Over the years, I have worked with scores of university and college professors, and subject matter experts from various fields, helping them make the transition from classroom teaching to teaching online. One thing that almost always poses a challenge for those new to online instruction is finding and then including their personalized teaching voice on…
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In a third-year online course we helped one of our higher education clients recently develop, it was decided to add in quite a few elements of experiential learning. That is, rather than following a strictly didactic approach of transmitting information and testing on it, we had learners working in groups on distinct real-world tasks, such…
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Everyone needs a touchstone. Something or someone you turn to when trying to determine what is authentic, what is a good decision, what is the right thing to do. With regard to how people learn, a question I grapple with every day, Roger Schank was my touchstone. His advocacy of a story-centered curriculum (SCC) really…
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Coming from a distance education tradition, I am always surprised by how many institutions are using online learning platforms to supplement classroom-based courses. This approach is often referred to as “blended learning.” However, if you scratch beneath the surface, you soon realize that this type of approach is not really blended at all. What often…
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I did some quick mental math and came to the conclusion that I must have sat through many thousands of lectures delivered by hundreds of lecturers in my lifetime. And through all of this – primary school, middle school, high school, undergraduate studies, graduate studies, and innumerable professional development courses and conferences – I could…
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I received an email invitation from Plateau Systems to join a webinar, titled “The Future of Learning Content.” It promised that I would “learn about the important trends that are shaping the development, deployment and management of learning content,” and discover “how content can be more effectively purchased, deployed and managed” (presumably using Plateau’s technology).…
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In an online program I helped design, a participant lead a 10-day asynchronous online discussion as her facilitation competency exercise on the topic of “What advice would you provide for a novice learning designer?” The topic really forced me to think about what I considered to be the most important thing to keep in mind…
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Ever wonder why so many online courses are dull, uninspiring page-turners that put learners asleep? Much of the tedium comes from the way that some course authors create online courses. They approach writing an online course as if they were writing a book, academic journal article, or technical manual. The results are predictable: a very…
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When talking about user accessibility to online learning, the conversation is usually around things such as W3C web accessibility standards or the Section 508 law and standards in the United States. These are important initiatives to make online material accessible for individuals with disabilities. However, there is also a broader perspective that can be taken…
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Confession #1: I’m not a big fan of quizzes as a method of assessing student learning. Quizzes tend to measure lower level learning objectives focused on knowledge recall. Higher level learning objectives focused on applying knowledge, synthesis of knowledge, and evaluation of ideas are better measured via things like project work, essays, case studies, etc.…
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