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Authentic Activities

September 27, 2021
The majority of online learners seek formal education for a multitude of reasons but can be frustrated by the lack of transferrable skills. Online education can bridge this gap by utilizing authentic activities, allowing learners to gain skills that directly connect to their professional lives.

Quantitative Course Best Practices

July 02, 2024
"What I hear, I forget; what I see, I remember; what I do, I understand." –Chinese proverb

Student-Generated Content

September 28, 2023
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:

Five Ways to Succeed as an Online Instructor

September 24, 2021
Whether experienced or new to online teaching, following these tips on online instruction can make the process more intuitive. The online environment may seem vastly different from the classroom, but these tips will make it feel natural, allowing you to improve student experience, increase teaching efficacy, cultivate engagement, and ensure successful course management.

Rubrics as a Tool to Support Equity and Inclusion

October 07, 2022
While student populations have become increasingly diverse, many groups, including first-generation, non-native English speakers, and individuals with disabilities, still face barriers and bias that can derail their success in college (Super et al., 2020). Traditional grading practices—including penalties for late work, writing in dialects other than standard English, and even plagiarism— are prone to bias and only perpetuate disparities, the research says (Feldman, 2019; Savini, 2021).

Increase Engagement Now

September 24, 2021
Whether you’re halfway through the term or just getting started, this post presents actionable, simple strategies you can implement immediately to increase engagement in your course.

Backward Design

September 24, 2021
Backward design is, as the name suggests, a process for designing curricula, courses, and lectures by working backwards from big-picture learning goals. The concept, introduced by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005), suggests that instructors create assessments, activities, and course content that are explicitly aligned with the broader learning goals of the unit. This is different from the traditional content-driven approach to learning design, which focuses on course content first and only secondarily tries to align that content with learning goals.

Creating Learning Objectives

September 24, 2021
Learning objectives help inform students about what they will learn and how they will be assessed. Objectives are meant to align with course expectations. Therefore, any assigned exercises should be guided by the course’s specific learning objectives. Everything in the course should work together to ensure students master the course objectives.

Implementing Social Media

September 27, 2021
Many students use social media platforms in their daily lives, and “emerging evidence indicates that students express positive attitudes toward using social media for learning in general” (Baisley-Nodine, Ritzhaupt & Antonenko, 2018). However, there are also many concerns connected with using social media in an educational setting. These include issues related to a lack of familiarity with the platform, the potential for distraction, and privacy concerns. Therefore, it is important to carefully plan the use of social media in a course to address any potential issues or concerns.