Jordan B. Peterson’s 10th rule for life, from his 2018 book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is: Be Precise in Your Speech. Peterson philosophises that chaos emerges in a household, bit by bit. This is what happens when we don’t pay attention to the small things. Chaos.  This rule came back to me this week, when I saw—yet again—an article which claims to be speaking about microcredentials (in the title) but is actually talking about short courses (in the content).  Short courses and microcredentials are not the same thing and it matters that the education sector knows why! Le ..read more

Two of Oppida’s talented learning designers, Belinda Griffiths and Mat Darch, take a detailed look at the subject of discussions in online courses—what the benefits are, how to facilitate them, and how to foster engagement and participation. … participant-driven discussion boards … could grow to play an important role in supporting emergent forms of learning in the twenty-first century, helping instructors and learners further engage the transformative potential of online conversations. Champion and Gunnlaugson, 2018 Benefits of facilitating great discussions in online courses Learners in onl ..read more

In this Oppida talks video, CEO Bianca Raby talks about the need for a product mindset when building an online course. Watch the video, then find the transcript and further reading below. Transcript Hi. Today I want to talk about why we need to shift our mindset to a product mindset when we’re building an online course. The first thing is that, unlike a face-to-face or synchronous engagement opportunity with learners, you don’t have the opportunity in a fixed online course to be able to respond directly and iterate and kind of go with the flow. So, any teacher knows that when they’re in the ..read more

Oppida’s Head of Client Relations Natalia Mishchenko recently chatted with ConnectED Founder and Senior Advisor Warren Kennard. They discussed the future of qualifications and of digital education, and ConnectED’s mission to provide higher education professionals with the knowledge and applied skills to harness the power of the edtech revolution. Warren Kennard is a globally connected higher education professional and reformer with extensive leadership experience across edtech, strategy, marketing, business development and partnerships. He is committed to giving higher education a stronger voi ..read more

Transcript Hi. Today I want to talk about what blended learning really is. So blended learning, you can think of it a bit like pre-readings on steroids. So the idea is that in a blended learning experience you actually have synchronous engagements that are drawing upon asynchronous content. So that means live engagement, so anything where you are actually getting to interact with your learners in a real-time way, should be built upon the work that they are doing before they come into that learning experience. So a truly blended experience means that they have had an opportunity to engage with ..read more

We are so excited! Our team just revamped Oppida’s very popular free short course: Designing Digital Learning! At Oppida we have freely shared our insights, tips, learnings and samples aligned to high quality digital education design since our kick-off almost two years ago. We know that for many this has spurred conversations and driven actions that have brought about some brilliant results! One of Oppida’s first efforts was: ‘Designing Digital Learning’, an 8-part self-paced 1-hour course covering the key elements to becoming better designers of learning. Since one of our core values is that ..read more

Innovation and technology are not just going to shape our future; they will also deeply impact how our next generations educate and shape themselves. Market predictions propose that the global Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR) market will reach 30.7 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2021. Those same predictions forecast an increase to 300 billion U.S. dollars by 2024. So, there is money in future tech; not a huge surprise—though 877% growth in 3 years is jaw dropping, to say the least. What is more interesting is that Extended Reality (XR) industry experts a ..read more

Transcript Hi. Today I want to talk about why it’s important to care about the user experience when designing your online course, and I will also use the acronym UX just to get in the rhythm of that because that’s what all the lingo is.  So the UX is super important when designing an online course because as consumers of a lot of technology over the last 20 years, all of us are really, really used to being able to get onto our devices and find what we need. And we have been very spoiled with user experience because of some of the big companies that we are accustomed to. So, I think Airb ..read more

Our latest blog is from Jon Kerr, Oppida’s Head of Growth and Partnerships, and looks at the idea of greater collaboration between universities and their local communities. In early 2017, an Australian Federal government paper explored the opportunity to establish University Precincts: centres to foster and facilitate industry collaboration with the university sector. In 2018, I heard a well-known and respected vice-chancellor of a Victorian university espouse a similar model, one that extended to the local community and to individuals.  A number of university precincts have been establis ..read more

Video transcript Hi. Today I want to talk about constructive alignment. It’s a term thrown around a lot by educators and often probably a bit misunderstood by anyone who hasn’t gone through and worked a lot of the time in education. So basically what it means is: does your content line up with the learning outcomes of the course and therefore are students able to do the assessments that you set, because they will essentially have, or they should, line up with the learning outcomes that you set. So we should be assessing what we plan to teach. And, so, constructive alignment means that w ..read more