My canopyLAB experience at Gulu University

Hello my fellow teacher!

What kind of teacher would you want to be? A boring one or an interesting one?

I believe all of us would want to go for the latter. So how can we do that? Let me share a beautiful experience with you. The month of September 2021 was an interesting one with yet a brand-new agendum for me with great words like canopyLAB and LEARNING DESIGNER at BSU.

My experience with canopyLAB brought a positive mindset in me in terms of being able to think of my students as independent persons who need to take part in deciding what and how they need to learn. Instead of being just a traditional teacher, I should also double as a learning designer (this is a creative designer of a course to make it participative and interesting) to make my courses more interesting and easier to understand. It is more like a social media platform for learning.

In the LAB which is on line, all you need is a computer, internet, open-mindedness, curiosity, collaboration, and creativity. Once you become a learning designer, you also begin to enjoy your work by being more of a facilitator. Actually, you can just create exercises which you are able to share with your students using different media platforms and they write their arguments in form of a chat and then vote the best argument. You can also get knowledge from different experts across the globe. Prof. Dirckinck-Holmfeld and Dr. Heillyn Camacho were great facilitators. I hope that the journey will be interesting for me and my students who should be at the centre of learning. This journey should bring about happy learners and a beautiful world of learning.

Perry Vivian Drateru
Faculty of Business and Development Studies
Gulu University