By Justin Mason
April 4, 2017
Athena is an associate professor of philosophy, and this summer she’ll be creating an online version of one of her courses.
Her chair/dean has asked her to work with an instructional designer, but Athena hasn’t worked with an “ID” before. She feels a bit nervous about it, so she asks a few of her colleagues for some friendly advice.
By Eileen Horn
February 24, 2017
At CEOEL, we are starting to work on developing a new degree for UW System’s Flexible Option. Before embarking on this new journey, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the last one. I had the opportunity to work with a great group of faculty and instructional designers this past year while developing UW–Extension’s first degree, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA). In this post, I’ll highlight just a few ways that this degree incorporates research-based recommendations for designing and delivering learning experiences to self-directed, self-paced learners. These practices address factors such as learner characteristics, assessment methods, and presentation of materials.
By Kristin Kowal
December 7, 2016
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.
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.
By Eileen Horn
September 4, 2016
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.
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.
By Eileen Horn
April 25, 2016
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.
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.