Create-Your-Own Quality, Interactive Digital Curriculum to Engage Students Across All Subjects

David Evans, SoftchalkNormally I don’t attend sponsored sessions, but Softchalk is one of those tools that I haven’t had the opportunity to utilize since my new job over 2 years ago. The session is being done using Softchalk Cloud, which I haven’t seen before. Softchalk Cloud allows you to manage your own learning objects through the SC website. To put the objects into the LMS, you simply include a link into the LMS and the learning objects or lessons appear. What this means is that as content needs to be updated, you make the edits once and all of the links are automatically updated. That sounds pretty neat. One of the other benefits is that all of the scores within the SoftChalk assessment will be sent to the LMS gradebook. This is a great idea for courses (and institutions) that use a traditional LMS. However, one of our LMS platforms isn’t a traditional LMS and doesn’t have a Gradebook. Still some possibilities for our traditional LMS, though.https://twitter.com/evinsmj/status/834057523879620609Along the same lines of accessibility, SoftChalk Cloud includes a built-in screen reader, assuming your institution subscribes to the screen reader software. David then went into adding various activities and interactions in the SoftChalk lesson. He included pop-up windows, call out boxes, etc. We’re more than halfway through the session and I haven’t seen anything new from the previous desktop version that I used years ago. The only difference with SoftChalk Coud is that you use a link to put the lesson in the LMS, rather than uploading a SCORM package.We have about 10 minutes left and he’s still working on the lesson. It’s a great tutorial for people who have never used SoftChalk before. What I’d like to see at this point is how do the lessons integrate within the LMS. I’m also not sure if it’s a good tool for my OCD. I really like having standard font formats throughout the online courses. Initially, I’m thinking about having some SoftChalk lessons (with interactions) mixed in with content pages created within the LMS. I feel like this would create a lot more work to try and standardize the formatting across the entire course. Does that really matter? I’m not sure. I could see it being an issue for those with accessibility issues, but I’m not sure.With just a few minutes left he’s able to show how the SoftChalk lessons can go into an LMS. He demoed both Blackboard and Canvas. It looks pretty easy. He also showed the Score Center, which is a new concept to me. It’s a teacher dashboard of all the students that have gone through that lesson. That’s a useful tool that we could use for some lower-level programs. Certainly potential for later on!