INFOgraphic | Gamification

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What is Gamification?	Gamification enhances the student learning experience by incorporating gaming elements into instructional materials.
How is gamification different than game-based learning?	In gamification, you apply gaming mechanisms that encourage and stimulate students to learn. On the other hand, in game-based learning, students learn from playing games. Gamification essentially is about encouraging a behavior from your students while game-based learning is about presenting content in a game format.
Where is gamification used?	Gamification is used in any area that uses e-learning and training to teach. So, gamification can be used on any audience that is learning a concept. Common examples can be found in education, healthcare, IT training, sports, law, and government.
When should you use gamification?	It depends on the audience and the subject matter. Use gamification techniques to motivate, challenge and engage students. Also use gamification techniques to help students track their progress and to reward them for progress AND completion.
How can you easily use gamification?	Letter grades, points and kudos are the easiest form of gamification. Incorporating gamification involves creating any reward system that encourages students to do an action.

  

References

Davis, V. (2014). Gamification in Education. Edutopia. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/gamification-in-education-vicki-davis. Retrieved 20 October 2014. 

Gamification vs. Game-Based eLearning: Can You Tell the Difference? ELearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/gamification-vs-game-based-elearning-can-you-tell-the-difference. Retrieved 20 October 2015.

Isaacs, S. (2015). The Difference Between Gamification and Game-Based Learning. ASCD in Service. http://inservice.ascd.org/the-difference-between-gamification-and-game-based-learning/. Retrieved 20 October 2014

The Difference Between Gamification and Game-Based Learning. TeachThought. http://teachthought.com/learning/difference-gamification-game-based-learning/ Retrieved 20 October 2014.

INFOgraphic | Learning about learning theories

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So, what is the big deal about learning theories?

If you are a teacher, course writer, instructional designer, technology coordinator, why should you care about learning theories? The answer is that theory is what grounds your work.  It is the why behind what we do. Having knowledge of learning theories is equivalent to putting more tools in your toolbox. So, be proactive and learn as much as you can about the various learning theories listed below.

INFOgraphic | What are instructional technology people talking about?

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Being a technology and information consultant as well as a teacher affords me the opportunity to work alongside of many in the world of instructional technology. Instructional Technology (I.T.) people talk about learning, design and technology. So, what topics are they talking about?

NEWS | New Section | INFOgraphic

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Keeping you update with education research around the Web!

I have some great news. I'm starting a new section entitled INFOgraphics! This will give me a chance to share some really quick tidbits of information with you. Specifically, I will include news about the world of online education, instructional design, instructional technology and educational media. I'll also share these INFOgraphics on my social media accounts from Google+ and Pinterest so that you can view all of them at the same time.

Looking forward to sharing more with you!

5 Ways to Minimize Online Student Separation

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Image: Pixabay.com

What can instructors and distant students do to minimize feelings of separation? When you are designing courses, what can you do to provide support to your online students? Here are some easy ways you can help your students feel more connected to your class.

NEWS | FREE Professional Development Opportunities @ ADOBE

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Keeping you update with educational opportunities around the Web!

If you are like me, you are probably engaged in your summer activities but are still looking to take on one or two professional development opportunities. (Yes, we teachers still need these!)

So, here are some FREE courses that you can take at Adobe Education Exchange. There are many opportunities that are really great for online higher education teachers. There are self-paced workshops, collaborative courses and live events. You can search for only "college/university", by subject, by Adobe product and by ISTE / Common Core Standards.

Check out Adobe's Education Exchange for professional development for teachers, https://edex.adobe.com/professional-development/

Technology Website Review | EdShelf.com

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Keeping you update with education resources around the Web!

What do you get when you cross Amazon's user recommender system with educational technologies? If you guessed EdShelf, then you are CORRECT!

Instructional Design for Teachers | Conducting an Analysis of Your Students as Learners (Part 2 of 2)

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My previous article, Instructional Design for Teachers | Analyzing Your Student as Learner discussed analyzing your student as a learner. This article looks at the meaning of analyzing your students and what you, as a teacher, get from doing this.  We will discuss the challenges of analyzing your students and easy methods to use for this process.

Instructional Design for Teachers | Analyzing Your Student as Learner (Part 1 of 2)

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As teachers we create a great deal of learning material for our students. For courses, we find ourselves creating midterms, final exams, learning activities, homework assignments, final projects, handouts, lectures, screencasts, slide presentations, learning modules, websites, practice sheets, etc. We may create these things from scratch or by selecting from a myriad of resources such as a textbook, test bank, PowerPoint slides, websites, or digital libraries.

Are MOOCs a Successful Education Model ?

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A few years ago, I wrote an article on MOOCs and online education. MOOCs were seen as the wave of the distance learning future but what happened to that notion? 

Using Video (Pt. 2) | FREE Online Video Repositories for Higher Education

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www.pixabay.com

Do you know what OER is? OER stands for open educational resources which means that the resources are accessible to anyone and are completely free. I have been consulting in this space for awhile now and will write on this topic at a later time.

In this post, I'd like to continue the series on the "Use of Video in Online Courses" by sharing some great OER video repositories in education. These repositories contain loads of educational/instructional videos that you can use in your online courses.

Using Video (Pt. 1) | 5 Types of Video Assignments for Online Courses

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Over the past decade, the use of video has increasingly become a great option for creating engaging learning activities for students in all types of courses. The use of videos are prevalent in blended courses, self-paced courses and in online in higher education. Many instructional videos are now available in the public domain that can be used in online courses. Teachers also have the option of creating their own videos to use in their course assignments. Some of the most common questions I hear from teachers involve how to create compelling video-based assignments that will enhance their students' learning experience. Here's how I look at it:

NEWS | RESEARCH - 2015 Survey on Online Education by OLC

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Image by Pixabay

If you teach online, you might have wondered how distance education is doing as opposed to traditional education. For me, I've wondered about the future of my faculty colleagues who teach on-campus as opposed to those of us who teach online.

I've been in and out traveling but wanted to point you to the 2015 survey on the "health" of distance education as reported by the OLC last month.

So, in case you missed this:

2015 Survey on Online Education by Online Learning Consortium
http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/2015SurveyInfo.pdf

Here is a 1-hour slide presentation of the OLC survey entitled, "Online Report Card - Tracking Online Education in the United States"
http://www.brainshark.com/pearsonschool/vu?pi=zFuzN896GzMmpAz0


Read the Babson College page on the survey HERE:
http://www.babson.edu/news-events/babson-news/Pages/2016-babson-releases-2015-survey-of-online-learning.aspx

Simple C.R.A.P. Test for Your Online Courses (POSTER)

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When creating online content and developing online course materials for your students, you should make sure that they follow good design principles.

The C.R.A.P. is a checklist that can help you gauge the visual impact that your material has on its audience. The acronym C.R.A.P. stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity for short. These are important design elements that should be considered when creating online content on your school's LMS, on your website or company's intranet. For details on each element and how it relates to your online content, read my previous article HERE.
So, when you are doing content development, make sure that all of your online course content passes the C.R.A.P. test. 

Click to download the poster.

A Simple C.R.A.P. Test for Your Online Courses

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Does your online course pass for C.R.A.P.?

In instructional design, it is important to design courses that visually pass the "sniff" test. The "sniff" test I'm referring to is the one that tests for contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity or C.R.A.P. for short. This started me thinking about the courses that I design and how they would pass the C.R.A.P. evaluation. Would they pass muster?  I have to delve a little deeper.

NEWS | I'M BACK!!! PLANNING THE NEW YEAR!!!

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Hey all! By now, all of my teacher friends are back to business in their classrooms. My content developers and instructional designer buddies are back to being knee deep in projects for the new year. I am working on some interesting online instructional projects this time along with preparing for an online mini-course.  Here are some initial thoughts: