Inspire Blog Tag: ecampus

Peer Review: Providing a Rationale for the Process

As online educators, we strive for a balance of learning activities that incorporate three types of engagement: learner-to-content, learner-to-instructor, and learner-to-learner.  The learner-to-learner component is often filled through discussion boards or group projects, but an underutilized and undervalued option is peer review. The Rationale There are many ways peer review benefits students, among them Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation lists: Empower students to take responsibility for and manage their own learning. Enable students to learn to assess and give others constructive feedback to develop lifelong assessment skills. Enhance students’ learning through knowledge diffusion and exchange of ideas. Motivate students to engage with course material more deeply. More broadly, the authors of The Knowledge Illusion argue that our individual capacity for knowledge … Peer Review: Providing a Rationale for the Process
by · November 13, 2019

Virtual Reality makes animation easy & speedy

The Ecampus multimedia team creates animations to bring your thoughts and words to life. In virtual reality, creating these 3D objects and animations has become incredibly easy and fast. The old ways … of power tool juggling Developing “multimedia” often means using small aspects of many different tools. “Media” being a means of communication and the plural of medium: a means of doing something. To create an animation for your class, we quickly run through a long list of media. Here’s an exhaustive run through of how the process works at the moment (feel free to skip to the next section! This is detailed): You would typically type up and email over a script that I take into Google Drive … Virtual Reality makes animation easy & speedy
by · September 23, 2019

On Good Design

Introduction For those who work in higher education, it may not come as a surprise that the field of instructional design has grown in tandem with the expansion of online programs and courses. Evidence of this growth abounds. While the discipline of instructional design has expanded rapidly in recent years, the history of instructional design is not well known by those outside of the field. This post will cover a brief history of instructional design with a particular emphasis on design: What influences design? How are design decisions made? How has the way we approached design changed over time? We’ll also consider how instructional designers actually design courses and the importance of course structure as an inclusive practice. Instructional Design: … On Good Design
by · September 9, 2019

Rubrics Markers of Quality –Tips and Best Practices (Part 2)

There are many benefits to using rubrics for both instructors and students, as discussed in Rubrics Markers of Quality Part 1 – Unlock the Benefits. Effective rubrics serve as a tool to foster excellence in teaching and learning, so let’s take a look at some best practices and tips to get you started. Best Practices Alignment Rubrics should articulate a clear connection between how students demonstrate learning and the (CLO) Course Learning Outcomes. Solely scoring gateway criteria, the minimum expectations for a task, (e.g., word count, number of discussion responses) can be alluring. Consider a rubric design to move past minimum expectations and assess what students should be able to do after completing a task. Detailed, Measurable, and Observable Clear … Rubrics Markers of Quality –Tips and Best Practices (Part 2)
by · July 22, 2019

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