Educators are constantly seeking effective tools to enhance the learning experience for their students. One free online tool is Scootle’s learning paths, an easy way to build lists of resources and create structured progressions towards learning outcomes. Here’s a simple guide on how to create a learning path in Scootle.
Step 1: Define your goals
Before creating a learning path, clearly define your educational goals. What are the key learning outcomes you want to achieve? Which aspects of the curriculum are you addressing? Having a clear set of objectives will guide your search for resources and the structure of your learning path.
Step 2: Log in and set up
Ensure you have access to Scootle by logging in with your credentials. All Australian educators are entitled to a free account; you can find out more about creating one in our blog article.
Step 3: Search for resources
Use Scootle’s search function to find resources. You can filter results by learning area, year level, resource type, and alignment with specific curriculum outcomes. For an engaging learning path, look for a variety of materials such as interactive activities, videos, lesson plans and quizzes that fit your educational goals.
Step 4: Create your learning path
Navigate to the first resource you’d like to add to your learning path. Click ‘Add to’, and a dropdown menu will show an option to create a new learning path. Fill in the name and description fields, and click ‘Add to learning path’ to add the resource. Repeat with each new resource, adding to the learning path you just created.
Step 5: Select and organise resources
Once you’ve found suitable resources, drag and drop them to reorder the learning path to create a coherent and logical sequence, which will help students build knowledge and skills systematically. Think about the progression of learning: start with introductory materials, move through to exploration and practice, and finish with assessment and reflection activities.
Step 6: Personalise your learning path for your audience
You can edit the descriptive text that has been automatically imported with the resources and replace it with your own text, for example, questions for students or context from previous lessons. You can also add comments between items using the ‘Actions’ dropdown to further customise the learning path.
Step 7: Share with your class and other educators
Students can access a learning path anywhere and anytime, using a unique PIN and without the need for logins. You can find and share this pin by navigating to ‘My learning paths’ and opening the one you’d like to share. Students can then access your learning path using the url and PIN available on that page.
A learning path can also be exported in a number of formats for use as a student worksheet, checklist of activities or assessment task.
As you create and share your own learning paths through Scootle, you’ll be contributing to a growing, searchable bank of resources that all Australian educators can use. Search shared learning paths created by other educators to save time and benefit from the collective expertise of your peers. This collaborative approach enriches the portal, making Scootle an invaluable resource of curriculum-aligned learning paths built by teachers, for teachers.