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...

 Just finished grading one batch of assignments and thought I would do a bit of Googling to find some relevant research regarding online course design before my upcoming Zoom lecture.  During this time of Covid 19, a lot of us have been extremely busy in converting face-face courses to hybrid or online formats. Sometimes, it is difficult to avoid "dumping" PowerPoints and notes used in a face-face class into an LMS, especially when working under time constraints.  My search yielded some good results. One of which is this graphic regarding student preferences in online course modalities.  I've been a big proponent of incorporating multimodal and microlearning activities in my online courses. I know these can be time-consuming to produce, but the payoff in student learning is (in my opinion) worth it.  Please take a look and share if you'd like. There is a link to the image at the bottom as well.  Take care and be safe,  Dr. Bruce Forciea Link to Article...

2019, A Year of Technology Overload? During this past Spring, I was introduced to a friend of a friend and the conversation went something like this: “So, what do you do for a living?” “I’m a college instructor.” “So, what do you teach?” “Anatomy and Physiology.” “That must be easy, since the human body doesn’t change!” My face erupted in an awkward smile and a forced but stilted laugh exited my lips. Alas, it may seem that once you learn all of the parts of the body and how they work, simply teaching it would be easy. Perhaps in an earlier time of glossy overheads, preserved cats and pigs, and blackboards with real chalk, it was easier. I remember my professors standing in front of the class and lecturing for hours while we scrambled to write down every word. There were no online resources like videos, learning management systems or virtual labs. What flowed out of the professor’s mouth was like a golden river of knowledge while we knelt raising c...

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...

We’ve all had that teacher, lecturer, instructor, or seminar presenter who lost us within the first couple of minutes of their presentation. Perhaps you worked hard at paying attention, but the complexity, monotone delivery, PowerPoints filled with text, or flat out boring material made you lapse into a coma.  Text has a propensity for becoming that boring presenter. We tend to scan and shy away from large blocks of text. Why, because we work to process information in the most efficient way with as little effort as possible and when faced with a page full of words our brains want to just run and hide. Our brains continually attempt to reduce cognitive load and we can ease their burdens by presenting text in a way that allows for efficient processing. Keep in mind that reading on a screen is very different than reading printed material. I can’t emphasize this point enough. I admit my guilt in simply dumping textual material formatted in MSWord into my online courses, as I’...

My short story, "Alder's Journey," about a scientist with an artificial brain, was just published by UK Sci Fi online magazine The New Accelerator: https://thenewaccelerator.com/alders-journey-by-bruce-forciea/ Y ou can read Alder's Journey and other short stories in my collection of short stories on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Anomalies-Reality-Collection-Science-Fiction-ebook/dp/B01N8X2BG7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1533332983&sr=8-1&keywords=anomalies+of+reality

Image from:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Students_working_on_computers_at_the_University_of_Monterrey.jpg Online learning has come a long way from the old days of inserting curriculum and text into an LMS and calling it a course. Now, online instructors need to keep current with LMS technology and continually work to improve their courses. This translates to learning about authoring tools, audio and video production, and, in some cases, coding. What often gets lost (in my opinion) is the incorporation of simple principles of usability. What I have found in my 16 years of teaching online is that students experience a good deal of stress, and that stress is magnified when they have to deal with a course that encompasses poor usability. So, what is usabilty and how can we incorporate it into our courses? Here is a definition from:  http://www.usability.gov/basics/index.html "Usability refers to how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their ...