Inspire Blog

Canvas Resources and Guides

With the migration to Canvas comes many new features and methods for facilitating your course. The Canvas Guides provide a lot of information, but you may be wondering, where do I even start? Here at Ecampus, we’ve put together a few guides to help you become familiar with some of the tools in Canvas. First, if you’re wondering, “I did this in Blackboard, but I can’t find it in Canvas; how do I…?”, we’ve created a few design options for that. These design options explore how to adapt features that you’ve used in Blackboard to the new Canvas environment. Design Options – Adaptive Release Design Options – Blogs Design Options – Discussion Boards Design Options – Folders and Items Design Options … Canvas Resources and Guides
by · February 10, 2015

Locating OER

Where can I find Open Educational Resources (OER)? Here is a list of Websites that offer (OERs) – open source (copyright free) materials, such as images, audio, and textbooks. Search Creative Commons This site allows you to search for resources using Europeana, Flickr, Fotopedia, Google, Google Images, Jamendo, Open Clip Art Library, SpinXpress, Wikimedia Commons, YouTube, Pixabay, ccMixter, and SoundCloud. Along with providing a selection of search services, Search Creative Commons allows you to filter your search for materials that you can use either for commercial purposes or for materials that can be modified and adapted in order to meet different needs. OER Commons This site offers support services and open educational resources (OERs) in a multitude of subject areas, grade … Locating OER
by · October 2, 2014

We can revisit and revise multimedia

Recently, we added 24 new birds to this “silhouette shape recognition” interactive for FW312. This was the 3rd time we expanded this interactive tool, and it serves as a nice reminder that Ecampus can continue to help improve your course materials year after year.
by · September 2, 2014

Universal Design for Learning

“Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design” –Ron Mace, NCSU Center for Universal Design A fundamental of online instructional design is that learning materials should be accessible to all students. Ecampus works closely with faculty to ensure accessibility of course content for everyone. For example, since some students cannot hear an audio track on a lecture video, it’s essential that a transcript of the narration or closed captioning is provided. Martha Smith and Gabe Merrell are OSU campus leaders in universal design and accessibility, and frequently discuss universal design for instruction with OSU faculty and staff. Martha is Director … Universal Design for Learning
by · August 5, 2014

Effective Narrated Presentations

When developing course material for online learning environments—especially narrated presentations—it is important to consider not only the content, but also the design of the material. If material is designed in a way that minimizes visual and cognitive distractions it will be easier for your students to engage with the content. A particularly effective paradigm in understanding the relationship between content and design can be found in cognitive load theory articulated by John Sweller (1988, 1999). When students are processing learning materials, their total cognitive load is made up of intrinsic cognitive load and extraneous cognitive load. The intrinsic cognitive load is the amount of mental energy required to process the content of the learning at hand. The extraneous cognitive load … Effective Narrated Presentations
by · April 30, 2014