If you’ve followed our blog for a while, you’ll recall several of our posts have explored the future and possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, eLearning, and instructional design. The release of Generative AI (Nvidia) and OpenAI programs (ChatGPT and GPT-4) in the past year has accelerated the AI Revolution in all aspects of life, including education.
Continue reading “The AI Revolution is Here! What this means for Educators, Students, and the Learning Environment”Category: Future
eLearning Past, Present, and Future (2011-2021): A Conversation about Trends in eLearning, Instructional Design, and Online Learning
In May 2011, I graduated from high school. In June, before I started college, I walked into my first group interview. While I had never heard of eLearning or instructional design, I was still intrigued. Dave Goodrich, one of my high school science teachers, now worked at Spring Arbor University (SAU) as an instructional designer. He believed in my potential and said this student worker job could last throughout my undergraduate career if I wanted.
I met Dave, Tara McCoy , and a couple others from what was formerly the Office of Academic Technology (OAT) outside a coffee shop. When I was hired on the spot, I had no idea what I was getting into or how this field and career would help me as a student and as a professor.
Continue reading “eLearning Past, Present, and Future (2011-2021): A Conversation about Trends in eLearning, Instructional Design, and Online Learning”Transformational Leadership During COVID-19
I feel like I have been in a state of Flow for the last 25 years. It seems like yesterday when back in 1995 four of us sat around a table discussing how the only way we could get our new Masters in Educational Technology to the teachers who really needed it was to put it on the newly available World Wide Web.
“Tectonic shifts” in society happen when an unexpected event creates widespread innovative experimentation around a new idea. (V Govindarajan & A Srivastava, 2020).
Continue reading “Transformational Leadership During COVID-19”Preparing for Fall 2020: Reimagining Higher Education
I am currently in a summer book study with fellow faculty discussing Teaching and Christian Imagination by David Smith and Susan M. Felch. Through my personal reading as well as group discussions, I’ve realized we need a significant reimagining in the way faculty and instructional designers view teaching and curriculum design in higher education.
Instead of providing a cookie-cutter process of how to teach and design curriculum, Smith and Felch invite readers to reimagine higher education through three metaphors: a pilgrimage, a garden, and a cathedral. In the wake of the many changes and uncertainties of COVID-19, I want to invite you to reimagine higher education through sharing some of the things I am learning from these metaphors and encourage you to begin taking steps toward making your reimagining a reality.
Continue reading “Preparing for Fall 2020: Reimagining Higher Education”The COVID-19 Semester is Over: Now What?
Three ways to move forward
It’s June 2020, and we just emerged from an unprecedented semester at the small midwestern university where I work as an Assistant Professor and Instructional Designer. Our semester-end faculty meeting brought together 90 professors who had just ended a semester of teaching they never in their wildest dreams could have imagined.
Continue reading “The COVID-19 Semester is Over: Now What?”3 Core Learning Skills for the 21st Century
How do we prepare our learners to succeed in the 21st century? More to the point, how do we equip *adult* learners for ever changing careers, skills and needs when the traditional education system is behind them?
First, I want to outline three critical skills—then I’ll talk about an organization that I think does well in this area and how they are helping to promote that particular skill for any worker in their organization. There are more skills than these that are required, but these ones top my list.
Continue reading “3 Core Learning Skills for the 21st Century”Are We There Yet? Peter Drucker, 2020 and the BOT
In 1959, Peter Drucker, a well-known and an influential thinker, coined the term “knowledge worker” and predicted the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In many ways, his vision of lifelong learning forecast the rise of online learning and instructional design.
Continue reading “Are We There Yet? Peter Drucker, 2020 and the BOT”New Generation of Learning Design
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has become a buzzword. Many label practically any decision made by machines as AI, and it becomes difficult to discern the difference between true AI innovation based on Deep Learning from the clever relabeling of existing capabilities. Many of these pseudo-AI efforts require massive investments of time and money to simulate an AI-like experience. This makes it vital for us to know how to spot true innovation.
Continue reading “New Generation of Learning Design”Why Deep Learning Will Change Instructional Design
If you’re like me, you may not have noticed the quantum leaps in technology over the past four years. Technology is so omnipresent in our lives we’re often not aware of some of the profound changes going on around us—until something draws our attention to it.
Continue reading “Why Deep Learning Will Change Instructional Design”Shift Doesn’t Just Happen: Breaking Out of Imaginative Gridlock
On occasion I have a problem associated with the firing of the neurons in my brain. Some event triggers my amygdala, releases dopamine stimulating my frontal lobe—and I enter into a state of hyperarousal. My thoughts go into hyperdrive, and I charge over the hill like I am Braveheart leading an uprising against Edward the Longshanks.
Some see this characteristic as me being overzealous. I prefer to think of myself as…enthusiastic. Either way—at some point I see a need to pause, reflect, and not lose a sense of balance.
Continue reading “Shift Doesn’t Just Happen: Breaking Out of Imaginative Gridlock”
Model eLearning 
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