Learning Lab

Online Learning Skills

Developed by the 2021 Learning HEPPP team and the Digital Learning team, the Online Learning Skills module will help students feel prepared for online learning, and confident to actively engage in online communication and collaboration. The module includes tutorials on

Navigating online group work

Activities and tutorials: Learning how to collaborate effectively when doing group work online will help you get the most out of your units and assessments. This is an important digital literacy skill which is highly valued by employers.

Using discussion boards

Activities and tutorials:“Discussion boards are platforms on which you can communicate asynchronously with your peers and tutors during an online course. The purpose of a discussion board is to provide you with the opportunity to exchange ideas, share content, and ask questions.”

Writing academic emails

“University emails are generally expected to be concise pieces of formal or semi-formal written communication. Learning how to structure an academic email, and the content to include, can help you get your message or request across clearly and effectively.”

Mastering class participation

“Staying focused and motivated while participating in online learning is a lifelong skill that will help you beyond university and in the workplace. These tutorials will help you prepare for your online classes as well as empower you to contribute in a respectful and meaningful way.”

The tutorials link to and reinforce existing Learning Lab material and other Library micro-credentials. This resource will be especially useful for pre-enrolled, and actively enrolled students who have not studied online before, are returning to study after a prolonged period, and/or may be apprehensive about online learning.

Chemistry

Completion of development of Chemistry Pages

• Introduction to chemistry
• Language of chemistry
• Atoms and atomic structures
• An introduction to the periodic table
• Chemical bonding
• Chemical equations
• The mole and stoichiometry
• Solutions and concentrations

Critical thinking

Through a partnership with RMIT's College of Business and Law to create and launch a new Critical thinking section, with updated pages, interactive activities and new materials

• Introduction to critical thinking
• Finding sources
• Analysing an argument
• Critical reading
• Logical fallacies

Maths resources

As part of ongoing work with the RMIT Library STEM team, we've been converting PDF learning material to HTML pages. This valuable work moves content out of inaccessible formats into mobile friendly pages. The pages developed in the last month are listed below.

• D1 Limit of a function
• D2 Gradients, tangents and derivatives
• D3 Differentiation from first principles
• D4 Rules for differentiation
• D5 The chain rule
• D6 The product rule
• D7 Quotient rule
• D8 Maxima and minima

Videos

We've moved all RMIT University Library videos from disparate channels to one channel. Visit the RMIT University Library Videos channel on Youtube. There's also a complete breakdown of each video and its supporting learning content on this page

Navigation

• Implementation new top menu that better represents the student journey though the material available on the Learning Lab.
• The 'Writing' and 'Assessments' sections are  consolidated, as most writing undertaken by students at a teriary level is part of assessment.
• Following a review of referencing material, A consolidation plan for ‘Referencing’ material has been developed.

General improvements

• Introductory paragraphs have been written for the top performing Learning Lab page to improve student experience, and assist with findability in search engines.
• Fixes 404s on ‘Choose valid sources’ pages
• Redundant page deletion, redirects
• Remove SSO link from login page, other UX improvements
• Maths videos have been consolidated into single pages to make them easier to access.
• Updated images including removing images of analogue writing implements.