What is that, you ask? It’s when a previous ‘instance’ of a topic is created (copied) into the upcoming ‘instance’ of the topic (eg S2 2017 is copied into S2 2018).
This may appear to be an automatic process but it is actually carried out by the Online Learning and Teaching Team in your college. There are currently some minor differences across colleges. Over time all colleges will use a consistent process:
- MPH and NHS topics have been rolled and you can now start preparing your topic for teaching
- BGL, EPSW, HASS and SE topic coordinators will have received an email requiring a response: you can nominate what content you want transferred into the new topic.
What you need to do – BGL, EPSW, HASS and SE
- Complete the online form to request content to be copied from a previous instance.
- Use this form if you want to create a shared topic.
- Complete this form even if you don’t want content copied and this will remove you from reminder emails.
You will receive a confirmation email when your topic has been ‘rolled over’.
Deadlines:
- Shared topics and rollover must be complete before students have access (one week before the start of teaching).
- Requests must be received for Semester 2 by 9 July 2018.
- Requests for non-Semester 2 (NS2) teaching must be received no later than 2 weeks prior to the start of teaching.
What you need to do – MPH and NHS
Your topics have been rolled over. You can move to the next step.
What you need to do once your topic has rolled over
This is a window of opportunity (May to July) to cull, tidy up and generally make your new topic instance more usable from a teacher viewpoint. If you have lots of items hidden in your topic, students won’t see them, but you/other teachers will, and it can be tedious working in a topic site that you need to wade through/make sense of. This clutter also makes life difficult for a new topic coordinator who takes over your topic.
If you are a topic coordinator, this is the time to think (again) about your topic’s design/redesign – content, activities leading to assessment, support resources. Did you know that your college now has a learning designer? You can make a time to meet with your learning designer to discuss topic design.
So why not look at rollover time as an ‘autumn clean’?
- What don’t you need?
- What do you want to discard/change?
- What needs updating? (eg out-of-date resources, activity dates/settings, broken links)
- Is there something that didn’t work in the last instance, that you want to ‘refresh’?
- How can you incorporate feedback from students?
Remember that all elements of the previous instance of your topic still exist; if you delete something by accident in the upcoming instance, it can be ‘imported’ by your eLearning support team at any time, on request.
Here are the timelines for S2 topics:
- You can access your FLO site/s from Monday 7 May
- Student access will begin 7 days before start of teaching (Monday 16 July)
Happy planning and developing!
Support resources include:
Written by Andrea Rankin / Grette Wilkinson
Learning Designer / Associate Director, Online Learning & Teaching
CILT