Resources for Curating Video Collections and Creating Custom Courses. A good video can be a powerful way to help students understand new concepts or refresh their knowledge of a topic. Thanks to YouTube, Vimeo, and oodles of other sites, we can now find instructional videos for just about anything. The challenge isn’t locating videos—but keeping track of the ones that help students the most. Making playlists in YouTube is one strategy, but there are better options. Try these tools for organizing and creating video courses. OpenEd, a free site launched in October, claims to be the world’s largest educational resource catalog. Once you’re a registered OpenEd user—it takes less than 30 seconds—you can create courses and playlists of videos and other content in the site’s directory.
Teachem, following the popular TED-Ed model, allows users to pull YouTube videos into online courses, which can be made public or private. Public Teachem courses can be accessed by anyone with the course URL. Teachem also allows for collaborative course creation. Trial by Fire: Lessons Learned in Developing and Delivering A Distance Learning Course. After a career as a healthcare compliance and privacy professional, I began my academic career at Montana Tech of the University of Montana in the fall of 2007. The Health Care Informatics (HCI) department was still new, with only three graduating classes. Given my background in healthcare systems, my primary objective was to teach students about the healthcare industry from an operations perspective.
Students would need an understanding of how healthcare systems work in order to become effective health information technologists. Upon my arrival, the head of the department made it clear that one of the primary strategic objectives of the department was to offer distance classes. Therefore, I began my academic career knowing that all the coursework would need to satisfy both the traditional classroom setting as well as distance students. Both the Montana University System and Montana Tech require distance courses to be equivalent to live or traditional classes.
HCI Classroom Conclusion. eSchool News 50 tips to develop and run your online courses. 50 tips to develop and run your online courses Andrea Harmon February 3rd, 2015 From getting started to managing the day-to-day business, try these 50 tips for setting up a successful online course for any grade level As many K-12 U.S. public schools and districts are struggling to compete with 100 percent online cyber charter schools for essential student funding, many universities are struggling to understand the impact of MOOCs on future enrollment.
Both of these scenarios point to the one thing that is abundantly clear, online education is having another growth spurt in the second decade of the 21st century and the race to create in-house online content is on. In-house online content is defined here as online course development created by practicing K-12 educators to avoid having to access sometimes cost-prohibitive, commercially-developed online courses. However, in addition to the already full plates of educators, in-house online content and course development remains a challenge. The Rapid eLearning Blog. Creating great interactive learning experiences requires a few core building blocks: relevant content, pull versus push, and real-world decisions.
With those building blocks you're able to structure effective learning scenarios that are meaningful to the learner and helps meet the objectives of the course. One of those building blocks in creating relevant content or content that is placed in a meaningful context. Essentially, you want to recreate the types of scenarios that are similar to the ones the learner has in real life. This allows them to see the content in ... Read the full article After last week's post on the different drag & drop interaction examples, I had quite a few emails asking for tips on how to create drag and drop interactions for elearning.
Sliders are used as a means to make adjustments/selections or as a simple way to navigate content. It helps to look at what others are doing to get ideas and inspiration for your own work. Create ... eSchool News Five steps to a successful blended learning program. Discussion Management Tips for Online Educators. I started teaching online classes more than 10 years ago. My training with Davenport University in 1998 consisted of five weeks of online and on-campus "how-to" workshops about using the technology. A few years later, the six-week online training at Franklin University still focused on software navigation but included rubrics for student participation. As educators, we were told, and we also assumed, that because we were the subject matter experts, we would know how to teach the subjects. My primary question, however, did not concern the technology: "What do I say online? " After attending education conferences, reading books about online teaching, and receiving a wealth of student feedback, I developed several techniques to manage discussions in my online classes. 1.
Students usually practice their analytic skills and problem-solving skills on case studies. I would much rather cull my examples from the evening television news or National Public Radio. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Comments. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” – Warm-Up Exercises for Online Courses. Tips for Effective Webinars. Giving an effective webinar requires some presentation redesign and technology skills that you don't necessarily need in a face-to-face presentation.
A great speaker in a face-to-face environment can easily crash and burn in a webinar setting if he or she isn't prepared for the unique challenges and needs of that environment. Here are some tips to help you pull off a webinar that will get you asked for an encore! Before the WebinarRecording and distribution. Before you design your presentation, you need to know whether the presentation is going to be recorded, and if it is, where it will be distributed.
For example, when I give a webinar that's not being recorded, I feel more at ease showing "live" shots of my personal information (like an email inbox or a Facebook page). You should always think about issues like copyright, but you should be even more careful if your webinar will be distributed to large audiences on the web. Presentation design. Engage often. Animation. Hyperlinks. Three Common E-Learning Design Issues & How to Avoid Them. I review lots of elearning courses and demos. Since elearning is a mostly visual medium visual inconsistencies tend to stand out. They’re the types of things that cause the Frankencourse design. I’ve been making a list of some of the more common issues that I find. So in today’s post I’ll highlight three that I see quite a bit and offer some feedback on how to avoid them. Images are Skewed Images on the screen are obviously not the right dimensions.
Here are a couple of quick fixes: Use the corner anchors. The cropping tool can change the image dimensions without skewing. Font Confusion Many courses tend to use too many fonts and without rhyme or reason. That’s a good goal. As a general rule of thumb (especially for those just getting started) limit yourself to two or three fonts. Title Subtitle Body font Emphasis: this could be the body font bolded or recolored Text Alignment Issues Text is the most common element on the screen.
Large blocks of text are centered. Avoid widows. Tidbits. Student privacy issues, ethics, and solving the guest lecturer dilemma in online courses. In an era where our privacy seems to be slowly dwindling---when our email can be viewed by our employers and cameras sit perched on street corners---some strongholds of privacy do remain. And, perhaps surprisingly, one such stronghold carries over to the online realm.
While your face may be on camera and your words in print, your identity remains protected and privileged information. Of interest then is the special situation when an individual enrolls in an online course. For some, it is the very nature of online anonymity that prompts an educational move to online courses. Many assume that anonymity is a given in the virtual course, but the truth is that there are many levels of anonymity. In the online classroom, student identities are available to those with access to the course, and must remain protected from those outside of it. When we allow a guest into an online course, he or she may have access to a list of students in the course, potentially violating FERPA.
Five steps to a successful blended learning program. The Do's and Don'ts of Synchronous Online Learning. Distance Learning | Feature The 'Dos and Don'ts' of Synchronous Online Learning By Bridget McCrea05/08/13 Creating videos, presentations, and lessons that college students access and interact with on their own time and terms is one thing, but developing learning content that requires both students and instructor to be online at the same time presents a whole different set of challenges for college professors and instructional technologists. Formally referred to as synchronous online learning (versus asynchronous learning, which is accessed and utilized at any time), the "live" learning environment happens in real-time on the Web and encourages interaction, commenting, Q&As, and other types of instant feedback.
As news broadcasters and other people have learned, being "live" in front of an audience comes with a unique set of challenges. Inoperable equipment, diminished bandwidth, and missed cues can all take their toll on a successful session. About the Author. How to Build and Lead Successful Online Communities: Behaving appropriately. "Now children, settle down so we can get started," is a comment to which most of us can relate. For me it often spelled the end of fun and signaled the start of something with which I grew very bored, quite quickly.
I envy young people entering the workplace after an academic career marked by more enlightened attitudes, which encourage interaction, team working, and the use of mobile devices in the classroom. I weep when I see formal, rigid lectures start in the world of work—and that includes formal eLearning, which allows no interaction apart from clicking a mouse. In my own experience there were times when things went wrong in the online communities with which I had been associated.
In some cases the cause lay in a failure of leadership, in most a failure to create the right behaviors and support those who were hurt, isolated, and disempowered. A comment, treated by the receiver as aggressive, but which was probably intended as a tongue-in -cheek joke can cause a person to withdraw. Teacher's Guide to Digital Storytelling. Teaching critical thinking and creativity in writing can be a difficult task, but it is crucial in preparing students to meet the standards of the Common Core. Digital storytelling is a highly effective technique for doing so, as it requires a clear organization of thought, discipline, and problem solving skills — all of which can translate directly into more traditional essay writing. What’s more, digital storytelling has the added benefit of meeting other Common Core standards relating to proficiency in technical skills. In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at why digital storytelling is an effective approach for teaching writing, and how to do it best.
Photo credit: torres21 What is Digital Storytelling, and Why Do It? Quite simply, digital storytelling is the act of using computer-based tools (desktops, laptops, tablets, cameras. and even smartphones) to tell a story. Here are a few creative digital storytelling assignment ideas to get you going. Digital Storytelling Lesson Ideas. Are Students Tuning You Out or Downloading You In? Improving Online Instruction for 21st Century Skills. Online learning has proliferated significantly in the last five years.
But is online education preparing students for 21st century skills just because students are required to have access to a computer? The Partners for 21st Century Skills categorize 21st century skills as follows: Information, Media, and Technology skills: information, media, and ICT literacy Learning and Innovation skills: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity Life and Career skills: adaptability and flexibility Considering the rising interest in online education and whether or not educators are truly preparing students, the million dollar question is "How do we improve online learning to better prepare our students?
" This issue goes beyond the classroom; workplace learners face the same struggles. Below are five strategies to not only enhance online instruction but also integrate and hone students for the 21st century skills needed to globally compete and succeed. Incorporating Technology. Librarians and the Era of the MOOC | Scientific and Medical Libraries. The New York Times dubbed 2012 “The Year of the MOOC,” and it has since become one of the hottest topics in education.
Time magazine said that free MOOCs open the door to the “Ivy League for the Masses.” Two of the world’s leading MOOCs, Coursera and Udacity, earned venture capital in the amounts of $22 million and $15 million, respectively. Educators, politicians, and yes, librarians, are taking note of this disruptive educational technology trend, and the future it holds for the training for our future scientists, doctors, nurses, engineers, and others entering STEM fields. I remember back my library school days, how librarians were fearing and struggling to redefine their role in “search” in the Age of Google, and now, they face another challenge, finding their role aiding professors and students in the Era of the MOOC. MOOCs & Librarians Infographic (Click Image to Zoom) Source: “MOOCing for Knowledge,” Disruptive and Transformative Education: Designing learning in the digital age. The Internet is changing how and when people can access information and is transforming and disrupting how education is designed and delivered.
New approaches to learning are threatening traditional educational values by de-institutionalizing and de-formalizing education as we know it. These new approaches support the prediction that education is as "susceptible to tech disruption as other information-centric industries such as the news media, magazines and journals, encyclopedias, music, motion pictures and television [1]. " The New Media Consortium's global digital educational meta-trends highlight some of the disruptive changes already happening in education [2], such as: Emerging global and collaborative educational business models of whatever, whenever and wherever learning.
Examples of Anywhere, Anytime, Anyhow Education Acknowledging and Supporting Pro-sumer Learners Learners are now multi-connected, multi-deviced, and live in an app driven world. Curating the Learning References. Microsoft Word - Strategies for Effective Online Teaching.docx - strategies.pdf. Tips and Tools for Fostering a Creative e-Learning Class.
Despite the effectiveness of e-learning, online learners remain notorious for losing focus, getting bored, checking email, chatting, texting, sorting through piles of neglected mail, or tuning out altogether. It's not their fault. We trainers haven't equipped our online learners with an arsenal of tools and toys that will help them stay focused. Knowing what we know about the effectiveness of brain-based learning (also called active learning or accelerated learning), it's up to us to apply our best practices in live, classroom training to enhance the effectiveness of the online learning experiences we conduct. Indeed, online learners are entitled to enjoy the benefit of the balls, toys, visual stimuli, icebreakers, discussions, and interactive exercises that have become standard in most live training sessions.
Make kinesthetic learning tools available Classroom learning gurus talk a lot about the need to create a stress-free and emotionally engaging learning environment. Yawn-buster.