Tag: assignment ideas

Digital Storytelling: Another Tool To Add To Your Pedagogy Toolbox

Digital Storytelling In Education: Why care? Telling stories allows us to narrate our experiences. When we hear stories, particularly powerful ones, they tend to stick with us (Rossiter, 2002). We all respond to storytelling, regardless of our backgrounds (Alexander & Levine, 2008). It is not surprising then that using storytelling in the classroom has been a successful pedagogical approach. Different technological tools and programs, such as podcasts, infographics, and other types of presentations, make it easy for instructors to create digital stories (McLellan, 2007).  Digital stories weave “the art of telling stories with a variety of digital multimedia, such as


Mapping the Terrain: How To Help Your Students Wrap their Minds Around Big Ideas

What Are Mind Maps? Learning researchers in the 1960s proposed mind maps as a way to make learning happen more quickly. Tony Buzan, with degrees in such varied fields as psychology, mathematics, English, and the general sciences, drew attention to mind maps in his writings about strategies to enhance memory and increase learning (Murley, 2007). In her piece Using Mind Maps as a Teaching and Learning Tool to Promote Student Engagement, Zipp (2011) explains “Mind mapping is a learning technique which uses a non-linear approach to learning that forces the learner to think and explore concepts using visuospatial relationships flowing


Successes and Lessons Learned: Designing Online Group Presentations

As much as we like to think our online courses are perfect, there is always room for improvement. Our job is never done. On the Distance Learning team, we are first and foremost concerned with partnering with faculty to develop high-quality learning experiences for students. That includes the ongoing process of revisiting courses and individual assessments: how well did this work for students and instructors, and how can we make it better? The Distance Learning team believes in a good challenge, and during the Spring 2016 course development cycle, faculty developer Dave DeVries and I met and conquered a design


Word Cloud Activities: Engaging Learners in the Online Classroom

In the online classroom, word clouds can be a fun, simple, low-stakes way to collect and convey information among learners. Of course, there are those who push back on the use of word clouds, like software architect Jacob Harris who says, “word clouds support only the crudest sorts of textual analysis, much like figuring out a protein by getting a count only of its amino acids.” But, some of us also counter that and say things like if appropriately designed, framed for the right audience, and the purpose is clear and meaningful, word clouds can be effective, engaging activities for adult


Online Group Work

Mary Bart of FacultyFocus.com posted an article about effective online group work techniques. Many students in SPS programs are working professionals who regularly work in collaborative environments. Many businesses benefit from the use of online technology to work in teams both locally and at a distance. For students enrolled in fully online courses at SPS, most peer interaction is online and computer mediated. Designing group activities and assignments for this environment will help students spend more time completing the assignment and less time configuring a collaboration infrastructure. Below are excerpts from Mary’s article with annotations to contextualize it for SPS