the, the use and the value of, of the grad cert learning design.

So let me tell you a little bit about how it’s all put together. Um, the big thing for me being a learning designer and now an academic with a focus

on learning design was making sure that the course, um, really was as accessible as easily

usable and modeled the principles of good learning design as possible. Um, and so for that reason we offer, um,

there’s a couple of different intakes, um, but we offer a wide range of subjects. Um,

so there are eight subjects, each were three credit points, so that’s half the size,

but twice as many as there would be in a normal, uh, graduate certificate, uh, and you do them in monthly blocks.

So if you’re doing a part-time, uh, load, are you do one subject for six weeks and then you finish it and then you start

the next one and do it for six weeks, finish it and move on to the next one. Um, and that really allows you to build up those kinds of skills that you need, uh,

and then complete the task and then start learning something new and putting all of your other new skills to use. So it’s pretty, uh,

pretty well structured in that respect. The other thing that is a real advantage is that it is delivered entirely

online. Um, and this is, uh, obviously something that we’ve all got used to over COVID, um,

but it’s built from the ground up to be delivered online. Um, and we have a mix of what we call asynchronous learning activities,

which are hosted in our canvas learning management system and make use of all these kinds of fantastic third party integrations, uh,

which you’ll learn all about in the grad cert. Um, but we also have synchronous live sessions and,

and one of the things that’s really important to me is that it is up to you to choose the way that you navigate your way through the course.

So let me give you an example. We have some students, uh, who never come to the live sessions. Uh,

they work all the way through the asynchronous material. They might watch the recordings of the live sessions and they are able to

satisfactorily complete the course. Then we’ve got other people who really live for the live sessions,

which are the, the, the synchronous kind of activities. Uh, and then they come along to every single one. Uh, so it’s,

it’s a matter of balancing your, uh, constraints, uh, with what you want to learn and finding a path through the grad cert, uh,

that suits you best. Um, and it works really well around work or even in a full-time

capacity as well. And we’ve got a good mix of students doing both. Um, if you do it in a full-time capacity, you can complete it in,

in just over four months, um, which means you could start next year, uh, and, and by, well, by this time, next day, you would have well and truly finished it.

Um, if you do it in a part-time capacity, it takes a little over eight months, you know, so, so about a year of study all told, um, my personal preference,

I think that the part-time capacity is the way to go. Uh, but, but either way works really, really well. Um,

it’s carefully designed to be, uh, to allow people to have multiple entry and exit points as well. Um,

one of the things that was really important, uh, to me, when I was thinking about how best to design a course in learning design,

and I spoke to learning designers, I spoke to people in the industry and I spoke to academics and I spoke to

teachers and UX designers and people who called themselves learning architects and learning engineers and learning scientists, all these kinds of great names,

um, which I think, you know, we’re all kind of learning designers. Uh, and I said, what, what kinds of things do I need to focus on?

And they said to me, the biggest problem with programs like this, um, and this is especially true in the North American setting is that people go and

they do a graduate certificate in instructional design or in learning design, or they do a master’s degree. Uh,

and then they start their first job as a learning designer. I have no idea what to do, um, which is really,

really frustrating. And so for me, uh, when I was trying to work out how to fill that gap,

what I wanted to do was make sure that, um, the, the content of the course was as close to

industry practice as possible. And we do this in a couple of different ways. Um, so if we assessment task within every single subject contributes towards a

portfolio that you can go and show to employers, and we know that portfolio works. I was talking to, um,

one of the graduates from last year who has just gone on and got a job as a content developer at a very big university in Randwick in Sydney.

I won’t say any more than that, but I’m sure he can work out which one I’m talking about. Um, and he said,

having this portfolio where I could show them, this is a interactive multimedia object I created, this is something else that I did, really got him over the line.

And they were so impressed by it. We know employers are starting to ask for more and more show us what you’ve done

as a learning designer. And the other kinds of things though, that we do is that we have an expression session in every single subject.

And I I’m really thrilled about the expression session and concept, because that is when I get a learning designer,

a practicing learning designer to come in and talk about what they’re doing in relation to that subject. Um, so for example, uh,

we’ve just finished a subject called critique, um, which is all about issues and ethics and learning design. And for that subject,

I invited a UX accessibility specialist to come in and talk about how she makes sure that content published on learning management systems meets

the required accessibility standards and showing us all the tools that she used, which is a really informative experience. So really,

really close to practice. But the most important way that we do that is in the final subject and the final

subject is called work learning design project. And that is where you undertake a internship,

like experience for about 30 hours. Um, so when you put it like that, it’s about a week, um, and you work as part of a learning design team on our,

on a personal or a professional, uh, or even a UTS based project. Um, and, and,

and you create something that goes into use immediately, whether that’s, uh, an assessment task with rubrics and briefs or a suite of interactive multimedia

activities, or in fact, a whole module within a whole course, you do all of these kinds of things as part of work learning design project,

and you get this wonderful, um, at the end of it internship like experience, yes, I’ve already worked as a learning designer,

and obviously that stands you in good stead if you’re considering, um, you know, future prospects as a learning designer. All right.

So let me tell you what we cover because this, this is the really, really good stuff. Um, we, as I said,

we cover a huge range of different topics and subjects. Um, we, we start off with think, which is all about learning theories.

And I like to call that everything from behaviorism to connectivism and everything in between.

So if you’ve heard of constructivism and social constructivism and cognitivism, uh, and, and, you know, the, if you can remember maybe, um,

things like the Skinner box experiments with pigeons and cages, we talk about all of those things in relation to what it means in terms of

learning. Uh, but most importantly, we talk about what does that actually mean for us as learning designers?

And of course, people often say, oh, Keith, you know, behaviorism that’s so old fashioned, no one talks about behavior as a variable and I’m like a-ha.

But of course they do because so many online learning management systems are built from a foundation of behaviorism.

You could even argue that the really exciting new wave of digital badges is just another form of behaviorism. Um, so,

so it’s a very relevant topic to discuss, um, in design: designing for learning, we talk about those instructional and educational frameworks. Um,

so if you’ve heard of things like the Addie model or the Sam model, my personal favorite, the R2-D2 model, um,

Merrill’s principles of instruction, uh, all of those ideas about how we construct learning

experiences, um, you know, we, we touch on bloom. Um, and then we get into the really interesting stuff,

which is the user experience design, the learner experience design, and how that interfaces with, um, user experience and user interface, um,

and design thinking, uh, you know, the, the Stanford D school, um, makes an appearance there as we talk about design thinking.

And because we’ve got to remember that as learning designers, we, we, we do learning, but we also do design and it’s important to be able to balance both of those

skillsets. Critique, uh, which I mentioned very briefly, we talk about all of the issues in learning design, and boy,

is this a rich field. Um, obviously we touch on things like ethical approaches to learning design.

We talk about privacy, we talk about copyright, we talk about bias, we talk about diversity. Um, and,

and the assessment tasks is a really good fun one for that one. We have to create, uh, ethically and culturally appropriate infographic. Um, yeah.

Okay. Analyse: evaluation and assessment in learning design. Um, and this, this is where we try to join up all of those, uh,

things that people often overlook. Uh, like I’m sure you’ve done, uh, maybe an online course or maybe a training session, um, where somebody puts up,

uh, the learning objectives. This is what we’re going to learn about today. And then they never mention them for the rest of the day, you know? So, so,

uh, the idea of being able to align your learning objectives with your teaching and learning, um, activities with your assessment tasks,

and then being able to develop a rubric around those assessment tasks is so crucial to being a good learning designer. Crunch is my favorite subject,

and I think Marie Claude might mention Crunch a little bit later on because I think she really enjoyed it as well. Um, this is where we dive into one of the new areas related to learning design,

which is learning analytics. Um, so how do we gather data from online and offline spaces? How do we process,

how do we wrangle, how do we cleanse that data and how do we turn that into actionable insights?

Um, we get to play with Tableau in that one. So if you’ve heard of Tableau, um, yeah, you’ll get a crash course into it and you’ll get to learn a lot about it.

Um, which is good. Fun. Yeah. Uh, the next one is predict, uh, which is another one of my favorite subjects. I mean,

they’re all my favorite subjects. I’ll be honest with you, but in predict we talk about the current and the future trends.

So we’ll take quite a critical view. Um, I get on my bandwagon and have a whinge about interactive whiteboards.

The fact that nobody really uses interactive whiteboards the way they’re meant to even though over and spent billions of dollars on them. Um,

but we also look at things like gamification, um, you know, is that a trend? Is it a fad?

Are we going to stop talking about it or another big one at the moment, virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality, mixed reality, uh,

AI machine learning, all of these kinds of things. We dive into one of the favorite things that you can do with that. Um, in,

in part of that subject, you can create a chat bot. Uh, so we use, um,

RBMs cognitive classes, uh, and you can actually, you know, with, without needing to know anything about coding,

you can build a fantastic little chat bot that will answer questions. Um, so that that’s good fun. Create, uh, is very hands-on. Uh,

so we dive into those kinds of micro learning, digital authoring kind of tools. Uh, that’ll be coming more and more expected, um, in the, uh,

learning design field. So off the top of my head, we look at things like articulate. We look at H5P,

we look at Genially, uh, and there’s one more that I’ve completely forgotten, but nevermind, it’ll come back to me. Um, yeah. And, and it’s very much,

let’s try these tools out. Let’s evaluate them. Let’s talk about when we’d use them and for your assessment tasks,

guess what you, you actually make one that is relevant to your, uh, professional personal context. Um, yeah. And then finally work,

which I’ve talked about just a little bit, um, and that’s our internship like experience. Um,

so really you can do the subjects in any order, um, that they’re being offered. Um, and,

and that leads us into talking about micro-credentials, which Sita is gonna mention in just a touch. Um,

but the one that you’ve got to do at the end, um, and if you’re doing it, full-time, you usually do it alongside create because they work together really well, uh,

is Work, uh, because that is, I don’t like the term capstone, but it’s kind of what it is.

It’s your chance to show off everything that you’ve learned in that internship like experience. Um, and you can see the dates when they’re being offered.

So every subject is offered twice a year. Um, yeah, and, and part-time students work through one by one by one and part-time students

would do two at a time. So why do you study? It is one of the most, uh,

relevant qualifications I think that you can get at the moment, um,

you know, you, you will get the qualification in learning design, um, that will put you in a good position to be offered a position as a learning

designer in this growing field. I can’t put it any more bluntly than that. Um, our students, our graduates, our alumni are getting those roles and,

and a lot of them are saying, it’s partly because I have on my CV grad cert learning design,

not a grad cert in education or technology or something like that. Um, you know,

the learning design is what people are looking for and that kind of flexible, um, you know, teaching, not teaching based, but instructional based approaches.

Um, the other thing is that we unlike some other approaches to, uh, instructional design, as it’s sometimes called, um,

we have a specific focus on learning analytics. We devote one eighth of the course to learning analytics, uh,

because we recognize that one, this is an area of particular strength that UTS and two,

it’s going to be somewhere where there is going to be significant growth throughout UTS, uh, not throughout UTS, throughout the industry. Um,

you know, sooner or later, the learning designer who doesn’t understand analytics, uh, might be a learning designer without much of a future. Um, you know,

and then that sounds a bit ominous, but I think it’s certainly a good reason to make sure we know about learning

analytics and that’s why we do it. And of course the internship like experience, you know, there, there are very few other opportunities out there for you to dip your toes in the

water of learning design, to work with other learning designers, um, and to develop a real world product that will go into use, uh, in,

in a corporate setting or an educational setting or a higher educational setting, um, you know, and that will, uh, position you well, um,

to be employed in the future. Um, I’m going to stop talking now and take a breath and hand over to Sita.

Thanks, Keith. Um, okay, so micro-credentials,

and this is UTS’ newest form of learning offering. Uh, you may have heard the education minister speak around micro-credentials,

especially, um, last year in relation to the higher education certificates.

And there’s actually no common or agreed upon definition of micro-credentials in the sector. Um,

UNESCO and a number of academics are working on coming up with an agreed definition in the sector.

But what I wanted to do today was explained to you what UTS’ definition of a micro-credential actually is. So, as it says, there,

it’s basically a formally assessed piece of learning. It’s also a standalone component,

and it’s something that you can study outside of an award course,

importantly, after you’ve undertaken a micro-credential and passed the assessment, we’re able to issue you with a certificate of attainment.

And that verifies that the study you have undertaken reflects certain skills and knowledge. Um, as Keith said when we were designing this course,

we wanted to make sure that there were different entry pathways into it. So different people could access the learning.

If you decide that you may not wish to start with the graduate certificate, then enrolling in a micro-credential basically gives you the option of dipping

your toe in the water to see what learning design is like. Alternatively, you may decide that you only wish to gain expertise in one of the specific areas

that Keith has already mentioned this evening. Then you’d be able to get credit recognition for the micro-credential against

the aligned subject in the graduate certificate, if you wish to be admitted to that later, uh,

there are a number of other benefits that micro-credentials provide to the learner. Um, as Keith mentioned, when this course was being created,

we did quite a lot of work when talking to industry, talking to the education sector, he undertook interviews with industries,

such as HR and defense. And so a lot of that work that was done and the different perspectives coming

across from industry are incorporated both into the subjects and into the micro-credentials. Uh,

the other parts of learning, including the in conversation sessions and the expression sessions.

If you’re a micro-credential learner, you’ll also get access to those.

Um, as I mentioned, we also provide you with recognition when you complete the micro-credentials. So you get that certificate of attainment,

and we’re also looking at offering badging, um, through equals. So you would be able to, um, note on things such as LinkedIn,

that you’ve completed the micro, and you’d be able to show immediately to a current or future employer that

you’ve undertaken in micro-credential at UTS, uh, just to the next slide. Thanks. Okay.

So in terms of the micro-credentials that we have on offer that are associated with the graduate certificate in learning design, we have four,

so that’s Design: designing for learning, Predict, Crunch and create, um, each of these,

like the subjects have a combination of self study and online learning materials, those optional weekly online sessions and the expression sessions as well.

Uh, we’ve received some great feedback to date on the micro-credentials that we’ve offered, um, for I’m just going to read out one of these, I may make Keith blush,

but for design, we had great feedback that the course was a great introduction to learning

design. The material was engaging and up-to-date, and the live sessions provided the opportunity to apply what I’ve learned. Um,

Keith is very enthusiastic and models, learning design very well.

Uh, luckily, and if you’re interested a Create micro-credential starts on the 1st of November.

So there’s still limited time to actually enroll in that if you’d like to,

uh, if you’d got any other questions around the micro-credentials feel free to

just drop them in the chat. And if you would like to, uh, sign up for the create one,

I’d be happy to give you some more information on that.

Um, so now, wheere just going to talk to our guests, uh,

Marie Claude and Amy, uh, just to provide you all with some insight into the student experience

and also what it’s like working as a learning designer. So I might start with Marie Claude. Uh,

could you let us know what your favorite subject was? So I think Keith gave it away.

Um, I actually really like Crunch, which was all about data analysis, which, um, was quite surprising to me.

I didn’t thought I was gonna love it as much as I did. Um, but then as a lover of math, it actually kind of makes sense. Uh,

and, um, what I really liked about the course is that, um, you, well, number one, our end of the semester end of project,

we were given a lot of freedom. We had a set of data that we could analyze,

or if we preferred, we could use something from our own professional, um,

environment, which is something I’ve decided to do, because I thought that it could really, really work well with my current job.

Um, I worked, I’m a learning designer. I do professional development for a union.

So what I’ve decided to do for my project was to actually see and try to track our membership base. And if like, who was resigning,

who was, was not keeping up with payment. And if there was, you know, try to analyze that, to see if there was gaps or something that we could do.

So I wrote this project, uh, with Tableau, I used Tableau, which was fantastic and really, really good. And, um,

of course I asked my employer if I could use the membership data

and they identified everything, which is something, you know,

that Keith showed us how to do cleaning data and everything and everything. And, uh, I came up with, uh,

some, my English brain has gone now, report.

Anyway, after I analyze all the data, I could actually see a clear gap of where the membership was kind of falling short

and everything. So after I received, uh, I, you know, gave it to Keith to analyze and everything. And, um, I got a really good note,

very good grade, but I also got a feedback from Keith being like, I think you should actually offer this to your employer.

I think there’s a lot of information for it, which I did. And,

uh, they were kind of flabbergasted by what I’ve offered. And they’re like, that’s not what we thought. That’s not what we were, what we were being told by,

you know, the people who were, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, but, you know, numbers don’t lie. The data is there. And then they’re like, okay, well,

we’ll have to discuss this and maybe change our, um, you know, our, um, uh, how we contact our members and,

and maybe change tactic on how to make sure that, you know, they keep on their current membership. So I, it was fantastic.

I just did a uni project. And then I brought it to my boss and they were like, whoa, you know, exactly right away, flabbergasted like, oh my God, we should,

yeah, no, we have to have another meeting. We have to discuss more of using more data analytics.

And even though it was not exactly about learning design, but it had significant impact right away on my work.

And also my standing at work also, you know, it was like, Ooh, look at her she is intelligent. But there’s also,

um, a lot of other, um, in, in the certificate, there was a lot of – In Create, I built a chatbot,

which, uh, that’s what I did, right Keith? Yeah. Okay. I, yeah, I did. I did create a chat bot, which, um,

is not used at the moment where I work because, uh, COVID 19 is a bit intense at the moment. Uh,

but also I thought that all the courses that we had were really good, because once again, uh,

we had the option of doing something that was offered to us, or maybe do something that was directly related with our work.

So I know that for example, I was working, you know, we were exchanging thoughts with the student and he worked in health in the

health system, in Queensland, um, how to, you know, um, redo his online courses to help nurses in, you know,

far north Queensland or stuff like that. So everybody’s experience and what they were taking of the course were

always different. But you could learn from somebody else who would use a different program that

you might not necessarily use it and be like, oh, I didn’t know. I could use Genially for example, to do this.

I would have not thought about that, that dah, dah, dah, and then you, you gain a lot from, I gained a lot from the live, um,

live experience, really exchanging idea with people who had the completely different, um,

background for their work, but you gain heaps, heaps, heaps of it.

Sorry. That was not my only favorite subject, but. Yeah, no, no, that was great. I think that really brings to life what we try to get across,

which is this theory obviously associated with each of the subjects, but it’s that practice part of it.

And I think being able to use the assignments to your current workplace, if you want to, that’s really appealing to a lot of people.

So thanks very much Marie-Claude. Um, Amy, over to you, did you want to tell us a little bit about your work as a senior learning

designer? Sure. Uh, so I’m a senior learning designer with UTS.

And part of my work in the past year has been to assist UTS scramble to more online offerings during several lockdowns and whilst the

international students are overseas. So, um, when I studying Keith’s course, I was a bit like Marie-Claude,

I was using, uh, what I was doing in my subjects to directly apply immediately to what I was

doing already as, as a job. Um, and the significant part of that was I could actually go

back to my superiors and say, there’s actually a theoretical underpinning for why we should do it this way.

It’s going to be more effective and have longer lasting results if we do it in XYZ instead of ABC.

And it really helps facilitate the way I spoke with other people on the team who weren’t learning designers. Um,

and it gave me the language and the confidence to really say, this is why, um, it’s because of professional decisions based on solid research,

why would you do it in a particular way? Um, so yeah, it gave me the confidence to do that, you know, and a bit like Marie-Claude, uh,

I found that the experience of, um, yes, learning from Keith, but also from all of the other people from such a broad

spectrum of people from all sorts of disciplines really helped, uh, me innovate and freshen up what I was doing because I came from an education

background, uh, learning what was happening in other industries and why they do it that way

really helped me back design and change a little bit of what I was doing,

uh, so that I could, um, stay up to date, but also develop a portfolio that really made me dynamic as a,

as a learning designer. Uh, so I think everybody should do this course if you’re at all interested in

training at all. Cause I saw one of the questions there was from a bedside nurse looking to transition. Yes, do this course, uh,

because the future of health, um, professional development and, and learning a lot of it’s going to be online,

but a lot of it also is going to be dealing with AI instruments that are going to be used more and more in hospitals.

And this course actually talks about AI and learning to work with robotics and, and those sorts of things.

So if you could do this course that you’d have a leap start on where the industry is actually going to end up in another 10 or 20 years, it gets,

it’s all exciting. You should do the course. Thanks, Amy. I was going to ask you ‘what advice do you have people that might be interested in the course?’,

but you’ve- Just do it. Absolutely do it. Get in touch with Keith, he’s a great conversationalist.

Just ask him your question and he’ll get back to you. Don’t be shy. Yeah. And to, to, uh, piggyback on what Amy was saying. Um,

I mentioned the database and the create course, but there’s a lot of stuff about AI and stuff like that. That also helps you being able to see in the future and what’s coming that you

might not necessarily see it in the position you’re in or whatever, but you’re like, oh, okay, this is coming. I, okay, well,

I can start implementing something at work, if this is what you’re looking for, or you know,

re-angle myself to try and go and be in front of the market and just to get there now. So when it all blows up, not that it’s going to blow up,

but you know, like you’re already in the, in the system,

You already met a language when it comes up,

which I’ve showed very well here. All right, Amy, you segue nicely into answering one of the questions. Um,

from our attendees. So we might shift to the rest of the Q and A’s now after Keith talks about the

admission requirements. Okay. Um, so there are a couple of pathways into this course, uh,

and I think it’s really important because, um, people do it different ways. Uh, and, and that fits, um,

with my ideas about making this as accessible as possible. Um, so ideally you would have a UTS recognized bachelor’s degree or an equivalent

qualification. Um, but if you don’t have that kind of, um, uh,

academic background, um, it’s still possible to be considered if you’ve got work experience either an AQF

level six and a minimum of two years relevant work experience, or a minimum of four years relevant equivalent full-time work experience, um,

and that, you know, what you do, if that’s the case and you still want to do the grad cert, um, you submit a,

a CV and a personal statement explaining your interest to it. And we take that very seriously and we examine it closely. Uh, and,

and there have been people who have, um, successfully completed, um, the grad cert, very successfully completed the graduate certificate, uh,

who didn’t have a bachelor’s background or anything like that. Um, Marie-Claude was one of them. I wasn’t gonna say anything Marie-Claude,

but if you’re going to out yourself, um, yeah. Uh, you know, you came from a background in, in fashion event organizing.

Yeah. And fashion marketing and special events. And, um, basically I went to school to, uh,

learn how to put on fashion show and a photo shoot,

and then, and, um, yeah, I kind of moved to Australia and then changed my career. And, um, yeah,

so it was a bit stressful to put this submission in, but, you know, I had some good people and, you know, and my CV was there. I was working in the,

um, in put like learning design. So it, it was, it was good. Yeah.

And now you’re a learning designer. Um, there, there are some English language requirements, so you need to have, uh,

an IELTS score, um, 6.5 with writing over six, uh, all the other equivalent kinds of things, as you can see there. Um, and.

That was me. Um, yes. Uh, you’re so good on this panel.

we’re up to the Q and A section. Alrighty. Um, so,

uh, I’m going to get a question. Oh, actually I should’ve mentioned this. Um, I, I can’t see who wrote it. Um, but it’s a great question.

How many hours per week is the face-to-face learning? Um, so the face-to-face component is one and a half hours.

Usually in the evening on a Wednesday or Thursday, we call that the live session, but they are not compulsory. Um,

we try to make it out of working hours. Um, cause that’s when most people are available. Um, but not everyone can do it,

you know, because people have work that is during that time or people have, um, caring requirements. So they’re always recorded, uh,

and you can play it back and things like that, but they’re not compulsory. Um, like I said, you can do the course entirely asynchronously if you choose.

Um, yeah, so 90 minutes per week, um, and that includes all the face-to-face sessions, including the expression session, which leads me to the second question.

Can we talk more about the expression sessions? Yes. Um, I stole this idea from the craft brewing movement, um, and,

and they have expression sessions where everyone gets together and tastes, uh, each other’s beers, um, which has got nothing to do with learning design,

but I just really liked that name. Uh, and what I wanted to do was make sure that, um, throughout the course, you know,

eight times during the course, you’ve got the chance to talk to, uh, and listen to and learn from not, not me as the learning design academic,

but the learning design person who’s doing the job every day of the week. Um, and,

and fortunately I was able to draw on quite a broad network in doing so. Um,

so what it usually looks like is that, um, in module six, the final week of each subject, uh,

we have an expert learning designer who comes in, who introduces themselves, talks about their background, what they are currently working on,

how they got into the role, the kind of tools and things that they use regularly. And then there’s a bit of a workshop. Um, so for example, um,

the, the person, the accessibility expert that I got in, she ran a workshop, uh, all about identifying, uh,

accessibility in the, um, on different webpages, uh, in crunch. Um,

I get a data scientist to come in to talk about how she’s designing student facing dashboards to be part of learning management systems, uh,

and students get to talk about what goes in. So a good student facing dashboard. Um, let me think of another one in predict. Um, we do VR, uh,

so we use things called coast spaces and merge cubes. Um, and you get to actually use them, uh, in, in, uh,

creating a VR environment for learning, um, oh, couple more questions. Right. Um, Jackson confirming that I can take the course part time? Yes,

you absolutely can take it part-time. Um, and the way that looks is just one subject for six weeks and then the next

subject, and then the next subject. Um, and if you take a micro-credential, do I have to wait until next year to enroll in the entire course? Yes. Um,

but if you successfully complete the micro-credential, let’s say you do create, um, which will be starting, um, not too far away. Um,

if you do create you automatically get the recognition of prior learning, so you would have already completed that subject and you’d only have seven

further ones to do. Um. And on that Keith as well. Um,

if you take a micro-credential in the first half of next year, then the good thing is,

is because we have that BDA intake that you’d be able to apply, um, for, to start in spring equivalent of spring next year.

So from July next year. Yeah. Yeah. Um, is the course suitable for learning designers looking to refresh their skills or only

beginners? Yes. Excellent question. Um, the best answer is that we’ve had both enroll and,

and both groups and both, um, have got something out of it. Um, so in my experience, um, learning designers are,

um, you know, often, you know, good across a wide area of skills, but,

but not perhaps as focused on any particular areas. Um, so what this course does by having the,

the eight different subject areas allows you to focus on some particular areas that you might need to develop your skills in.

They sometimes call this being a T-shaped learning designer. So breadth and depth in one particular area, um, you know,

let’s not get into that, but the answer to your question is, uh, there is something in it for everybody, it starts off, um, with a good basis,

um, and a current relevant basis, uh, but it quickly develops into current practice and it’s good for both

groups. Uh, you can always apply for a leave of absence Abbey. Absolutely. And you can take a semester off. There’s no problem with that. You know,

there’s, there’s the paperwork that you’ve got to do. Um, but that’s about it. Yeah. Okay. Come on.

More questions. Um, what I will do is just jump across the last slide. Um,

and the reason I’m doing that is my email address is just there in the middle. Um, so for questions like the ones that you’re asking,

I am absolutely 100% at your service to answer them. Um, that’s, that’s kind of what they pay me for. Right. Um, and, uh, be more than happy to,

to continue our chat. Um, in another forum, if you’ve got a question you don’t want to ask now, um, that’s fine as well.

And as I said, please contact me at sita.chopra@uts.edu.au.

If you’ve got any questions about the micro-credentials and also being admitted into the graduate certificate in learning design,

after you may have undertaken a micro-credential and I’ll just plug it one more time. We have the create micro-credentials starting on the 1st of November.

Please do get in touch if you are interested in enrolling in that one.

And I just, so there’s one more question, Gavin. Oh, a couple more questions. Um, okay. Uh, I’ll do Gavin’s first and then I’ll go back to Schwayder.

Who’s got, uh, quite a detailed question there. Um, all right. So Gavin, I’m thinking of a mid-year start. Should I apply now?

So if you mean mid-year 2022, um, I’d encourage you to do some micros and get a bit of a taste for it and see if

you like it. Um, and I’m confident saying that because it works that way that most people go on.

Um, but, uh, yeah, I don’t think enrollments are open for the mid-year intake next year, yet. Uh,

only the start of the year intake. Um, so I would wait a little bit longer, but if you want to send me an email, uh, Gavin, um,

I’ll set up a reminder and I will email you when that mid year enrollment opens and say, don’t forget. Um, you can enroll.

Okay, good. I’m glad you’re enjoying the session so far. Um, yes. Okay, good, good question. These are all really good questions.

So the micro credentials are priced effectively the same as the, the, um,

the individual subjects. So they’re, they’re priced on a certain amount per credit point. Um,

uh, one of the, the advantages of the micro-credentials is there is often an early bird, um,

uh, pricing special. Uh, so if you enroll early enough, you get a bit of a discount on that. Um, but yeah,

they are not exactly the same because there’s administrative costs and things like that involved, but they are quite similarly priced. Um,

so why should you do create now rather than waiting to pair it with a work subject? Uh, they do work well together, um, uh,

but it depends whether you wanted to do it full time or part time.

Um, you know, so, so if you’re doing it, um, part-time, you actually do create,

and then you do another couple of subjects and then you bring it back to work. Um, but if you are doing it, full-time, you do create and work together. Um,

it, it, it’s just, what’s your preference. Um, you know, I would urge people to think carefully about enrolling full-time if they’re

already in full-time work. Um, that’s tough because they are six weeks and they are quite

busy. Um, uh, to give you a bit of an idea there there’s about 10 to 12 hours, um,

of work per week, um, per subject. So if you were to doing full-time, you’re looking at about 24 hours, um,

per week, which is, you know, that’s, that’s a full-time study load.

Yeah. Uh, uh, but yeah, it’s purely up to what you prefer. Um, you know, so if you want to take a more measured approach through it yeah.

Do it part-time, uh, or do the create monitor credential first. Um, you know,

if you want to dip your toes in the water and see if this is for you, do the create micro-credentials first, um, you know, and it’s kind of a,

a lower bar to entry, um, rather than committing to a whole grad. So you can try on the micro and say, oh yeah, this actually works for me. Um,

or the workload’s manageable. I can do this. Um, you know, so those are some of the reasons why you might do it. Yeah.

And I’ve just popped in the chat there, the, um, application intake dates for down BDE, um, entry,

just, they have the Gavin. Uh, so it’s the intake quizzes on the 20th of July.

Yeah. Good question, Gavin. Unfortunately. No, um, they’re not, so, um, you, you’ve got to pay upfront for the, um, the market credentials,

Okay, great. Well, thanks everybody for coming tonight. Thanks again to Keith Amy. And Marie-Claude, uh,

we hope to either hear from you or possibly see you in the micros or graduate certificate.