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Fear and Design

By Kristin Kowal
December 7, 2016

Posted in: Instructional Design

In this post, I’ll share what my colleague Moses Wolfenstein and I learned about instructional designers’ fears during a group discussion at the 2016 Distance Teaching and Learning Conference (DTLC) in Madison, Wisconsin. I’ll also share a handout with some strategies for conquering fear in design.

Context of the Discussion

A table with conference participants writing down their fears on post-it notes.
Conference participants write down their fears during “The Dark Side of Instructional Design” discussion at DTLC.

Moses and I came up with the idea of leading a discussion about fear and design after reminiscing about various projects we had worked on. Many times, some kind of fear or anxiety got in the way of the project’s success. We searched briefly and did not find anything that specifically addressed fear in instructional design. After that, we decided that we wanted to hear from other designers about their experiences. This led to a discussion about “The Dark Side of Instructional Design” at the conference in August.

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OERs: A Curator’s Perspective

By Eileen Horn
September 4, 2016

Posted in: Competency-based Education (CBE) / Faculty / Instructional Design / News / Teaching Online / Tips

It’s a busy time around here! With the fall semester starting and new competency-based program development in full swing, everyone is working hard to deliver the best learning experiences possible. Back-to-school season is exciting but challenging for learners, instructors, and those of us in supporting roles. Part of that hard work is curating learning resources—open educational resources (OERs). Today’s post will explore how some of our faculty are approaching OERs.OER logo

In the midst of all this preparation, I’ve recently heard conversations about how important thoughtfully curated learning resources are to a student’s success, and it occurred to me it might be interesting to look back at the transcript of a conversation I had with Kim Kostka about using OERs. Kim and her colleagues Tom Neal and Tony Millevolte assembled and annotated an array of OERs for one of our Flexible Option competency sets.

Here are some of the highlights from my conversation with Kim.

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Is Virtual Reality the Next Trend in Education?

By AngelaMeidl
July 5, 2016

Posted in: News

While Virtual Reality (VR) has been around for some time, it is only recently that major companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, and HTC have been developing headsets for home use. While many new VR owners are using these headsets for games, there also exists potential for VR in other environments. Oculus and Facebook, the owners of Oculus and the Oculus Rift VR headset, recently held their inaugural Launch Pad event at Facebook HQ

Facebook HQ, Menlo Park, CA
Facebook HQ, Menlo Park, CA

In Palo Alto, CA to discuss how to further the possibilities of VR in areas outside of games. Participants were asked to fill out an application detailing what they thought was missing in the VR space, and how they feel they could best contribute to the field. I was one of those 100 participants invited out to Facebook for a day of workshops and support from the Oculus team to try to develop a tool in VR, in my case a visualization tool for our Data Science program.

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Student Engagement

By Kristin Kowal
May 27, 2016

Posted in: Faculty / Teaching Online

The spring semester is over, summer is here, and that means faculty retreats! This year at our University of Wisconsin Health and Wellness Management retreat, a major theme we explored was student engagement. How do we keep students motivated and actively learning in online courses? Below you will find the synopsis of our session on student engagement, along with some resources if you want to learn more.

A grid showing examples of a variety of students: one that expects to succeed and values the task, one that expects to succeed but doesn't value the task, one that expects success but doesn't value the task, and one that doesn't expect to succeed and does not value the task.
Motivation = expectations x value (an original artistic interpretation by yours truly). Click to enlarge.

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Studio Learning for Faculty Development

By Eileen Horn
April 25, 2016

Posted in: Faculty / Instructional Design

Today, I introduce Fred Baker, an instructional designer at the University of Tampa. We have a common interest in openness in higher education, and I recently learned that he took a compelling approach to faculty development. Because we are in the process of designing an onboarding and development program for our faculty, I wanted to learn more about what he did.

Cover image of "Creating Significant Learning Experiences"The project was originally conceived of as a studio learning experience in which faculty would read and discuss L. Dee Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences, then create tools and course components based on principles from the text, receiving feedback from peers along the way. In consideration of the busy schedules of most faculty, the experience was divided into two phases, with Phase I focused on reading and discussing the book and Phase II being the hands-on portion. Intrigued by the idea of offering something like this for our faculty, I was eager to learn from Fred about the logistics involved, and about how things went. His answers to my questions were enlightening and encouraging so I wanted to share a bit of that interview with you.

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