Welcome to CloudFirst

At Deakin, all students’ learning experiences begin online. In CloudFirst, learning is reimagined and designed to prioritise the online learning experience, while ensuring the teacher led on-campus and online experiences are active and engaging.

Why CloudFirst?

CloudFirst enables Deakin to fulfil its promise to provide students with a brilliant education where they are and wherever they want to go

CloudFirst Learning Design

CloudFirst learning design operationalises Deakin’s policy on Premium Learning and Teaching

CloudFirst Multimedia Exemplars

CloudFirst uses high production-value learning resources to enhance student learning and engagement with learning resources that complements textual content

The journey so far

ESTIMATED TOTALS 2019 – 2021

TEXT

PODCAST

VIDEOS

INTERACTIVES

IMAGES

CONTRIBUTORS

The CloudFirst Project began in 2018 as a two-year project with the goal of collaboratively co-designing high quality exemplar units across some of Deakin’s largest degrees, led by a purpose-built multidisciplinary team of experienced staff members with deep expertise and broad knowledge in areas such as educational design, multimedia creation, user experience, project management and IT development.

Over those initial two years, the CloudFirst team co-designed over 25 units in the Masters of Business Administration, Bachelor of Law, Masters of Education – Research Pathways, and Masters of Education – TESOL. The co-design processes between the CloudFirst team and faculty academics were iteratively refined and improved over time as the project progressed, resulting in the creation of numerous assets to support the transition of project innovations into normal teaching practice; including a CloudFirst Learning Design framework, unit site templates, self-paced capability building assets and learning design workshops that the wider university could use to begin their own CloudFirst journey.

From 2020 the CloudFirst team joined the Course Review and Renewal Project to continue the work of providing premium exemplar course and units, while expanding into new areas of strategic importance such as course hub sites, non-unit student support sites, and new capability building resourcing and training. In this period, the team has worked across discipline areas including Public Health & Health Promotion, Mathematics, Architecture, Data & Business Analytics and Indigenous Studies. During COVID lockdowns the team also supported the rapid pivot to teaching and learning online through targeted support and training.

2021 saw the CloudFirst Learning Design framework and unit site template become the default for the online portion of unit design at Deakin University, either applied ‘as is’, or adapted by faculties and divisions to suit their particular context. And from 2022 onwards, we will see this learning design model continue to evolve and expand in exciting new directions!

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PACKAGED ELEMENT	CONTRIBUTION TO LEARNING	PURPOSE
Short Video	sets the tone by providing students with a sense that the teacher is personable and guides their learning through to the completion of the unit offers an alternative to text-based delivery that promotes student engagement, as online learners don’t tend to watch long videos through to completion focuses on the relevance and purpose of the learning rather than the concept itself because students will be more motivated to learn if they have a disciplinary or professional context for the topic introduces ‘Big Questions’ that pique interest and highlight content relevance, and provides a lens through which students engage with readings and resources in a purposeful way	Builds educator presence; sets student expectations; engages and motivates students to acquire knowledge
Introductory text	introduces the student to a key topic complements the video without repeating the same information but refers to key points made in the video provides a brief introduction to the topic or focuses on a key aspect of the topic draws links between this topic and previous or upcoming topics and assessment tasks	Guide exploration and focuses learning for acquisition of knowledge
Call to action	prompts students to engage in active and collaborative learning for deeper understanding enables students to extend and consolidate what they have learned and apply it to an authentic learning task anticipates student diversity by allowing students to participate in a variety of ways (eg. investigation, collaboration, discussion, application, production, reflection) enables students to practice disciplinary ways of thinking (eg. decision making, discussing, reflecting) through application of knowledge to case studies and scenarios of real world professional settings and contexts consists of micro-activities that model and build towards major assessment tasks where students would complete similar applied tasks	Application of knowledge
Discussion forum	gives the opportunity to build the learning community, socialise and discuss what learnings through collaboration with peers allows students articulate their emerging understandings and try-out new ways of thinking develop relationships with other learners and overcome the sense of isolation which some online learners feel discuss their learnings as part of a ‘call to action’ and work towards an assessment piece	Social exchange and builds learning community; receive feedback on learning and makes learning visible to teachers and themselves