Despite what I might tell my eye doctor when I go for a check up, if I’m awake there is a very high chance I’m using a screen. Let’s be honest, we’re living in an online world. Technology is virtually inescapable. In fact, in my line of work I can’t do my job without it. I am an Assistant Instructional Designer at the University of Regina. What that means is that I spend my work day developing and maintaining the online classes offered through the university.

Most online courses offered through the university run through URCourses. This is the hub where all course sites are held. It allows students to access the courses they’re in for the current semester, and it allows me to access the courses I support (Which often tend to be any course that begins with the letters F through N). URCourses isn’t actually a unique creation by the university. It’s an L.M.S (Learning management system) known as Moodle. Over the past five years I have become fluent in Moodle. Gathering a better understanding of the little intricacies to consider when creating resources and activities such as quizzes, assignments, forums, books, videos, and my personal favourite H5P’s

H5P’s are interactive content that can be placed into a course, or anywhere where H5Ps are enabled. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to add any H5P content to this blog. That’s too bad as I had just created a couple slides with two buttons where you could only proceed by pressing the green one:

H5P’s have been a fantastic addition when developing classes. Often instructors like to use them as a no risk “Test your understanding” activity at the end of a book or unit. They can also be used to break up content when it’s just blocks of text one after another. H5Ps can be smaller activities like one off multiple choice questions, or fill in the blanks. Bigger study materials like flash cards or drag and drop questions. And even bigger concepts that might seem out of the question at first. My favourite example of this is a murder mystery activity I created when I first started at the university. It seemed like an impossible task at first, but with a lot of hard work turned into one of the best projects I’ve worked on. Students work their way through the mystery, investigating clues, interrogating suspects, and using knowledge learned in class to find a reasonable explanation for the murder that has occurred. Just look at all of the branches!

But this work couldn’t be completed without the help and input of my coworkers. I work fully remote, but easily stay in contact with everyone via Zoom’s messaging system. We can share documents and ideas, help problem solve when we’re running into unforeseen issues, or just take a moment to share a laugh or some GIFs to showcase our mood. Zoom helps us to stay connected even without in person contact.

When I’m not working there’s still a very high chance that I am doing something with technology. Whether that’s playing video games with friends, watching Netflix/YouTube, walking my dog and listening to Spotify, or more recently, reading articles and doing research. We’re living in an online era, and I am here for it!