OUR STRATEGIC PRIORITIES
Four strategic priorities have been identified to advance digital learning at McMaster.
1. Develop digital literacy and proficiency
Technology is rapidly changing, and as we increase the options and supports available to our community, we recognize the need to enable our educators and learners with the knowledge and confidence to utilize digital teaching and learning tools effectively and meaningfully.
- We are committed to continuous learning and improvement to best prepare our community for their teaching, learning and research activities.
- We are committed to developing consistent language in policy for teaching and learning modalities offered at McMaster.
- We are committed to offering academic skills development for learners on how to best learn in digital environments.
- We are committed to providing educators with resources to inform decisions regarding course modalities connected to the types of teaching and learning goals, including promotion of Flex Forward Accessible Education.
- We are committed to engaging educators and learners in informing the development of resources and workshops to support digital literacy.
- We are committed to developing clear and transparent guidelines to inform educators on the mindful use of technology in their teaching.
2. Build institutional capacity and capability
As we continue to implement digital learning, we will develop human and technological support to provide high-quality, inclusive experiences for both our educators and learners.
- We are committed to providing and sustaining necessary human resources and infrastructure to reimagine digital teaching and learning policies and processes.
- We are committed to developing detailed procurement criteria for new software and technology to support digital teaching and learning experiences which includes accessibility.
- We are committed to providing processes and support to educators for high quality development of a change of modality for their course in alignment with program expectations.
- We are committed to increasing technical support hours offered for the Learning Management System and Campus Classroom Technologies to go beyond traditional business hours.
- We are committed to equipping study rooms with technology to better support hybrid group meetings.
3. Create effective learning opportunities
Teaching and learning can happen anywhere and anytime. Digital environments and technologies create opportunities for our educators and learners to collaborate in diverse ways in different spaces and offer flexible learning experiences.
- Whether virtual or in-person, we are committed to implementing teaching approaches in a way that creates the best possible conditions for learning to flourish.
- We are committed to developing digital accessibility guidelines for teaching and learning.
- We are committed to encouraging the use of lecture capture by educators for lectures and posting recordings on Avenue to Learn.
- We are committed to creating new tech-enabled learning spaces on campus to enhance teaching and learning activities.
- We are committed to developing a robust, accessible, and scalable classroom standard for hybrid teaching and learning experiences.
- We are committed to providing students with opportunities to choose digital learning experiences (e.g. hybrid, online, virtual, hyflex) where possible and appropriate to the program and learning outcomes.
- We are committed to providing human and educational resources to support our educators in teaching using digital tools that they deem best for their course material/learning outcomes, in alignment with the principles for digital learning and as appropriate for the expectations across a program.
- We are committed to developing evaluation tools, programming and processes for ensuring courses are high-quality, regardless of teaching modality.
- We are committed to supporting and resourcing initiatives to encourage discoverability, use and creation of open, affordable and inclusive digital learning materials
4. Advance innovation through collaboration
Digital learning presents us with new opportunities for innovation in teaching and learning spaces. Our educators will work together to deliver excellent learning experiences for our learners. Digital learning tools will also enable us to increase global awareness of our learners and foster innovation.
- We are committed to retrofitting campus spaces to offer teaching studios adaptable for various disciplines to be equipped with technology to produce high-quality recorded teaching content/material.
- We are committed to increasing the number of remote experiential learning opportunities taking place globally.
- We are committed to enabling those who wish to try new technologies to participate in pilot projects to experiment with new technologies and modalities.
- We are committed to recognizing educators who have demonstrated teaching excellence using tech-enabled teaching and digital pedagogies.
- We are committed to increasing global awareness amongst our learners by offering more Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) opportunities.
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