Course Design

The concept of universal design for learning (UDL) was initially developed in order to provide equal access to learning opportunities for students in face-to-face courses. It has since been adapted for many learning situations, including online courses. However, there is still a widespread perception that

Supriya Sarnikar, associate professor in the Economics and Management Department at Westfield State University, enrolled in several MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) offered through Coursera for several reasons: personal enrichment, to learn of any pedagogical or technological innovations these courses offered, and to better understand

Careful preparation is essential to the success of an online course “to provide a positive experience for the students and to be able to maximize your time with students so that you’re not spending time on reworking things that weren’t clear up front,” says Ann

The University of Wisconsin’s Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning is a good place to keep abreast of current trends in distance education. This year the two hottest topics were open education and mobile learning.

At both the beginning and end of each day, it is important to remember that there are only so many options for designing and delivering distance education courses that comply with copyright and fair use law. If I wanted to give someone the short version

Andy Stanfield, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at Florida Institute of Technology, is a proponent of using Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning to improve instructional design.

The most important lesson we can teach our students is that college is just part of their lifelong learning journey, and most of their intellectual growth will happen after college. This means forming a “personal learning environment” (PLE) that will preserve, organize, and harness the

Screen after screen of text is what Kevin Gumienny refers to as “crappy” learning. Gumienny, curriculum coordinator for the Texas A & M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX), says that there are some valid reasons for using this type of instructional design—it’s easy to create and

I have been teaching online for 19 years, and during this time I have encountered many online courses where the layout was less than smooth, the writing quality embarrassing, and the contents confusing. And you who read this column have also experienced this: I know