Digital Learning Thresholds (DLTs)

The Digital Learning Thresholds (DLTs) are Western Sydney University’s standards for quality design and enhancement in our digital learning environment, vUWS. The DLTs are designed to be a tool for continuous quality improvement and a framework for innovation of our digital teaching and learning practices. There are 20 DLTs and each one is outlined in detail (including resources for their implementation) in the links below. Additionally, we have provided a ‘Getting started’ guide in this page to help contextualise how you can use the DLTs in your practice.

Watch this video about why the DLTs are relevant to your practice.

Where to start?

1. Building your foundations

The main objective of your digital learning environment is to maximise opportunities for student-centred learning experiences. These opportunities are built on student engagement and require the foundational features of the DLTs to be put in place before you start. This includes the following:

• Ensuring easy access to learning guides with an outline of the program and assessment tasks (DLT: 2 , 3 )
• Outlining the expectations that you have for student participation (DLT: 4 )
• Establishing clear links between the activities, materials and learning outcomes (DLT: 10 , 13 , 8 )
• Making sure you have provided sufficient scaffolding to help structure student learning (DLT: 9 )

2. Building your materials and activities

Learning materials and activities need to be sufficiently engaging to promote student engagement in the learning process. The DLTs that can guide your practice include the following:

• The development of clearly articulated learning objectives for the different components in the learning environment (DLT: 12 )
• Not all activities need to be innovative or novel but it is worth experimenting with activities that students might not have encountered previously to sustain student engagement (DLT: 5 )
• Stimulate and promote student-centred learning in synchronous learning environments (DLT: 18 , 19 )
• Ensure the alignment between materials and activities (DLT: 14 ) so that students are clear about the boundaries and value of their participation
• Mix up the types of materials you provide to students to help sustain student engagement (DLT: 6 , 7 )
• Different formats for learning materials provide students with more choices and this can help promote student engagement (DLT: 15 )

3. Building your community

A sense of being part of a learning community is a central feature of a digital learning environment. These DLTs can help guide your practice:

• Learning communities can be developed through the use of asynchronous technologies (DLT: 16 , 17 )
• Community building can be done very simply through welcome messages and providing announcements throughout the course of the semester (DLT: 1 )

4. Measuring student progress

You can measure your students’ progress through the integration of summative and formative assessment tasks in your environment. The DLTs that cover this include the following areas:

• Ongoing formative tasks or activities to promote metacognitive learning practices are useful for monitoring student progress (DLT: 11 )
• Use the grading and feedback options that are built in to digital assessment tools to provide feedback and for monitoring student progress (DLT: 20 )

What next?

The DLTs have been developed to support and guide the practice of the digital learning design. They can also be used to promote reflective practice. As you work through the design of your learning environment, they can be used to help you reflect on how students have engaged, participated and interacted in your course. In this way, the DLTs can be used to encourage iterative cycles of improvements in your digital learning environments.

Interactive DLT Explorer

Use the tool below to learn how and where the thresholds apply across the Cortex template.

Principles

1 –  Focus on the student learning experience and student outcomes within the digital learning environment;

2 – Complement to the quality of curriculum design and enhancement within the development and approval processes;

3 – Provide a foundation of consistency across digital learning environments and students and teachers;

4 – Are grounded in a pedagogical framework that has a robust scholarly basis that can be drawn on for inspiration and insight;

5 – Create space for innovation and continuous quality enhancements in the techniques, approaches, and technologies employed in the Digital Learning Environment;

6 – Are aligned to both qualitative and quantitative data sources that provide useful insights for innovation and enhancement over multiple cycles of development and improvement of curriculum and the digital learning environment;

7 – Promote reflective practice and discourse among Subject Coordinators, learning designers and technologists, and other subject-matter experts as part of a cycle of continuous improvement;

8 – Are accessible to students so that they can equally contribute to that continuous enhancement process via their own reflection and feedback

Pedagogical Framework

The pedagogical framework employed with these Digital Learning Thresholds is called Community of Inquiry. Community of Inquiry is not a prescriptive pedagogy; rather it offers a series of lenses that allow us to adopt different critical perspectives both in observation and in reflection.

There are three lenses, or rather “presences,” that we can view our digital learning design through: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Our Digital Learning Thresholds align with at least one of these presences, which will allow for both a concrete focus on targeted elements of the Digital Learning Environment, but also opportunities to expand beyond that focus.