Inspire Blog Tag: ecampus

Re-imagining your online office hours

So, you’re thinking about offering virtual office hours in your online class. Your instructional designer is thrilled! Virtual office hours are a great way to promote social connection and build community with your students. But, you’re nervous. Maybe you’ve tried offering virtual office hours before. Maybe you’ve heard from colleagues that students aren’t going to show up to your office hours. Maybe one student will show up. Maybe five. Or three. Or none. Maybe you’re not sure how to prepare. You want your students to come with questions. Maybe your students will come with tons of questions. Maybe they won’t. Just as you can’t–or shouldn’t–teach an online course in the same way that you would teach an on-campus course, you … Re-imagining your online office hours
by · December 14, 2018

Exploring Podcasting For Online Courses

One of the common ideas instructors have to bolster student-content engagement in a course is to add media. Podcasts are a type of media element that can support learning in a number of ways. It is relatively easy to link to an established podcast. Planning and producing your own podcast is more involved. This post explores the idea of producing a podcast for your online course. Is it something you should consider? Prior to diving into the value and purpose of podcasts it is useful to understand what a podcast is…and what it isn’t. The term podcast is a portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcast”. This blended word says a lot because a podcast is a digital recording that is produced … Exploring Podcasting For Online Courses
by · August 3, 2018

Game Design as Pedagogy (Project-Based Learning)

Many educators have contemplated the use of games as way to engage learners, or maybe thought about using some elements found in games to engage learners. A big hurdle for integrating games into a course is the amount of work it takes to build them to use in a course, even if you have the skill-set. Of course, you could always take the easier route and try to integrate an existing game into a course. The hurdles there involve cost and finding a game that supports the content specific to your course. There is another approach to bring game concepts into the learning environment that does not necessitate a huge investment of time, combining game design with problem-based learning. Create … Game Design as Pedagogy (Project-Based Learning)
by · July 30, 2018

Active Learning Online – Part 2

Active Learning Online – Part 2 The first post about active learning looked at how to include active learning in an online course. You heard about how a history professor used an interactive timeline. Each student added images, facts, and descriptions to the timeline, and the result was a visually-rich historical review. Students had fun while learning about facts and events. This is an example of collaboration and active learning at its best. The second example focused on interactive textbooks as an alternative to printed books. The Top Hat product combined words, images, video, and engaging activities to improve learning and make it more active. In today’s post we look at two new active learning ideas: mind mapping and annotated reading. … Active Learning Online – Part 2
by · May 18, 2018

The Guest Expert Video Interview: Planning & Production

This article is the first of a two-part series on producing video interviews featuring guest experts for online courses. Part I focuses on planning while Part II will address the faculty role in the video interview production process. Part I: Planning With A Purpose Interviews of guest experts are valuable forms of course media because they can serve a number of instructional purposes. Traditionally classroom instructors might consider including guest experts as part of instruction to… Connect learning with an authority in the field. Communicate what the practices are in a given field. Describe the nature of work of a professional in a given field. Show important work environments or processes. Introduce a second, collaborative voice to instruction (Laist, 2015). … The Guest Expert Video Interview: Planning & Production
by · February 23, 2018