D2L Connection, held earlier this month in Amsterdam, is an annual opportunity to connect with learning leaders, build relationships and create a community of like-minded individuals. This year’s theme was innovation in education and technology, and our speakers, panellists and attendees had plenty to share. Here, we explore the emerging learning trends and innovations discussed at the event.
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
Advancements in technologies like AI are changing the learning landscape for educators and students alike. AI can enhance the learning experience and make course creation easier. It presents opportunities—not least in personalised learning and adaptive assessment—but also challenges.
UK universities recognise this. Last year, a cohort of 24 drew up guiding principles on generative AI like ChatGPT that can create new content from large data inputs. The principles outline five commitments, including supporting staff and students in becoming AI literate, equipping them to use generative AI tools appropriately, adapting to incorporate the ethical use of AI, upholding academic integrity, and sharing best practices.
Principles like these are important, as demonstrated by a report this year from the UK’s Open Innovation Team and Department for Education, which revealed that 23% of school teachers and leaders are concerned about the risks of using generative AI tools.
As a community, we must continue discussing AI, sharing our hopes and concerns, and learning from best practices. Wonderful examples were showcased at D2L Connection by Avans Hogeschool, which developed a virtual AI assistant to reduce educator workload, increase efficiencies and organise knowledge management, and KEITH.ai, a University of Surrey spin-out company that uses AI to augment marking and feedback.
- Product innovation
2024 has been a bumper year for product innovation at D2L, so D2L Connection provided an ideal chance to reflect on enhancements, explore the possibilities they open up, and demonstrate them in action. Prominent among the innovations were:
- Course creation and interactivity: Course creators want to develop online learning content that will engage their learners, but they often lack specialist digital skills and long development times. That’s why D2L first introduced Creator+, so educators without coding skills could create content simply.
This year, D2L announced the all-new D2L Creator+ with H5P as a complete solution for creating engaging courses with interactive content. H5P functionality enhances Creator+ by adding 50+ interactives, a Smart Import generative AI tool and advanced learning analytics. Now, course creators can incorporate polling, video streaming, lecture recording, emoji clouds and more into their content—making it feature-rich, engaging and visually appealing.
- AI: As explored above, AI can have a positive impact on teaching, administrating and receiving learning. This year, D2L introduced D2L Lumi, an AI-powered feature to help build better content, assessments and activities. Built with privacy and data governance in mind, D2L Lumi offers a way to generate quiz questions based on course content, generate intuitive suggestions for assignments and discussions according to course material, make it easier to create practice questions, and produce automated answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).
- Competency-based education
Competency-based education (CBE) recognises that students will progress at different rates within a given timeframe for a period of study. Some will need to spend more time on topics, and they might even need to supplement course material with other sources of information to fill gaps in their knowledge. Essentially, CBE is outcome-based education in which the result of the learning outcome is the goal, not the amount of time spent on achieving this.
With CBE, students move onto a new topic only when they’ve mastered the previous one. Provided clear learning outcomes are set, students have a flexible amount of time—within course parameters—to master each competency. If they struggle in a particular area, they can receive additional help. They can also draw on pre-existing knowledge and skills, so mature students for example can gain credit for previous learning and experience and use this to move rapidly through familiar topics so to give more time to new areas. In this way, all students who complete their courses do so because they’ve mastered all elements, rather than just some.
CBE exemplifies a personalised approach to study, recognising that students learn in different ways and at different rates. It is designed to enable all students to succeed, using flexibility and adaptability to enable them.
CBE can help educators deliver learning experiences that can lead to practical, demonstrable outcomes and genuine skill mastery, but they may need some help adopting this approach. The learning management system (LMS) can provide the tools to help align course activities and assessment with learning outcomes when educators transition to a CBE model.
Learning from best practice
Surely the most inspiring sessions at any event are the ones where attendees hear from their peers about what they are doing and what they have achieved. This was almost certainly the case at D2L Connection.
We were delighted to have so many pioneers of technology in education speak about and demonstrate their transformative Brightspace journeys and innovations in learning.
The University of Surrey’s School of Veterinary Medicine presented an overview of how it used Brightspace and other tools to address three particular challenges that arose from increasing student numbers—student engagement, streamlining communication and enhancing feedback.
The University of Huddersfield showcased an engaging educational activity modelling the team’s use of D2L Creator+. This drew on a variety of pedagogic approaches including interactive teaching, gamification of learning, active reading and the use of story, and combined these approaches into an interactive escape room activity.
Wageningen University showed how D2L Course Merchant helped improve the pre-student customer journey. The university offers online courses in Brightspace for pre-students to get a preview of the study of their choice but experienced challenges with the workflow for registering these pre-students for the course. In the session, attendees were shown how Wageningen simplified a piece of the pre-student customer journey with D2L Course Merchant, while keeping the experience of getting a taste of Wageningen education intact.
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