The Spark of Learning

Last night was our final class, and I was supposed to submit my course summary then. Unfortunately, I ran into an issue with my summary video—it couldn’t complete rendering in time. I reached out to the Animaker support team for help, and I was eventually able to download the video for sharing this morning.

The last class was emotional but fun. It was a great opportunity to watch so many thoughtful, creative, and hilarious summaries from my classmates. My personal learning summary wasn’t anything fancy—just a personal reflection on what I’ve learned and the challenges I faced, which ultimately helped deepen my learning experience.

I used Animaker to create my video because I’m familiar with the platform. However, with all the recent updates, it still took me a while to complete it. Luckily, I still have a Basic Plan subscription, which allowed me to make a five-minute video. I chose to use text instead of audio, thinking it would be easier for everyone to read rather than listen to my voice.

These past 13 weeks have been an incredible learning journey. While five minutes isn’t nearly enough to capture everything I’d like to say, the lessons and experiences I’m taking away will stay with me for a lifetime.

Thank you, Dr. Hildebrandt, for such a fantastic course. And thank you to all my classmates for your genuine contributions to my blog, course profile, and course prototype. Without each of you, this course wouldn’t have felt as complete and meaningful as it did.

Wishing you all the very best in your future learning and teaching careers—may you continue to grow, inspire, and make a difference wherever you go!

So what’s it all about?

Basically, this course helps first-year hospitality students figure out how to build awesome careers that are both good for them and good for the community. If you want all the more details, I wrote about it in an earlier blog post.

And how did I make it?

It was not just thrown together! Here’s the details:

Building the Course Itself: I organized everything into easy-to-follow sections, picked out cool resources that I have learned throughout this EC&I 834 course, and added videos to keep things interesting.
Trying it Out: I let a few of my peers test the course and tell me what they thought. This helped me fix any confusing parts.
Making it Better: I took their invaluable feedback and redesigned the course, making the course more organized and the whole thing easier to use.

….Let Me Show You!

I made a quick 10-minute video where I walk you through the whole course. You will see how it has been organized, how students navigate through it, and all the cool interactive activities.

Wrapping Up

Honestly, this has been a really fun project! I have learned many about designing courses and making them engaging through H5P tools. I am excited to keep improving it and eventually design an official one for my faculty in the future.

Thank you for spending time to read my final blog!

In my course profile, I mentioned using Moodle as LMS for the blended portion of the course, but for the prototype, I will build the course platform with Canvas. It is similar to Moodle in the way that it has several useful tools such as a built-in online “Discussions”. With this feature, students can share their thoughts, questions, and ideas, which I think is a great tool for getting everyone to interact to each other’s. This tool can be especially helpful for those students who might be a little shy in class – it gives them another way to participate and connect with their classmates.
Canvas also provides other interesting tools for creating and sharing all sorts of content. In the “Lucid (Whiteboard)” area, students can insert other graphic design like mind map, diagrams. This is useful for students to develop their personal or group brainstorming ideas and creative skills. Moreover, they can use the “Pages” feature to get more creative with how they express themselves and easily share their work with classmates for feedback. I will use this feature to add a self-introduction video and make sure that every student will do the same. This way will not only help us get to know each other but also give students a chance to practice their communication skills in a fun and engaging way.
Additionally, I am also planning to use Canvas “Collaborations” function to help students work together in real-time. They can team up on documents, projects, and presentations, which is a great way to build teamwork skills. And for those times when we need to connect face-to-face, Canvas “Conferences” (which uses BigBlueButton – a tool I really enjoyed in my blended courses) will let us have video chats, and real-time interacting activities. These real-time interactions are so important for creating a sense of community in the course.
Because this is for first-year students, university life can be their big adjustment. I want to make sure everyone knows exactly what is expected from the get-go. Therefore, clear guidelines and assessment instructions will provided for all the different activities and interactions. For quick knowledge checks, chapter overviews, and final reports, I will be using the “Quiz” and “Assignment” features in Canvas. I will also be fostering a supportive environment where everyone feels included. Encouraging constructive feedback between students will be a big part of that, and I’ll be checking in regularly to offer guidance and support.
Finally, to help students really get the most out of the course, I will be incorporating some reflective activities, like self-assessments and reflective journals. This will give them a chance to think about their own learning and how they’re interacting with the material and each other. By using all these different features and tools within Canvas, I am hoping to create a really rich and supportive learning environment for every student./.

The global tourism and hospitality industry faced significant challenges, after COVID 19 pandemic. For instance, my previous faculty experienced a 50% decrease in student recruitment, and when we went to recruit the new batch of students, many of them seemed unsure of their future careers. Our university has a career consulting team to support high-school students in making career choices, but our faculty tried to use new recruitment strategies, such as quick interviews and personality tests to ensure we choose the right students. As a lecture and faculty administrator, I often learn that when students choose a wrong major, they will lose their motivation to study. Therefore, combining my previous teaching and industry experiences, references from several syllabi from my faculty, and a suggestion from Gemini for a basic course outline, I created the new course titled “Sustainable Career Development in Hospitality Management.”
This course not only aims to help first-year student transition smoothly from high school to university, gain essential skills and knowledge, but also obtain a holistic view of their career explorations in a sustainable and ethical way. It will also address the two UN’s sustainable goal development(SDG) to guide the student in further developing their skills as they navigate their learning journey.
I will use Canvas to design a course prototype because it would be prohibited to gain access to my university LMS – Moodle. However, I will still address Moodle information in the course profile, as this may become a real project I develop for my faculty in the near future.
Here is the course profile

Thank you for reading and looking forward to receiving great feedbacks from everyone.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, blended learning, online learning, and hybrid learning have become familiar to most people, particularly learners and educators. The conveniences of these formats are undeniable—they allow us to learn from the comfort of our homes and easily connect with others with just a click of a mouse. Additionally, these learning models enable multitasking, saving valuable time that would otherwise be spent commuting between locations.
In this blog, I will share some information related to the Hybrid-Flexible (Hy-Flex) Learning Model which originally came from the Instructional Technologies (ITEC) graduate program at San Francisco State University by Dr. Beatty, B.J, and his team. You can find the original paper here: EdTech Books

So back in 2005, the department realized they needed to increase enrollment in their MA program. They had considered moving the program entirely online to reach more students, but faced challenges:
○ Lack of institutional support: No resources to build an online program.
○ Faculty expertise: No teachers trained in online teaching.
○ Student interest: Students might not want an online option, especially since they were already located near the university.
Therefore, creating a fully online program seemed impossible under these circumstances. That went the hybrid-flexible course was designed to “bridge” the need of online students and still serve their current face to face students. Below is some key features of this model which was drawn:

Hy-Flex course design defintion

Similar to other model, HyFlex offers students who are the direct users, several important benefits.
The first is to make courses more accessible by making accommodations for people whose schedules or personal circumstances prevent them from attending in person. Therefore, having flexible options will give students more control over their everyday schedules. The second is that, HyFlex provides varied learning resources and options which helps to enhance the educational experience. Finally, by giving students the freedom to decide for themselves when and how best to learn and finish course requirements, HyFlex solves the common challenge of balancing school and other life obligations
HyFlex does, however, come with a number of drawbacks. Firstly, students must know how to effectively manage their time and schedule their in-person or online attendance in advance. Along with dependable technology and internet connectivity, the online option requires the capacity to maintain concentrate, which is difficult given the numerous potential distractions in this digital age. Plus, it takes self-motivation and discipline to succeed in an online environment, especially when the content might be less engaging or harder to get into.
In my opinion, HyFlex is not just a trend—it’s a solid approach to teaching and learning in this digital age. But it only works best when schools and instructors are well prepared. This means having the right tools, proper training times, and support in place. Moreover, instructors need to be trained to teach both online and in-person effectively, and students might need extra help navigating the technology and online learning environment.
With careful planning and the right support, HyFlex has the potential to improve learning for a lot of students and make education more flexible and accessible for everyone.