Group items tagged

"As long as aviation pioneers tried to mimic birds, controlled, heavier-than-air human flight proved impossible. Along somewhat similar lines, it is only by breaking decisively from traditional face-to-face models that it will be truly possible to create the kinds of immersive, social experiences in online education that will truly engage students and promote high levels of attainment among broad profiles of students."

"The results suggest that the lowest-ability students benefit more from engagement than classmates, first-year students and seniors convert different forms of engagement into academic achievement, and certain institutions more effectively convert student engagement into higher performance on critical thinking tests.

With apologies for the title -- some interesting graphs here that demonstrate the level of engagement at various video lengths. Makes the case for short videos. One thing that doesn't seem to be considered is how the video is integrated (or not) with learning activities.

Key finding: "A strong majority of those who have taught online, 71 percent, say doing so has helped them develop skills and practices that have improved their teaching both online and in person. More than seven in 10 say online teaching has enabled them to think more critically about how to engage students with content, better use multimedia content and better use the learning management system."

"When using Bloom's Digital Taxonomy (a revised take on Bloom's devised by educator Andrew Churches), it helps to have a list of verbs to know what actions define each stage of the taxonomy. This is useful for lesson planning, rubric making, and any other teacher-oriented task requiring planning and assessment strategies." [Karen, thanks for passing this along!]

"an average student who participates in online discussion will score 25 percentile points higher on course exams than an average student who participates in classroom discussion"

Overview of distance ed pedagogy

A resource for translating seat time and credit hour requirements to online activities from Penn State

An excellent guide for faculty written by Michelle Miller of NAU: "It's for anyone who is in the process of creating a new course or redesigning an old one and needs advice on which technologies to use, how to use them, and why."

(Educause registration required for access to this pdf; OSU is an institutional member of Educause.)

"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."

"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."

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