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A Few Big Changes, Lots of Little Ones: Updates to the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric
Introduction In the summer of 2018, Quality Matters (QM) released the Sixth Edition of the Higher Education Rubric along with a Rubric Update course to help reviewers brush up on the changes. For the Distance Learning team in the School of Professional Studies, that’s a big deal.…
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Up Up and Away: How Superheroes Can Save Online Discussions
Back to Krypton… In the late summer of 2017, Jacob Guerra-Martinez a Learning Designer and game-design researcher in Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies, pitched an audacious plan to a part-time faculty member in the School of Professional Studies. He wanted to gamify a discussion board so that graduate students could choose between being heroes…
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Time Management Strategies for Teaching Online
Benjamin Franklin said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. Below you will find 10 strategies to assist you while teaching online during term. Host office hours: Hosting regular office hours can lessen the number of emails you receive.…
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GamiCon Reflection- My Top Three Takeaways
This past weekend I had the pleasure to attend the first ever GamiCon conference, which was a co-located event hosted here in Chicago by Sententia Games and Training Magazine’s Online Conference. This conference was specifically for those who design and deliver Gamification for a variety of audiences, including corporate and academic programs.…
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Lowering the Cost of College with Open Educational Resources – October 2018 Online Learning Webinar
The cost of commercial textbooks can be a roadblock to student learning, but open textbooks offer high quality alternatives to instructors. According to US Public Interest Research Group, upwards of 65% of students decide against buying a textbook because of cost.…
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NUDL Workshop Reflections
This summer, AccessibleNU hosted their second UDL Workshop series. A cohort of faculty and academic staff, including Learning Designer and IDS instructor David Noffs and Senior Content Specialist Christine Scherer, learned about universal design for learning and best practices to design and teach courses that are welcoming and accessible for all students.…
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Using Panopto for Student Video Assignments
Some online courses use video not only for instructor created content but also for student assignment deliverables. Arc had been a video platform that made it easy for students to add a video to Canvas, either by posting it as a discussion reply or uploading it as an assignment.…
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Beyond Entertainment: Using Gamification to Engage Online Students – September 2018 Online Learning Webinar
Gamification is heard a lot in education, but some are still not sure what it means. In this webinar, learning designer Jacob Guerra-Martinez outlined the basics of gamification, focusing on the difference between using game concepts in a course as opposed to game play.…
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2018-2019 Web Conferencing Text for Syllabus
Choose one of the groups of text below to copy and paste into your syllabus. Blue Jeans We will use BlueJeans for optional synchronous meetings. The Northwestern IT YouTube channel on Blue Jeans Video conferencing and the Canvas Learning Center BlueJeans page provide additional guidance for using BlueJeans.…
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Knowing Your Users: A Important Piece of the Gamification Puzzle
As educators, we know that not everyone learns the same. That is why different learning theories and styles exist. These theories allow faculty to adapt their courses to fit the various styles of their students in order to give them the best and most beneficial experience possible.…