Bring Your Course for Development (BYCFD) Tailor-made Interactive Online Course Design Workshop

The Sakai Monitoring Report produced by the Academic Quality Assurance Unit (AQAU) for the second semester of the 2020/2021 academic year indicated that most faculty did not utilize the opportunities offered by the Sakai Learning Management System in the area of designing and populating their course site with materials to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous learning. To a large extent, makes it difficult for students to achieve the learning outcome of online learning.

In response to this gap, the AQAU in collaboration with the University of Ghana Computing Systems (UGCS) organized a 2-hour guided ‘Bring Your Course for Development (BYCFD)’ training workshop for faculty from February 8th,2022 to February 10th,2022. The training involved guiding faculty to design/create their course sites with experts from the Sakai Team. It was a hands-on activity which guided faculty to design their semester course site from scratch during and after the training, using the lesson tools.

Each faculty brought his/her course materials such as course outline using the AQAU standards, lecture presentations, reading materials and videos, activities and assignments to create quality learning environments and experiences for students. Faculty were taken through a sample course site guided to design a similar one for their semester courses using the lessons tool on Sakai LMS.

A total of number of 48 faculty participated in this exercise. Overall, we observed that the SAKAI training was a success looking at the assessments and evaluations from participants.

It is expected that through a deliberate and structured exposure to instructional materials, learning activities and interaction, students will be able to access information, obtain skills, and practice higher levels of thinking which will impact positively on teaching and learning.