Going digital: Challenges and opportunities in transforming face to face ALL workshops into online versions

Abstract

This paper reports on the experience of transforming the face-to-face workshop ‘Writing a Literature Review’ (WLR) into an online version. This genre-based pedagogy workshop guides HDR students through the process of finding, synthesising and evaluating sources and structuring this content effectively to build a coherent argument. The paper focuses on the pedagogical and technological challenges and opportunities arising from this process from the perspective of an experienced academic literacy educator with limited expertise in developing online materials. It discusses the shift from an inductive to a deductive instructional approach and explores the affordances of the selected software: Camtasia and Smart Sparrow, to create more student-centred activities. It also describes how an interdisciplinary collaborative approach was implemented to address the need for training and evaluating usability and accessibility. Finally, it argues that starting the process of creating online materials has benefits for all stakeholders, not just the virtual audience.