Category: Content

Finding your OER Champions

Throughout our OER series, we’ve explored the value open educational resources bring to students, instructors, and institutions as well as where to begin with OER. Last week, we discussed using a model to bring open educational resources (OER) to your institution by building relationships with key influencers and OER champions.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, your institution probably has OER champions already.

Typically, OER are first adopted by the hard sciences. But you likely have another partner: Continue reading “Finding your OER Champions”

Tips for Bringing OER to Your University, Institution, or School

In our OER series, we’ve explored how cost-friendly open educational resources (OER) can replace the expense of traditional textbooks. We’ve looked at where to find OER as well as how to choose quality materials. By now, you’re probably wondering how to bring OER into your institution.

Continue reading “Tips for Bringing OER to Your University, Institution, or School”

Bringing Value to your Learners with OER

You walk into the campus student bookstore. Classes started last week, and you just got paid at your part-time, minimum wage student job. You nervously add the cost of the stack of textbooks in your head.

You don’t have enough cash. You never have enough cash.

What do you do? Put some books back? Continue reading “Bringing Value to your Learners with OER”

Formatting eLearning Documents: Back to the Basics

Elearning is a highly collaborative environment, with instructional designers (ID), subject matter experts (SME), instructors, and editors all working together to provide consistent content across multiple platforms. It’s one of the great strengths of eLearning.

It can also be a great weakness. Continue reading “Formatting eLearning Documents: Back to the Basics”

Making your eLearning Assignments More Interactive

History is rich and vivid, and it shouldn’t be presented in a way that students see as dry.  As an adjunct history instructor, I am always looking for ways to motivate students to explore history and to look at it from different perspectives. I’ve discovered that infusing a scenario-based assignment engages learners and encourages them to think outside the box. Continue reading “Making your eLearning Assignments More Interactive”

Diving into Open Educational Resources (OER)

With the rising costs of textbooks, it’s imperative that universities and colleges find cost-friendly, quality learning materials for students. Enter Open Educational Resources (OER), stage left. Continue reading “Diving into Open Educational Resources (OER)”

Game Design Principles for Your Course, Round 2

This week, I’ll continue our series on lessons that can be learned from game design and applied to the world of instructional design. We’ll keep exploring Mark Rosewater’s “10 Things Every Game Needs” for our comparison.

In my last post, I outlined how goals and rules clearly lay out the learner’s expectations to ensure they understand the structure and outcomes of the course. Today, we’ll focus on three design elements to retain and increase learner engagement throughout your course. I’ll also include a couple of practical tips for implementing these features in your course.

Let’s get started. Continue reading “Game Design Principles for Your Course, Round 2”

Engage your Learners with Interactive Video

“In addition to enhancing learning, video can also reduce training time. It’s easier and takes less time to watch a well-made video than it does to read through pages of dense text or complicated diagrams to grasp a concept.”

Andy Cole (Via Brainshark; originally included in The Benefits of Video in eLearning)

In my last post, we explored some benefits of using scenarios in eLearning. Today, we will examine the value of learning with interactive videos using PlayPosit. Continue reading “Engage your Learners with Interactive Video”

Apply Game Design Principles to Your Courses

Earlier, you heard from Michelle about the lessons she took from the world of broadcasting and applied to Instructional Design. Today, we’re going to discuss lessons that can be learned from a field adjacent to Instructional Design—game design.

While significant research surrounds adding gamification elements to eLearning courses, implementing it means devoting a large amount of resources. What then, can we learn if we look at it from the flip side? What fundamental game design principles translate to Instructional Design? Continue reading “Apply Game Design Principles to Your Courses”

Get students fired up with scenario-based eLearning

 

Want to get students fired up about learning? Then present a problem and ask them for a solution. Scenario-based instruction will grab your student’s attention and keep them engaged in the learning experience. In this post, I will give some definitions of scenario-based learning, identify some of the benefits it offers, and explain when to use it in your online course. Continue reading “Get students fired up with scenario-based eLearning”