The overwhelming majority of students who take my human physiology course intend to apply to medical school. In order to complete a medical school application, these students are asked to complete a number of academically challenging and time consuming prerequisite classes, score well on the MCAT, and at the same time juggle volunteer, shadowing, and …
Category: Instructional Design
Aug 17
RE: UDL Uncompromising Directives by Phyllis Wright
Hi Phyllis, I didn’t see a way to leave a comment on your post, but I did particularly like your focus on the ‘why’: My goal is always to engage the “why” first in face to face or online, then “what” and finally “how.” With teaching or leadership, unless I can convince my followers to …
Aug 15
In the Home Stretch with UDL
UDL!! The Recognition Network: Learning about UDL has been liberating: I now know why to include images rather than just text in my PPTs (I thought they were unnecessary decoration or ‘cutesy’); why my colleague almost always includes a visual (screen) during a talk; why my screen now will have a great deal of white …
Aug 10
Introducing the Fabulous OERs!
What a great learning module! As a teacher of Academic Writing to international students, we push, pull, struggle, cajole, train, scare, practice, practice, practice how to incorporate outside sources without plagiarizing…. But this new-found knowledge of OERs creates a new dimension to the training of using sources! I had heard of Creative Commons, but I …
Jul 19
Crazy lil thing called “Assessment” or What’s in an Approach?
Approach?? I am constantly assessing my students in my classes: with every utterance from my students, I am assessing what they are saying, how they are saying it, their strengths, weaknesses, application of what we have focused on up to that point in the course, what they understand, what they don’t understand based on questions …
Jul 16
Self-directed Heutagogical Learning
I loved the article on self-directed heutagogical learning. I feel like my online course has found a home. It of course will be a challenge. The concept is still so new and unknown that my computer is telling me it is misspelled. In my course, I am seeking to develop self-motivated ministers to do acts …
Jul 14
Self-Evaluated, Self-Directed and Heutagogical Learning – NIMC (Not In My Classroom!)
The prompt asks us to describe our initial thoughts on designing an entire course or a single assignment, and my very first reaction is included in the subject line. Having said that, I think I need to clarify – I’m thinking mostly about the undergraduate prerequisite science courses that I’ll be responsible for in the …
Jul 01
Vision vs. Reality?
Yes, it’s exciting to me: an online course will allow learners who cannot attend F2F courses to benefit from what we teach. Even if I design online learning modules (different from an entire course), this will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of F2F: it will free up time for more meaningful interactions and engagement with …
Jun 30
Motivations and challenges for online teaching
I confess that my motivations for teaching online are mostly external–we have a new degree program that offers online learning, and half of the students concentrate in my area. However, given that it’s now a “fact of life,” I find it an interesting challenge to try and transfer some of what I do well in …
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