Inspire Blog Tag: instructional design

Five Tips for Making Accessible PowerPoint Slides

By Susan Fein, Ecampus instructional designer If you use slide presentations to deliver information and then provide a digital version of the slides to support learners, this post is for you! Instructors teaching online or who use a companion LMS or website to accompany in-person classes often upload the slide file to aid students in notetaking. However, you may not be aware that digital files are not automatically accessible to those using assistive technologies, such as screen readers. Following a few simple and easy guidelines will improve accessibility of your materials for all students and demonstrate your thoughtful attention to inclusivity and equity. Who Benefits from Accessibility? Everyone, not only those with disabilities, benefit from accessible learning materials. The U.S. … Five Tips for Making Accessible PowerPoint Slides
by · April 11, 2022

Course Learning Outcomes – High-Beam or Low-Beam Lights?

The following is a guest blog post from Meilianty Gunawan. Meili completed an Instructional Design internship with OSU Ecampus during Fall 2021. Have you ever driven a car on a highway with no streetlights in the middle of the night? Your first instinct is to turn your car’s high-beam lights on to give you greater visibility on what lies far ahead of you. You are probably fine just by relying on the car’s low-beam lights, but you will not be able to get a clearer picture of the far end of the road as you would get from the high-beam. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a framework used by instructors to develop course learning outcomes. It lays out six cognitive domains (from … Course Learning Outcomes – High-Beam or Low-Beam Lights?
by · March 14, 2022

Course Design Challenge: Try Subtraction

In your work as an instructor or instructional designer, what kinds of course design problems have you been trying to solve lately? Perhaps there’s a discussion board assignment that you’d like to make more engaging, or maybe there’s a lab activity that students struggle with. According to recent research findings published in the journal Nature, “…people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient” (Meyvis, T. and Yoon, H., 2021). In a course design context, this means we will probably reach for something we can add to our course to fix a problem: a shiny new tool we learned about at a conference, an extra video lecture, … Course Design Challenge: Try Subtraction
by · February 24, 2022

It Takes Two: Fostering Collaborative Faculty-Instructional Designer Relationships for Student-Centered Learning

Introduction Relationships matter for successful collaborative work. Yet, when it comes to online/ blended/hybrid course design, development often begins with a focus on course content, assuming that the collaborative relationship between faculty and instructional designers is secondary to the design process (Tate, 2017). If we care about student success, we must turn our attention to the ways in which effective collaborative relationships among design partners contribute to the course feel — that is, the online learning environment as perceived by students. In our recent OLC presentation, we proposed an interactive strategy for developing collaborative relationships between faculty and instructional designers based on curiosity, enthusiasm, and mutual respect.  Faculty and instructional designers often find themselves at cross-purposes. The design process expects … It Takes Two: Fostering Collaborative Faculty-Instructional Designer Relationships for Student-Centered Learning
by · January 31, 2022

Creating Open Textbooks for Language Learners: A Guide for Getting Started

Subject matter experts in many fields have embarked on authoring projects with the goal of replacing traditional published texts or customizing content for specific learners’ needs, yet large-scale creation of open textbooks or series designed for language learners has been slower to gain traction (Blyth and Thoms, 2021). Efforts in this area have largely been limited to adapting existing OER materials (5R activities) for specific learning contexts or piecemeal creation of online activities to provide reinforcement of isolated language skills. Part 1 in this series outlines the potential benefits, limitations, and challenges that programs and instructors face when undertaking large-scale authoring projects to address the needs of language learners. The purpose of this second post is to offer guidance for … Creating Open Textbooks for Language Learners: A Guide for Getting Started
by · January 18, 2022