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Online Teaching Tune-Up
My unit is starting a series of faculty professional development brown bags on online teaching. Rolling out this Wednesday is a session by Dr. Gary Hecht. He will share strategies and examples he used for facilitating live (real-time) sessions based on his experience teaching in the iMBA program. I have created a digital invitation for this purpose. I will write more after the session, where I will be live tweeting. University of Illinois faculty and staff can enroll on the registration page so that we have an idea of how…
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Competency-Based Education 101: An Animated Tale
Related to the previous post, these videos were created as part of the CBE module using GoAnimate. Want to learn more about the “new” educational approach? Check out my videos. A new focus on Competency-Based Education (CBE) [1:17 min] A quick survey of CBE [2:25 min] Some questions about the CBE approach [1:25 min]
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Design Challenge: 30 Minutes of Learning
I have been working on a design assignment recently. Here’s the Design Brief: Learners would be academic department chairs, faculty and course developers and only have 30 minutes to commit to learning this module Topic: Competency-Based Learning in Higher Education I had about two weeks to complete this assignment. Some of you may know that I’ve been out of the country for a while and most of my belongings are still out of the country. I operate now in a minimalist mode with only 5% of my belongings. In order to create this module,…
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Learning Bytes: OopsEd, Books and Buzzwords
A Byte of 2016 OLC Accelerate The 2016 OLC Accelerate came to me today via Virtually Connecting. A major takeaway was the reference to what is called accidental learning by Roz Hussin and her students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln – learning from the “Oops” moments of our lives. The following video captured our interaction of ideas with onsite and virtual buddies: Born a Crime This is an enticing book title. It sounds grammatically or syntactically incorrect, but is not, because author Trevor Noah is simply telling us what it meant…
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My Super Power as an Instructional Designer
Someone asked me: What is your super power as an instructional designer (ID)? A terrific question! In these days of rapid technological development and free web tools, I’ll stick my neck out to say that any ID can learn to use multiple tools and acquire a range of credentials and certification in several areas, from project management to accessibility and several other skill areas. These then don’t make me extraordinary. What makes me extraordinary? My mind. Our uniquely powerful minds, and not forgetting our distinctive temperaments with their mental, physical and emotional…
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3 Recent Questions about Assessment
I don’t have to walk far from home to see “education centres” flourishing at almost every turn and corner in my neighborhood. The tuition industry in Singapore is a billion-dollar industry. I’ve been told that a certain tutor has become a millionaire without having to step out from his home, his tuition center. Why don’t I reap some of this rich harvest too, friends and family ask? No, not a snob, I’m just still thinking about how to reconcile this with my professional goals and educational philosophy. Are Singaporeans obsessed with standardized…
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A Critical Conversation about Instructional Design
Dear Maha, Thanks for the interesting conversation around the use of the terms Instructional (versus Learning) Design. I will do my best to respond to your question about resources and add some quick thoughts along the way. “Instructional” Theories Several scholars in the field have written about the history of ID. It’s been a while since I completed doctoral studies in ID and I don’t have all my books with me. Robert Reiser and Michael Molenda have written about the history and philosophical origins of ID. As to ID theories,…
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Why I Teach a CL Course, or, Any Course
@yinbk @GoogleGuacamole @merryspaniel @Autumm absolutely. so much to unlearn before ppl can even start. why i made #ed1to1 slow/low-stakes. — Bonnie Stewart (@bonstewart) July 16, 2015 #Students are the #heart of my work & always will be. They are our #hope. #WisconsinIdea #OurUW — Sara Goldrick-Rab (@saragoldrickrab) July 17, 2015 To reflect is to think, ponder, or meditate. Some people write blog reflections in double-quick time. I can’t. Thinking takes time; and in my world, blog reflections consume time, which I don’t have a lot of now, particularly when an online…
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Designing a Course Worth Learning 3: Course Video Make
Transcript of Video (Google Document) Thinking and talking about the course has turned into action. Yes, UNIV 291 has begun. I did not create a navigation or orientation video because I had provided a lot of instructions on the website. The students didn’t seem to be lost. They knew where to start. I had a Get Started button, to be sure. Most of their questions centered around Learning Activity terms we use in Connected Learning. Were they doing things “right” and questions about social media. Why aren’t my tweets showing…
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Institute on Inclusive Teaching: Quick Notes
[Related blogposts: 2014 Reflections on the Institute on Inclusive Teaching; There’s a Place for Us; EdContexts full version] [Image description: Words: Restorative Justice, Dignity of Risk, Structural Poverty, Traumatizing Awareness, Food Shock] Last year, it took me a couple of weeks to distill my thoughts into a blogpost. The above image captures some of the ideas I’m mulling over. Structural Poverty. We meet again Through veiled window glass frosted by body heat Rain pelted outside and within Wetting my white linen and polka-dotted leggings My guilt and helplessness remained What…
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Group Learning
At work, there was substantial discussion around the terms collaborative work, cooperative work, team work and group work — all focused on making the OLE (Online Learning Experience) a perfect experience for our participants. After a while, a colleague said he doesn’t really care what words we use for these “more than one person” type of learning. Signs of burnout? In the end, I offered to use other words like group learning and team learning in place of collaborative learning. The most important thing is not which word we choose to…
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What Could’ve Been: #et4Online68425 2015 Presentation Notes
Hello to all who are / may / might be thinking of attending session #et4online68425, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to present in person due to personal reasons.Title of Presentation: When Graduate Students Become Online Instructors: A First-Time Online Instructor’s Teaching Toolbox The proposal can be retrieved at http://olc.onlinelearningconsortium.org/conference/2015/et4online/when-graduate-students-become-online-instructors-first-time-online-instruc The website for our presentation is at: http://rampages.us/gradtoonlineteach/ This presentation started when my colleague and I met a group of students from PSYC 795 Practicum in the Teaching of College Psychology (Fall 2014). The provocation to create a resource arose when…
