Inspire Blog Author: Deborah Mundorff

Boosting Student Performance: The Impact of Well-crafted Quiz Instructions

I have always struggled with test anxiety. As a student, from first-grade spelling tests through timed essay questions while earning my Masters of Science in Education, I started exams feeling nauseous and underprepared. (My MSEd GPA was 4.0). I blame my parents. Both were college professors and had high expectations for my academic performance. I am in my 50s, and I still shutter remembering bringing home a low B on a history test in eighth grade. My father looked disappointed and told me, “Debbie, I only expect you to do the best you can do. But I do not think this is the best you can do.”  I am very glad my parents instilled in me a high value of … Boosting Student Performance: The Impact of Well-crafted Quiz Instructions
by · July 24, 2023

Five Tips on Improving Readability in Your Courses

The following is a guest blog post from Aimee L. Lomeli Garcia, MLA. Aimee completed an Instructional Design internship with OSU Ecampus during the Fall of 2022. Have you ever found yourself reading the same paragraph over and over again only to not retain any information? Or been so overwhelmed with the content you’re trying to read that you’re unable to absorb any of it? Odds are that it may not just be the content you’re trying to read; it may be the way the information is laid out. One way to help read and retain information is to make the text more readable. Making information readable in your online course can seem overwhelming, but there are a few steps that you … <strong>Five Tips on Improving Readability in Your Courses</strong>
by · January 17, 2023

12 Ways Instructional Designers Can Be Inclusive of Low-Income and First-Generation Students

The following is a guest blog post from Michelle Coxey. Michelle completed an Instructional Design internship with OSU Ecampus during the Fall of 2022. Ian Wilkins is a high school language arts teacher, but besides the students, his passion is social justice. He shares a powerful metaphor that education is like a heavily gated castle. Those inside the castle are comfortable and safe and do not realize that the people outside are hungry (Chardin & Novak, 2021). If someone opens the gate and admits a person from the outside, would that person feel comfortable and safe inside like everyone already there? Would they know the rules of the castle? Would they feel like they fit in and deserved to be … <strong>12 Ways Instructional Designers Can Be Inclusive of Low-Income and First-Generation Students</strong>
by · December 19, 2022

An Introduction to Markdown

This past February, I was putting together a proposal for the 2022 Distance Teaching & Learning (DT&L) Conference, and I shared my draft with a couple of my colleagues for feedback. Typically, when requesting feedback, our team relies on Google Docs, which has a nice feature set for suggesting edits. However, I was not using Google Docs. I explained that they would be viewing my formatted document on HackMD, a collaborative web-based Markdown tool. One of the colleagues I had asked for feedback responded: What are the pros and cons compared to a google doc, may I ask? That question inspired this blog post. What is Markdown? Markdown is a plain text format with a simple syntax to add formatting … An Introduction to Markdown
by · April 18, 2022

Course Learning Outcomes – High-Beam or Low-Beam Lights?

The following is a guest blog post from Meilianty Gunawan. Meili completed an Instructional Design internship with OSU Ecampus during Fall 2021. Have you ever driven a car on a highway with no streetlights in the middle of the night? Your first instinct is to turn your car’s high-beam lights on to give you greater visibility on what lies far ahead of you. You are probably fine just by relying on the car’s low-beam lights, but you will not be able to get a clearer picture of the far end of the road as you would get from the high-beam. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a framework used by instructors to develop course learning outcomes. It lays out six cognitive domains (from … Course Learning Outcomes – High-Beam or Low-Beam Lights?
by · March 14, 2022