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Marc Prensky

What many educators often forget is that reading and writing, although they have enjoyed primacy for hundreds of years, are very artificial ways to communicate, store and retrieve information," he says.

Prensky argues that only 10 per cent to 20 per cent of people in any society are highly literate and points out that YouTube already hosts more video content than was produced in the entire history of broadcast television, including millions of how-to videos that show, not tell.

Writing is an active thinking process, a way to develop new knowledge for yourself.

As you write, you are recording how your mind works and stimulating your thoughts and ideas. The written record of your thinking becomes part of your new knowledge.

Although college writing assignments differ somewhat in emphasis from your workplace writing, the methods and strategies these assignments teach you will be useful in your workplace writing.

The common practice of systematic design, such as the ADDIE model, simply did not fit well with the academic culture (Moore & Kearsley, 2004; Magnussen, 2005). Over the past two decades, instructional designers in higher education have needed to redefine their role and practice. The role of a change agent emerged as instructional designers worked side by side with faculty to rethink their teaching in order to integrate technology into course design and delivery (Campbell, Schwier, & Kenny, 2007). Not only do instructional designers play the role of advisers to faculty and department on issues of curriculum and course quality, they also play a vital role in faculty development and institutional change when it comes to researching and implementing new learning technologies. Undoubtedly, instructional designers in higher education need to modify their approach and design models to fulfill their widening role and to make meaningful contributions. New design prototypes have evolved through field experience in higher education (Power, 2009), and role-based design has been proposed to transform the field of instructional design (Hokanson, Miller, & Hooper, 2008).

There was strong agreement among participants that the guidelines are more helpful for new and less-experienced faculty members.

A common format for blog posts and articles is to present a topic and then include some actionable steps at the end to help your reader apply their learning. Here are a few ways you might do this: Reflection: Ask your readers to ponder or consider the new idea or perspective you shared with them, and how they might integrate it into their lives. Journaling: Ask your readers to write about the topic. You can provide specific questions for them to answer, or invite them to ask and answer their own questions. Rehearsal: Ask your readers to practice a new behavior, habit, thought pattern or language. Suggest how many times per day or week they should do it, and in which specific situation(s). Action: Ask your readers to take a specific action or actions. Suggest how many times per day or week they should do it, and in which specific situation(s). Documenting: Ask your readers to keep track of their progress; give them a checklist to mark off their actions or ask them to record it in a journal. You may also ask them to keep track of their results, feelings or thoughts during this process. Reporting: Ask your readers to share their results with you, your community or an  accountability partner.