Inspire Blog Tag: ecampus

Managing the Pace & Workload

Lately I’ve heard from a number of faculty whose students have expressed stress or overwhelm at the workload in a course. Further, students as well as faculty have had to adjust to a new routine or pace in their lives in recent months. All of this change gives us a chance to examine the workload and pace of a course so that it is manageable for both students and instructors. To that end, I offer three simple things that faculty can do to make their workload more manageable: Manage expectations Post time estimates for each activity Consider your own availability Manage expectations One of the most effective ways to help students understand how much they should plan to do each … Managing the Pace & Workload
by · July 6, 2020

Academic Success During Turbulent Time (Part 2): Teach Students How To Learn

In part one of Academic Success, we reviewed why it is important to help students develop time management skills and how to design courses that help students manage time. In this post, we will discuss the why, what and how about teaching students how to learn. By this time, most public schools and higher education institutions are coming to a close for Spring 2020 teaching. Congratulations on overcoming so many challenges and finishing teaching during COVID-19! As we prepare for summer and/or fall teaching, I would like to invite instructors to consider teaching students how to learn in your next teaching adventure, in order to help students achieve academic success. Why Teach Students How to Learn? For teachers, teaching students … Academic Success During Turbulent Time (Part 2): Teach Students How To Learn
by · June 22, 2020

Distance Socializing : Exploring tools for remote communication

The Ecampus multimedia team researches emerging tools, and works with our sibling team of Instructional Designers to help support instructors. So lets take a moment to peek at tools we all might be using in the coming years for communicating with teammates from a distance. Multimedia developers primarily use a paid tier of Slack (for instant messaging), Outlook (for email), and Zoom (for meetings with live video or audio). While we play around with many other emerging tools, I believe we’re using the same basic trio as most everyone else. Just wanted to be clear that I don’t have a revolutionary new secret tool in my back pocket which you must start using today. We’re all in the same basic … Distance Socializing : Exploring tools for remote communication
by · May 25, 2020

Designing Online Learning With Awe In Mind

Awe – A Shared Uncommon Human Experience Can you recall the last time you experienced awe? It is likely you can because awe is an emotion that tends to be a positive memorable experience. What were you doing during your awe experience? Did you learn anything from it? Do you still think about it? This post will profile the nature of awe and will conceptualize how we may integrate awe in learning design for online instruction. We will begin with exploring what awe is and how it occurs. Then our focus will turn to how awe might impact cognition and therefore learning. Lastly some examples of how awe integration might be conceptualized for online instruction and remote experiential learning. It … Designing Online Learning With Awe In Mind
by · May 18, 2020

Flexibility and structure in course design: You don’t have to choose

Flexibility is an inclusive practice. Structure is an inclusive practice. Both of these statements are true–yet, many people might wonder how to reconcile these seemingly opposite approaches in their course designs. How does one build a course that is both flexible enough to accommodate the diverse needs of their students, yet structured in a way that is clear and unambiguous? In a practical sense, what do these words really mean? First, let’s define these terms and consider why each of these approaches are critical to student success. What do we mean by flexibility and structure and why are they both important features of course design and facilitation? Flexibility Flexibility is getting a lot of press right now, due to our … Flexibility and structure in course design: You don’t have to choose
by · May 5, 2020