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Month: June 2020

Content creation and sharing via TedEd

Published June 27, 2020

With more and more faculty putting courses online in response to quarantining in the wake of COVID-19, there’s been a lot of focus on content creation and sharing such as creating microlectures as accessible recordings or as live synchronous sessions in a web-conferencing platform like Zoom. But now people are getting a little tired of Zoom sessions being the sole approach to content creation and sharing. So here’s another idea — TedEd. TedEd provides an easy-to-use template for creating lessons using Ted Talks, YouTube videos, or videos you create and upload to YouTube. Here is an example of one I…

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Random thinking about discussion

Published June 6, 2020

In various conversations about online courses recently, I’ve shared some of my random thoughts about online discussion. Such as… When done well discussion has great value. Engaging in a discussion can help students: explore a diversity of perspectives recognize and investigate their assumptions increase their intellectual agility show respect for others’ voices and experiences develop students’ capacity for clear communication and so on. When planning for a discussion I tend to complete four steps: Start by thinking about the purpose of the discussion. What is my instructional goal? How does it relate to helping students achieve the learning objectives/outcomes. Then…

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“Getting to Know You” Activities

Published June 6, 2020
“Getting to Know You” Activities

“Getting to Know You” activities are an important consideration when establishing social presence in courses. My students are educators and learning experience designers so my “getting to know you” activities are sometimes design oriented — serving two important goals: social presence and design thinking/exploration. In addition these activities serve as low-stakes opportunities for orienting students to various tools and platforms (e.g., Flipgrid). I use these activities at the start of a semester as well as throughout the course for reconnection purposes because I don’t think one getting-to-know-you activity during the first week of a course is sufficient. Establishing social presence…

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