Sometimes your learning management system just doesn’t provide the large-scale bulk editing or bulk creating options you need it to. So, when you need to make big changes to a course, it can seem like you’re going to be clicking away all day.
A few days ago, I had an instructor who wanted to convert all fifteen of his discussion assignments from whole-class discussions to group-based discussions, and the student worker I would normally delegate this task to was out of the office. I was faced with what would normally be a half day of tedium, creating the group-based discussions, copying the prompts from fifteen discussion assignments into seven group-restricted discussions per assignment, and re-linking the group forums in the modules.
Fortunately, this wasn’t my first rodeo. I got my start in instructional design as a student worker myself, and I found a massive time-saving technique that not only dramatically cuts down the time these things take, but also reduces the opportunity for errors. This project took me about 25 minutes.
I’m going to share the secret to my success–a way of batching these repetitive tasks together.
Photo credit: Paul Ekman Group