Online Learning | Nantana Taptamat

In addition to teaching educational technologies and innovative pedagogies for postgraduate students, I have extensive experience designing and developing learning activities using various software packages and online coursework-building technologies, including graphic design, video, animation, and multimedia production. I am an advanced user of several authoring tools, including Articulate 360 (Storyline, Rise, Review), HTML, Camtasia and Adobe Creative Cloud (e.g., Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and Premiere Pro). In addition, I am highly skilful in managing several LMSs such as Blackboard, LearnDash and Moodle. My online course website interface combines social media-like ecosystems with interactive learning management systems, which allow integration between this learning platform and several social media. As an administrator of several websites, I effectively use several social media tools to increase user engagement for educational and marketing purposes.

Working as a learning designer at UQ, I design and develop resources (e.g., animated videos, interactive worksheets, and online courses) and deliver career development and employability learning for students in various modes: Fully online, blended, dual and in-person. I develop two frameworks: a SCRATCH framework and a Learning Design Decisions framework to systematically guide my work, aiming to enhance student learning, sense of belonging and lifelong learning mindsets at a large scale. To inform my practice, I synthesise multiple perspectives, data sources and stakeholder inputs to propose practical, principled and innovative approaches and enable educational scalability of supports and services within UQ. Additionally, I use the Technology Enhanced Learning Accreditation Standards (TELAS) framework to evaluate the quality of the online self-paced courses by a range of stakeholders, including students, my team and several subject matter experts.

In addition, I won the 2021/2022 SEAMEO Australia Education Award, which allowed me to develop a meaningful professional development program for over 700 teachers and educators across 11 countries in Southeast Asia. Through this project, I have developed online learning modules embedded in a highly interactive social learning platform that allows participants to exchange ideas and practices collaboratively.

On this page, I am sharing my learning journey as a learning designer, researcher and online teacher, during which I iteratively design and develop the online teacher community and professional development program.

The project entitled “ Learning together through SEAMEO- AUS EDULINK: Practices and Principles for Collaborative Pedagogy and Assessment using ePortfolios” has been implemented since August 2021 and will end in early May 2022. So, please come along and learn with me as I am documenting the project's progress and reflecting on my professional growth. I will reflect on both my professional growth through this site and project updates on the SEAMEO-AUS EduLink website.

Below is an example of my learning design experience in which I develop an online teacher professional of practice to facilitate a professional development program.

Professional Development Program & Online Community of Practice

I developed a project proposal entitled, "Learning together through SEAMEO- AUS EDULINK: Practices and Principles for Collaborative Pedagogy and Assessment using ePortfolios" for the SEAMEO Australia Education Links Award. Before submitting this proposal, I asked my colleague, Mufli Muflichah if she wanted to collaborate where she was interested. So, I added her to the proposal.

When our proposal had been shortlisted, I created the promo video to accompany our application. Finally, our project was selected as a winner of the 2021 SEAMEO Australia Education Links Award. Following is my learning journey story starting from we when we won this award.

A summary of project proposal created by Nantana

Design and Development of the Professional Development Program

This project aims to bring scholars and teachers from Southeast Asian countries and Australia to learn and collaborate through the online community of practice. To accomplish this goal, I developed an online community of practices that allowed embedding a series of highly interactive learning modules and online interactions. Design and development of the social learning platform involve an iterative process that includes continuous loops of design, testing, revising, implementing and revising the elements of the community website (e.g., interactions within course discussions, social posts, forums and gamification).

SEAMEO-AUS EduLink consists of two components: a professional development program and an online community of practice.
1. A professional development program involves a series of online courses and a series of guest speakers.
2. An online community of practice involves both asynchronous and synchronous interactions among its member.

A series of online modules is shown in the figure below.

Components of SEAMEO- AUS EduLink

A series of online modules

Project timeline

After designing and developing the community of practice and professional development program, the project implementation involves 4 phases as shown in the figure below. Since November 15, 2021, our members have engaged with the courses and with one another. At the moment, they are developing their portfolios (Phase 1). From January - March 2022, the members will have the opportunity to engage with the experts/educators/researchers whose works focus on ePortfolios.

Project timeline

Community website

The community website has several functionalities of Facebook and Backboard with gamification features. For example, each teacher will have their own profile where they can see their followers and following. They also can link their profile to their social media and ePortfolios so other teachers can read and provide feedback. They can check their timeline, edit their profile and connections. The teachers can interact with other teachers in their groups and explore the courses they are taking. They can look at photos and documents that have been uploaded. Besides, they can create and respond to posts in the forum. Participating teachers will receive points for their engagements, and their ranks will be promoted when they reach a certain point balance. Points, ranks, certificates and some automated feedback are automatically generated by the system.

In the following sections, I describe and reflect on how I develop, implement and revise this platform. I hope to share my experience in this exploratory project, including many challenges that would benefit educational practitioners and policymakers. Especially if you wish to do similar projects, you would not need to learn the hard way and avoid the mistakes I have made along the way.

Let's get started by the end product (live update). Below is the community website, and here is the LINK to that website.

The SEAMEO-AUS EduLink Portfolio

To document the project progress and maximise collaboration, I have created and concurrently updated the portfolio, which can be accessed through this LINK. The content of ePortfolio include:

Introduction to SEAMEO-AUS EduLink;
Documentation of the project: Explanation of community interface, updates, code of conduct, and shared documents;
Links to ePortfolios of the members who wish to share their works with other members for feedback;
Details on upcoming and past events;
Case studies
Contact and information about the founder, advisors and contributors

SEAMEO-AUS EduLink designed by Nantana

SEAMEO-AUS EduLink in numbers

Members of SEAMEO-AUS EduLink are K12 teachers, educators and educational administrators from 11 countries in Southeast Asia: Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam.

Besides, some members reside in other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India and Bangladesh. About 70% of our members are Philipino.

Prior to this project, about 70% of our members have not developed or used ePortfolios in their classrooms, while 30% have developed/used or are familiar with ePortfolios in education.

Overview of the countries of origin that our members are from

420

Enrolled

305

Completed

735

Consented to participate in the project

541

Registered to the community website *

403

Enrolled

281

Completed

"Introduction to ePortfolios" *

"Creating Your ePortfolio" *

* Data as of 23 August 2022

The challenge I had at the first stage is communication with the potential participants. Sending bulk emails were very challenging as Microsoft Outlook did not allow sending more than 500 bulk emails. Hence, it is possible that some participants who agreed to participate did not receive the emails about the orientation link and registration to the community website, particularly, all conversations have been done virtually only.

How I design, develop and implement the PD program

In the following sections, I will walk you through several steps starting from developing the community website, creating the two online courses, recruiting the participants and implementing the program. I will keep adding the artifacts as the project progress. Please let me know your thoughts on my journey and practices. I would love to hear from you so that I can improve my work.

To ensure that I did not violate the licenses of material used in the course, I purchased the licenses that allow me to use the applications and modify artifacts such as images and vector elements to be used in the non-profit website.

Step 1: Design and develop the community website and two core courses

Firstly, I created a social learning platform on WordPress and enabled a learning management system using LearnDash. I have been adding several components to the community website. Kindly be advised that the interface has been changed according to the interactions and opinions of our members. Hence, if you subscribe today, you might find the interface is slightly different from the figure on the left.

The platform interface can be categorised into three groups:

Menus;
Shortcuts to personal information of the members (e.g., profile and settings, point balance; and connections)
Shortcuts to some primary components (e.g., groups, forums, updates, and recent posts and replies);
Post updates;
New updates

The interface of the community website (as of 24 November 2021)

Below is the overview of the elements of the community interface.

Overview of the interface of the community website (as of 24 November 2021)

Step 2: Call for participants

Upon completing the design and development of the community interface and two courses, I asked five teachers from Thailand to test the systems and courses. I revised and improved the systems and course interface according to their feedback.

I created the email blast message, project concept note and call for participants page (accessed through this link) to use for participant recruitment. The concept note is shown on the left-hand side.

From 29 October to 10 November 2021, we recruit the participants through several methods such as Facebook, our existing networks and SEAMEO networks.

Very special thanks to our following priceless networks for helping us reach our valuable members:

Khun Piyapa Su-angavatin
SEAMEO Schools' Network Coordinator
Dr Tran Le Nghi Tran, Vietnam
Dr Yuni Budi, Indonesia

Challenges of this stage

As it was the end of the semester involving multiple marking tasks, I was extremely busy. It was difficult to keep up with over 700 submissions of expression of interest.
All communication had been done through online platforms (emails, FaceBook, What's app and so on). Hence, it was very likely that miscommunication occurred now and then.
The communication involved diverse people from different cultures.
The different time zones also contributed to the challenges regarding remote collaboration.

Last but not least, all challenges had been eased/ addressed by great collaborations from stakeholders and participants who have been really supportive. I am forever indebted to their kind understanding, patience and genuinely appreciate their active participation.

Step 3: Registration

Once the participants agreed to participate in the project, I sent them emails to provide information about the next steps, including program orientation webinar and registration to the website.

In order to get access to the courses and be able to engage with other members, the users need to register to the platform. To sign up to the community website, the users can follow these steps:

Go to www.nantanalearn.com;
Click sign up and they will be prompted to the registration page;
Enter the information in each field and click "Create Account";
Click the link sent to their email to confirm their registration; and
After that, they can sign into the website and interact with other members.

Profile settings

Followed the census agreement of our members, the community website is set as public. Although I set up the community to be public according to our vote, I still think privacy is a huge issue. Therefore, I set up the system in a way that our members have full control over their profile privacy. They can edit their profile and account settings.

The gif file below shows how our members could set up their accounts, including login information, email preferences, privacy and group invites. Additionally, the members can export their data or delete their accounts if they want.

Post privacy control

In addition to the fact that the members control their account settings, they can also control their posts manually before posting any updates as shown in the figures below.

How to set up post privacy.

Gamification: Points and Ranks

Points and ranks

The members will earn some points once they register to the website. They will be rewarded with a range of points for different kinds of interactions within the courses and social groups. There are four types of points: coins, credits, points and reactions. The coins are associated with interactions within the course whereas the credits reflect their achievements on the courses. In addition, the points are related to their interactions in the social groups whereas reactions are associated with their interactions with other course members.

When the members have reached a certain points balance, their ranks will be promoted to the next level. For example, if they reach a points balance of 200, they will move from level 3 to level 4.

Initially, I set up the system in the way that each week, the leaderboard will update the point balance and show the top ten members who earn the highest points.

However, upon implementing the project, I thought our community was meant to be supportive, not competitive. Hence, I took out the leaderboard but still keep the rank as our members voted to have the points and ranks.

Leaderboard, initially planned to be included