experts' corner: online lessons
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Learn the latest about interface design, instructional strategies, lesson content, use of video, audio, or other media
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Researchers uses qualitative descriptions and rich narrative excepts to describe what distinguishes exemplary online educators from others.
added November 11, 2014 "Exemplary Online Educators: Creating a Community of Inquiry" Perry, B., & Edwards, M. (2014). Exemplary online educators: Creating a community of inquiry. Online Submission, Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education--TOJDE v6 n2 Apr 2005 Originally, written in 2004, the authors find that "...exemplary online teachers create a community of inquiry that is comprised of a strong social, cognitive and teaching presence." They further identify and richly describe three common themes for effective educators. Chiefly that they are "challengers, affirmers and influencers." Download original article... |
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Can responding to published blogs be used to prompt reflective thinking by adult learners in an online and distance education course?
added September 17, 2014 "Reflective Thinking: Exploring Blog Use by Adult Learners" Timotheou, M. M. (2014). Reflective Thinking: Exploring Blog Use by Adult Learners. In Learning and Collaboration Technologies. Technology-Rich Environments for Learning and Collaboration (pp. 460-466). Springer International Publishing. The author presents a useful qualitative description of a small study that asked adult, distance learners taking an education course to follow and comment on a published educational blog of their choosing. This study distinguishes itself from other blogging activities by not pursuing blogging as a "learning journal" activity, but instead as an "educational activity for professionally interacting with and meaningfully challenging others' ideas and posted content." The author concludes that "students appreciated the reflection process that blogging engaged them into, while their motivation to further explore and use blogs to improve their learning experiences was increased." The author also discusses factors that affected blog interactions. Go to original article (may require journal subscription)... |
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Researchers analyze data from 6.9 million MOOC video viewing sessions to determine what design features enhances learner engagement.
added August 9, 2014 "How Video Production Affects Student Engagement: An Empirical Study of MOOC Videos" Guo, Philip J. and Kim, Juho and Rubin, Rob (2014) Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale Conference, L&S' 2004:41-50. The researchers conducted an empirical study of how video production decisions affect student engagement in online educational videos. The researchers used data from 6.9 million video watching sessions across four courses on the edX MOOC platform, and measured engagement by how long students watch each video, and whether they attempt to answer post-video assessment problems. Their main findings are that "shorter videos are much more engaging, that informal talking-head videos are more engaging, that Khan-style tablet drawings are more engaging, that even high-quality prerecorded classroom lectures might not make for engaging online videos, and that students engage differently with lecture and tutorial videos." The authors did not, however, assess the learning effectiveness of any of these formats. The authors provide a set of recommendations to help instructors and video producers take better advantage of the online video format. Go to original article (may require journal subscription)... |
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Researchers identify instructional strategies useful for military training systems
added July 16, 2014 "Instructional Strategies Framework for Military Training Systems" Vogel-Walcutt, Jennifer J., Logan Fiorella, and Naomi Malone (2013) Computers in Human Behavior 29 (5): 1490-1498. The authors attempt to consolidate the literature on instructional strategies into a coherent framework that can be used to enhance the design of military training systems. Their review is intended to provide a concise, organized, and practical framework for the selection and implementation of research-based instructional strategies relevant to military training goals. Go to original article (may require journal subscription)... |
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Researchers demonstrate strong value of enhancing informational graphics with emotional imagery.
added June 24, 2014 "Benefits of emotional design in multimedia instruction." Mayer, Richard E., and Gabriel Estrella (2014) Learning and Instruction 33:12-18. In this study, college students received a lesson on how viruses infect a cell. Students in the control group saw simple black and white graphics illustrating the step-by-step process. Students in the enhanced group saw the same series of steps enhanced with images of the cell expressing surprise, fear, and sickness at various stages of the infection, through human-like eyes, and with the virus depicted with a blue face, fierce eyes and a green dot at the end of each of the blue tentacles surrounding its face. The enhanced group performed significantly better on subsequent knowledge tests, with moderate effect sizes ranging from 0.65 to 0.69. Go to original article (may require journal subscription)... |
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Researchers demonstrate that use of Mayer's evidence-based principles of multimedia design can substantially increase short and long-term learning effectiveness.
added June 24, 2014 "Teaching for understanding in medical classrooms using multimedia design principles." Issa, Nabil, Richard E. Mayer, Mary Schuller, Edward Wang, Michael B. Shapiro, and Debra A. DaRosa (2013) Medical education 47(4):388-396. The authors compared pre-test/post-test results for 37 third year medical students receiving either a traditional PowerPoint lecture, versus 43 third year medical students receiving the same lecture content updated using Mayer's evidence-based principles of multimedia design. Examples of changes made included
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Researchers find that decorative illustrations reduce learning in students with low prior knowledge, but increase it in students with high prior knowledge.
added June 24, 2014 "Triggering situational interest by decorative illustrations both fosters and hinders learning in computer-based learning environments." Magner, Ulrike IE, Rolf Schwonke, Vincent Aleven, Octav Popescu, and Alexander Renkl (2014) Learning and Instruction 29:141-152. The authors used a computer-based learning environment teaching geometry and enriched it with interesting decorative illustrations. They compared pre/post-test results for learners using this environment or taking the same geometry lessons in the same environment but without the decorative illustrations. The authors found that their decorative illustrations did trigger situational interest (with images depicting dynamic or active imagery triggering greater interest than those with static imagery), that the decorative illustrations did not appear to increase sustained interest, and that the net result was a modest increase in the effectiveness of the learning environment for those with high prior knowledge, but a reduction in the learning effectiveness for those with low prior knowledge. Go to original article (may require journal subscription)... |