On Oct 20th 2014 I launched what we called the Virtual Learning Center (VLC) at the University of Portland. I came up with the idea and initial concept for the VLC as part of my graduate work at Western Oregon University. Plug for the program here: MSEd | Information Technology.
The VLC was originally designed to be delivered on WordPress using the Learn Dash plugin. http://www.learndash.com/. This plugin allows your WordPress site to be a light weight Learning Management System. You can create courses and lessons that are perfect for self-paced learning.
One part of the VLC is the idea of achievements, evidence for the learner that they completed the courses. To accomplish this I decided to implement digital badging and with with the badging authority Credly.com. When looking for a badging authority I noticed that EDUCAUSE was using Credly. What I needed next was a way to connect Credly to the VLC (LearnDash). So the next plugin used is the BadgeOS plugin. http://badgeos.org/. This plugin provides a connection to Credly and LearnDash. This plugins help to get the achievements from the VLC to Credly.com.
To support the use of badging I created several designs that we are using digital badges on Credly. Below is an example of badges created for the project. You can see more at the University of Portland Credly site.
One of the first courses posted was for the School of Nursing called:
Micro-Ethical Decision Making in Clinical Practice
“Nurses who teach students at the point of care play an important role in developing the students’ ability to make ethical decisions in nursing practice. What students observe in clinical practice – what nurses do and what they fail to do – contributes to the students image of ethical professional nursing practice. This image can be positive, reinforcing ethical actions, and at times, the image can also be negative, reinforcing unethical substandard practices that result in less-than optimal patient care.”
Additional courses had been added to their VLC which include:
- Academic Electronic Health Record
- Gender Awareness and Providing Feedback
- Intimate Touch
- NRS Evidence-based Clinical Teaching
That fall we also launched the larger Virtual Learning Center for the entire campus. This VLC was built to provide additional professional development as part of the universities Digital Future. Up till this point we had provided one-on-one training, just-in-time video resources, and help sheets but wanted to put those in a more formal package online. Practice what we preach and that is building online learning.
After the first year of the VLC projects we issued over 170 badges. The badges are a result of students (staff, faculty and students) completing self-paced micro-courses in a VLC. These courses range in focus but all embrace the idea of a micro-course. We try to keep the courses to 2 hours of content and utilize a variety of media in the delivery. We provide captioning on all video and transcription for audio if used within the courses.
Updates (2019)
Leading up to 2019 the WordPress version of the VLC has been moved to Moodle and two products created. Those professional development courses for students, staff, and faculty are now part of the production LMS environment under a category of “professional development”. We are now leveraging the built in digital badging functionality in Moodle to deliver proof of completion. We decided to keep those digital badges within Moodle so we can easily get that completion data back into Banner (SIS – Student Information System). We then moved the continuing education courses to a standalone installation of Moodle. Those courses are usually accessed by users with no university credentials. We branded that platform “Boost”.