Our university was among the first to adopt virtual learning as COVID-19 spread.

We had an emergence task force that identified & evaluated several virtual meeting apps. Based on that evaluation, our university decided to buy an institutional licence for Zoom and integrate it with our existing Canvas e-learning platform. The platform has for many years enabled the streaming of lectures, uploading of presentations by professors and students, submission and grading of assignments as well as online discussions, surveys and (automatically scored) quizzes.

I believe that having a high degree of standardization in our virtual learning tools has helped us to get large economies of scale and deliver consistently high-quality learning experiences.

Professors have the freedom to custom design their virtual learning experiences using the standard online resources. They can do so on their own or by asking for help from our university’s education support department.

If they discover a useful tool beyond our standard set, then they are encouraged to share it with the education support department. Thus, everyone in our university can potentially benefit from each discovery.

To facilitate decision making when it comes to choosing pedagogical tools that cater to professors’ needs one should treat decision making as a stream of inquiry, not an event. Decision-driven organizations match decision-making styles to appropriate techniques and, wherever possible, encourage parties to play roles rife with dissent and debate. In decision-driven organizations, decision rights are part of the design. Flash animations are one pedagogical tool that might help professors design virtual learning experiences by leveraging existing online resources and customizing them to instructional needs.

Article On Decision Making

Article Learning in a Flash

PS: Examples of flash animations are at https://vimeo.com/knowledgesolutions.

The most important is to track and understand the learner's characteristics, needs, and level.