Behind every successful digital learning resource is a process that brings together pedagogy, design, and technology to support students in reaching their learning objectives.

This presentation showcases a range of digital learning resources developed by the Digital Learning Development team for blended courses at Trinity College Dublin, and offers insight into the collaborative processes behind their design and production.

The team develop fully online courses, MOOCs, CPDs, staff training, and blended resources for the university. This presentation focusses specifically on blended resources created for undergraduate, postgraduate and micro-credential courses, with the aim of sparking discussion about designing innovative digital learning experiences using industry-standard tools. This presentation is structured around people, processes and products, highlighting the roles, workflows and outputs involved in developing blended learning solutions.

People

Central to the development work are Instructional Designers, Multimedia Designers, Learning Technologists and a Video/audio Specialist. While they specialise in specific skills and bring particular strengths as part of their role, many of their skills overlap, resulting in enhanced teamwork and knowledge sharing. The team partner with academic staff to lead the development of multimedia resources and VLE tasks to provide enhanced teaching and learning opportunities. This collaborative model combines pedagogical expertise with high-level technical and creative production skills.

Processes

When developing resources for blended courses, we collaborate with academic staff to discuss delivery modes, structure, and course content to identify opportunities for digital teaching and learning enhancements. Through this collaborative process we design purposeful blended learning activities, to increase variety of learning types, for example, acquisition, investigation or practice, while addressing specific teaching and learning challenges. Defined roles, iterative development phases, structured workflows, reusable templates, embedded accessibility and QA processes streamline development. Keeping the student experience at the centre of the design is core to decision-making, which is underpinned by constructive alignment, cognitive multimedia learning theory, user experience best practice, and accessibility.

Products

Projects span multiple disciplines across the university including Business, Nursing and Midwifery, Engineering, Classics and the Careers Office. Examples of blended elements developed for modules include the following.

- Flipped learning:

• Multimedia presentations
• Instructional videos

- Experiential learning:

• Interactive Interview preparation scenarios
• Interactive Perinatal training scenarios
• Software training simulations

- Reflective learning:

• Interactive skills audit tool

- Gamified learning:

• Climate leadership game

- Knowledge Consolidation:

• Summary infographics
• Interactive quizzes

- Bespoke solutions:

• Ancient-Greek alphabet tool

Insights include that the blended learning resources are effective for learners engaging with UDL principles. Student engagement and feedback from academics are positive. Blended learning provides a valuable opportunity to create bespoke and innovative learning resources and interventions that respond to specific teaching challenges and learner needs.