onlinelearningcoursedesign

  As I was learning to use Adobe Captivate to produce interactive activities for my online courses, I decided to push the envelope per se and attempt to produce a game.  After about 40-50 hours of work, the Circulatory System game was complete. The goal of this game is for students to learn the human circulatory system by navigating through it in order to find hidden robots and scientists. The game essentially maps out the entire circulatory system as arteries and veins are represented by "hallways" in a science fiction lab setting. The game includes a screen that tallies how many robots and scientists were found and the player is rewarded with a success screen when finishing the game.  From a Captivate perspective, the game includes a lot of advanced actions and variables to keep track of the player's path and actions. I really found these to be a challenge in getting everything to work.  My efforts in developing this game and many more interactive activities was re...

Images are a great way to convey information, but it is important to use images that help to communicate your message. Images used for decoration or disconnected to content add nothing and can even detract from your message. Research supports the idea that people learn better from text and graphics than from text alone. One theory suggests that people may store information in long-term memory better with textual information paired with relevant graphics. Our brains process visual information presented by graphics faster than text. According to the Visual Teaching Alliance: Approximately 65% of the population learns visually 90% of the information entering the brain is visual Visual Aids increase learning by 40% Our eyes can register 36,000 visual messages per hour Image Types Which image format should you use? The answer is it depends on the type of information you wish to convey. Here is a short primer on image formats. Jpeg (Joint Photographers Experts Group) i...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Several_empty_red_pens.jpg Giving Student Feedback Many years ago, back when I started teaching online, I had a problem that puzzled me – students didn't take kindly to my feedback. They knew that my message was good for their improvement, but they just hated it – the feedback was from hell. A few of the students even mentioned having stomach pains when they received my weekly emails. Basically, my message was too negative and difficult to accept. Were these students way too sensitive or … God forbid…was I at fault here? Was I that harsh? Maybe…I just didn't like the idea that so many students hated my feedback, and I felt compelled to fix this situation. After some research and a lot of trial and error changing the feedback messages into a more palatable version, my problem was resolved! Now, students email me, thanking me for the constructive feedback they received. What a change! Here are my suggestions to improve y...