In a 60 minutes presentation on Day 2 of the Faculty of Communication, Media and Information Studies (CMIS) at Grafton, Ing Prof Redwood-Swayerr explained the key ingredients of the eLearning and demonstrated the capabilities of USL’s new Learning Management System (LMS). The presentation which was followed by a Q &A, session covered administrative functions, user privileges, course management, assessment, student support and a host of other axillary functionalities such as HR, and elections management.

Participants were informed that USL has already acquired a three-story building to host the eLearning Secretariat and key staff positions have been identified and construction of an eLearning studio is in its advanced stage.  The special taskforce step up to drive eLearning implementation will convene on Monday to agree project execution timelines and milestones.

The immediate target is to rollout eLearning postgraduate in the coming academic year (2021/22) and already, 6 departments have submitted potential courses to be mounted and more are expected. The discussion noted the need to build the capacity of lecturers in a number of areas.

Key capacity areas identified included basic IT skills to develop notes especially in Word and PowerPoint, content development, course outline development, audio-visual recording and how to use various Virtual Learning tools like Zoom. Departments are advised to appoint eLearning Course coordinators and immediately commence identifying recommended etextbooks and other resources required to deliver eLearning.

Given the strict deadline (next academic year) and the scale of work yet to be completed, a special eLearning retreat is to be convened solely for approved eLearning postgraduate courses. The goal will be to support the departmental eLearning teams to fully develop course contents and set up eLearning sites within the new LMS.

Credit: David Gbao_Director, SPQA/Re-Engineering Programme Lead