Search
There are 23 results.
Category
Tag
Tag
All (61)
Active Learning (3)
Activities (2)
Alt Text (2)
Analytics (4)
Assessments (4)
Asynchrony (6)
Belonging (2)
Canvas (2)
Case Studies (1)
Collaboration (2)
Color Contrast (2)
Communication (6)
Community (5)
Content Creation (7)
Course Materials (4)
Course Preparation (4)
Discussions (4)
Diversity (3)
Equity (2)
Faculty Presence (2)
Faculty Support (1)
Feedback (1)
Formative Assessments (2)
Game-Based Learning (2)
Gamification (1)
Hyperlinks (1)
Images (2)
Inclusion (5)
Multimodality (7)
Page Design (1)
PowerPoint (1)
Qualitative courses (1)
Quantitative courses (1)
Representation (1)
Rubrics (1)
Screen Readers (1)
Social Media (1)
Summative Assessments (1)
Synchrony (7)
Third-Party Tools (1)
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (2)
Video (1)
Visual Accessibility (2)
Visual Design (1)
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.
Using PowerPoint in a Video
The familiarity and ease of PowerPoint make it a natural choice for creating instructional videos. After all, your energy is better spent on planning and recording videos than on learning a new tool. However, creating quality slides still requires significant time and attention to detail.
The Power of Retrieval Practice
Faculty aim to impart lasting knowledge and skills, but sometimes, learning doesn’t stick. One of the most powerful techniques for enhancing students’ long-term retention is retrieval practice, the process of actively recalling information to mind rather than passively reading or reviewing it. In this piece, we’ll dive into the evidence behind retrieval practice, provide strategies for how to incorporate it into online courses, suggest ways to frame its utility to students to ensure they fully reap the benefits of this learning strategy, and describe specific types of retrieval practice activities.
Communication, Community, and Student Engagement in the Online Classroom
The most difficult task in transitioning from on-ground to online teaching is determining the best way to emulate the community and engagement inherent in a face-to-face classroom.Consider this: Your online classroom can be even more engaging than an on-campus classroom. Simple tools, such as discussion forums and announcements, can elevate your classroom immensely.
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.
Using Hotspots
A unique way to share information, images with hotspots offer online learners the opportunity to interact with course content. Learners can click or hover on particular parts of an image and receive pop-ups giving them more information. Hotspots represent information in a particular context; thus, they fulfill the multimedia principle—use words and graphics rather than words alone—and the contiguity principle—align words to corresponding graphics (Clark & Mayer, 2016).
Game-Based Learning Experiences
Game-based learning (GBL) is a learning experience, or set of learning experiences, delivered through gameplay or game-like activities with defined learning outcomes. GBL is often confused with gamification, which is the application of game elements to a non-gaming experience. GBL engages students cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally, and socioculturally (Plass et al., 2015). Many factors should be considered when designing GBL, including narrative, player positioning, and interactive design (Dickey, 2005).
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:
Enhancing Student Learning Through Course Consistency and Accessibility
Course developers (those who build individual courses) play a crucial role in the success of an online degree program by providing expertise and bringing unique perspectives. Accordingly, it is valuable for faculty to customize their course spaces by infusing them with their own knowledge and personality. At the same time, it is also crucial to prioritize structural consistency within and across courses in an online program, as course consistency is a key aspect of accessibility and a key contributing factor to student success. In particular, students must be able to perceive, operate, and understand the course and course materials using program-standard devices and certain assistive technologies, and this should be true across all of the courses in a program. This is where program chairs and administrators can help support faculty in standardizing key elements of courses to facilitate a seamless student experience. In this piece, we discuss how maintaining structural consistency within and across courses can positively impact accessibility.
Student Support in a Multimodal Course
Multimodal courses allow for exciting opportunities in course content and activities but can be, by design, less flexible than asynchronous courses and less predictable than synchronous courses. These opportunities thus come with needs for additional logistical support and flexibility, as students need both to be able to take advantage of the opportunities of synchrony and asynchrony equitably. How can you best support students in a multimodal course, providing guidance through multiple forms of interaction? This piece gives insight into what kinds of support benefit students in multimodal courses and how to provide them. We’ll end with five quick tips for supporting students that apply to almost any multimodal course.