Inspire Blog Tag: online learning

Collaborative Online Annotation Tools for Engaging Students in Readings

Do you ever get the sense that students posting in their online discussions haven’t really engaged with the reading materials for that week? One way to encourage active engagement with course readings is to have students annotate directly in the article or textbook chapter that they are assigned. While it is common to see students annotating in their paper copies of their textbooks or readings, these aren’t easily shared with their peers or instructor. Of course, students could snap a photo of their handwritten annotations and upload that as a reading assignment task, though that does require additional steps on the part of both the student and instructor, and there is no interaction with others in the course during that … Collaborative Online Annotation Tools for Engaging Students in Readings
by · April 27, 2020

Accessibility, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and Inclusive Design: What Do They Really Mean?

The other day, my six-year-old asked me what the word “industrious” means, and I was overcome with pride and, moments later, mild panic as I tried to answer his question and couldn’t clearly articulate the meaning of the word. This experience ended well (thanks, Alexa), but prompted me to think about how often we use words without fully understanding what they mean. We don’t question the meaning of these words when they are used in our work or daily interactions. We may use these words ourselves on occasion–or with regularity–but when we stop and try to define these words, the proper associations and descriptions don’t come immediately to mind. In my work as an instructional designer, it’s common to talk … Accessibility, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and Inclusive Design: What Do They Really Mean?
by · December 16, 2019

Digital Storytelling for Higher Education

About halfway through earning a master’s in education, I took a summer session class on digital storytelling. It ran over the course of three half-day sessions during which we were required to complete two digital stories. I had no great academic ambitions in my approach to these assignments. I was trying to satisfy a degree requirement in a way that worked with my schedule as a single mother of two teenagers working full time while earning a graduate degree. My first story was a self-introduction. I loved this assignment. Even though I had one evening to complete it, I spent hours tweaking it. I enjoyed learning the tools. I enjoyed sharing my story with my classmates. Even after it was graded, … Digital Storytelling for Higher Education
by · December 9, 2019

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

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