ARC 375 [492/590]: Experiencing Cities

Together with the four instructors, Cathi Dunnagan, instructional designer, and David Tredwell, new media specialist, designed the student experience around the concept of traveling to sites and locations across time. Using Moodle’s completion tracking, Dunnagan designed one block as the “Itinerary” that lists each module with itemized content. The itinerary tracks progress and provides quick access to lectures and resources across the course modules. Each item displays a checkbox that is automatically checked as the student views new content. Checkboxes are also marked when the student submits an exercise or submits a project.

Instructional Challenges

  • Create a visually stimulating interface and an engaging experience within Moodle that can be easily updated by instructors.
  • Virtual field trips
  • Engaging user interface

Highlights and Solutions

After setting up the Itinerary, the DELTA team created five topic modules. When the student first opens the course, these topics are revealed only as visual banners with titles. As the student clicks a topic banner, that topic opens with an overview, visual interface to content, an exercise and a project.

  • History of Cities lectures linked through specific city locations on a global map.
  • Modern City History & Design lectures through historic movements on a timeline.
  • Cities Today: Challenges & Solutions via photographs overlaid with topic titles.
  • Place & Place Making via Plot maps.
  • Designing Future Cities: Utopia/Distopia via black & white photographs that roll over to full color.

As part of the design, the team developed an approach for lectures that ensures consistency across all presenters. Instructors developed lectures in PowerPoint and recorded in Mediasite. The instructors plan to expand the collection of guided location tours as time and travel allow.

For more information about DELTA services, please contact LearnTech.