Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS)

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/48179

TLOS, a unit within Virginia Tech’s Division of Information Technology, is dedicated to the advancement of teaching and learning through the thoughtful application of technology to the teaching process and learning environments.

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Now showing 1 - 19 of 19

Empowering undergraduate researchers with digital credentials: Aligning national and university standards at Virginia Tech
MacDonald, Amanda B.; Swaby, Keri; Zaldivar, Marc (2025-06-18)
Developing Microcredential Guidelines for Non-credit Badging in Higher Education
Zaldivar, Marc; MacDonald, Amanda B. (2026-02-06)
Connect learning to career opportunities: Preparing your learners for a rapidly changing workplace
Gildner, Jason; Zaldivar, Marc; MacDonald, Amanda B. (2026-02-18)
The University Libraries at Virginia Tech utilizes digital badges as a means for creating pathways to student engagement in undergraduate research and for connecting students' desire to participate in undergraduate research with their interest in building hard and soft skills needed for the workforce. The Advanced Research Skills Program (ARS) is an online initiative designed to equip undergraduate students with essential research skills and competencies. Through a collaborative partnership with Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS) and the broader university community, the program provides students with verifiable recognition of their skills. ARS was aligned with university and national standards: the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Career Readiness Competencies and Virginia Tech’s Professional Development Competencies. This alignment created an avenue for faculty to be able to gather data on which competencies students were mastering through undergraduate research programs and share its impact broadly; conversely, student digital credentials were tagged with hard and soft skills and aligned with university and national career competencies. We hope the standards alignment and skill tags serve as a guide for the language/terms to use when discussing skills learned in the associated experiences. Most recently, Instructure launched a skills tab within Canvas Credentials that can now heighten the benefits described above of connecting student badged experiences with career skills and competencies. TalentNeuron is a labor market data provider that Instructure has integrated into Canvas Credentials to serve as the default skills taxonomy. This integration allows users to see which skills are in-demand, where jobs are available, and provides metadata for skills linked to career paths.This connection provides earners with an on-ramp to job opportunities to leverage the skills they have obtained. When standards are aligned, work skills are tagged, and the TalentNeuron skills tab is used, there is a direct avenue connecting higher education to career readiness.
Growing a Community of Credentialing Practice at VT
MacDonald, Amanda B.; Zaldivar, Marc (2026-02-18)
Beginning with a Provost initiative in 2024, Virginia Tech has been working to unify our approach to noncredit badging. Working to build a sustainable community of practice around digital credential use, we have worked to bring key partners into conversation. In the past year, we have developed a taxonomy, a set of developmental guidelines, created stakeholder and review committees, and bridged our student and faculty professional development initiatives. As our use cases continue to evolve, we have noticed several factors that have inhibited or encouraged the growth of this project. Growth is never smooth, and we still face several challenges and opportunities moving forward. In this session, we will explore the decisions that have brought us to where we are today, as well as our future plans for growth. We will share our current approach to building taxonomies and creating a campus culture of microcredentials. In doing so, we hope to engage the audience in critical thinking around the value of partnerships, collaboration, and a culture of credentialing at their institutions. The session will be framed in stages of critical questions we approached, with small group and large group discussion time built in.
Making the case: If not now, then when?
MacDonald, Amanda B.; Zaldivar, Marc (2025-07-22)
At Virginia Tech, we have been creating a community of practice for nonclassroom credentialing for students. One of our next challenges will be to take the activities of the relatively small community and expand the effort across campus to a variety of nonclassroom contexts. In this session, we will explore our approach to this important question of value of badging, as well as opening it up to the experiences and ideas of the audience.
2024-2025 TLOS Annual Report
(Virginia Tech, 2025)
This report presents TLOS' key accomplishments for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Digital Badge Guidelines for Noncredit Programs at Virginia Tech
MacDonald, Amanda B.; Zaldivar, Marc (Virginia Tech, 2026-07)
At Virginia Tech, students, faculty, and staff engage in a variety of training and activities that support their professional and personal development outside of for-credit, transcriptable experiences; however, there has not previously been a university-wide approach or tool to aid in tracking attendance, providing assessment and feedback (when appropriate), and recognizing learners for their work, accomplishments, and professional growth in those noncredit, nonclassroom experiences. Digital badging offers a way for units offering noncredit, nonclassroom experiences on campus to track, respond to, and recognize learners for their engagement. For units offering these a variety of learning experiences, digital badging provides data for showing the reach and impact of their work and awards for learners for their participation. For learners, digital badging offers a visible and shareable asset that complements their academic work. For hiring professionals, digital badges are offering a new way to identify and classify large applicant pools, with a tool that is “machine readable.” The Digital Badge Guidelines for Noncredit Programs at Virginia Tech are meant to help groups at Virginia Tech who are interested in developing either a single badge or a full microcredential program to navigate both the technology and the design questions in an easy-to-follow format. The Quick Guide for Noncredit Badging at VT contains an abbreviated version to share only essentials needed for badge creation. The power of microcredentials lies in a value proposition between the issuer, earner, and viewer. Virginia Tech’s badges will be much more valuable when we follow some key design principles as a group and some best practices that have been identified nationally. This record link serves as a hub for current and previous versions of the Digital Badge Guidelines for Noncredit Programs at Virginia Tech and the Quick Guide for Noncredit Badging at VT. Previous versions will remain published at this link. Please scroll down and select the most current version of these guidelines when beginning your badge work at Virginia Tech.
2023-2024 TLOS Annual Report
(Virginia Tech, 2024)
This report presents TLOS' key accomplishments for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Developing a Network for Non-credit, Non-classroom Credentialing at Virginia Tech
MacDonald, Amanda B.; Zaldivar, Marc (2025-03-03)
Examining Faculty and Student Perceptions of Generative AI in University Courses
Kim, Junghwan; Klopfer, Michelle; Grohs, Jacob R.; Eldardiry, Hoda; Weichert, James; Cox, Larry A., II; Pike, Dale (Springer, 2025-01-24)
As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT become more capable and accessible, their use in educational settings is likely to grow. However, the academic community lacks a comprehensive understanding of the perceptions and attitudes of students and instructors toward these new tools. In the Fall 2023 semester, we surveyed 982 students and 76 faculty at a large public university in the United States, focusing on topics such as perceived ease of use, ethical concerns, the impact of GenAI on learning, and differences in responses by role, gender, and discipline. We found that students and faculty did not differ significantly in their attitudes toward GenAI in higher education, except regarding ease of use, hedonic motivation, habit, and interest in exploring new technologies. Students and instructors also used GenAI for coursework or teaching at similar rates, although regular use of these tools was still low across both groups. Among students, we found significant differences in attitudes between males in STEM majors and females in non-STEM majors. These findings underscore the importance of considering demographic and disciplinary diversity when developing policies and practices for integrating GenAI in educational contexts, as GenAI may influence learning outcomes differently across various groups of students. This study contributes to the broader understanding of how GenAI can be leveraged in higher education while highlighting potential areas of inequality that need to be addressed as these tools become more widely used.
Simplify, Consolidate, Intervene: Facilitating Institutional Support with Mental Models of Learning Management System Use
Hassan, Taha; Edmison, Bob; Williams, Daron; Cox II, Larry; Louvet, Matthew; Knijnenburg, Bart; McCrickard, D. Scott (ACM, 2024-11-08)
Measuring instructors' adoption of learning management system (LMS) tools is a critical first step in evaluating the efficacy of online teaching and learning at scale. Existing models for LMS adoption are often qualitative, learner-centered, and difficult to leverage towards institutional support. We propose depth-of-use (DOU): an intuitive measurement model for faculty's utilization of a university-wide LMS and their needs for institutional support. We hypothesis-test the relationship between DOU and course attributes like modality, participation, logistics, and outcomes. In a large-scale analysis of metadata from 30000+ courses offered at Virginia Tech over two years, we find that a pervasive need for scale, interoperability and ubiquitous access drives LMS adoption by university instructors. We then demonstrate how DOU can help faculty members identify the opportunity-cost of transition from legacy apps to LMS tools. We also describe how DOU can help instructional designers and IT organizational leadership evaluate the impact of their support allocation, faculty development and LMS evangelism initiatives.
Framing generative AI in education with the GenAI Intent and Orientation Model
Pike, Dale; McGowin, Brooke; Bond, Mark Aaron; Williams, Daron; Cox, Larry A., II (Educause, 2024-06-06)
The proposed model seeks to assist instructors and learners with a framing lens for how GenAI might be useful in educational settings.
Instructional Designers as Organizational Change Agents
Bond, Mark Aaron; Lockee, Barbara B.; Blevins, Samantha (Educause, 2023-10-31)
Systems thinking and change strategies can be used to improve the overall functioning of a system. Because instructional designers typically use systems thinking to facilitate behavioral changes and improve institutional performance, they are uniquely positioned to be change agents at higher education institutions.
Developing Supplemental Instructional Videos for Construction Management Education
Barnes, Andrew F.; McCoy, Andrew P.; Warnick, Quinn (MDPI, 2023-09-28)
Technological advancements and lower production costs since the mid-1990s have dramatically improved opportunities for instructors to tailor self-made instructional videos for their students. However, video production technology has outpaced the development of educational theory, causing instructional videos to consistently fall short of their pedagogical potential. Responding to these shortcomings, scholars from various backgrounds have started publishing guidelines to help practitioners as they develop instructional videos for their respective fields. Using a rapid literature review, this article contributes to this ongoing effort by synthesizing theory-based, best-practice guidelines for a specific subcategory of educational videos called supplemental instructional videos (SIVs). SIVs are different from other types of instructional videos in that they are used to support and magnify other learning methods, mediums, and materials rather than substitute for them. Bringing the best-practice guidelines synthesized in this paper immediately into application, they were used to inform the production of SIVs for an undergraduate course that was held in the Building Construction Department of a major public university in the United States during the Spring 2020 semester. The methods used in the production of the SIV guidelines were systematically documented during the course for future researchers and practitioners to learn and build from.
The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning
Hodges, Charles B.; Moore, Stephanie; Lockee, Barbara B.; Trust, Torrey; Bond, Mark Aaron (Educause, 2020-03-27)
Well-planned online learning experiences are meaningfully different from courses offered online in response to a crisis or disaster. Colleges and universities working to maintain instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic should understand those differences when evaluating this emergency remote teaching.
Beam TelePresence Robot White Paper
VTechTeams (Virginia Tech, 2014-03-03)
Tech Teams is an engagement initiative sponsored by TLOS that brings together a small group of people from across the university to rapidly evaluate emerging technologies that have potential for use in teaching and learning at Virginia Tech. In this white paper, Tech Teams evaluates the Beam TelePresence Robot.
Course Development Plan Template
Williams, Daron; Cox, Larry A., II; Ofori, Eunice; Louvet, Matthew, Sr.; Nino, Miguel (Miko); Cui, Andy-Gouqiang (2020-01)
The Course Development Plan (CDP) was designed as a job aid for faculty to use when working to revise or develop a technology-enhanced course. This document is used as part of a semester-long course (re)design with the aid of an Instructional Design unit. Many of the elements in this document were included to build a course that would pass a quality assurance review based on the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric.
Development of an Interactive Human Body Digital Reusable Learning Object (RLO) to Provide Whole Body Systems-Based Learning in Vitamins and Minerals
Walz, Anita R.; Gallo, S.; Good, Deborah J.; Akers, J.; Baab, Lujean (2015-09-18)
University teaching and learning of vitamins and minerals has been limited to a nutrient by nutrient approach. However, most vitamins and minerals play extensive roles in and interact with multiple body systems. Researchers from Virginia Tech, James Madison, and George Mason Universities are developing a Reusable Learning Object (RLO) for the study of micronutrients needed by the skeletal system. The RLO will be a freely accessible platform and be designed as a layered human body to highlight different micronutrient actions in target systems. Links to scientific research articles, government Dietary Reference Intakes, and other web-based factual information will be provided. Undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in vitamins and minerals courses across the three institutions will serve as the control group (no exposure to RLO) in 2014 and treatment group (exposure to RLO) in 2015. This presentation will address the design of the RLO and provide results from year one regarding type of student learners as well as interest and perceived utility of digital objects. As the RLO can be applied to teach various concepts, this session will be of interest to faculty across the university, particularly science instructors and those who teach online courses.
Student Produced Video
Voros, Gyorgyi (2014-06-06)
In an online class, student produced video can be used to assess their learning by faculty or for peer reviewing purpose.

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