This week, Lesley and Seanna have teamed up to share some new thoughts on engagement. In the right hands, amazing things can be done with online activities, discussions, and assessments. The BIG DEAL though: yours are not the only hands. Engagement is grown by everyone in the class by taking our time in knowing and…
This blog post was originally written by Dr. Tannis Morgan, Advisor, Teaching and Learning and Researcher, Open Education Practices at BCcampus. We would like to thank Dr. Morgan for allowing us to repost her blog. You can find her other posts and work on her website: https://homonym.ca/ Link to original post How to teach online using…
As we should all know by now, pivoting rapidly to remote delivery of teaching and learning over the course of a few days to is not the same thing as designing an effective online course. However, as many of you will also now experience, designing an online course with a few weeks notice (perhaps also…
There are a number of tools that curriculum designers can use to help them design a program. These days curriculum design is really coalescing around an outcomes-based approach to curriculum. Also referred to as backwards design, the process starts with envisioning the program outcomes first: What do you want graduates of the program to be…
by: Dr. Seanna Takacs Let us say that you have heard of UDL and have an interest in making some modifications to your curriculum. You may have students whose learning needs have confounded you. They may be language learners or may have accommodation plans that you struggle to implement. You might have had a class…
by: Dr. Seanna Takacs When I begin to explain Universal Design for Learning to any audience, it is often received as paradigms and theories are: with quiet reservation until the audience can see where the rubber hits the road. What does this mean for my teaching? What does this mean for my time? How will…
Shortly after writing my recent post on discussion-based learning I came across a book by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins (2013) titled Essential Questions – Opening doors for student understanding. Asking questions is something most teachers do, however have we seriously considered how the quality of the questions impacts the quality of the response? Reflecting on…
“Learning through discussion is often aligned with learning through collaboration” (Laurillard, 2012). However, they are not the same pedagogical focus. The focus of collaboration is to produce something that has been created together. Discussion on the other hand is to explore concepts, negotiate meaning, share perspective and deepen understanding. In a traditional classroom discussion is…
At first glance, asynchronous discussion-based learning seems simple and obvious, pick a question to post in a forum and post it in the learning management system. If only it was this simple. As a beginning online instructor, I used the questions given to me by a colleague and found myself frustrated with a class full…