Sunday, January 27, 2008

7 Things You Should Know About Lulu

Lulu is a web-based self-publishing service, providing online access to the tools an individual needs to design, publish, and print original material, including books, brochures, reports, calendars, and posters. Faculty can use the service to publish more timely textbooks and other material for courses, and by having access to the tools of production, students can see and understand the processes involved.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Rethinking Teaching for the Knowledge Society

Author Diana Laurillard's study addresses how universities have been aware of the pressures to expand access to higher education, yet the knowledge society requires more graduates fueled by the expanding higher education sector. In turn, it is generating more knowledge industries, producing additional, competitive pressures for traditional institutions of higher education. Knowledge industries are creating the means by which individuals can acquire the immediate skills and knowledge those industries need. As a result, many individuals are questioning the true benefit of a university education, given it's cost.

Hidden Costs of Graphical User Interfaces: Failure

An interesting study on graphical interfaces allowing users to issue commands using pull-down menus, icon tool bars, and keyboard shortcuts. While menus and icon tool bars are easier to lean, the study shows keyboard shortcuts are more efficient , although the transition to learning shortcuts are not readily adopted.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Designing, implementing, and evaluating an online portfolio

The purpose of this study is to discuss the development, implementation, and evaluation of a portfolio requirement for the Master’s Program in Educational Leadership through the University of Cincinnati offered entirely online. Portfolio development, implementation, and evaluation using the e-Portfolio tool in the Content System of the Blackboard Academic Suite will be discussed.

Wikis for online collaboration in the instructional design process

Wikis are used in small groups to create, revise, and edit instructional design materials. Advantages to the learners and the instructor include the ability to see what each member of the group has contributed, the addition of more channels of communication, and more reliable version control of design documents. This study describes a process for using wikis to collaborate online.

An interactive course on instructional methods for future faculty

Opportunities for graduate students to develop teaching skills are important but rare. This study describes an online/distance graduate course on instructional pedagogies.

Monday, January 07, 2008

A Learning Style Survey for College

Are your students or yourself the educator having trouble learning new information in a college class? You may want to learn more about unique learning styles. Learning styles are ways we prefer to learn. It doesn't have anything to do with intelligent or what skills you have learned. It has to do with how your brain works most efficiently to learning new information.

There is no "right" approach to learning. The important thing is to be aware of the nature of your own learning style. If we are aware of how our brain best learns, we will have a better chance of studying in a way that will pay off. Take this survey to identify your particular style.

The Web Changes Everything...

“The Web changes everything.” Training included. Yet most instructional designers earned their credentials long before the advent of blogs, RSS, podcasts, microcontent, wikis, Google, and mash-ups.

What Web competencies should generalist instructional designers have under their belts? Dave Lee and Jay Cross have been noodling on this. Here is their working assumption:

What are yours?

Criteria for Evaluating Online Courses

The criteria presented in this fun guide are based on the national and international experiences of staff in the Instructional Media and Design department at Grant MacEwan College. Although they were developed to assist educators in evaluating the effectiveness of online courses, they may also be used as guidelines for course developers.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Ed-Cast Design & Functionality Scoring Rubric

Many educators appear to be reluctant in creating Podcasts, or are readily jumping on the Podcast bandwagon without measuring effectiveness for students. Online Educators and Instructional Designer looking to "effectively" integrate Podcasts in their distance ed curriculum can turn to an assessment tool designed by the University of San Francisco for effectively creating podcasts titled Ed-Cast Design & Functionality Scoring Rubric. This valuable discovery was shared thanks to a class mate, Mawrin Britto.

An Explorative Study about Second Life, the Virtual World

If users accept Virtual Worlds as a new way and channel to communicate, collaborate, and cooperation, and if institutions arrive to provide value to users, Virtual Worlds might become the next generation platform for Internet users. The Virtual University of Edinburgh (VUE) group is a virtual educational and research institute bringing together all those interested in the use of
virtual worlds for teaching, research and outreach related to the University of Edinburgh.

However, in order to become mainstream, Virtual Worlds like Second Life have many challenges to overcome and where user acceptance is probably the most important one. In an Explorative Study about Second Life, this report assesses the user acceptance of Virtual Worlds, specifically Second Life. By means of a survey with almost 250 respondents this report provides first empirical results of the user acceptance of Second Life.