Instructional Design

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North Carolina Women’s Oral History Collection with Dan Fountain

Professor of History Dan Fountain spoke to us about the North Carolina Women’s Oral History Collection, including the history of the project and how those working on it adapted capture methods during the pandemic.   Tell us about the project. We’ve been doing oral histories at Meredith for over 15 years. It began with a partnership …

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Benefits of Implementing Course Templates in Your Department

Around the world, instruction is increasingly delivered asynchronously online, with educators facing new challenges and searching for ways to maintain rigor and quality content. As online education has emerged across mainstream higher education, an increasing number of MPA programs are offering online courses, hybrid courses and entire degree programs online (Naylor and Wilson, 2009; Powell, 2007). …

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New Ways to Track Work for Students and Instructors in Brightspace

There now new ways for students and instructors to track work and submissions in Brightspace! We’ve added 2 new widgets to homepages Work to Do widget for students The Work to Do widget shows upcoming, due, and overdue work. Students can see the work for a course on the course homepage OR work for all …

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Backwards Design and Transparency 2: Modules and Assignments

Previously we discussed how to use backwards design to design an entire course. You can apply some backwards design principles when creating your modules as well. Brightspace’s HTML editor and Insert Stuff tool are great for creating modules that provide clarity to your students by keeping the rationale for your decisions easily accessible and in …

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Backwards Design and Transparency at the Course Level

Numerous instructional and course design models depend upon “backwards design” as their prime organizing principle. Many instructors start by deciding which content they want to include in their course, then decide on assessments, then course objectives. Backwards design reverses that process, making content the last thing you would choose.  Flower Darby, in her book Small …

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Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction: Time tested approach to successful instruction

Oftentimes instructors need a simple, repeatable process to help them when they are in the weeds of course design. One such process is Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction.  Robert Gagné was an American educational psychologist best known for developing multiple systems for simplifying and delivering instruction. He pioneered the science of instruction during World War …

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