Search
There are 21 results.
Category
Tag
Tag
All (54)
Active Learning (2)
Activities (1)
Alt Text (2)
Analytics (4)
Assessments (4)
Asynchrony (4)
Belonging (1)
Branching Scenarios (1)
Canvas (4)
Case Studies (1)
Collaboration (2)
Color Contrast (2)
Communication (6)
Community (5)
Content Creation (4)
Content Delivery (1)
Course Materials (4)
Course Preparation (3)
Discussions (4)
Diversity (1)
Equity (2)
Faculty Presence (1)
Formative Assessments (1)
Game-Based Learning (2)
Gamification (1)
Hyperlinks (1)
Images (1)
Inclusion (3)
Inclusive Language (1)
Multimodality (5)
PowerPoint (1)
Qualitative courses (1)
Quantitative courses (1)
Representation (1)
Rubrics (1)
Screen Readers (1)
Social Media (1)
Spreadsheets (1)
Summative Assessments (1)
Synchrony (6)
Third-Party Tools (1)
UDL (1)
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (1)
Video (1)
Visual Accessibility (2)
Visual Design (1)
Format
Inclusive Language
Use inclusive language across course content and communications to reach every learner. “Inclusive education must be cultivated deliberately if we want to advance in its implementation” (Márquez & Melero-Aguilar, 2022, p. 842). Inclusion entails creating an environment of open participation for all individuals. Inclusive course design works to ensure that all students feel heard, valued, and validated. The thoughtful use of language can establish an environment of inclusion in online learning.
Best Practices for Online Office Hours
Office hours, blocks of time designated for faculty and student interaction outside of any regularly scheduled class sessions, are routinely incorporated into university courses (Briody et al., 2019; Hsu et al., 2022). Such sessions are often semi-structured and optional for students, allowing faculty to provide customized support to individual learners when needs arise. This form of faculty-student interaction can support academic achievement, retention, and engagement (Griffin et al., 2014; Guzzardo et al., 2021). That office hours attendance is often at the discretion of individual students, however, can result in underutilization of this valuable supplement to required course sessions and contents (Briody et al., 2019; Griffin et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2017). The purpose of this blog is to delineate empirically guided strategies for optimizing the inclusion of office hours in university courses. In particular, we focus on office hours hosted online, as the online modality can be advantageously employed not only for courses delivered online but also for those delivered residentially.
No Sweat Alt Text
What is “alt text”? Alt text is descriptive text linked to an image, graph, or other visual content that allows users to understand the visual without viewing it. Any image online should contain alt text, but guidelines differ depending on whether the image is simply decorative or related to other content on the page.
Student-Generated Content
Student-generated content — materials and tasks created by learners for other learners — can strengthen engagement by providing students an opportunity to express creativity, practice critical thinking, and increase ownership of learning. Developing student-generated content requires learners to produce an instructional artifact, demonstrating new knowledge alongside existing understanding. Student-generated content can include a variety of formats:
Inclusive Communication Practices
In asynchronous, hybrid, and multimodal learning environments, strong communication practices greatly aid student engagement and satisfaction (Martin & Bolliger, 2018). Faculty may develop an exceptional course in terms of goals, content, and design, but without proper communication and feedback, the course experience will be significantly diminished.
Zoom Into Online Learning
Faculty often express concern over how to maintain personal relationships with their students in an online course space; incorporating optional synchronous elements to an online course can help “put a face” to a name. Zoom, the video conferencing tool that allows you to create synchronous experiences for their students, has become ubiquitous in educational and businesses in the past two years.
Multimodal Models
Designing a successful multimodal course means, at each step of the process, considering what each format does well—structuring the course such that each piece of content, each activity, each interaction uses the most effective delivery method available. But what does that look like in practice? This piece describes three approaches to structuring a multimodal course. In each model, asynchronous and synchronous time complement one another and further module and course objectives. Where the models differ is in the relative importance of asynchronous activities in enabling students to complete synchronous activities and vice versa.