Inspire Blog Tag: instructional design

Designing the open course: Why Instructional Designers should follow a “right to repair” plan

Intro The concept of the ‘right to repair’ has been on my mind recently, both as a user of tech products and as a designer of online courses. Electronics are notorious these days for their enigmatic design. The user is not trusted to make repairs or is restricted in the ways they can interact with device components. This is a choice made by manufacturers to limit access to approved vendors or repair shops. Instructional Designers have a similar choice when building courses. Do we follow a restrictive approach to modifications, or open up courses by anticipating, welcoming, and providing the resources for modifications? Difficult by design I recently experienced the restrictive side myself as I needed to fix an air … Designing the open course: Why Instructional Designers should follow a “right to repair” plan
by · May 23, 2022

Improving Student Engagement and Connection in Online Learning: Part II, Methodologies and Practices

Introduction Since the first post in the series appeared a few months ago, we have received plenty of feedback from other instructors who are actively engaged in online education. Some of the stories shared by them reiterate the points we discussed, and others included tips and techniques that have worked particularly well for them. Almost all of them agreed that teaching well online remains a challenging task. “I love the notes on proactive student support … especially the notes on checking in with those who are behind. Sometimes all they need is a little empathy!” Vic Matta, Associate Professor, College of Business, Ohio University  “I regularly incorporate each of these in my relationships with my students, to include weekly zoom … Improving Student Engagement and Connection in Online Learning: Part II, Methodologies and Practices
by · May 16, 2022

Make Your Word Documents Accessible for All

In this post I’m returning to an important topic: accessibility. In a previous blog my colleague Susan Fein explained how everyone benefits from more accessible materials and that a large number of our students have some degree of disability. Word documents are ubiquitous in our courses, as well as for other work-related activities. If a Word document is designed for digital consumption – such as posting in the Learning Management System or on a website – it needs to comply with accessibility standards. Fortunately, Word includes excellent tools for making your file accessible! I will first go over the main accessibility features, and then show you how to implement them in the video below. Accessibility checker: Word includes a tool … Make Your Word Documents Accessible for All
by · May 9, 2022

The Seven “Cs” of Successful Team Collaboration

According to the 2020 Brandon Hall Group Team Development Pulse Survey findings (Werder, 2021), at least half of work is currently done in teams in over seventy percent of companies. Global Human Capital Trends (2016) confirmed that this trend is continuing, with over 7000 organizations moving towards more team-based designs. However, the success of team collaboration is not a guarantee and requires diligent planning and hard work. Tannenbaum and Salas (2020) suggest that there are seven “Cs” (or drivers) of teamwork, namely: capability, cooperation, coordination, communication, cognition, coaching, and conditions. To contextualize and apply each of these 7 “Cs”, I’ll use a recent team collaboration I participated in as an example. A team of four staff from Oregon State University … The Seven “Cs” of Successful Team Collaboration
by · April 25, 2022

An Introduction to Markdown

This past February, I was putting together a proposal for the 2022 Distance Teaching & Learning (DT&L) Conference, and I shared my draft with a couple of my colleagues for feedback. Typically, when requesting feedback, our team relies on Google Docs, which has a nice feature set for suggesting edits. However, I was not using Google Docs. I explained that they would be viewing my formatted document on HackMD, a collaborative web-based Markdown tool. One of the colleagues I had asked for feedback responded: What are the pros and cons compared to a google doc, may I ask? That question inspired this blog post. What is Markdown? Markdown is a plain text format with a simple syntax to add formatting … An Introduction to Markdown
by · April 18, 2022