Chances are you have a Learning Management System (LMS) like Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, or Moodle at your school. But how do you use it? The findings from a recent survey by Pomerantz, Brown, and Brooks (2018) of U.S. learning institutions are rather alarming. Despite the
Most online courses have what we call “traditional discussions,” which follow the read-write-post (and perhaps reply to a peer or two) pattern. Even if the discussion questions are interesting, both instructors and students can get tired of the same old routine. We recommend trying any
When online instructors and instructional designers work together to develop a course, communication is often one of the biggest challenges as thoughts and intentions on both sides get lost in translation. As a faculty member who’s also spent time as an instructional designer, I’ve had
One of the goals of professional programs is to develop students’ critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, however it’s not always easy to create authentic exercises that enable students to practice the kinds of critical thinking skills required by their profession and then demonstrate competency. This
Most faculty assume that students would welcome any use of social media in a course. After all, social media use is ubiquitous among students outside of class, and many students are already surreptitiously using it during class. But instructors often find that students are far
Students traditionally receive only the course description and textbook list prior to starting a class. Everything else about the course is learned from the syllabus they get on the first day. But some of the information contained in the syllabus might be valuable to students
Active learning improves student performance and increases enthusiasm for learning. But despite its known benefits, active learning can be challenging to implement for asynchronous online learners. The most popular active learning techniques—such as think-pair-share, audience polling, and game-based learning—center around students working together in a
When I was asked to create an online course 20 years ago, I simply transcribed my face-to-face lectures into 10–15 page Word documents that I posted in our LMS. Don’t ask me how my students managed to get through them.
In our 24/7, always-connected world where we are inundated with information from all sides, the ability to identify quality resources to inform our research and actions has become a major focus in higher education. Digital Content Curation, as it is called, is something that many
It is no secret that the cost of textbooks has skyrocketed over the past years, with students spending on average around a thousand dollars a year on textbooks (Meyer, 2016). It should thus come as no surprise that the majority of students have opted out
Magna Publications © 2023 All rights reserved
