Course Structure Overview
Format
The #DigPINS curriculum is designed for a completely online deployment using a variety of open resources and free digital tools. You are welcome to take what parts of the curriculum that we have created and make them your own. We have listed some of the digital tools that we have used in past iterations as part of the is template but remember that all of the details here can be customized for your institution.
Facilitators
#DigPINS requires a facilitator and can be co-facilitated. Facilitators should have close association with the college or university that is implementing the curriculum.
Facilitators of #DigPINS act as guides more so than instructors. They are not there to dictate right or wrong answers but rather to encourage each participant to consider their own digital identity, how they network through digital spaces to connect for positive change, and how that can impact their pedagogy and scholarship. For every topic (Pedagogy, Identity, Networks, and Scholarship) we have created a template that should be customized by the facilitator(s) and posted for participants as guiding documentation for the week. Facilitators generally post a video outlining the each week’s theme and activities. Facilitators contribute to and guide the overall conversation about each topic with the participants.
Participants
Doing a participant analysis is an important step in designing a customized #DigPINS implementation for your institution. What is a participant analysis – it is just a fancy way of saying imagine who your participants might be. What disciplines/organizational units do they come from? What digital expertise do they have? What are their time commitments? What vulnerabilities might they face online?
Use your participant analysis to inform your design as well as your outreach strategy.
Time
There are a few considerations around time with #DigPINS. One, how long will your deployment be, second how much time will it take you to design and deploy the template, and finally how much time should you expect from your participants.
Ideally, #DigPINS should be run for at least four weeks – one week for each of the major topics (the PINS) but again you will need to adjust for your local environment. If you don’t have time for four weeks you will need to consider how you will break things up and adjust the time that you expect of your participants. You may have more time and in that case you could add more content or schedule some downtime (perhaps over a holiday for instance).
Time for you to design #DigPINS
The time commitment for the curriculum will depend on how you deploy it but generally it is between 3-5 hours per week – though some faculty have done more because they wanted to participate more. Time is spent on readings, videos, conversations, and synchronous online activities (i.e. collaborative annotation, Twitter chats, etc).
