Professional Learning Goals

• Advanced functions of D2L–supported collaboration among colleagues by helping new D2L teachers deliver content. Mentored daily. 
• Used Chromebooks to support students with reading/writing-equity/accessible learning
• Merged the best face-to-face activities with online activities for learning–ensuring students felt confident taking an online course, but first with teacher face-to-face support
• Gained skills editing existing content/units/activities to help maximize student engagement and overcome learning obstacles of IEP’d students, and students at Applied and Essential level students
• Built hybrid content delivery with our own Google Classroom materials to empower students to navigate multiple digital platforms

Activities and Resources

• Co-planning release time
• Board TeLT’s access for support during these planning sessions
• Curated digital classroom resources
• Learned how to use Pear Deck for collaborative learning
• Pear Deck Pro Version subscription for full functionality
• Integrated existing Google Classroom resources
• Registered for BOLTT2018 to  build capacity for digital integration and collaboration with colleagues from different boards

Unexpected Challenges

• The greatest unexpected challenge is the amount of work and focus required to build capacity to not only NAVIGATE D2L resources, but also to learn enough about the architecture to initiate course DESIGN
• Students buying in to process was slow; lack of student confidence for some IEP’d students was an obstacle. For all students it is like teaching a new language. Content knowledge is kind of separate from this new “language” skill.
• The D2L reboot in summer 2017 had many improvements. However, there are still many glitches that are very time-consuming to resolve (e.g.: “Teacher edit” doesn’t specify limitation of only being able to change lessons, not the Unit structure).
• Took much more time to add our Google Classroom content into our D2L courses than we expected
• Need more time to drill down into grading tools

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

• Enabled students to create thoughtful and meaningful discussion posts
• Empowered them with new confidence to navigate future e-Learning courses both in high school and post-secondary contexts
• Enabled students to collaborate meaningfully in a rich, diverse online learning environment
• Built student knowledge of multimedia options to choose to create assignments that are richly varied and impactful

Sharing

• We shared how D2L works in our civics courses at a staff meeting in a Professional Learning Carousel
• We collaborated with colleagues on teaching the new course, how the D2L worked, and spent a lot of time mentoring
• We plan to share our course refinements and growing navigation skills with colleagues who are joining the e-Learning adventure, since our school has just been designated a SCDSB D2L Hub
• We hope to build a dynamic team teaching environment next year with release time where needed, to support staff and student e-Learning skill development

Project Evaluation

• We believe our project is for sure a success because our goals are met. We have learned a great deal about D2L challenges and opportunities, and are in a much better position to help contribute toward D2L capacity growth in the coming school year as we move toward SCDSB e-Learning hub status.
• Re: what we might have done differently, this is hard to speculate. It was a new experience format-wise, and we feel we met our goals to date; more planning time would have been very helpful in deepening D2L knowledge.