One teacher I remember well is my seventh grade Texas History teacher. One reason he stands out was his unique ranking system, which ranked his top ten students from all his courses based on their grades. The better you did, … Read More
Blog
What Are Mind Maps?
Learning researchers in the 1960s proposed mind maps as a way to make learning happen more quickly. Tony Buzan, with degrees in such varied fields as psychology, mathematics, English, and the general sciences, drew attention to … Read More
Online course design and teaching presents a unique set of challenges and rewards. There are dozens of new variables to consider, like course structure, content delivery, and synchronous sessions. There’s no face-to-face classroom interaction or collecting students work in real … Read More
Recently, IMC Professor Judy Franks presented an interesting issue: her student evaluation feedback indicated that her students absolutely loved her course, but were overwhelmed with the workload. In addition, she was asked to teach three sections of the course in … Read More
What type of video should I make?
If you arrived at this blog post hoping for a prescriptive answer to that question, you won’t find it here. Instead you will find a framework for including video in your online course, … Read More
If you sit down with a learning designer at the School of Professional Studies to talk about a strategy for designing or redesigning your course and they suggest beginning with the end of the course in mind, you might find … Read More
Introduction
Content Editor Christine Scherer and Learning Designer Krissy Wilson joined Rutgers University Continuing Education for a six-week course: Accessibility and Compliance in Online Education. The course focused on “basic concepts, issues, approaches, strategies, beneficiaries, and resources with regard to … Read More
June’s Online Learning Webinar, hosted by instructional technologist Jackie Wickham, was a demo of Blue Jeans, Northwestern’s new web conferencing software that integrates with Canvas. Online faculty in the School of Professional Studies are encouraged to use Blue Jeans to … Read More
Introduction
Many online classes provide resources as a weekly, no-nonsense bibliography, a chain of citations. It is an efficient, time-tested way of presenting resources, and there is some benefit to letting students forge their own reading path through them.
But … Read More
As much as we like to think our online courses are perfect, there is always room for improvement. Our job is never done. On the Distance Learning team, we are first and foremost concerned with partnering with faculty to develop … Read More