Resources, Tools & Trends Archives - Page 9 of 10 - Ecampus Course Development and Training

Whether you’re a regular visitor to this blog or you just stumbled on it for the first time, you may be curious about where to learn more about the world of online education, particularly from an instructor’s perspective. You could start with a Google search for “online education,” but sorting through the 14 million results would be very time consuming!

To substantially speed things up–so you’ll have time to watch the leaves turn–here are four great sites where you can access a wealth of information, tools and resources about teaching online and the growing field of hybrid (“blended”) learning. Check them out!

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative – “a community of higher education institutions and organizations committed to advancing learning through information technology (IT) innovation”

Merlot – “a free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy”

National Center for Academic Transformation – “an independent non-profit organization dedicated to the effective use of information technology to improve student learning outcomes and reduce the cost of higher education”

The Sloan Consortium – “a consortium of individuals, institutions and organizations committed to quality online education”

The use of audio recording tools in online classrooms is a great way to incorporate student voice in an otherwise silent environment. Providing students with various methods to give, receive and store information using multiple learning modalities greatly enhances learning.

Instructors can use simple audio recording tools to both deliver course content and assess learning. The recorded voice messages can serve as mini-lectures, clarifications to muddy topics, quick reminders and more. Your students can respond to your voice messages verbally by posting a comment to your recording.

Some ideas for student-generated content include general introductions, interviews, or even a Q&A session with student experts. Audio recording tools are great resources for the foreign language classroom and can be used to assess your students’ speaking skills in the target language.

Here I’ve included a 30 second example of a ‘boo’ (what Audioboo calls their recorded messages) with more information.

Looking for a way to elicit more original replies in your online class discussions, or perhaps an engaging assignment that will challenge your students to comprehend and then explain the concepts you’re trying to teach? You might want to give FlickrPoet a try. Don’t let the name fool you; this tool can be used in a wide range of classes, from liberal arts to the sciences.

One way to supplement your powerpoint slide/lectures is to add an audio track/narration. It is ideal when creating an online class that if you do take your powerpoints from a face-to-face class to modify and change the content to fit an online environment. There could be content that could be supplemented through online discussion, or perhaps through student research through other websites, etc. You can also add an audio narration track to your slides, we use a program called Adobe Presenter to accomplish this task. Adobe offers a 30 day trial if you wish to explore this on your own computer, we can also lend out USB Headsets as well. Below is a quick tutorial on how the program is used.

First impressions matter! Check out this brief video for some tips to getting your online class off to the right start.

Good assignments for online classes share many of the same qualities as good assignments for on-campus classes, but may require the use of some different tools or different approaches. If you are looking for ideas for improving or creating assignments for your online course, check out this video, which includes suggestions about different types of assignments to use, tools you and students may need for online assignments, tips for creating and managing group assignments, as well as some tips for evaluating assignments in online classes.

Here is an example of interactivity in a PDF. The file was created from a PowerPoint and, as a new instructional designer, my first foray into creating elearning. As I created the PowerPoint I had several of John Medina’s Brain Rules in mind. The first one? We don’t pay attention to boring things. Guess what? Students don’t either! This shouldn’t surprise you. I didn’t want to this simply be another passive learning task. I designed this piece of elearning with the idea of offering learners an opportunity to interact with the content and learn by listening, watching, reading and writing. I chunked the information in order to not overwhelm the learner with text. Ready for the next rule? As instructors and designers, we need to strive to stimulate more of the senses. Learners need to be stimulated! In this example, there are a few audiovisual experiences embedded in the form of photos, YouTube videos and an active learning collaborative task. I saved the best rule for last: Vision trumps all other senses. With this in mind, I searched high and low for images that would not detract from the learning process, but enhance it. I wanted the images to relate to what was being taught and serve as a reminder for what the learners had read. It’s easy to overwhelm elearning with the numerous visuals – especially if they aren’t related to the content. Is this the best example of all things elearning and visual design? Of course not! I have just entered the world of visual design and strive to keep learning and improving.

An approach known as “inverted” or “flipped” learning is gaining momentum in contemporary higher education. Inverted learning figuratively flips the traditional lecture-plus-homework format of many college courses on its head. Rather than using class time for the largely one-way delivery of information from instructor to student, the lecture material is made available online for students to study prior to class. Then classroom time can be used for face-to-face interaction that includes clarification, amplification, small-group work, problem solving, review, and assessment of learning built on the foundation of online course content and readings.

As illustrated in Robert Talbert’s presentation, “Inverting the Classroom, Improving Student Learning,” the inverted learning model moves more of the transmission of information outside the classroom, so that class time can be devoted to higher-level assimilation activities. A growing body of research, including a widely publicized University of British Columbia study published recently in the journal Science, points to the efficacy of devoting class time to learning activities other than lectures.

By nature, inverted learning is well suited to “hybrid” courses, which include both regular classroom meetings—with class meeting time typically reduced by 50%—and significant online content delivered via a learning platform such as Blackboard. A pilot program for development of hybrid courses is the centerpiece of OSU’s new Teaching & Learning Technologies Initiative. A request for proposals to participate in this pilot program will be distributed to OSU faculty by early September.

Gaining students’ attention is the first of Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction. A great way to gain attention is to provide a catchy animated video about the topic you are presenting.

What’s that? You’re not a trained animator? Don’t let that stop you! If you can choose items off a menu and type some dialogue, you can create an animated video for free at www.xtranormal.com. The animation below was created for an upcoming professional development workshop at Ecampus. The whole project took about 10 minutes to create.

Blackboard will be upgraded to version 9.1 in time for Fall term 2011.

Although there will be some minor cosmetic changes, basic functioning in the most frequently used areas of Blackboard (i.e. discussion board, grade center) will remain the same.

New features to look for include:

Wikis
Grading in blogs and journals
New content creation menus
Accessibility improvements for multimedia
Mashups – ability to embed Flickr, Slideshare, YouTube content
Ability to move assignments and tests within a course site

If you want to see these new features in more detail, view this 7 minute tutorial.
Blackboard 9.1 Overview

Ecampus Course Development and Training

Providing inspiration for your online class

Category Archives: Resources, Tools & Trends

Interested in Teaching an Online or Hybrid Course?

Incorporating Student Voice in the Online Classroom

FlickrPoet

Getting Started with Adobe Presenter

Best Practices for Week 1 and Beyond

Assignments for Online Classes

Example of PDF interactivity

Inverted Learning?!?

Xtranormal Animation

Blackboard 9.1

Contact Info