One day I was working at a coffee shop when an acquaintance wandered in. Eyeing my laptop, he asked if he could please use it for a couple of minutes to send an email. When he finished, he thanked me profusely; he was trying to land an important job and that email was essential. I knew he’d previously worked in computer security, and he explained … Continue reading Social Media in Classes: Good Idea?
For the most part, of course, any sort of assessment — quizzes and tests, say — occur within the LMS. This allows for scoring and posting of grades in the gradebook. But sometimes you might want to give students the option to submit feedback anonymously. As far as I know, this is not possible through the LMS, and even if it ostensibly were possible, I … Continue reading Evaluation: When Should You Go Outside the LMS?
In my online classes, I’ve used Blackboard Collaborate as well as Meetings/BigBlueButton in Sakai. The latter is billed as a “webinar” tool. (“Oh boy, I’ve been invited to participate in a webinar! I can’t wait!” said no one ever.) As is so often the case, the usability of these is severely hindered by how complicated & glitchy they are. In the case of Sakai, the “easy” … Continue reading Look beyond your LMS for synchronous & asynchronous engagement tools
The video here is one of a series that I’ve been making for my online and blended English classes. It’s a simple video but I believe it includes elements of good instructional design: Content is clear & simply presented. Key terms & points are emphasized on-screen. The content is concise & efficiently presented; no extraneous material. Content reiterated & summarized at the end. Accurate captioning … Continue reading A brief example of self-produced content
Having been teaching blended and online courses for a couple of years now, I’m embarrassed to admit that until recently I hadn’t done a screencast. It was my understanding that this would entail the use of an application or service that was expensive (or at best had a limited-use “trial” option). So I finally decided to have a look at what was on offer. Of … Continue reading Trying Something New: QuickTime for Screencasts
Here’s a blog that I’ve recommended and used in graduate-level courses on Applied Linguistics for Teachers, which I’ve taught in both English (at Loyola University Chicago) and Spanish (at La Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá), and both online and F2F. The blog’s founder and primary contributor is François Grosjean, a notable professor of psycholinguistics in Switzerland. Life as a Bilingual This blog has the distinction … Continue reading Recommended blog: Life as a bilingual
An essential question for online course design: How important are instructor-student and student-student interactions in online learning? A quick Google search reveals myriad websites dispensing conventional wisdom on the topic, which consistently assure us that interactivity of all kinds is key to good online course design. However, I suspect that online teachers and learners —those of us with dogs in the fight, as it were— … Continue reading How important are teacher-student & student-student interactions in online learning?
A colleague posed this question: Should we be concerned that most of the instructional design models we consider for online education were conceptualized long before the internet was created? My answer: No, we should not be concerned. Any useful instructional design model (or teaching methodology)—new or old—is based on the nature of learners and learning. And any effective model for online instructional design has the … Continue reading Are Old Teaching & Learning Models Relevant to Online Education?
As an instructor of online and blended courses, I was recently sent (by an administrator concerned with such things) a “Compliance Audit” policy used by another college, for review. The audit form consists of several pages where instructors are asked to describe and quantify what happens in their courses in various ways. But what can be ascertained with this process? Though the audit provides a … Continue reading “What’s He Building in There?” | Verifying Quality of Online Classes
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