While working with a Psychology instructor recently, we engaged in a very common debate on whether or not to include a group project assignment as part of the learner assessment breakdown in a newly revised online course. She acknowledged that she had some very bad experiences in the past with group work assignments in other…
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Many of my previous articles have focused on the importance of following solid instructional design principles when developing online courses. In this article, I would like to focus on a different, but equally important facet of design, namely graphic design. There is one shortcoming that I see over and over when reviewing online courses in…
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When considering online learning, many faculty and administrators will ask me about the potential for online learners to cheat – either by having others do the work, or by plagiarizing the work of others and representing it as their own (i.e. cutting and pasting). My response is that an integrated strategy of education, penalties, technological…
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My job involves coaching and mentoring a great many instructional designers – both within our own eLearning development projects and as a service for many of our clients. One of the biggest challenges I face in this regard is getting designers to get to the essence of a training challenge and cut out all extraneous…
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I came across an interesting online conversational podcast with Clark Quinn (Quinnovation) and Cammy Bean (Kineo) on the topic of “instructional design malpractice.” Of course there is no such crime on the books, but perhaps there should be. The upshot of the admittedly tongue-in-cheek conversation was that there is too much boring eLearning out there…
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I have been in the adult education and training business for almost four decades and I still see an unfortunate fixation on content. So much of education and training is focused on ensuring that learners know certain things. So little is focused on providing learners with the ability to actually go beyond knowing, to being…
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