Story-Centered eLearning
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…
Read article
Blended Learning: Adjusting the Mix
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…
Read article
Does the World Really Need More Lectures?
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…
Read article
Context is King!
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).…
Read article
Rule #1: Respect the Learner
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…
Read article
Online Course Authoring: Script a Learning Experience; Don’t Write a Book
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…
Read article