Spotlight on ANZSOG

Brief

The Executive Masters of Public Administration (EMPA) program by ANZSOG is an exclusive two-year postgraduate qualification comprising 9 Subjects (plus an Orientation course) designed to help future public sector leaders develop and enhance their critical skills in effective public administration.

Influenced by the events of 2020, ANZSOG approached Oppida with an opportunity to redesign and develop the EMPA Subjects for blended delivery. Oppida facilitated the content migration and re-development of each Subject to a blended learning model.

Project dates

Challenge

During the difficult chapter of 2020, ANZSOG faced the challenge of transitioning and delivering the Executive Masters of Public Administration (EMPA) online. Addressing the proposed migration and redesign task inhouse was not an option for the academic leads within the Program who, at that stage, were new to online teaching. So, ANZSOG approached Oppida to manage the transformation and migrate each EMPA Subject as part of the two-year Program through a blended delivery that combined asynchronous material released on Canvas and synchronous learning in supporting live Zoom sessions. Oppida was also involved in coaching and supporting the development of ANZSOG faculty to facilitate their subjects online.

As well as developing a comprehensive EMPA Program Plan, an EMPA Orientation plus a Curriculum Map for each Subject, Oppida was tasked to engage with government and university parties as well as leading subject matter experts to develop the 9 Subjects.

Solution

Oppida collaborated with each academic to redesign their EMPA Subject over the course of 2020 to ensure that ANZSOG learners would continue to experience the active, adaptive and social learning activities within the material online that the Master’s Program is renowned for. Our senior team has extensive experience in writing curricula for higher education, as well as designing it for maximum online engagement. As a result, the student experience in the new EMPA blended learning delivery model meets the online needs of today’s challenging times while still developing their knowledge, skills, mindsets and behaviours in the public sector.

The redesigned blended delivery model of the EMPA Program consists of:

• Asynchronous learning – this comprises content for each of the 9 EMPA Subjects being migrated and enhanced onto an Oppida-designed Canvas template that provides supporting readings, teaching videos, interactive activities and assessment briefs for students to complete in their own time that support the synchronous live sessions.
• Synchronous learning – real-time interaction with the 9 Subject academics in planned live online webinars and group activities.

By redesigning the EMPA to adopt this blended approach, Oppida ensures the Master’s Program continues to deliver ANZSOG’s intended learning outcomes and graduate attributes across the 9 core Subjects.

As of 2021, Oppida was re-engaged by ANZSOG to further upgrade the design and navigation of the EMPA Subjects on Canvas for the next cohort of students to enrol in through a further reviewed and revamped version of the Program.

Brief

Oppida was tasked with designing a learning technologies repository, showcasing the Canvas LMS. This was to primarily to facilitate training and development for ANZSOG’s internal staff.

ANZSOG strives to improve its online education offerings for students and enable learners to achieve stated goals or expected outcomes through better quality learning design.

Project dates

Challenge

ANZSOG approached Oppida about an internal project that would inspire the staff to reevaluate their pedagogical approach and delivery of online education courses to increase student engagement.

Oppida was tasked with creating a course in Canvas that showcased its tools and features. The complexity of this project came when considering the vast difference in the online education experience of ANZSOG’s academics and facilitators. The team at Oppida needed to create a course which took into account differing levels of experience. It also had to be educational and instructional.

Solution

Oppida took a structured approach to create a learning resource that outlined the benefits and best practices around digital learning technologies for active, social and adaptive learning and assessment. All of this is delivered in Canvas – ANZSOG’s chosen learning management system – and prompts educators to optimise their use of a variety of plugins, LTIs, and features on the platform for different teaching scenarios.

Oppida decided to structure the resource accordingly in the form of a learning repository of demonstrations, guidelines, and research that covered the application of learning technologies across four important areas:

• Active learning: How to keep remote students engaged
• Social learning: How to get students to connect in an online community from remote
  locations
• Adaptive learning: How to personalise online learning and provide student autonomy around
  how and what they’re learning
• Assessing for learning: How to support the design and delivery of rich and authentic
  assessment tasks online that provide students with the opportunity to learn and achieve
  course outcomes

The team at Oppida provided multiple examples, demonstrations, and evidence-informed research to support each scenario and also pointed out supplementary external tools that complement Canvas well. These included H5P, Padlet, and Parlay Ideas.

Oppida was able to guide ANZSOG from an innovation perspective to improve their use of Canvas, all with the student in mind.

As part of a shift to blended learning and in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, there was a need to move a number of courses online. ANZSOG educators now have the capabilities to easily select the most appropriate learning technologies for improving their digital education offerings, as well as clear resources and guidance to refer back to for when and how to use them.

ANZSOG educators can now leverage the Learning Technologies resource to design and deliver quality blended and online learning experiences from short webinar-based workshops to post-graduate degrees for public sector leaders across Australia and New Zealand.