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Representation Matters: Guest Speakers to Support DEIB

July 11, 2024
Guest speakers can support diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives while promoting students’ academic and professional growth across disciplines. When designing courses, identify ways to integrate speakers into the curriculum, tap established networks, and ensure that any readings and assignments align with these efforts.

Zoom Into Online Learning

September 24, 2021
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.

Representation in Course Images

September 27, 2021
How many times have you looked at an image and thought, “Have I seen this before?” Chances are, if you are browsing a stock photo site, it’s often. That feeling of déjà vu occurs because images reflect an amalgam of artistic, cultural, and ideological influences (Hall, 2015).

Six Strategies for Multimodal Content Delivery

November 02, 2022
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.

Instructor Presence in Online Courses

September 24, 2021
Consistent and meaningful instructor presence is one of the most important drivers of student success and satisfaction in online courses (Roddy et al., 2017). However, establishing instructor presence online can be challenging. In fact, studies have shown that many online students feel their instructors are largely invisible (Tichavsky et al., 2015).

Inclusive Language

September 16, 2022
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.

Enhancing Student Learning Through Course Consistency and Accessibility

October 04, 2024
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.

Creating Video Announcements

July 10, 2024
Course announcements are an excellent way to communicate important information regarding upcoming topics and assignments. When delivered in video format, course announcements can also help create a culture of connection with your students, establishing instructor presence within the course.

Diversity and Inclusion in Online Education

August 20, 2024
Education should be diverse and inclusive regarding the composition of the student population, the selection of course materials, the methods of engagement, and the opportunities for assessment. However, it is important to avoid using the terms "diversity" and "inclusion" interchangeably, as they possess distinct meanings that should be preserved. Given their fundamental roles in course design and facilitation, this piece highlights the difference between diversity and inclusion in a general sense before applying these concepts specifically to online learning.

Multimodal Models

December 29, 2022
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.