Group items tagged

"EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products)is an initiative of the American Diploma Project (ADP) Network designed to identify high-quality materials aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The objectives are two-fold: Increase the supply of high quality lessons and units aligned to the CCSS that are available to elementary, middle, and high school teachers as soon as possible; and Build the capacity of educators to evaluate and improve the quality of instructional materials for use in their classrooms and schools. EQuIP builds on a collaborative effort of education leaders from Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island that Achieve facilitated. The outcome of that effort was the development of the "Tri-State Rubrics" and a quality review process designed to determine the quality and alignment of instructional lessons and units to the CCSS."

"Clarifying Ownership of Teacher-Created Digital Content Empowers Educators to Personalize Education, Address Individual Student Needs The webinar explored how states and districts can empower and encourage educators to create and share high-quality digital instructional materials to improve students' learning experiences. Presenters discussed the central legal issue of ownership of instructional materials and offered recommendations for effectively managing the increased use of digital content, including with respect to the advantages provided by open educational resources (OER). "

"First Principles of Instruction M. David Merrill For the past several years the author has been reviewing instructional design theories in an attempt to identify prescriptive principles that are common to the various theories. This paper is a preliminary report of the principles that have been identified by this search. Five first principles are elaborated: (a) Learning is promoted when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems. (b) Learning is promoted when existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge. (c) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner. (d) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is applied by the learner. (e) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is integrated into the learner ' s world"

"We organized our expert presenters' tips into seven categories: Making Learning Stick, Effective Instructional Design and Development, Managing Project Costs and Time, Demonstrating Your Value, Documenting and Managing Your Designs and Standards, Designing for Mobile, and Customizing and Personalizing Learning. We compiled these into a free eBook for your enjoyment. Read here for details and where to download the book!"

"Research for Practitioners: Are There Basic Principles Across All Instructional Design Models?"

The resources at the bottom of the article are good.

"April 29, 2014 Achieve Webinar: Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's Common Core State Standards Implementation Strategy Achieve hosted a webinar on integrating EQuIP into Common Core State Standards implementation plans. Alissa Peltzman, Vice President, State Policy and Implementation Support, Achieve and Sasheen Phillips, Achieve's new Director of EQuIP and OER, provided an overview of the available tools and resources developed through Achieve's EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products) initiative, designed to identify high-quality materials aligned to the CCSS. We then heard directly from leaders at the state and district level who have put the EQuIP resources into use to support their efforts to identify quality and aligned instructional materials to advance implementation of the CCSS, including Merri Ann Drake, Idaho Core Coach, Idaho State Department of Education; Elissa Farmer, Curriculum Specialist, Seattle Public Schools; Terri King-Hunt, Gifted Support Specialist, Atlanta Public Schools; Linda Schoenbrodt, Elementary Mathematics Program Specialist, Maryland Department of Education; and Amy Youngblood, Founder, Eduoptimus. Please see below for resources shared during the webinar. Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's CCSS Implementation Strategy (PowerPoint slide deck) Integrating EQuIP Into Your State's CCSS Implementation Strategy (audio recording)"

"How do you know you have quality digital learning content? This question could be made incredibly complex, but luckily people in-the-know have given ten simple guidelines. The Association of Educational Publishers has stepped up to offer some professional standards of quality and consistency - a baseline for all instructional resources."

"Access to learning repositories is helping educators locate more impactful content for students learning-repository-instructionThe emergence of open educational resources, coupled with students' desire for more personalized learning, has fueled a need for content repositories that enable teachers, students, and parents to locate effective learning resources and educational content quickly. Now, the state of Illinois is developing efforts to help teachers and students leverage tagged educational content to make learning more customized, and effective, for students. The Illinois Shared Learning Environment (ISLE) will help educators use data and other tools to connect students with the learning resources and instructional content best suited to their needs. State educators can use student data to locate tagged educational resources and learning materials that suit each student's needs, moving away from a "one size fits all" mindset."

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license. These resources may be used free of charge , distributed without restriction , and modified without permission. In 2012, the Washington State Legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 2337 that directed the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to create a collection of openly licensed courseware aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and conduct an awareness campaign to inform school di stricts about these resources. The Legislature saw this as an opportunity to both "reduce the expenses that districts would otherwise incur in purchasing these materials" and "provide districts and students with a broader selection of materials, and materi als that are more up - to - date." As a part of th is legislative mandate , OSPI conducted a review of OER in high school mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) that built on the work of the 2013 WA OER R eview . Teams evaluated full - course Geometry/Integrated Math 2 and units in 9 th - 10 th grade ELA. In addition, an OER Algebra 1 course unavailable for review in 2013 was examined. The review process, conducted durin g February and March , 201 4 , made use of existing review instruments designed to gauge alignment with the C CSS and overall OER quality . Minor revisions to the 2013 process were informed by feedback from the first cohort of reviewers. The results from this r eview enable educators and content developers to tap into the most powerful feature of OER : the ability to freely adapt and redistribute materials ."

"Farquer said presently, while the ISLE is still in beta, state leaders and educators are making efforts to "use resources from repositories and organizations that have shown a commitment to publishing according to the LRMI."

"Guidelines for Professional Development of Online Teachers Based on the SREB Standards for Quality Online Teaching Providing quality professional development for online teachers is extremely important to ensure ongoing quality teaching and learning - just as it is for teachers in traditional classrooms. The professional development of online teachers should be well-planned and organized to meet the specific academic and instructional needs of online teachers."

"This guide is organized in two main sections. Section I provides our working definition of distance education and anatomizes its many modes and models, dissecting their strengths and weaknesses in terms of instructional quality and effectiveness. Section II focuses on methods, collating best practices and lessons learned about teaching and learning from successful global distance education models. The guide also contains a glossary of terms, a reference section for further Web-based information on distance learning programs and approaches, and an extensive bibliography of the sources cited within the guide. Where available, we provide website addresses for every program discussed here. We also provide the URLs of websites that offer free content, but not those of commercial websites, which can typically be accessed online by searching for them by name."

"oday's education system includes ingrained practices, including policy and decades-old methods, that prevent schools from moving to competency-based models. Solutions to this problem include: Creating and making available educational resources on competency-based learning. These resources might be best practices, rubrics or tools, or research. Convening a coalition of League of Innovative Schools districts that are working to build successful competency-based models. Creating a technical solution for flexible tracking of competencies and credits. Problem No. 2: Leadership doesn't always support second-order change, and those in potential leadership roles, such as teachers and librarians, aren't always empowered to help effect change. Solutions to this problem include: Promoting League of Innovative Schools efforts to enable second-order change leadership Creating a framework, to be used in professional development, that would target and explain second-order change leadership discussions Schedule panel discussions about second-order change leadership Problem No. 3: Communities and cultures are resistant to change, including technology-based change Solutions to this problem include: Identifying new and engaging ways to share cutting-edge and tech-savvy best practices with school and district stakeholders and community members Involve business leaders in technology-rich schools and create school-business partnerships Look to influential organizations to spearhead national ed-tech awareness campaigns Problem No. 4: Education budgets aren't always flexible enough to support the cost, sustainability, or scalability of innovations Solutions to this problem include: Build relationships with local businesses and career academies, and create incentives for companies to hire students, in order to create a revenue stream for schools Look to competitive pricing and creative solutions Leaders must not be afraid t

"make their compliance e-learning more interesting and impactful. 1. Focus on behaviours not policies If the organisation requires people to read the whole policy, e-learning should not be the answer - put in place an effective system of tracking completion and the right carrots and sticks. What e-learning should be used for is providing realistic ways for learners to practice the desired behaviours and providing the minimum viable knowledge to do this. If you get the attitudes right, people will refer to the policy when they need to. Several entries successfully boiled the underpinning policies down to just a few key messages which could then be communicated in engaging ways. This may take significant trust from your subject matter experts, but this is increasingly the direction of travel that regulators are taking (away from 'tick box' compliance). 2. Make the learning part of a campaign Once you have defined the key messages about how you want people to behave, think about it as a communications campaign. E-learning is just one channel within the overall campaign. There has been much already written on this, so I won't dwell on the benefits of campaign thinking and spaced practice e.g. improved memory, social learning, buzz, ease of learning transfer back into the workplace. Some entries applied campaign thinking very effectively. 3. Pre-test Life is too short to be told things you already know so that your employer is legally protected. It's a far better use of everyone's time if learners have a pre-test. This means that the people who need the learning get it and those who don't don't (pre-testing enables a variety of routes through the learning). To make this viable, the questions in the pre-test need to be challenging and really robust. The amount of learner time that you'll save more than justifies paying for additional instructional design expertise if you need help to step up the quality of questioning. 4. Use role filters Learne

"Using a Conversational Tone in your eLearning Courses Thursday, 02 October 2014 14:50 Written by Ruth McElhone In my last blog post, I explored the Modality Principle from the book Elearning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard Mayer. In this post, I've decided to examine another principle in the book - the Personalisation Principle in Chapter 8. The chapter examines 3 types of personalisation principles but I'm just going to review the first principle. The first Personalisation Principle in this chapter supports using a conversational style of writing in our online modules. Using a conversational writing style can help explain the content in simple, plain English. "Based on cognitive theory and research evidence, we recommend that you create or select e-Learning courses that include some spoken or printed text that is conversational rather than formal." (Clark and Mayer, 2011) There has always been some debate that if we put content in a conversational or informal style, this can 'detract from the seriousness of the message'. Just because you are using an informal style does not mean that the content should be sloppy or use slang terms. It's all about keeping things simple. It should feel like a conversation, not a lecture while still feeling professional."

This title sounds like an impending trashing of the traditions of ADDIE, but I believe it simply places entrenched methodology in a more current and responsive context. While it seems that many are trashing old school ADDIE, I would argue that ADDIE is alive and well; in fact, is at the core of any effort to design and deliver a training solution. Agile design is catching a great deal of attention at all the conferences I've spoken at in 2013 but when you get right down to it, what we find in the iterative attributes of "agile" methods are incremental applications of ADDIE."

I've hit a bit of plateau with my Leaving Addie for SAM book. Can you recommend any good resources for seeing how folks actualize SAM? It sounds great on paper but I would love to see it or experience it more directly.

This article discusses the basics of selecting multimedia that will draw in the learners and will provide them with the best possible eLearning experience, without taking away any from the value of the core content itself.

Well, check out the co-author on the second piece, our very own Liz Glowa! Liz, apart from your piece, of course, any other documents here important for us to read?

Actually, I wrote the paper and Susan wrote the Introduction . I bookmarked the research data base and will bookmard a SREB pub that I think is important for PD.

"Below is my categorization of the most important elearning paradigms as of 2014. eLearning Paradigms 2014 Content Presenter (enables content to be presented to learners) Comprehension Tester (enables learners' knowledge to be tested--and feedback provided) Practice Provider (enables learners' decision-making to be tested--and feedback provided) Performance Supporter (enables performers to be prompted toward action) Reminder (enables learners or performers to be reminded to learn and/or take action) Social Augmentation Provider (enables learners to learn from and with each other) Gamification Provider (provides motivational incentives and behavioral prompts to action) Mobile Learning Provider (provides learning and/or performance support through mobile technology) Data Utilizer (enables data collection and data-based interventions) Video Provider (enables video to be utilized in various ways) Learning Organizer (provides organizational structure around learning opportunities) Personalizer (enables content or prompting to be individualized or tailored) Learning-Delivery Augmenter (enables easy delivery of content or prompting) Context-Based Triggerer (enables content or prompting to be delivered depending on context) Cost Saver (enables learning to be delivered at a lower cost)"