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Designing to Promote Instructor Presence and Instructor-Student Interaction
Whatever our role might be in the course design process, we are charged with creating an exemplary learning experience for our adult learners. One way to ensure we create the highest quality and most engaging courses is by designing learning … Read More
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Meeting the Accessibility Needs of Adult Students
Adult students have a higher incidence of disability and are less likely to seek accommodations than the general student population. What should we do to support them? Anticipate their needs. Why? The Adult Educator Handbook of Rights and Responsibilities, … Read More
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Word Cloud Activities: Engaging Learners in the Online Classroom
In the online classroom, word clouds can be a fun, simple, low-stakes way to collect and convey information among learners. Of course, there are those who push back on the use of word clouds, like software architect Jacob Harris… Read More
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Nebula: A Graphic Interface for Discussion Forums
Northwestern’s department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences and Northwestern Information Technology have created Nebula, a tool that presents discussion forum activity as a visual network graph. Nebula was developed to increase interaction and collaboration in the discussion board environment. … Read More
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Chicago Online Learning Summit Reflections
On December 9th, 2015, the Learning Design team attended the 2nd annual Chicago Online Learning Summit, hosted by DeVry University’s DV X Labs at the digital startup coworking space 1871. The summit included presentations by industry leaders and pitches … Read More
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Planning for Accessibility: January 2016 Online Learning Webinar
The first Online Learning Webinar of 2016 focused on accessibility. In Planning to Write for Accessibility, Christine Scherer and Krissy Wilson demonstrated a number of simple steps that designers and developers can take to make course sites more accessible. They … Read More
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Winter Quarter 2016 Begins Today!
Happy New Year and welcome back to all our faculty, students, and staff. Winter Quarter 2016 starts today, with over a hundred sections of online courses being offered across multiple SPS programs. Included among these programs are several courses in … Read More
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Choosing a Web Conferencing Solution
Northwestern Information Technology recently introduced Blue Jeans, a web conferencing platform that integrates with Canvas. Blue Jeans is now available in all Canvas sites at Northwestern. Faculty in the School of Professional Studies can choose to either use BlueJeans … Read More
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Seeing Differently: Designing for Students With Colorblindness and Low Vision
Lots of minute decisions govern color selection in design. What colors show allegiance with a university or college? What colors highlight the most important information in an infographic? What colors best distinguish between different types of data? One question that … Read More
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OLC Collaborate Chicago Conference Reflections
On November 19, the SPS Distance Learning team attended the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Collaborate Chicago Conference, hosted at Rush University. The conference included several panels on subjects like regulation, learning analytics, and competency-based education, and breakout sessions that dug … Read More