Ecampus Course Development and Training « Providing inspiration for your online class

Here is an example of interactivity in a PDF. The file was created from a PowerPoint and, as a new instructional designer, my first foray into creating elearning. As I created the PowerPoint I had several of John Medina’s Brain Rules in mind. The first one? We don’t pay attention to boring things. Guess what? Students don’t either! This shouldn’t surprise you. I didn’t want to this simply be another passive learning task. I designed this piece of elearning with the idea of offering learners an opportunity to interact with the content and learn by listening, watching, reading and writing. I chunked the information in order to not overwhelm the learner with text. Ready for the next rule? As instructors and designers, we need to strive to stimulate more of the senses. Learners need to be stimulated! In this example, there are a few audiovisual experiences embedded in the form of photos, YouTube videos and an active learning collaborative task. I saved the best rule for last: Vision trumps all other senses. With this in mind, I searched high and low for images that would not detract from the learning process, but enhance it. I wanted the images to relate to what was being taught and serve as a reminder for what the learners had read. It’s easy to overwhelm elearning with the numerous visuals – especially if they aren’t related to the content. Is this the best example of all things elearning and visual design? Of course not! I have just entered the world of visual design and strive to keep learning and improving.

This is an example of a introductory video to a weekly module.

An approach known as “inverted” or “flipped” learning is gaining momentum in contemporary higher education. Inverted learning figuratively flips the traditional lecture-plus-homework format of many college courses on its head. Rather than using class time for the largely one-way delivery of information from instructor to student, the lecture material is made available online for students to study prior to class. Then classroom time can be used for face-to-face interaction that includes clarification, amplification, small-group work, problem solving, review, and assessment of learning built on the foundation of online course content and readings.

As illustrated in Robert Talbert’s presentation, “Inverting the Classroom, Improving Student Learning,” the inverted learning model moves more of the transmission of information outside the classroom, so that class time can be devoted to higher-level assimilation activities. A growing body of research, including a widely publicized University of British Columbia study published recently in the journal Science, points to the efficacy of devoting class time to learning activities other than lectures.

By nature, inverted learning is well suited to “hybrid” courses, which include both regular classroom meetings—with class meeting time typically reduced by 50%—and significant online content delivered via a learning platform such as Blackboard. A pilot program for development of hybrid courses is the centerpiece of OSU’s new Teaching & Learning Technologies Initiative. A request for proposals to participate in this pilot program will be distributed to OSU faculty by early September.

A great way to engage students is to first capture their attention with something interesting. From there keep your videos short, 10 mins or less is ideal for modules.

Gaining students’ attention is the first of Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction. A great way to gain attention is to provide a catchy animated video about the topic you are presenting.

What’s that? You’re not a trained animator? Don’t let that stop you! If you can choose items off a menu and type some dialogue, you can create an animated video for free at www.xtranormal.com. The animation below was created for an upcoming professional development workshop at Ecampus. The whole project took about 10 minutes to create.

Blackboard will be upgraded to version 9.1 in time for Fall term 2011.

Although there will be some minor cosmetic changes, basic functioning in the most frequently used areas of Blackboard (i.e. discussion board, grade center) will remain the same.

New features to look for include:

Wikis
Grading in blogs and journals
New content creation menus
Accessibility improvements for multimedia
Mashups – ability to embed Flickr, Slideshare, YouTube content
Ability to move assignments and tests within a course site

If you want to see these new features in more detail, view this 7 minute tutorial.
Blackboard 9.1 Overview

Project Name: Evapotranspiration
Media: Vector image – Flash
Class: Waterwise

This diagram shows how water escapes from a plant as well as the soil. It was used as an image inside a powerpoint presentation for waterwise.

Project Name: Clay and Sand
Media: Flash Vector Drawings
Class: Waterwise

This little animation shows how water is absorbed differently in sand vs clay. This understanding will help gardeners make wiser choices when choosing how to water their plants.

Click the image to play the animation

Project Name: Whale Migration
Media: Flash Vector Drawings
Class: FW302
Design Team: Warren Blyth, Thomas Emery

This interactive flash application lets you follow the migration of gray whales off the west coast of North America for 2 years. It follows a pregnant mother, calf, and a male. Numbers came from OSU researchers.

This project was directed by Warren Blyth, programming by Thomas Emery, I was in charge of animation, art, and layout.

Click the image to launch the application. Hit the play button in the bottom left corner to start it.

Have lots of papers to grade? Lots of student assignments that need your expert, detailed feedback? Instructors and students alike know the value of formative assessments, but instructors know how much time quality, detailed feedback takes to supply. Shortkeys is a helpful program that can help instructors provide detailed feedback and save time in grading by reducing the need to re-type the same passages repeatedly.

Shortkeys is a macro program, which is a program that allows you to set up replacement text for a small number of user-defined keystrokes. If there is anything you type multiple times, this program is for you. There is a limited-use free version, called Shortkeys Lite. The full program costs around $25.

Benefits of using this program:

Significantly reduces grading time – a clear benefit for instructors
Much more efficient than copying and pasting from Word files
Reduces errors due to typos
Significantly improves the depth of feedback instructors can provide, given time limitations – a clear benefit for students
Useful for URLs, HTML code, phone numbers, email addresses, library card numbers, page references in textbooks, or any other information you find yourself having to look up more than once

How it works:
The user programs each “shortkey” code and types out the replacement text. Once the shortkey is saved, it is ready to be re-used. For instance, for a shortkey that is programmed to explain a comma splice and how to fix one, a user could set the shortkey as “##cs.” As soon as the user types that code, a full explanation about comma splices is placed in the document: This is a type of run-on sentence called a comma splice, which is two complete sentences linked with nothing but a comma. Two complete sentences need more than a comma to separate them. To correct this, change the comma to a semi-colon, add a conjunction, or simply make two separate sentences.

Possible applications:

To explain common grammatical and punctuation errors
To provide examples to students, such as example thesis statements
To refer students to outside resources
To demonstrate proper citation styles for various types of sources
To include “here’s what I was looking for & here’s how your assignment measured up” notes for student assignments
To record summaries and announcements that you re-use in my courses from term to term
To remind students of course policies, such as late policies
To record HTML code you use frequently in Blackboard

Where to get it:

To order the software or to download a free trial version, visit www.shortkeys.com.

Ecampus Course Development and Training

Providing inspiration for your online class

Example of PDF interactivity

Political Science 449

Inverted Learning?!?

Music 102

Xtranormal Animation

Blackboard 9.1

Evapotranspiration

Clay and Sand Animation

Whale Migration

Shortkeys

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