The Centre for Flexible & E-Learning (CFEL) has wrapped up its Blended Development Workshops for 2019. The workshops ran from 21 – 25 October for mainly Suva based teachers. The week kicked off with the Engineering teachers from the College of Science, Technology & Environment (CEST) at the Derrick Campus in Samabula. CEST is prioritising their Certificate level programmes in Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering for the blended mode in 2020. This was followed by two parallel workshops on 24 October at Nasinu Campus for the School of Education (SOE) teachers in the College of Humanities & Education (CHE), and Agriculture teachers from the Koronivia Campus in the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (CAFF).  The SOE teachers from CHE were primarily from the Industrial Arts and Physical Education disciplines. The final workshop for the week was held at Nasinu Campus on 25 October for Hospitality teachers in the College of Business, Hospitality & Tourism Studies. The Hospitality teachers travelled from the Nadi Campus to Nasinu. Around 20 teachers in total took part in the workshops.

These workshops prepare teachers (or content specialists) for the development and delivery of their blended courses with CFEL. Participants were receptive to the ideas presented in the workshops and shared their experiences and views on their need to use technology as a means of leveraging and transforming students’ learning experiences. These preparatory workshops dealt with storyboarding blended courses with consideration for constructive alignment, designing appropriate learning experiences, the multimedia mix, e-moderation, exploring the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and quality checking blended design.

As CFEL’s work wraps up for the year, the team is also revising its good practice guides for Moodle, Turnitin and Mahara in anticipation of an upgrade to the institution’s learning management system for 2020. As well, an evaluation of its workshops and core activities for 2019 is being undertaken to inform enhancements to its work in the coming year

With the CHE Industrial Arts team

With the CBHTS Hospitality team.