Inspire Blog Tag: Course Design Ideas

Inviting Art into Online Course Design

How it Begins As an instructional designer one of my most important tasks is to hold an initial meeting  with an instructor, or subject matter expert (SME). During that first opportunity to collaborate on an online course design project the conversation typically focuses on  key course design elements. Commonly we discuss the broad approach to the course, anticipated assignments, narrated lecture needs, assessment, video production and support, the mechanics of the development process and more. Rarely does art come up in the conversation.  Chasing Images Now, that may seem obvious why art is not outwardly discussed. However in the first meeting we do address the topic of look and feel for the course, and images for course banners and any … Inviting Art into Online Course Design
by · October 19, 2021

Learning from Games: Failure Edition

This is the paradox of failure in games. It can be stated like this: We generally avoid failure. We experience failure when playing games. We seek out games, although we will experience something that we normally avoid. (Juul, p. 2) As a continuation from my last blog post considering grades and Self-Determination Theory, I wanted to take a brief side-quest into considering what it means to experience failure. Jesper Juul’s The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games will provide the main outline and material for this post, while I add what lessons we might learn about feedback and course design in online settings. Dealing with Failure Juul outlines how games communicate through feedback using … Learning from Games: Failure Edition
by · August 17, 2020

Adding a New Feedback Loop to Your Online Courses

Canvas Survey with Mud Card Questions

New online instructors often express concern about the loss of immediate student feedback they get by teaching in person. These educators count on in-class interaction to help shape their lesson plans in real-time. Student questions, lack of interaction, or even blank looks, help them understand what concepts are difficult for their learners. Others just feel more comfortable with the two-way nature of in-classroom communication. But teaching in an online environment doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive from gauging student interest and comprehension. Mud Cards I was first introduced to the concept of “Mud Cards” or “Muddiest Points” through an open course MIT offered in Active Learning in College-Level Science and Engineering Courses. The instructor described handing out index cards to … Adding a New Feedback Loop to Your Online Courses
by · July 20, 2020

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

Ten Course Design Strategies to Minimize Cheating

One of the most common questions I get as an Instructional Designer is, “How do I prevent cheating in my online course?” Instructors are looking for detection strategies and often punitive measures to catch, report, and punish academic cheaters. Their concerns are understandable—searching Google for the phrase “take my test for me,” returns pages and pages of results from services with names like “Online Class Hero” and “Noneedtostudy.com” that promise to use “American Experts” to help pass your course with “flying grades.” 1 But by focusing only on what detection measures we can implement and the means and methods by which students are cheating, we are asking the wrong questions. Instead let’s consider what we can do to understand why students … Ten Course Design Strategies to Minimize Cheating
by · July 15, 2019