MiniCPD - How to build a bi-modal module

Sarah Montano gives advice on how to build a bi-modal module.

Dr Sarah Montano from Birmingham Business School gives advice on how to build a bi-modal module. More help and advice is available through the HEFi Canvas Remote Teaching Resource. 

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So this video is really about how do you build your digital module that will work online and offline?

So one of the ways I think, in which we might want to think about how we build a module is to think about how we can be creative - and that's creative ourselves, in how we might deliver and create our content. But how can we endeavour to create creativity with our students? And I think being bimodal offers us a great opportunity to allow students to be more creative, but also for us to be creative ourselves.

To start building our modules, one of the areas that we need to think about is how can we scaffold the students’ learning so throughout the ten or eleven week term, how might we think about their learning? But actually when we're building our digital module, what we need to think about is breaking those two hours down into much more of a bite size piece. So I say it's going to be challenging. Students probably aren't going to engage in a full two hours of a lecture. So it's thinking of all the relevant theories, the concepts that are within there. How can I break all of these down? So we might decide that actually we're going to break our two hour lecture down into actually ten different pieces of information.

So when we're building the module, one of the things we want to start thinking about is our learning outcomes. Now we all have our standard module, learning outcomes that are on our paperwork and they'll be on our, you know, module information handbook. But actually, when we're building a bi-modal module, one of the things we need to do is go beyond the basic learning outcomes. What do I need them to end this session having fully achieved? And it's going a bit beyond the understanding, but thinking, you know, do I need them to apply this? Is this about understanding how this particular concept works in the real world? But what precisely is it? So it's a much more of an analytical approach to what's this particular lecture about. So really thinking about those two hours, in much more bite size pieces.

So because students are going to be online, one of the things we need to think about is maintaining their interest. So when you're building your particular session, so we might want to call this a unit, we would be thinking about breaking this down into these bite sized pieces and introducing variety within that. So you might want to think about having a short introductory video. Then you might want to create a case study and perhaps you might want to have some diagrams that students can have a look at. You might want to create a little PowerPoint video. There could be any number of ways that we can interact with students. But as I say, it's very much about thinking about things as bite size.