Empowering lecturers to facilitate high quality education through the use of learning technologies

In 2014, the Department of Law at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) decided to transform some of the courses related to the graduate program Cultural Sociology – Law, Power and Social Justice into distance learning. The vision was to reach out to new target groups of students and establish partnerships with other universities across time and space.
This abstract outlines the process of empowering lecturers and students, the online learning activities that were designed and the results and evaluation.
In 2014, three lecturers participated in faculty development facilitated by the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at SDU. The course offered insight into e-learning pedagogy and into the functions and features of Adobe Connect that constituted the live, virtual learning environment and Blackboard that made up the asynchronous, virtual learning environment, thereby empowering the lecturers to use these two systems as platforms for teaching and learning. The faculty development took place online to enable lecturers to practice their online skills. The course that was designed and carried out with students consisted of both synchronous activities; online lectures, discussions and group work in Adobe Connect, and asynchronous activities; wikis and written
feedback in Blackboard. This approach promoted the modernization of the learning environment and enabled different forms of interaction which, documented by students’ course evaluations and exam results, resulted in a high degree of active participation that enhanced the learning experience.