Inspire Blog Tag: Oregon State Unviersity

Redesigning Office Hours for Asynchronous Online Courses

While attending a panel presentation by students pursuing degrees online, I heard one of the student panelists share something to the effect of, “Oh, I don’t do Office Hours. However, instead of Office Hours, one of my instructors had these ‘Afternoon Tea’ sessions on Zoom that I loved to attend when it worked with my schedule. She answered my questions, and I feel like she got to know me better. She was also available to meet by appointment.” What wasn’t revealed was why this student wouldn’t attend something called “Office Hours” but did attend these other sessions. Did “Office Hours” sound too formal? Was she unsure of what would happen during office hours, or unsure of what the purpose was? … Redesigning Office Hours for Asynchronous Online Courses

The CAQDAS Quandary Part 1: Exploring qualitative software for collaboration

by Greta Underhill Are you interested in qualitative research? Are you currently working on a qualitative project? Some researchers find it helpful to use a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) program to help them organize their data through the analysis process. Although some programs can perform basic categorization for researchers, most software programs simply help researchers to stay organized while they conduct the deep analysis needed to produce scientific work. You may find a good CAQDAS program especially helpful when multiple researchers work with the same data set at different times and in different ways. Choosing the right CAQDAS for your project or team can take some time and research but is well worth the investment. You may need … The CAQDAS Quandary Part 1: Exploring qualitative software for collaboration

Learning from Games: Failure Edition

This is the paradox of failure in games. It can be stated like this: We generally avoid failure. We experience failure when playing games. We seek out games, although we will experience something that we normally avoid. (Juul, p. 2) As a continuation from my last blog post considering grades and Self-Determination Theory, I wanted to take a brief side-quest into considering what it means to experience failure. Jesper Juul’s The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games will provide the main outline and material for this post, while I add what lessons we might learn about feedback and course design in online settings. Dealing with Failure Juul outlines how games communicate through feedback using … Learning from Games: Failure Edition