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David Trottier, from our ICT services on campus at the U of S, has begun a repository of interesting information related to educational technology and instructional/course design.

"Universal Design is a framework which removes barriers on campus in order to broaden access to university services for ALL students.  Universal Design for Learning (UDL) specifically provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs."

"Almost 25 years have passed since Chickering and Gamson offered seven principles for good instructional practices in undergraduate education. While the state of undergraduate education has evolved to some degree over that time, I think the seven principles still have a place in today's collegiate classroom. Originally written to communicate best practices for face-to-face instruction, the principles translate well to the online classroom and can help to provide guidance for those of us designing courses to be taught online."

"This site is designed to answer the question being asked: What does a high quality online course look like? It is ourhope that instructors and instructional designers will use this site to learn more about the Rubric for Online Instruction, and be able to view examples of exemplary courses that instructors have done in implementing the different components of the rubric."

Concise look at writing learning outcomes based on Blooms Taxonomy.

CLASSE is a version of the National Survey of Student Engagement that is designed to be used at the level of an individual course. It is free to use, but requires a note to be sent to the developers (as per the instructions on the website.

"Students are going to use mobile devices and computers in the classroom, regardless of the professor's level of comfort with technology. It's best to embrace the technology and work with your educational technologist or instructional designer to determine the best tools and methodologies to enhance your course with technology and support the course objectives."

Universal Instructional Design

"Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance. This provides for consistent structural support, when required (Hogan & Pressley, 1997)."

Great looking resource with a CC-BY-SA license on it. "In this online resource, the model used for course development is a project team-based structure. The framework still can be used by those who have a "lone ranger" approach to the course development process. All of the resources can be used as they are and are in development, based on the feedback received and ongoing research in the field. You can evaluate/modify your courses using the checklists provided in this module. "

"ION and the Illinois Virtual Campus have taken the lead to develop a quality online course rubric and evaluation system in the state of Illinois. The goal of this project is to help colleges and universities to improve accountability of their online courses."

This article takes Chickering & Gamson's "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (1987) and applies it to online courses.