Search
There are 17 results.
Tag
Tag
All (72)
Active Learning (3)
Activities (3)
Analytics (4)
Animations (1)
Assessments (4)
Asynchrony (6)
Canvas (4)
Case Studies (1)
Collaboration (2)
Communication (4)
Community (4)
Content Creation (9)
Copyright (2)
Course Maintenance (4)
Course Materials (5)
Course Preparation (3)
Discussions (4)
Diversity (1)
Faculty Presence (3)
Feedback (1)
Formative Assessments (2)
Game-Based Learning (2)
Gamification (1)
Hyperlinks (1)
Images (3)
Inclusion (1)
Infographics (2)
Multimodality (7)
Page Design (1)
Podcasts (1)
PowerPoint (2)
Presentations (1)
Qualitative courses (1)
Quantitative courses (1)
Representation (1)
Revising (2)
Rubrics (1)
Screen Readers (1)
Social Media (2)
Summative Assessments (1)
Synchrony (7)
Third-Party Tools (1)
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (1)
Video (11)
Visual Accessibility (2)
Visual Design (2)
Improving PowerPoints
Sharing information via PowerPoint presentations is a long-established strategy in higher education. Designing PowerPoint presentations for online courses can pose unique challenges; however, best practices can help overcome these hurdles. With time and attention, faculty and instructional designers can create engaging and purposeful presentations with lasting value.
Six Strategies for Multimodal Content Delivery
If you’re developing a course with synchronous and asynchronous elements, you have a host of options for engaging students and delivering content. Research suggests that incorporating multiple modalities increases accessibility, engagement, and learning (Mick and Middlebrook, 2015; Margolis et al., 2017). With that said, it is important to be intentional about multimodal course design. Both synchronous and asynchronous methods of delivery are effective, but activities can be better suited to one or the other modality and synchronous time is often limited. Delivering selected content asynchronously can support students’ understanding of how information is organized and leave more time for interactivity in synchronous sessions.
Implementing Social Media
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.
Copyright
From time to time instructors may want to include in their courses copyrighted materials like images, print content, audio recordings, or videos. The University of Minnesota Libraries define copyright as “the area of law that deals with creation, ownership, sale, and use of creative and expressive works.”
Leveraging White Space
Good page design requires balance between white space, or negative space, and positive space. Positive space encompasses all aspects and types of content; on a course page, these objects might include an introductory paragraph, video thumbnail, infographic, callout box, opinion poll, or provocative quotation. Relative to these course components, white space might seem like a nice-to-have. Because it promotes clarity and reduces distortion, however, white space is just as important to instructional page design as content.
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.
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.