A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

Instructional Design

Ten Concierge ‘Keys’ for Supporting Individualized Online Course Development

Large group training workshops to facilitate online course design can be a mechanistic experience and a nightmare to schedule given perpetually busy faculty with overloaded calendars. Equally ineffective static, “self-serve” online materials only go so far and can leave faculty disengaged or confused (Riegle 1987; Howland and Wedmen 2004). Personal support services modeled on the hotel concierge are used successfully in health care and private industry and, to a lesser extent, in higher education (Michelau and Lane 2010). They hold promise as an approach for supporting online course development.

David S. McCurry, EdD, and Bonnie B. Mullinix, EdD April 28, 2017

Testing What You’re Teaching Without Teaching to the Test

Have your students ever told you that your tests are too hard? Tricky? Unfair? Many of us have heard these or similar comments. The conundrum

Cindy Decker Raynak and Crystal Ramsay, PhD August 8, 2016

Show the Learner Visible Signs of Their Learning

One of the strengths of gamification is that it provides visible milestones of the student’s mastery of content in real time (when it is well designed). Too often in an instructional setting, the learner doesn’t know whether or not he or she really understands or can apply the knowledge they are learning. There is often no visible sign of mastery of the content or application of the content.

Karl Kapp EdD March 6, 2014

Thinking of Collaborative Teaching? A Few Things to Consider

It used to be called team teaching, but that term is now used less often to describe the collaboration of colleagues when they jointly teach the same course. Multiple instructors may be involved in the course, each delivering a freestanding module; or two instructors may do the course together, each in class every day with all course activities and assignments integrated. And there are variations of each of these models.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD February 7, 2014

How to Create Assessments for the Flipped Classroom

It seems like everyone is talking about the flipped classroom. But how do you use this new model to construct lessons and assessments that reinforce student learning?

Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti October 4, 2013

Scaffolding Student Learning: Tips for Getting Started

Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We’ve written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students’ progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don’t perform well on the learning experiences we’ve designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it’s important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance.

Vicki Caruana PhD October 15, 2012

Course Design and Development Ideas That Work

This 17-page report features proven course design alternatives implemented in courses of varying sizes and disciplines. It’s sure inspire you to rethink how you could change certain components of your courses to build a better learning environment.

Faculty Focus April 1, 2010

Five Tips for Designing an Online Faculty Workshop

What is the best way to train and support a beginning online faculty member? At some colleges, the only option is on site training held on the campus over a day, a weekend, or a period of days during the summer. These on-site workshops, while potentially very effective, commit the faculty members to time, travel, and often inflexible scheduling. However, Berkeley College, with campuses in New York and New Jersey, has designed an online faculty workshop and set of training and support tools to complement its other professional development offerings.

Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti June 25, 2009

Establishing Online Instructor Performance Best Practices and Expectations

Helping faculty learn to survive and even thrive online is critical if we are to realize the potential of this new learning space. During a

Lawrence Ragan PhD. June 12, 2009

Strategies for Increasing Student Learning and Performance

When it comes to course design, is the goal to help your students understand concepts, enable future retrieval of concepts, or enable future retrieval of concepts and apply them in real-world situations? To create more effective learning environments, and minimize forgetting, some faculty are turning to Situation-based Learning Design (SBLD), which aligns learning context with performance context.

Mary Bart February 11, 2009

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