Graphical Elements: Illustration, Graphs, Charts, and Diagrams

When creating a course learning module to be delivered online, the right visual elements can make or break the page. A long page of nothing but text, no matter how well laid out, can seem overwhelming to the online learner. But how do you find just the right image to add to the topic? Should [...]

Media Elements Faculty Learning Community

This was the first week of our Media Elements faculty learning community (FLC). The Media Production staff  and I are co-facilitating the weekly sessions. I got the idea a few weeks ago after reading Clive Shepherd’s post on “Media Chemistry”. Our community will be exploring the use of digital media for teaching and learning. Much [...]

Digital Media Literacy

After reading Clive Shepherd‘s post on Media Elements I decided to host a Faculty Learning Community this summer on the topic of Digital Media Literacy.  For a couple of hours each Tuesday our FLC will explore various digital media elements: typography, illustration, photography, animation, audio and video, and consider when, where, and how they might [...]

Interactions: Online vs Classroom

I was speaking with a number of late adopters the other day (I realize the expression is not actually “late adopters”, but I am somewhat of an optimist – I think about TV and Microwaves and have to believe that everyone will eventually adapt). Anyway, I heard a couple of questions I hadn’t heard in [...]

Blended by Design

For the past several years I have offered weekly walk-in sessions introducing faculty to various online technologies for teaching & learning. Invariably, an instructor will find a particular solution intriguing and decide to integrate it into their class. Many of the attendees teach in a traditional face-to-face format and their goal is to simply add [...]

The Future of Online Learning

I predict that in ten years there will be no such thing as “online learning”. There will be only learning; all learning will be to some degree online. Students will choose to what degree based upon their personal learning preferences and the availability of course sections in relation to their location and schedule. Sloan-C recently [...]

Good Technology meets Good Practice

For the past several months I’ve been trying to describe “good technology” within the context of teaching and learning. A number of years ago Stephen Downes published a list: Nine Rules for Good Technology. Using this list as a guide (and adding one more item – scalability), I posted a rubric here which I think [...]

Blended or Mixed-delivery?

Our institution of higher ed began using web-conferencing about a year ago. By the end of the year we had 100 host licenses. A host is a user who can initiate a meeting/training/support session. Attendees need not have a license – just hosts. I began using it to permit faculty to connect to our weekly [...]

Disability Services and Online Delivery

A recent article entitled “Help Students Overcome Online Accessibility Problems”, by Stacy Kelly, highlights several challenges students with vision loss may experience when taking online courses. In an informal survey of 100 users, respondants report that screen readers may not read PDF files as text, but instead as one large image. As a solution, they [...]

The “Online” Continuum

We often talk about online delivery in terms of “fully-online”, as opposed to blended/mixed, or enhanced. These conversations tend to try and clarify what considerations we should take when designing and delivering instruction and training. However, I think we need to further consider whether these are distinct modalities, or a continuum. Fully-online (asynchronous) Online (w/ [...]