IMPART Alliance is a unit housed within the College of Osteopathic Medicine (Dept. of Family and Community Medicine) at MSU. They provide (non-credit) training to non-MSU people around the state and need an LMS to house/manage all of their classes. Prior to COVID, all of the classes were live, in person and 3.5 hours long. They have spent the last year or so converting all of the curriculum to one-hour classes that are offered with a live instructor via Zoom. They have been piloting the classes, using Qualtrics/and or Zoom as their registration system and tracking the quizzes, paperwork, and certificates using excel. Shannon Harkins-Padgitt reached out to the MSU IT Instructional Technology & Development team to see if there was a unit on campus who could provide some advice about getting D2L set up.
I recognized the D2L features that would best meet the needs of their program and arranged to work with Shannon to design the overall course structure in D2L for each level of their program (diagramed in the workflow below). Once the workflow was complete and approved, I created a template D2L course "shell" with placeholder activities and documents so that I could setup the D2L release conditions and access permissions. Once the shell was complete, I created documentation for Shannon outlining the remaining work to be done in duplicating and customizing the shell for each of the three levels of the IMPART Alliance program before populating the courses with content, Zoom links, quiz questions, and certificate templates. Finally, I recorded a video tour of the course shell and documentation.
I recognized the D2L features that would best meet the needs of their program and arranged to work with Shannon to design the overall course structure in D2L for each level of their program (diagramed in the workflow below). Once the workflow was complete and approved, I created a template D2L course "shell" with placeholder activities and documents so that I could setup the D2L release conditions and access permissions. Once the shell was complete, I created documentation for Shannon outlining the remaining work to be done in duplicating and customizing the shell for each of the three levels of the IMPART Alliance program before populating the courses with content, Zoom links, quiz questions, and certificate templates. Finally, I recorded a video tour of the course shell and documentation.
This project was by far the most comprehensive D2L course setup projects I have gotten to do. I really enjoyed collaborating with Shannon and seeing her excitement as the workflow and course shell took shape. It was a ton of fun to translate her vision into D2L tools/strategies and be able to say "we can totally do that!" I am really glad that I thought to diagram the course structure before I started, as it really helped me keep track of the tools and interactions between course elements.