Category Archives: Course Design

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Difficulty in Academia: Limits and Benefits

How hard is too hard? Is there an optimal failure rate for learning? Robert Wilson, Amitai Shenhav, Mark Straccia, and Jonathan Cohen would say yes.  In their 2018 study, The Eighty Five Percent Rule for Optimal Learning, the researchers set out to discover the “sweet spot” for difficulty in academia. They found that the spot where the most learning occurs –one that is not too hard so as to create frustration, but not so easy so as to not warrant doing– is a 15% failure rate.  What does this mean for students?  At its most simplistic level, it means that if you get 15% of the answers on an assessment wrong the test is at the optimal difficulty. 15% wrong? Wait that is only an 85% (or a B+), won’t that mess with my GPA (and perhaps my self-esteem)!? 

While I don’t think we can go so far as to say that an 85% is the ideal grade, I do think that we can do more to design classes that both encourage and reward failure.

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DePaul’s Mission in the Classroom

In common to most, if not all, teachers, I always commit myself to designing and carrying out successful teaching. In particular, I subscribe to the notion that teaching success correlates with students learning. Accordingly, part of my job as a teacher is to identify and facilitate ways of learning that best match the kinds of learning that needs to occur in my courses. Because there is no such thing as an all-purpose approach to teaching (or one-size fits all approach), I understand the need to maintain a life-long commitment to continuous improvement upon my teaching and learning. Thus, I intentionally make every effort to keep abreast with evidence-based developments on approaches to teaching and learning. For example, I regularly read journal articles and books related to teaching and learning. I attend the Annual University Teaching and Learning conference, the University Fall Forum, and other teaching and learning workshops. Among the many lessons I have learned is the critical role that the classroom climate has on students learning. Indeed, course climate has been suggested as a very important component in the design of effective instruction. For example, Ambrose et al. (2010) suggested seven principles for effective teaching based on literature research and their own teaching experiences. Two of these principles seem to explicitly connect learning with the climate of the course.

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Don’t Worry, it’s a Standards Feature

Congratulations, you’ve been selected to teach ABC-461 this coming quarter!  The department thinks you’re the perfect expert to update the course and a copy of the last professor’s syllabus has appeared in your inbox. Now retired, Dr. Otto Heare left you some of his notes and course materials, but seems you’re going to have to do some serious work.

Script of the word "standards"During your meeting with your instructional designer, you state that you have full freedom to modify the syllabus but note there are some pesky standards that must be included. Dr. Heare didn’t really give you much guidance on what they mean and your department chair told you there was documentation somewhere but they can’t find it right now.

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Take a Break!

I sit here writing this as Spring Quarter is nearly upon us. I am finishing up the last two of many courses in a particularly heavy load, and still waiting on some materials for both. It’s a weird time; I know there are things that desperately need finishing, and there are other projects I am giving short shrift right now due to my development work, but there is a strange sense of calm that occurs just before the very end. It’s almost a sense of inevitability; the quarter’s going to start whether we’re ready for it or not, and so sometimes it’s better to just sit back and let things ride.

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Aligning Goals: Simple Structures for Student Transfer and Reviewer Clarity

Since we apply the Quality Matters (QM) rubric to the review of our courses, we typically view the interactions between the elements of the course as “alignment”—the idea that these pieces all flow through or stem from one another, allowing a reviewer and instructor to see the connection of these elements throughout the course. While we have various ways of demonstrating this alignment (numbering and sub-numbering, parenthetical reference, etc.), these tend to be used internally, mostly shared between the instructor, the instructional designer, and the review teams. Rarely do we share this full concept of alignment with students—but why? If we build for structure and scaffolding of the lessons throughout the course, wouldn’t it also be beneficial to students to see ways of connecting the various course objectives with the module objectives, readings, assessments, and other activities?

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Page Formatting: Yes You Scan!

Are you reading this?

How about this?

  • This is a little out of the ordinary, but I bet you’re reading.
  • Maybe you aren’t.
  • How can we tell?

Readers scan in very predictable ways and patterns. The basics are pretty simple. We jump to bolded text and don’t expect to see giant, bold statements. We read with a different emphasis when text is italicized. We scan immediately to images  on the page. Big, long paragraphs **like this one** are tiresome to readers and often get skipped while scanning. Formatting text in an unexpected way can throw your reader off, but using page formatting strategically can guide your reader through a page and help keep them engaged. Some of the tactics used in best-practice writing for the web may also be useful for academic writing and assignment construction.

You’re definitely reading this.

Most of the research being done around page scanning patterns is being done so with web content, not academia, in mind. However, some of the research done for web content writing may be helpful as you write or create resources for students.

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3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Designing Your Course

When you work in education, winter break can be a time for reflection and revision. Faculty often use this time to rework their courses and syllabi. Traditionally when one revises a course they:

  1. Find texts and supporting materials
  2. Divide readings and homework throughout the quarter
  3. Determine a method for assessing students’ performance

And, boom! Your course is planned! While this remains the most common way to structure a course, a different approach commonly called Backward Course Design has been steadily gaining in popularity throughout recent years.

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Instructional Design Tools to the Rescue

Instructional design is a growing industry because many institutions and corporations are realizing that designing, developing, and delivering online curricula for their employees is extremely beneficial. As a result, employers are researching instructional design tools that would best fit their work environments. Research has shown that no matter what the industry, students and employees learn best when they are engaged and can interact with the content. Therefore, many businesses are seeking e-learning tools that can help their lessons be more interactive and help bring the training to life. The content usually contains animations, quizzes, walkthroughs, games, annotated videos, etc. This blog will give a brief overview of some instructional design software that can be used to create eLearning Content.

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Even a Child Could Do It: Basics of Cognitive Load Theory

My son went to Kindergarten this year. He’s doing all the things I figured he would: math, reading, gym, music, art, recess, and the library. Once upon a time, I was a substitute teacher in K-12, and so I had a passing familiarity with kids’ worksheets. But this is the first time I have been a parent of a school-age child. Suddenly those worksheets he brings home are vastly more interesting to me. Looking over the exercises, I am reminded of the importance of the presentation of information; that is, how the instruction is designed for his developing brain to grasp what are sometimes difficult concepts, without making the tasks seemingly too difficult for him. We have all heard someone tell us to “take it slowly” when we are learning something new, or to make “baby steps” toward completing a larger goal. In a nutshell, these are some of the basic concepts in Cognitive Load Theory.

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Teaching Diverse Learners: How the Universal Design for Learning framework can help instructors engage a range of learners

Door and Elevator DoorSidewalk cut-ins. Elevators. Buttons that open doors. If you’ve ever been out and about in a wheelchair, used a dolly to move furniture, or pushed a baby stroller, you know to look for and use these things. But the fact is these innovations are relatively recent and were not mandated until the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990.

While the aim of the ADA is to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities and provide for their access to public places, the effects of the law have impacted a broader segment of the population. This broader impact includes empowering individuals to take legal action to end disability bias to ensure a more inclusive environment for everyone.

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