Week 4 Links and analysis

Building e-learning

by Keenan Kibrick

Good afternoon Pepperdine University audience, I wanted to have one more link group to focus on the topic of best instructional design practices in the classroom.  I believe these resources are very useful and I hope you will find them useful as well.

Learner help to build e-Learning

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/learners-help-build-better-e-learning/

Why I opened it:  This article was opened because it appeared to help facilitate a great theory of education, making the classroom based on what students want/need, and seeking out student opinion.  I was curious to see how to improve classes before a class starts based on previous year data.  I always follow this theory after a class finishes, but I was curious to see how the data could be used for the next semester.

Why I kept reading it:  It divides tips for how to reflect on your class before you start it.  It’s all about developing new courses, but it could also be used for someone who is trying to re-develop a course they are teaching. It takes tips from the idea of thinking like a designer with the purpose of teaching to a specific audience.  This designer method is very good for faculty, but even more important in an online class or blended classroom.  Online and blended classes should be laid out as much as possible on day one because more of a class is public at a time in an online environment then a face-to-face environment.  Students need to be able to navigate the different tabs to know what to expect for the class.  Building a fully prepared online class before the first day is very important, and these steps help make sure that the class which is built mirrors best design practices.

For more information about this I also recommend the following Extra Credit Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HmtmoGwpZc

It’s on thinking like a designer.  While the video is for game design I find a lot of it can be applied to class design. Both this video and the article provide great ideas to help prepare for a new class, and how to re-examine to improve a class. This idea overall of thinking like a designer is a great practice and the document really helps follow user experience feedback methods to improve an online class.

It’s perfect for:  Online faculty, faculty who use courses to improve their class, and faculty who want to learn best design practices applied to the field of education

Evaluating eLearning

http://lectora.com/blog/how-to-evaluate-your-online-training-course/?utm_source=elearning-industry-blog-post&utm_medium=blog-link&utm_content=the-anatomy-of-great-e-learning-quiz-questions&cid=elearning-industry-blog-post

Why I opened it:  I found the above link while looking at this link.  http://elearningindustry.com/the-anatomy-of-great-e-learning-quiz-questions.  The first link was about ways want to improve the type of questions faculty can provide on exams, and when they mentioned it was about e-learning I was curious to explore the differences between e-learning questions and face-to-face questions.  The article though wasn’t that good, to me, but it did have a link to an article about evaluating our own online classes. This link turned out to be worth it and a great article about evaluating a person’s own online course. 

Why I kept reading it:  It’s a simple short blog post about 3 ways people can also think like a designer for classes.  I highly recommend reading this article after the two posts from the first article.  It talks about user testing in online classes, feedback forms inside classes, and tracking student achievement after a class.  It has great strategies that are worth exploring for a class, and can even expand past the online and blended classroom for ideas.

It’s perfect for:  Class improvement, more info. to think like a designer, faculty who want to read a short but valuable way to re-think the learning process.