Group items tagged

"Instructional designers, like web developers in the '90s, historically had expertise in conveying content through a limited set of tools and platforms, such as a learning management system (LMS). LX designers, in contrast, merge design-thinking principles with curriculum development and the application of emerging technologies to help faculty tailor content to student behaviors and preferences. It cuts across disciplines and moves beyond the LMS: LX designers embrace graphic design, multimedia production, research-based standards and social media. They are partners to faculty throughout the program and course development process."

Summarizes legal basis for accessible online educational materials and provides tips and key links to aid instructors in moving toward Universal Design for Learning.

"One of the biggest misunderstandings about online learning is that it has to be limited to things that can be done in front of a computer screen. Instead, we need to reimagine online courses as something that can enable the interplay between offline activities and digital augmentation. . . . We need to focus . . . more on finding ways to robustly capture evidence of offline learning that can be validated and critiqued at scale by peers and experts online."

"The findings suggest that a new role, the life skill promoter, has emerged. Furthermore, analysis of the remaining roles (pedagogical, designer, social, technical and managerial) showed that: (i) online instructors are, first and foremost, pedagogues; (ii) the design of the particular online program influences the pedagogical and designer roles and; (iii) the managerial role has declined in importance over the years due to the development of more intuitive and transparent online scenarios from the beginning of the course onward."

This is a heady rant about motivating your user. (7 min). While some of the big words might be off putting, the simple game examples should be inviting. ? It serves as advice on making someone feel glad they performed a task you setup for them. The speaker is talking about video games, and behavioral engineering, but I think it relates to motivating online students. _________________________ tl;dr? the core takeaway is: points ain't rewards. Just because you gave someone points, doesn't mean they received them as a reward. Points only work as rewards when they are a "token" of whatever currency the player values. I think this is fascinating to keep in mind when trying to motivate students. (you might think of grades and degrees as tokens in different currencies) + I'm curious to learn how much the field of "instructional design" leverages behavioral engineering.

"The case for learning out loud extends beyond the development of effective communication skills. An asynchronous, multimodal learning environment that invites students to verbally converse with one another has been shown to improve the social and emotional elements of learning." (also see http://www.slideshare.net/brocansky/learning-outloudsept2014)

Thought this was a nice easy read regarding a topic that comes up each year. We all know educational games should tackle more than memorization and that multiple choice questions offer a puerile level of analysis, but seems like we keep falling back into these two traps. Looking forward to tackling new projects that treat learning as the ally instead of the goal, and encourage exploration more than stepping through checklists. Just sharing because I enjoy chewing this stuff over all the time.

Alternative modes to delivery offer examples which provide learners with greater control over the content and meaning of what they are learning and over the processes by which they learn.

Video about best practices for week 1 and beyond in online classes