http://joelleegardner.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-industrialist-and-craftsman.html

This is an interesting topic - the tension between efficiency and quality. Many for profits and larger institutions have centralized development for online courses with standard formats and protocols. Do these inhibit really high quality work and creativity?

We've been using Quality Matters for about 6 years and have a program for faculty where we help them develop new online courses and programs using the QM standards as guidelines. We've found it to be very effective and an excellent communication tool between faculty and instructional designers.

There are many websites that I recommend to faculty as possible sources for online content including professional organizations, the Biography channel, NPR, etc. Two that stand out are Open Culture (http://www.openculture.com) and Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org).

Open Culture has audio books, online courses, movies, textbooks and ebooks. The cover page always has something interesting - today it is "On her 100th Birthday, Watch Rock Pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Wow Audiences With Her Gospel Guitar". You can browse or put in search terms to search the archives. Looking for documentaries? You can search for collections of documentaries or a specific one by name. Interested in Freud, you can actually find a recording of him on a radio broadcast.

Internet Archive is a library of books, movies, software, music, etc. All for free. Again, you can browse by media type, or search for specifics. Enter "JFK ask not" and you'll find the audio clip of that famous statement. Interested in the Grateful Dead? There are recordings of 18 of their live concerts.

Both these sites take some time to master - but well worth it for the rich content available.

This is the first blog in a series of 3 about discussions (click Next to get to the subsequent postings).
Topics:
How to get students to participate
How to facilittate robust online discussions
Methods and means of grading online discussions

The postings are clear, to the point, and contain some good tips. Also, the postings span the Week 2 and Week 3 topics of interactions and assessments.

https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/how-to-get-students-to-participate-in-online-discussions/

It is interesting that definitions differ from K-12 to Higher Ed and between Higher Ed institutions as well. These documents provide some different perspectives on the terminology:

Good basic definitions: http://online.teaching.ucla.edu/Terminology

Overview of different delivery types - myths and realities - K-12. The definition of blended is very different than what we imagine. The links to the YouTube on a f2f teacher who is not "teacher centered" and to the original video on flipped learning by the teachers in Colorado who coined the phrase are worth watching.

http://www.eclass4learning.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Blended-Learning-Keynote.pdf

And this article has a great lit review of different definitions of hybrid, blended, and flipped along with a continuum of classroom delivered to totally online that might be modified to describe the definitions and percent of classroom and online as defined by your school.

http://c21u.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/HICE%20Conference%20Proceedings_1556_with%20citation%5B4%5D.pdf

I've become very interested in the idea of InfoGraphics as a way of summarizing and communicating information. This one provides some good info and seems to align well with the design process presented in the BlendKit2015 course.

http://elearninginfographics.com/how-to-choose-digital-curricula-for-blended-learning-infographic/