A Journey in Progress: Been There! Done That! What’s Next! York University’s Virtual Learning Commons: Phase I and Phase II Vivienne Monty & Sarah Coysh 5 th Annual Learning Commons Conference, Kingston, Ontario, June, 2010

2 York University’s Online Learning Commons:  Modular models  York has two: one physical and one virtual

3 Background to Development: Our Students An overview of York student demographics clearly identifies why one size cannot fit all:  Almost half our students commute more than 40 minutes each way  60% of our first-year students work off campus at an average of 16 hours per week  Many of our students work long hours because they have an aversion to debt  50% of our incoming students are first generation with parents that see education as a means of enhancing economic prospects  Undergraduate times to completion are longer than the provincial average  Almost 50% of first-year students report that they spend 5 hours or less on campus each week outside scheduled class time York’s Provostial White Paper for Strategic Planning *(Building a More Engaged University: Strategic Directions for York University )

4 Student Needs  Our students usually need help 24/7.

5 Forming the First YULearn Group  Formed in 2007  Makeup of the group

6 Virtual Commons Basics: Criteria of Site Development  The site needed to be integrated and holistic.  All relevant data must fit into one page of web viewing and no scrolling should be necessary.  It must have an online index for easy access.  The site should provide one stop shopping for various skills sets that are needed. Currently there are too many places to look and search in.

7 More Principles and Criteria  Modules must be portable to faculty webs; Moodle etc. and also must be interactive and “fun” for students. They should contain exercises, sample assignments and the like.  The Library should be key/central in development.  Modules would have various media and types of activity such as PowerPoint, Video, exercises and so on.

8 …And the List Goes On  Survey methodology to assess the usefulness of each module should be present.  Skills modules should aim at “post secondary” skills only.  It should have no passwords or other gate keeping attached to it.  The site must undergo usability testing.

9 How We Look Today

10 Don’t Have a Site Without It  Making changes to the site must be easy and seamless.  Different media must be integrated effortlessly.  The people who design and create the modules in this online presence are also meant to be modular in the same fashion. The team is constantly changing as per requirements.  Librarians, however, will continue to provide the backbone as developers and administrators.

11 Done That! Results of the First Year of Development  It took a full year, as we projected, to develop the basic model and for some time our laundry list of what needed to be included grew and grew. In the end, we knew we had to whittle it down to key concepts if it was to work and be used without confusing the users.

12 What’s Next???  Currently, in phase two, we are constructing more interactive modules. As each section develops either the interactivity or the way a module is built is dependant on the nature of the need, students’ feedback and so on.

13 Phase II: Are We Having Fun Yet? Virtual Learning Commons Committee Members:  Counselling Disability Services  Writing Department  YuLearn Project Co-ordinator  Associate University Librarian  Department Head of Scott Library  E-Learning Librarian

14 Virtual Learning Commons Mandate 1)Replacement of the Library Research Roadmap 2) Replacement of YuLearn

15 Research Roadmap  Re-use the content  Need to integrate writing, learning skills, critical thinking throughout the tutorial  Difficult to update (keep in mind when choosing platform)  Game Concept: “Snakes and Ladders”  Incorporate detours and dead-ends to show flexibility  Incorporate audio visual components (ie. images, sound bytes & video clips).

16 Environmental Scan Examine online tutorials from around the world.  Examined 174 tutorials  Somoza-Fernández, M. and Abadal, E. (2009)"Analysis of web-based tutorials created by academic libraries." Journal of academic librarianship, 35 (2), _aowtcbal _aowtcbal

17 Observations  A table of contents on each page  Incorporated different starting points for students  Listed the learning objectives at the start of every module  Used faculty and students in photo clips with voice overs  Fun games  Ability to print handouts  Incorporated visualization exercises  Audio capability (auditory learners/learning disability)  French to English, ie. U of Ottawa

18 Project Proposal Investigating Costs and Designs: University of Ottawa  Cost ($20,000)  Who involved? (Professional programmers and designers, instructional designer)  Technical requirements (Flash)  Story Board (Librarians)

19  Audience: Undergraduate student  Generated Key Learning Objectives: Recursive Functions  (Writing, Learning skills and Library research) Getting Focus Exploring Topic Structuring/Thinking Content

20 Where do we go from here?  Project Proposal  Internal Resources  External Resources Questions? Comments? Suggestions?