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IDs on IDs (aka Instructional Designers on Instructional Designers)
I love movies, theater, broadway, musicals, art galleries, books. High culture, pop culture. Recently, I began seriously listening to Variety entertainment magazine’s Actors on Actors interviews. Actors talking to each other about their craft. The interviews were fascinating and generally last 30 to 45 minutes; in some cases, there was a lot of mutual admiration (ahem). EdSurge has been supporting meetups among instructional designers (or even higher ed innovators) via their EdSurge Loop program. I’ve signed up for four Loops (2 didn’t go through due to technical problems and a miscommunication of time).…
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Visual Redesign to Enhance Learning
Part of my work as a MOOC designer/instructional designer is the visual redesign of slides or any course materials. Frequently, slide decks for studio recordings arrive on my computer filled with just sentences, sentence stems and/or bullets. The goal of redesign work is to convey the instructor’s ideas more accurately and fully by designing a more directly accessible visual message. This work taps on my message design and graphic design skills to make the material as accurate and aesthetically appealing as possible. I believe that “aesthetics matter” (see University of Edinburgh’s Manifesto for Teaching…
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Magical Five, Plus Minus 2
EdSurge has a monthly newsletter, The Top Five, and CNN has a daily 5 Things. I love reading them both. Both curate for me interesting articles I don’t have the time to comb the internet for myself. There is something magical about not going beyond that number 5, it seems. Maybe you have heard of or read George Miller’s seminal article, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information; and that due to the limits of our short-term memory (“the span of immediate…
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What an Instructional Designer Learned from The Great British Baking Show
I am late to the party. I just finished one season or the Netflix Collection 5 of The Great British Baking Show (aka The Great British Bakeoff), the one where (spoiler alert!) an army officer won. Have you watched any of the shows? If you plan on watching the series, you can opt to stop reading now. If not, you may proceed! I’ve read many things about the show. Many people find it charming to the point of becoming addicted to it. I binge watch some Netflix or Amazon Prime…
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Oct 2018 PADLA Meeting Notes: Case Studies and New Collaborative Technologies
I signed up for my first Pennsylvania Delaware New Jersey Distance Learning Association, PADLA, professional development event at Norristown, PA, at the Corbett Experience Center, a beautifully renovated 1700’s mill. October 11, 2018 came soon enough. The heavy rain made the drive to the Corbett Experience Center a hairy experience; the Center was about 1.5 hours away. But I was there to learn, and according to the information webpage, from a mix of “Corporate, Non-Profit, K-12 and Higher Ed professionals” about the issues and technological/pedagogical advances that could enhance human performance in…
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“Picture This”: Some Foundational Principles on Graphic Design
IMHO, the best instructional designers are not just learning scientists, they also have an eye for the aesthetics. The best combination of formal educational training for an instructional designer, to me, is a BFA/MFA and a MS in instructional design. Since I don’t have a BFA/MFA (though I contemplated doing a MFA instead of a PhD in instructional design), I have consistently worked on developing and enhancing my graphic design and media authoring skillset. Recently, I read a book called Picture This by Molly Bang, a recommended text for wannabe graphic artists or…
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Tips to Create Engaging Live Sessions
[First published Feb 7, 2017 at Engaged Learning blog.] Live sessions (LS) offer opportunities for interaction between students and with the instructor in an online learning environment. Download PDF 7 Things to Know When Facilitating Live Sessions (text-only format) Acknowledge your students’ presence. Call them by name. Cultivate a sense of community. Start and stop the session on time. Show how the live session topic is relevant to the course and students’ work. Don’t repeat what’s in video lectures. Provide real life, current examples / cases / situations. Help…
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How Do I Know My Students Are Actually Learning in an Online Class? [draft]
[This is a first draft of some of my preliminary thoughts] I was asked this question during a consultation with a new online instructor. Sounds simple but I was somewhat stumped. I recall recovering in time to furnish a response. In hindsight, I want to put together a more thoughtful response. Essentially, this concern confounds most first-time instructors of online courses. They fear that they can’t engage with their learners and will not know whether these learners are keeping up with the class. The gap in space and place, the asynchronous…
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How to Turn Off Subtitles or Closed Captioning in Amazon Fire TV
Recently, I have been watching French movies on Amazon TV as part of my self-directed French studies. I turned on Closed Captioning (CC) for one of the movies last week because it didn’t have English subtitles. When I watched the French movie (Roman de Gare) today, I was saddled with both the movie’s subtitles and Amazon’s CC texts. Figuring out how to remove CC (or Subtitles) from the movie drove me crazy. I googled and didn’t find any “solution” I could understand or that worked. Amazon’s instructions were of no help.…
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Wanna Go to SXSWEDU 2019?
With a click of the mouse, I selected the last radio button on the SXSWEDU 2018 evaluation form and hit “Submit.” The conference evaluation form was merrily on its way to the organizers. There were the usual questions about takeaways, the learning experience, about what would make me want to go back again, and what would stop me from doing so. I would go to SXSWEDU again because … The values of SXSWEDU resonate with the core of who I am. I value access and equity, social justice, arts for learning and…
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SXSWEDU 2018: Things I Remember
Check out the following padlet for things I learned at the conference. Padlet URL: https://padlet.com/ywbkreher/6qk74qw8wvbb
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Creating Online Assessments for the First Time
This is a post that needs to be written as it is a F.A.Q. — one that I often get. Even when I’m not directly asked to address this, many instructors would appreciate having this range of assessments upfront when they are creating online assessments for the first time. Some of the questions I get asked are: What type of assessment can I create? How should I create them? Why should I create this assessment and not that? How do I measure …? So, I’ve put together some information, especially for first-time online instructors,…