Distance Learning responds to a need As we develop courses with instructors here at SPS (the School of Professional Studies), we often discover that instructors want to try something new as they assess student learning. They are tired of doing just papers or problem sets. Our learning designers created an Assessment Gallery so that instructors can review sample assignments, discussion board posts, and even rubrics created by faculty members as they go through our development process. Our initial strategy when we started building out the gallery, was to view this as an internal tool that we could share with SPS

Research shows that students learn more effectively in online courses when an instructor gives consistent, timely feedback (Ramlall & Ramlall, 2016). Anyone who has developed a course with our DL team has discussed this as part of our process.  We know that our instructors spend time thinking through exactly how they will participate in online discussions and give comments on student work to help students learn the most from the experience of completing their assessments. Feedback flows both ways Feedback should also flow from students to instructors. This post is a simple reminder that it’s a great idea for instructors

TEACHx, a fun day set aside to explore teaching and learning, will be held on May 18, 2022, in the Norris Student Center. We encourage you to join the Distance Learning staff as we take some time out to think about creative, effective teaching as we listen to a variety of presenters talk about their recent experiments and what they have learned from them. We encourage you to learn more and register at TEACHx.com. The School of Professional Studies’ learning designers will present some of their innovative work.   David Noffs and Assistant Director Shannon Castle will be part of the digital

Discover new ways to teach and learn If you have not attended the TEACHx conference in the past, we strongly urge you to try it out this year. It’s a day to focus your attention on new approaches to teaching and to hear from your colleagues as they present about their experiments with teaching. This year the one-day conference will be in person once again. Where will it be held? Here are the details: When: Wednesday, May 18, 2022, 8am- 5pm (CDT) Where: Northwestern’s Evanston campus, Norris Center Register Here Come celebrate the successes of instructors, students, learning designers, and

Why Use Discussion Boards? Discussion boards are a commonly-used strategy to encourage engagement in an online class. But how do you keep discussions fresh?  How might you add variety to the discussion boards in your class? We have 5 tips to share with you: 1. Ask students to end their initial response with a question for their peers. This approach opens up the discussion. When a student reads through the discussion board, there are a variety of questions/discussions to engage in, which creates a richer experience for everyone. The goal of this strategy is to help students consider more topics