Essential Reading for Instructional Design? As an instructional designer/eLearning professional, what books are the essential tools in your reference library? I'm not looking for the obtuse theory books. I prefer the get-down-and-dirty variety. These are my current faves. Last May, I started a bit of a list in this post: Beginning Instructional Designer's Toolkit. Dr. After my appeal for something a little more pared down that I might actually be able to read, Dr. Other ID books of note that have been recently recommended to me:e-Learning by Design by William Horton (recommended by Christy Tucker)What Every Manager Should Know About Training by Robert Mager (recommended by Dave Ferguson)The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams (not the comedian) (this was recently recommended to me by someone who asked the same question on LinkedIn.What would you add? Photo credit: Little by MegElizabeth
Retooling for Creative Curriculum Retooling for Creative Curriculum - Using Low Threshold Activities to Produce Best Practice Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia Abstract: Will Rogers once said "When you are through changing, you are through." Production of educational multimedia is changing and faculty and support staff are having to change with it. This paper describes potential benefits for using multimedia and hypermedia, describes barriers that limited their use in the past, and briefly outlines current issues. The paper argues that there is an important future for educational multimedia, and new methods and software programs are available that will change how it's produced. In particular, the philosophy and strategy of Low Treshold Activities (LTAs) provides an important foundation for the retooling of creative curriculum. Multimedia, as a concept, has reached popular acceptance. Convincing faculty members that multimedia and/or hypermedia is a good idea for educational use is just the beginning. Fair Use
The Instructional Use of Learning Objects -- Online Version This is the online version of The Instructional Use of Learning Objects, a new book that tries to go beyond the technological hype and connect learning objects to instruction and learning. You can read the full text of the book here for free. The chapters presented here are © their respective authors and are licensed under the Open Publication License, meaning that you are free to copy and redistribute them in any electronic or non-commercial print form. In addition to reading the book, at this website you can participate in discussions of the book's chapters with the authors and others, submit any corrections should you find errors in a chapter, and discuss other issues related to learning objects, instruction, and learning. The book is divided into five major sections. 1.0. 2.0. 3.0. 4.0. 5.0. This site is maintained by David Wiley. Copyright © 2000 by the authors listed above.
IDKB - Doing an ID Project Permission from author required to link to the IDKB. If citing this work in a publication or scholarly work, it should be referenced as: Dabbagh, N. (date retrieved). (Click on the phase of Instructional Design on which you are working to view a page on that topic.) Reinventing class discussion online Web discussions are gaining popularity in academe as a way to spur intellectual exchange among students outside of regular class time. In fact, a recent survey by the Campus Computing Project finds at least a quarter of college courses have their own Web pages, many of them with discussion areas. But, as convenient as it is to log on any time and discuss the latest course reading with classmates, students often find that the online world doesn't prompt the same kind of bonding, camaraderie or even conflict that face-to-face discussions do. Students respond less directly to one another on the Web because they can't see each other. Often they throw out random, isolated thoughts, and the discussion founders. To make discussion more enticing and productive online, some psychology professors are developing ways to foster more bonding and social interaction over the Web. Forge social bonds The first step toward a productive Web discussion is "just to say who you are," says Bonk. Assign roles
Learning Materials A collection of simulations and virtual labs focusing on first-year college physics. An interview with the award winning... see more A collection of simulations and virtual labs focusing on first-year college physics. An interview with the award winning author can be found in About us at Phet VideoPhET provides fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena for free. We believe that our research-based approach- incorporating findings from prior research and our own testing- enables students to make connections between real-life phenomena and the underlying science, deepening their understanding and appreciation of the physical world. Material Type: Simulation Author: Carl Wieman, Ron LeMaster, Mike Dubson, Sam Reid, Kathy Perkins, Wendy Adams, Noah Finkelstein, Noah Podolefsky Date Added: Mar 03, 2004 Date Modified: Apr 09, 2014 Peer Review for material titled "PhET - Physics Education Technology at the University of Colorado" About this material:
What Everybody Ought to Know About Instructional Design In an earlier post, we looked at how to build better courses by trimming out some of the content. Many of the follow-up comments and questions speak to your role as an instructional designer. In fact, it’s a question I was asked in a recent email: What is the role of the instructional designer? And how do I convey that to my clients and subject matter experts? As I was contemplating a response, I stumbled upon this video that does a great job illustrating the value of instructional design. Click here to watch video. As humans, we’re wired to learn and we’re always learning. Learning happens through our experiences and through the things we see and hear. A formal course intrudes on the learner’s natural learning path. The video above is an excellent illustration of some key points concerning instructional design. Some might try to understand the big picture and spend time figuring out where they’re at and why they’re in two teams. Now let’s flip it around a little.
Blackboard Quiz Generator: A Service of Wytheville Community College Blackboard Quiz Generator A simpler, faster way to create Blackboard quizzes and tests! Example I want to create a multiple-choice series of questions. 1. etc. After you submit the form, you get a file generated for you that will import into Blackboard using the Pool Manager (available with Blackboard v4 and v5, but not at Blackboard.com). Try it out and create a quiz If you use this service a lot and you use the "Select Specific Questions from Pool" feature in Blackboard, you may find a couple of Assessment Helper Scripts I've written very helpful. David Carter-Tod Wytheville Community College
2008, l’anno dell’eLearning I Learning Object Se ne parla continuamente, ma cos’è esattamente un Learning Object? In estrema sintesi, un Learning Object è un contenuto digitale, riusabile, che raggiunge uno specifico obiettivo didattico. Quindi un Learning Object (è utilizzato spesso il suo acronimo, LO) è un’unità di istruzione, in formato digitale, con le seguenti caratteristiche: ü riutilizzabile, per la sua autonomia, in diverse situazioni di apprendimento; ü autoconsistente, sufficiente per la comprensione di uno specifico concetto; ü modulare, aggregabile con altri LO all’interno di un corso o un’unità didattica; ü reperibile, grazie alla sua classificazione con i metadati; ü interoperabile, funzionante su diversi sistemi Learning Management System, grazie all’aderenza agli standard di settore (Scorm e Aicc). Un Learning Object generalmente adotta una comunicazione coinvolgente per l’utente. I Learning Object sono normalmente memorizzati su archivi chiamati “repository”, dove vengono classificati grazie ai metadati.
10+ Ways to Be an Exceptional Instructional Designer If you want to design online classes or training programs for high schools, universities, businesses, or non-profit organizations, you’ll need to become a jack-of-many-trades. Successful instructional designers need to be more than just experienced educators. To be truly exceptional, they need to develop skills in areas such as communication, technology, research, and programming. If you’re looking to brush up on your portfolio or get a job as a first time instructional designer, here are over ten ways that you can make yourself stand out from the crowd. 1. Become a master communicator. At its heart, instructional design is about communication. 2. Whether or not you’re a part of academia, being able to discuss learning theories with your subject matter expert can help you figure out the best way to present content and assignments. 3. 4. 5. 6. Unless your employer is asking you to build from scratch, you probably won’t need to become a serious programmer. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.