Formatting eLearning Documents: Picture This

Images are a great way to add a little life to your document. Microsoft Word makes it especially easy to insert images into a document. But, with great power comes great responsibility, and you should stick with some basic principles when inserting images. If not, they can be overwhelming, hard to see, and difficult for a reader to interpret the relationship of the image to the text.

So, in this post, we’ll explore the basics of inserting and formatting an image and some little extras, like adding alt text to improve the accessibility of your documents.

Continue reading “Formatting eLearning Documents: Picture This”

Blackboard and Broken Links: Behind the Scenes with a Student Worker

Our student workers truly enrich our work and days. It’s truly enjoyable for faculty and staff to watch students grow in the time they’re here. While the years at university sometimes seems to ebb and flow for students, it flies by for us. Today, senior Jordyn Moore reflects on her time working with the eLearning team.

As my fourth and final year at college draws to a close, I often find myself reflecting upon my time as a student worker in eLearning.

Continue reading “Blackboard and Broken Links: Behind the Scenes with a Student Worker”

Useful Feedback from a Student’s Perspective

In a literature class I took in high school, my class submitted all of our papers online for the ease of checking plagiarism and providing feedback. As Ann described in her post about audio and video feedback, my teacher not only left us written comments but audio feedback as well.

Five years later, I still remember how encouraging his audio clips were to me. They were constructive and uplifting.

What made this feedback so meaningful? Why has it stuck with me for so long? I think it’s a combination of a few different factors.

Continue reading “Useful Feedback from a Student’s Perspective”

Bring Simplicity to Your eLearning Design

Each day, the amount of data created increases by about 2.5 quintillion bytes, and 90 percent of the data in existence comes from the past two years (Marr, 2018). Without a guide (or a friendly-neighborhood librarian), it’s impossible to sort through that much data on our own. It’s no wonder our learners struggle with information overload (“Information Overload,” 2019).

Continue reading “Bring Simplicity to Your eLearning Design”

eLearning Feedback: Enhancing Instructor to Learner Feedback

In my last post on relevant and relational feedback, I mentioned how adding a human factor into your online courses creates another dimension of building relationships with students. Constructive, relevant, and relational feedback helps students develop an awareness of their learning as well as the ability to recognize and address their weak points on their own. Today we’ll look at audio and video feedback tools you can use to build relationships with your students and help them take these important steps in their learning.

Continue reading “eLearning Feedback: Enhancing Instructor to Learner Feedback”

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”

Facilitating an online course: Five ways for getting it right

The first online course I developed and facilitated was Fundamentals of Speech. I was determined to get it right, because I had graduated from an online program and understood first-hand the pitfalls and frustrations students go through with a weak facilitator. In the very first week of the course I realized that it takes a lot of work to facilitate well! The second thing I realized was that it was so worth it—and so rewarding.

Since then, I’ve developed and facilitated many online courses, and enjoy being the eLearning certification trainer for new online and blended faculty at Spring Arbor University.

Continue reading “Facilitating an online course: Five ways for getting it right”

Choosing Meaningful Names for your eLearning

Ever save a file with a random name, only to not be able to find it later? If only you’d named it something meaningful! The same can be said for naming your eLearning materials.

Continue reading “Choosing Meaningful Names for your eLearning”

Managing your Digital Toolbox

In the past I’ve talked about how it’s important to not let efficiency get in the way of trying to master a new skill or tool. Today, I want to expand on that a little bit and argue that sometimes, leaning too much into monetary efficiency is bad.

Yeah. Sometimes you just gotta spend money.

I’m not saying be frivolous. But rather try not to get locked into design patters solely by financial concerns. Let me explain.

Continue reading “Managing your Digital Toolbox”

eLearning Feedback: Make it Relevant and Relational

In my series on Keller’s ARCS Model for Motivation, I discussed the important role satisfaction plays in increasing and maintaining a student’s motivation to learn.

Students are satisfied and motivated to improve when teachers provide clear, constructive feedback and affirm and encourage them, both verbally and nonverbally. As classroom environments become more digital and asynchronous, we must find ways to improve instructor and student communication, especially feedback.

In this series, I’ll share practical tips for instructor to learner feedback and learner to learner feedback. We’ll look at tools to help you improve and enhance the feedback experience in online courses. Today we’ll begin with why you should provide constructive feedback.   

Continue reading “eLearning Feedback: Make it Relevant and Relational”