rubrics their institution developed can be used to reliably
How to Turn Your Summer Reading List into Book Spine Poetry > Virtual Learning Connecti... - 0 views
ollie_4: Building a Better Mousetrap - 1 views
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I understand why teachers want to allow students freedom to be creative in the process of completing a product that demonstrates learning, but the fact is that without the criteria for completion and mastery (two rubric dimensions) students won't know what exactly it is they are supposed to demonstrate to prove learning. Additionally, most students don't know where to go with a new product to demonstrate learning and to be creative with it. If they had that kind of mastery of a product/learning then they wouldn't have to be taught it in the first place. Rubrics or some identification of critical elements that demonstrate that learning has happened on the standards necessary is vital.
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Your comment about students not knowing where to go with a new product is huge. I have found that "regurgitation" of others notes/lectures/explanations/ideas seem to come through for many students. That creative component is difficult
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well-designed rubrics help instructors in all disciplines meaningfully assess the outcomes of the more complicated assignments that are the basis of the problem-solving, inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogy
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“Meaningfully” here means both consistently and accurately
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Very true. I am guilty of not always being consistent from student to student. Rubrics help, but also for me to complete the grading of an assignment in one sitting :)
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As an educator, I have the tendency to place in my rubric.....teacher impression in comparison to the peer group. Yes, that is one area students do not like because the view it as "opinion". This is usually from my A students who want the path of least resistance.
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I love rubrics because it not only helps me be consistent but it makes very clear my expectation on an assignment/project. If they ask a question I can often say, "refer to your rubric".
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“latticing,” or “scaffolding”—if they are shared with students prior to the completion of any given assignment.
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“Perhaps the greatest potential value of classroom assessment is realized when we open the assessment process up and welcome students into that process as full partners”
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the vital “traits,” key qualities, or “dimensions,” to be rated
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I agree that this is powerful. But unfortunately, having the students build the rubric and then complete the product of the rubric becomes very time consuming. It is important to pick and choose when instruction will be furthered by the students' participation in the creation of the rubric and when it is not feasible because of the time commitment and loss of time that would need to be committed to another set of learning goals.
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I would agree with this. I think it also makes a difference if the purpose of the rubric is for final grading or scaffolding. Students may not have a good feel for the different levels when first tackling a topic/project.
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withholding assessment tools (whether they are rubrics or more nebulous modes of evaluation) from students is not only unfair and makes self-assessment more difficult
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It is so unfair to students not to give them a rubric for assessment purposes. Without a rubric they are left in the dark to guess what the teachers wants, what the teacher expects, what emphasis the teacher is placing on various parts of the assignment, etc. Rubrics make assessment transparent rather than secretive!
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best of both worlds here, by designing a rubric on a PC that allows for the easy insertion of assignment specific traits.
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Is this a skill most teachers possess? It boggles my mind and intimidates me just reading about it.
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I would hope teachers have these skills - if not, they need to develop the skills in order to provide the best assessment procedures possible. There are many available resources - books, classes, etc. - for learning these skills.
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“Standards, Feedback, and Diversified Assessment: Addressing Equity Issues at the Classroom Level,” reports that extensive use of rubrics can help minimize students’ educational disparities and bring fairness into assessment on numerous levels: “In short, explicit performance criteria, along with supporting models of work, make it possible for students to use the attributes of exemplary work to monitor their own performance.”
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A rubric that tells students, as a typical example, that they will get an A for writing a 1000 word essay that “cites x number of sources and supports its thesis with at least three arguments” will lead students to perceive writing as a kind of “paint-by-number” endeavor (Mathews).
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extremely short scales make it difficult to identify small differences between students.
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some rubrics are dumb.’”
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I agree completely! I love the example quoted below - this was one bright and creative student! Some rubrics are dumb, and this is why it is so extremely difficult to develop a "one size fits all" rubric! This is also why I feel teachers should be developing their own rubrics based on the needs and requirements of their subject area and class.
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A holistic rubric is more efficient and the best choice when criteria overlap and cannot be adequately separated
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analytical rubric, however, will yield more detailed information about student performance and, therefore, will provide the student with more specific feedback.
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If you visit the web page I cut and pasted this from, you will find that each item is hyperlinked to a full explanation of the step.
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Clearly defining the purpose of assessment and what you want to assess is the first step in developing a quality rubric
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The collaboration among colleagues to create a rubric can not only create a much more reliable and valid rubric, but can also lead to professional growth (through the discussion) and improved instruction because of the collaboration and growth.
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I agree that this collaboration is well suited for bringing reliable and valid data. With the new "collaboration" mandate where we have over 30 hours to collaborate, documenting on Diggio can enhance the situation for true collaboration... :)
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Mary, that's so true. Diigo and other sharing forums like it will be incredibly helpful as we move to the new collaboration requirements. This is especially true when 30 hours of face-to-face time (depending on how it will ultimately be defined and delineated) might be impossible to find.
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a meta-rubric to assess our rubric
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Barbara Moskal, in her article “Scoring Rubrics: What, When, and How?” insists that rubrics should be non-judgmental: “Each score category should be defined using description of the work rather than judgments about the work.
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I think this is important. It will take some careful consideration to phrase statements in a way that is descriptive of the expectation without judging it.
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I agree completely. When a student uses a rubric as a guide to how their work will be assessed it is not possible for them to define our meaning of the word "good" which is why that would not be a reasonable expectation on a rubric.
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advocates of rubrics at all educational levels have argued that rubrics provide students with clear and specific qualities to strive for in those assignments that “are open-ended, aligned more closely to real-life learning situations and the nature of learning” (Skillings and Ferrell) and mitagate both teacher bias and the perception of teacher bias (Mathews).
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As mentioned earlier, having access to the rubric prior to instruction, and using it to self-evaluate provides the student with more guidance as they do their work.
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I think they make grading look more objective then subjective and that should help with students thinking teachers grade them lower than their peers simply because "they don't like me".
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I would like to see more resources that specifically show more designs that are for open-ended writing prompts and projects - this kind of student work is often expected to have different elements depending on the project, writing these rubrics is tricky!
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static elements encouraging students to simply make sure their essays have those features
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I think there is still a place for a few of these in a rubric - they identify key pieces that are expected in a final project. Unless you're going to have students continually revise until they are at the top level in every category, this kind of thing may be needed from time to time.
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I agree with you that this kind of thing may be needed from time to time to show the students that the essays need to have those features in the paper.
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I agree also, but those are only a small part of a good rubric and shouldn't be the emphasis of the expectation.
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if you feel that one dimension is more important than another.
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I always used this to emphasize the main point of the project, but still give some weight to other important pieces, such as organization and mechanics.
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Me also, it seems unbalanced to give the same weight to the non-essential but still important parts of an assignment, rather than weighting the most importart parts higher.
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I have done weighting before as well. I wonder if this causes some students to play the "points game." If they do the main element really well, can they still get the grade they want and not do the other elements. But I guess the good point would be that they got the main element.
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Look at some actual examples of student work to see if you have omitted any important dimensions.
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I think this is a really good idea. Many times we think our rubric is what we are looking for, but many times we might have missed a key point.
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I find that a lot in my teaching- I will develop a rubric for a specific assignment and then make modifications the next year, if I find something wasn't quite right after I used it to actually grade assignments.
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This is why making a template and being able to make modifications - add and subtract - each year or throughout the year makes things so much easier.
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educators in all disciplines to assess outcomes in learning situations that require critical thinking and are multidimensional
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“on what students have actually learned rather than what they have been taught,”
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I like this quote- it reminds me of another quote that says "If the students didn't learn, did the teacher really teach?" Good food for thought...
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What a concept! Love to read that this at a post-secondary institution.
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This is indicative of the changing paradigm from teaching and instruction to focus on learning, and I think that is the correct point of view for teachers/educators to take. I remember when I started teaching 25 years ago and was aghast at the teachers who were still devoted to the Bell Curve. The paradigm then, teach so that only the very top students can understand what you are instructing on, trick the students as much as you can, and, of course, don't worry about the ones who don't get it. We've "come a long way, baby."
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the rubrics their institution developed can be used to reliably score the performance-based and problem-solving assignments that now form a significant part of the undergraduate engineering curriculum at the University of California at Berkley.
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When instructors plan on grading student thinking and not just student knowledge, they should articulate the vital features that they are looking for and make these features known to the student.
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I believe this is where it is important to have models of different levels of student work with explanations why the work is at that level.
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I agree with your comment about having different levels of student work to use as models. Have you tried providing the examples of different levels and letting the students use the rubric to determine which example fits which level? I have tried it a couple of times and it is a big eye opener for students. I need to make a point of doing it more often.
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they should articulate the vital features that they are looking for and make these features known to the student.
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This sentence is interesting because I have never heard that you shouldn't share rubrics with students- I have always thought students need to have the rubric as they work on the assignment, so it seems obvious that we should make those features known to the student.
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Items in a rubric shouldn't be a secret. I go over the rubric with my students so they understand what I want. That way I get what I want!
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both assess and encourage student learning
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the criteria must be made clear to them and the jargon used must not only be understandable to the student but also be linked specifically to classroom instruction
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Pilot test your rubric or checklist on actual samples of student work
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red, “
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Red in poetry means love....or murder, blood, death or despair. I know colleagues who "love" rubrics and I know colleagues who struggle to build a rubric that truly shows high expectations for students who "beat the system" by following the rubric, but not truly having the "spark" to the overall outcome.
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“The instructor’s comments on papers and tests are done after rather than before the writing, so they cannot serve as guidelines, compromising the value of writing comments at all.”
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Conveying expectations before starting an assignment helps the student focus as they are completing the assignment. Comments at the end of a paper are useless unless students are allowed to fix their paper after reading the comments. Not sure if the students learn much if they don't get feedback along the way so the final product can be a quality product.
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When students are full partners in the assessment process, as Mary Jo Skillings and Robin Ferrel illustrate in their study on student-generated rubrics, they tend to “think more deeply about their learning.”
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Moreover, some teachers have noticed how students who were good writers become wooden when writing under the influence of a rubric.
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When instructors do not explicitly delineate the qualities of thought that they are looking for while grading, they reduce learning to a hit or miss endeavor, where “assessment remains an isolated […] activity and the success of the learner is mostly incidental”
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Rubrics can be designed to measure either product or process or both; and, they can be designed with dimensions describing the different levels of that “deep learning” so valued in WAC programs.
Lesson: Articles on Visual Design - 4 views
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Depending on how a texture is applied, it may be used strategically to attract or deter attention.
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I never thought about "texture" online; what would be an example of a repeated element? A simple picture, or maybe a repeated diagram?
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Texture is an interesting element that I generally disregard. However, I remember a literature professor open poetry discussions with questions about texture and taste. He would use such responses to get to the tone of the work. What taste/texture/tone does this course have?
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Spacing makes things clearer.
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I have found this to be true since starting this class; less is more; and the idea of also adding an element of some kind to every page makes a lot of sense to me too. I think about this now as I create ANY kind of presentation page.
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"Less is more." That sums up nicely what we've been learning. I know that I have a tendency to be too wordy and thus the page seems way too cluttered. I need to make a concerted effort to utilize the Less is More rule of thumb.
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In the last year or so, I've switched to using CSS to make my buttons and have never looked back. Sure, it means my buttons don't always have the flexibility I might wish for, but the savings in build time from not having to make dozens of little button images are huge.
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What does this mean? That in CSS (which I think I missed what that means...) you don't need to give a direction to click on a button to do whatever it is you are wanting it to do? Rather, it is automatically an apparent clickable button?
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Good question! What is CSS? I think this is another rule of thumb we might want to add to our web-design rules: Don't assume the reader knows what the abbreviations or acronyms mean. Spell them out and define them so everyone is clear.
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Everything should be themed to make your design coherent between pages and on the same page.
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Font Choices
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What font should we be using? My journalism minor is quite dusty, but I was taught that body copy should be a serif typeface (e.g. Times New Roman, Georgia) and headlines should be a sans-serif typeface (e.g. Arial, Helvetica). Your choice of type might also give you a better grade: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19604/does-size-12-times-new-roman-font-receive-better-grades-in-school S
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Squeaky wheels get the grease and prominent visuals get the attention.
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Pantheon
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it’s a good practice to never open links in new browser windows.
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I'm going to give this some thought because this suggestion is opposite of what I generally try to do. I've always thought it was better for readers to close the new linked area.
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My too. I like new windows for new material. This seems contrary to my preferences.
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It is not the way I think either. I tend to want to separate things so I am not distracted. New windows keep me focused.
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Same here. Especially with Moodle, I try to have it open in a different window so that they don't lose the original course.
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A typical example from usability sessions is to translate the page in Japanese (assuming your web users don’t know Japanese, e.g. with Babelfish) and provide your usability testers with a task to find something in the page of different language. If conventions are well-applied, users will be able to achieve a not-too-specific objective, even if they can’t understand a word of it.
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The basic elements that combine to create visual designs include the following:
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All of this is what is missing from the powerpoint I created for Mollie 3 in the week 2 lab section.
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To be clear, these elements are always present, even in their absence. That is, even when one has the ugliest colors imagineable, they still are using a color palette. If you are Picasso, you get paid a lot of money for having the absence of these basic elements.
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and that the medium changes as frequently as the underlying technology does.
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To achieve precedence you have many tools at your disposal:
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These make perfect sense to me. I'm thinking that if I can remember and use these 5 chunks of precedence I would be taken a giant step toward fine-tuning the online lessons I create.
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One slight difference between the online lesson and the "webpage" this designer is talking about is that there is going to be more stuff on the webpage. An online lesson doesn't have as many elements vying for attention.
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some pretty bad examples out there.
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The DE website is a "pretty bad example" if you ask me. (Although there have been improvements made over time.) There is just SO much there that is difficult for me to find what I want and need. I guess I could use that website as a non-example of effective navigation.
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True. Of course, Heartland's old website was bad too. That is one of the occupational hazards of people like us who have our fingers in everything.
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Adhering to Standards
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good set of CSS stylesheets
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Hmm. . . .what is a CSS style sheet? So much unfamiliar content specific vocabulary in this article makes me wonder if I'm actually understanding what is being said.
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A CSS style sheet is a set of rules (in the shape of a bunch of code) that govern a website. It would look like this: All headlines are in Maroon, 24 point, centered All sidebars have a box that is 100 pixels by 80 pixels. Except... in a language we can't understand.
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Here’s what the golden ratio looks like:
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But, didn't we read somewhere earlier in the class to place pictures/photos on the left-hand side of slide? Do these 2 ideas contradict each other? Someone please clarify for me.
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Well... in our lessons, we advocated for putting them on the right side, as it helps with wrapping of text. Though putting them on the left is not a design faux pas. The "golden ratio" layout is more beneficial for designing a website, where you have grids to place content.
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This is similar to Paradox of Choice – the more choice you give people, the easier it is to choose nothing.
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OK, i can see how too many choices is confusing in web design. But as an educator, I want to assure that my students have the freedom to make some choices regarding assignments and activities I ask them to complete in order to show their understanding. How will I balance these 2 ideas when creating online lessons/courses?
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I think you already answered your question. Design is different than learning choice. It's like the new textbooks that have so much sidebar information that students aren't reading the main text. Too much design choice. In a lesson, you can present students with different learning options (enrichment, accomodated assignments, etc), but keep the webpage consistent.
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the right is more interesting?
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I don't think the image on the right is more interesting? What am I missing?
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"Interesting" is of course subjective. Typically, the rule of thirds means if you move the subject over to the 3rd-line of the picture, the picture shows more dynamics. Instead of "here's this rock formation", it's "Here's the rock formation, in its habitat, and now your eyes are moving over to this side of the photo to examine what is around it"
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provide an email address if they were asked for it after they’d seen the feature work, so they had some idea of what they were going to get in return.
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I so agree. If I'm asked for email or other info to enter a site, I just close out. I want some hint of what the site has to offer me before I give them all my info. Great tip!
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I steer away if I am asked for identifying information before I can explore the site's information.
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I hate it too. I have an email site dedicated to these throwaway signups that I never check (unless I need to confirm an account). I grumble every time.
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he more options a user has when using your website, the more difficult it will be to use (or won’t be used at all).
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The best images follow the rule of thirds: an i
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Users don’t read, they scan. Analyzing a web-page, users search for some fixed points or anchors which would guide them through the content of the page.
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Unity has to do with all elements on a page visually or conceptually appearing to belong together. Visual design must strike a balance between unity and variety to avoid a dull or overwhelming design.
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White space is used around text and between sections to allow the page to breath
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Similarity refers to creating continuity throughout a design without direct duplication. Similarity is used to make pieces work together over an interface and help users learn the interface quicker.
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Padding is the space between elements and text. The simple rule here is that you should always have space there.
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At the end of the day, your Web design is a tool for people to use, and people don't like using annoying tools!
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Design is not just something designers do. Design is marketing. Design is your product and how it works. The more I’ve learned about design, the better results I’ve gotten.
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So, if your layout width is 960px, divide it by 1.618 (=593px). Now you know that the content area should be 593px and sidebar 367px. If the website height is 760px tall, you can split it into 470px and 290px chunks (760/1.618=~470).
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With effective web design, you need to make sure things that do NOT go together, are not perceived as one. Similarly, you want to group certain design elements together (navigation menu, footer etc) to communicate that they form a whole.
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White space is all about the use of hierarchy. The hierarchy of information, be it type, colour or images.
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Avoid cute or clever names, marketing-induced names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names.
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Incorporating space into a design helps reduce noise, increase readability, and/or create illusion. White space is an important part of your layout strategy.
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The use of space can be often overlooked or just not something that we always pay attention to.
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Lisa, I agree. In fact, my opinion is its the best place to start, since it is one of the easier elements to understand (not sure I can identify what "good Gestalt" is) and one of the easiest to actually do.
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White space is used to give balance, proportion and contrast to a page.
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You should direct the user’s eyes through a sequence
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Simple, minimal design does not automatically mean the design works, or is effective. But in my experience simple is always better than the opposite
9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design - Envato Tuts+ Design & Illustration Tut... - 0 views
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I'm reminded of that episode of the Simpsons where Homer eventually becomes this "gossip" of Springfield online. His first foray into creating a web site was to find all these weird, loud animations and throw them on a site. Then he got disappointed when no one visited the site. I'd hope I wasn't that poor of a designer, but it's so tempting to just use whatever's out there and difficult to discern what will add to the content and what will distract. (I tried to insert a link to the image, but it didn't work - just search Homer Simpson's first web page, if you're curious)
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