Best Practices

Building Interactive Case Studies in Asynchronous Professional Development Courses

April 25, 2025

ETO’s Learning Module Designer, Maggie shares best practices for building case studies in asynchronous courses. She will use the example of a case study built for the Environment, Social, and Governance course for the Mining Industry Management Program (MIMP). Explore how interactivity, metacognition, and collaboration can be purposefully built into online modules.

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How lighting, audio, & camera settings impact talking-head video quality

January 23, 2025

ETO’s Education Media Specialist, James, shares behind-the-scenes hardward upgrades that improve our production quality of “talking-head” educational videos. We’ll use a recent example, a video created for Professor Alan Chong from Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice (ISTEP). James will discuss the technical setup for lighting, audio and camera, and how each contributes to the quality of the final video.

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Using Lighting to Transform a Room for Impactful Interviews

May 27, 2024

ETO’s Education Media Specialist, James, will talk about what went behind the filming of the two-person interview videos created for one of the modules in Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG), an online course in the Mining Industry Management Program (MIMP).

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Implement an anonymous mid-term feedback survey

October 19, 2023

How to implement a mid-term survey (or other feedback mechanism) in your course.

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Building the EdTech Workshop Attendee Guide: A Digital Experience for an Analog Event

October 2, 2023

Find out how we used an e-learning authoring tool to deliver the EdTech Workshop 2023 Attendee Guide.

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Intro Video vs Intro Video: How things have changed in 7 years

August 28, 2023

What has – and hasn’t – changed about how we design and produce promotional or introductory course videos.

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Promotional image for 'The EdTech Workshop Recap Video' displaying various conference materials, including a booklet labeled 'CTRL+Shift' and colorful badges, with a background graphic indicating a behind-the-scenes look at the EDTECH WORKSHOP 2023

Making the EdTech Recap Video: An Intentional and Collaborative Approach

May 30, 2023

Find out how a social media video trend turned into a collaborative experiment for the ETO Content Production Team.

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Designing and Building Digital Learning Experiences

February 2, 2023

At the ETO, we love a good project retrospective. We’re just finishing content development for an online course and are about to begin the process for a second course (with a few repeat subject matter experts (SMEs).

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Tips to safely implement un-vetted tools in your course

August 15, 2022

Thinking about using a un-vetted, third-party tool in your course? Give this post a read to ensure you are implementing these tools according to U of T’s guidelines for third party tools and implementing the ETO’s practical risk-mitigation suggestions. We want you to use great tools in your course – but safely, securely, and thoughtfully.  

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A colorful banner with the text "REFLECTING DIVERSITY IN OER" (Open Education Resources) surrounded by illustrations of diverse individuals.

Reflecting diversity in Open Education Resources (OER)

May 1, 2022

WHOA! Resources is an open access library of digital assets meant to support creation of Open Educational Resources, initiated by Cheryl Heeyeon Lee.

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Designing visual elements that pop (and promote learning)!

January 10, 2022

Learn about how the ETO’s Educational Graphic and Media Developer can help elevate your content via our review and design process (and see an example with…eggs)!

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Using a video template to make recording videos easier

December 8, 2021

Creating strong instructional video content is definitely labor intensive but also can be very rewarding (learners report that they value the self-paced nature of video and appreciate being able to review as needed).

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