Inspire Blog

Collaborative Online Annotation Tools for Engaging Students in Readings

Do you ever get the sense that students posting in their online discussions haven’t really engaged with the reading materials for that week? One way to encourage active engagement with course readings is to have students annotate directly in the article or textbook chapter that they are assigned. While it is common to see students annotating in their paper copies of their textbooks or readings, these aren’t easily shared with their peers or instructor. Of course, students could snap a photo of their handwritten annotations and upload that as a reading assignment task, though that does require additional steps on the part of both the student and instructor, and there is no interaction with others in the course during that … Collaborative Online Annotation Tools for Engaging Students in Readings
by · April 27, 2020

Facilitating Active Learning with Zoom

Facilitating Active Learning with Zoom By Christine Scott, Instructional Design Specialist, Oregon State University Ecampus So you managed to get your face-to-face courses up and running remotely in the midst of a global pandemic. You’ve secured your Zoom sessions to avoid unwanted disruptions, your students are in their virtual seats, and you’ve successfully delivered a few lectures. So what’s next? Now that you have students’ attention, you may find that you’re ready to focus on transforming your synchronous session into a space for active learning to take place. It’s no secret that students learn better when they are actively engaged in the learning process. The question is how that translates to a remote Zoom session. Is it even possible to … Facilitating Active Learning with Zoom
by · April 17, 2020

Beyond intentions: Contextualizing learning outcomes

Beyond intentions: Contextualizing learning outcomes “After completion of this module, you will be able to…” Does this sound familiar? Have you created statements like this before? If so, it is possible that you have come across Bloom’s taxonomy or the taxonomy for teaching, learning, and assessments (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). The taxonomy is a guide to identify the specific knowledge that students are expected to acquire and demonstrate at the end of an educational activity (i.e., a course, module, lesson). However, connecting the outcomes to the activities and assessments can be challenging. Before we look into a guide and examples of alignment, let’s take a brief refresher at outcomes. Learning Outcomes Explained Many of us have heard of several terms … Beyond intentions: Contextualizing learning outcomes
by · April 9, 2020

Only Human

By Susan Fein, Instructional Designer, OSU Ecampus I recently volunteered to lead a book club at my institution for staff participating in a professional development program focused on leadership. The book we are using is The 9 Types of Leadership by Dr. Beatrice Chestnut. Using principles from the enneagram personality typing system, the book assesses nine behavioral styles and assesses them in the context of leadership. At the same time, a colleague asked me to review a book chapter draft she is co-authoring that summarizes contemporary learning pedagogical approaches. These theories are derived from every conceivable arena, including psychology, philosophy, epistemology, neuroscience, and so on. In both of these situations, I found myself immersed in far-reaching and seemingly unlimited perspectives, … Only Human
by · February 24, 2020

Self-Determination Theory and Online Education: Thinking About Grades

Photo by Terry Vlisidis on Unsplash Last Time on SDT & Online Education… This post is a continuation of my previous blog posts on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Online Education and a companion post to Chris Lindberg’s series of posts, Games as a Model for Motivation and Engagement. In my last post, I posed some difficult questions to consider as you start thinking about how you use grades and motivation in your courses. In case you missed that post, here are the questions—I invite you to spend a few minutes, hours, or days with these questions before moving on with the rest of this blog post: Do you use grades to create external regulation of behavior in your course? Are … Self-Determination Theory and Online Education: Thinking About Grades
by · February 3, 2020