In fully online courses, instructor presence is built through meaningful interactions—such as guiding discussions and providing timely, personalized feedback on assignments. These practices help students feel supported and connected.
A well-crafted introduction video complements these efforts by humanizing the course experience.…
Profile William J Guth
In our recent webinar presentation, Sr. Instructional Technologist Aaron Bannasch and I demonstrated how generative AI tools can be used to ignite creativity and streamline the development of multimedia content for asynchronous courses. The session focused on practical applications of AI for brainstorming, scriptwriting, and generating visual ideas.…
The multimedia principle postulates that people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. This principle was introduced in 1997 by Richard Mayer, an educational psychologist who has made significant contributions to learning and cognition theories and is best known for his work on multimedia learning theory.…
In our recent blog entry Make It Stick!, we discussed strategies for helping students move newly learned information into long-term memory. Of the strategies discussed, Practice Getting It Out vs. Getting It In stands out as an opportunity not only for students to generate knowledge by teaching concepts to peers that demonstrate their understanding of learned content, but also as a vehicle for creating variety in the types of assignments we design.…
How do you know that what you’re teaching is truly sticking with students? Do their test scores reveal it? Or does that only show that they remembered and recalled it for the exam? Do students leave you confident that they can apply skills and knowledge when they’ll really need it?…
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “I’m not a radio host! I don’t have an on air personality. I don’t have it in me to plan and record a weekly series.” All those things may be true. But those are not necessarily requirements for creating course content in podcast form.…
Would you agree that bad audio can ruin a good video, presentation, or recording? Most certainly. A few months back, we identified tools for recording interview audio on the go. Today, we’ll listen to and compare five USB microphones, illustrate their uses in online instruction, and identify a few principles that will help us get the best results.…
We are pleased to announce the winner of the iRig Lavalier microphone giveaway. Congratulations to adjunct faculty Eric Abbott. Thank you to all who participated.
As promised, a few of our microphone donors are extending discounts on mobile recording device equipment to faculty, students and staff at the following rates.…
The Office of Distance Learning is giving away an iRig Lavalier microphone that was graciously donated by IK Multimedia. In order to participate, faculty and students must visit our recent Field Recording blog post, read about and listen to the microphone comparisons, and reply to the post using the following criteria.…
In Part 1 of this series, Web 2.0 Digital Tools Selection Criteria, I shared a method for evaluating digital learning tools that may find their way into our online courses. In this continuation entry, I will demonstrate the method in action by discussing tools which I evaluated as part of my course work for Introduction to Online Presentation Tools.…