Authentic engagement between students and instructors is immensely important in eLearning. That being said, both collaborative and social learning are the heart behind any virtual course. Not only that, but researchers at the University of Calgary Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning describe these modes of learning as an “opportunity for students and instructors to engage in shared efforts to search for meaning, understanding, and solutions to complex problems or concepts” (Anselmo et al., n.d.). Thankfully, the rapidly-developing sector of collaborative and social learning tools allows us to provide these opportunities for authentic engagement.
Continue reading “Collaborative and Social Learning Tools for eLearning”Does Going Digital Alter Learner Retention?
People engage in learning through different formats. This can vary based on the learning environment and the stakeholders involved in the development of content. With the recent uptake in online and computer learning, as course designers and instructors we need to ponder a new question—is the option of having a digital textbook and taking notes on a computer just as effective as a paper textbook and handwritten notes? This debate includes many individuals adamantly on one side or the other, so the answer should be investigated through research to determine what the evidence tells us. To begin this conversation, let’s look at existing studies and determine how these two available options should inform course design moving forward.
Continue reading “Does Going Digital Alter Learner Retention?”Unwrapping 2022: Supporting Learners
It’s that time of the year again. If you’ve been following Model eLearning for some time, you know we use our last post of the year to reflect on the past year. We enjoy the opportunity to look back at the themes of the year (and we hope you do too!).
Continue reading “Unwrapping 2022: Supporting Learners”Authentic Self-Assessment in eLearning
Self-assessment is an incredibly powerful tool to foster self-reflection and growth for all—and it’s especially important for college students. More students take a greater number of courses and programs online. And overall, online learning is generally more self-paced. Students need to build and hone self-assessment skills to help them track their progress and set goals for future weeks, months, years of assignments, projects, and exams.
Continue reading “Authentic Self-Assessment in eLearning”Digital Content Curation Tools for Education
Digital content curation tools allow us to easily create, collaborate, share, and evaluate educational resources and collections. With “[…] advances in technology, enhanced tools allow researchers to preserve their work in new venues and formats to reach new audiences. (Deschaine & Sharma, 2015, p. 20). In Curating an Instructional Content Collection for Teaching and Learning, I shared how to use content curation in course design to provide accurate, relevant learning resources and model 21st century information literacy skills. In this post, I’ll discuss digital tools for curating educational content.
Continue reading “Digital Content Curation Tools for Education”Building Learning Environments to Engage Our Learners’ Attention Span
An interesting development within the expanding research on the brain and its functions is the study of attention spans in humans. Based on the new information and data found in these studies, we can build learning environments that are more interesting to our students as they are able to engage in the content more effectively since it aligns with the way their brains prefer to engage in the world.
Continue reading “Building Learning Environments to Engage Our Learners’ Attention Span”Reimagining Higher Education: The Sequel
In summer 2020, I reflected on reimagining higher education in light of Smith and Felch’s (2016) book, Teaching and Christian Imagination. Today, I want to build on that blog post by reflecting on another book, Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (Baker & Bilbro, 2017).
Continue reading “Reimagining Higher Education: The Sequel”Creating Accessible Learning Materials — Microsoft Excel
Hey there! Ready to continue learning about how to make your course materials accessible? In keeping with our theme thus far, we’ll look at another program in the Microsoft Office Suite–Excel.
Continue reading “Creating Accessible Learning Materials — Microsoft Excel”Curating an Instructional Content Collection for Teaching and Learning
Content continues to be published at staggering rates—and it’s only likely to increase. With the proper equipment, time, and an internet connection, anyone can publish content with relatively low effort. The value and accuracy of this content might not go through vigorous quality checks (or may be outright fictitious and created for malicious purposes), which means we must become savvy to identify, evaluate, and share the best resources.
Continue reading “Curating an Instructional Content Collection for Teaching and Learning”A Melting Pot of Learning
(While I try to speak without bias, I should note that I have a Western Mind model and come from the Euro-American cultural background. I welcome any comments to discuss these ideas in greater depth as I find this topic very fascinating and relevant to what we need to be discussing in this day and age. The more perspectives we can gain from others the more we learn about their culture and our own biases.)
As an instructional designer, familiarity with how to make learning material (in whatever modality) reach as many students as necessary and possible in ways they can comprehend is essential. In this pursuit, we focus on topics such as accessibility, universal design for learning (UDL), and inclusion. However, in addition to those, I have been exploring an area that could use more data—the integration of cultural understanding in learning design.
Continue reading “A Melting Pot of Learning”
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