Fall and Beyond: Higher Education in the Age of COVID-19 and Other Disasters

May 8, 2020.Reading time 24 minutes.

Even before the COVID-19 global pandemic, higher education was struggling to make sense of what David La Piana and Melissa Mendes call a VUCA world in The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution: Real-Time Strategic Planning in a Rapid-Response World. Originally coined by the US military to describe a post-Cold War world, VUCA stands for: Volatile– The world […]

Considering the Future, Now!

April 21, 2020.Reading time 33 minutes.

I don’t know about you, but the last few weeks (months?) have felt surreal. Not only on a professional level, but on a personal one as well. That uncanny feeling I have about ‘these times’ has continued as our local and state leaders and our federal governments are discussing what it will take to start […]

What’s Next? Surviving in Lifeboats. Getting to Summer Term and Beyond.

April 8, 2020.Reading time 13 minutes.

This week WCET is starting a new series of blog posts on what distance education leaders should be thinking about as we move past the initial pivot to remote learning. The series, “What’s Next?” will focus on a variety of topics aimed at helping you prepare for the summer term and beyond. Many of these […]

Keeping Accessibility in Mind During the COVID-19 Conversion of Courses

March 24, 2020.Reading time 20 minutes.

quote from text in an image: It is much, much harder to retrofit accessibility onto existing educational materials than it is to get it right the first time.

We welcome today’s guest post from Cyndi Rowland, Executive Director of WebAIM (at Utah State University) which empowers organizations to make their web content accessible to people with disabilities. Cyndi gives us great and compassionate advice for teachers and faculty suddenly thrust into teaching with technologies. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, Cyndi! — Russ […]

Evaluating Faculty Participation in Online Workshops

February 27, 2020.Reading time 9 minutes.

Example of a network analysis graph for the discussion-based workshop. Each circle represents a participant in the workshop, while the shaded groupings represent different sections of the workshop. Circles show how particpants are grouped in large circles. The lightly facilitated group is more dispersed and have lines drawn between participants showing how they interact. The Facilitated discussion forum is one tightly connected circle with more interaction.

Last week we welcomed Lynn Wahl, Instructional Designer for UNC Charlotte, to discuss how they used design thinking to create online faculty development workshops. In a continuation of the topic, Lynn joins us today to talk about how to assess a learning opportunity such as the online workshops to ensure they continue to engage attendees […]

Design Thinking for Faculty Pedagogy Training

February 21, 2020.Reading time 8 minutes.

a circle graph showing the "innovation sweetspot." Three circles labelled "desirability, viability, feasibilty" all interlapping. The innovation sweetspot is right in the middle of the three other circles.

Have you heard of design thinking? This process is a non-linear, iterative process that focuses on understanding users and redefining problems to create innovative solutions and prototype said solutions to make them even better (interaction-design.org). We can use design thinking in a variety of arenas, not the least of which is to design courses. Today’s […]

What do they still need to learn? The Impact of Smartphones on Curriculum

January 28, 2020.Reading time 10 minutes.

Hold on, let me finish up one thing on my phone. Okay, I’m finished! Now, onto our post. I don’t know about you, but it can be hard for me to put my smartphone down sometimes. This relatively small device has become a large part of my life. I not only keep in touch with […]

Using a Research-Based Approach – It’s Up to Us

December 4, 2019.Reading time 14 minutes.

Today we welcome Andria Schwegler, Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for the Master of Science Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University – Central Texas. Andria joins us to discuss the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and the opportunity such scholarship provides for improving education, teaching, and hiring. In addition, she discusses whether there is […]

What We Talk About When We Talk About Student Engagement

November 20, 2019.Reading time 9 minutes.

At a recent #DLNChat, one of the questions, answers, and resulting discussion prompted me to ask Karen Costa (writer, faculty member, and faculty development facilitator extraordinaire) to write a piece for us on her comments. Today’s blog post is thought-provoking and, I hope, word-changing for you. Thank you, Karen, for reminding us about the importance […]

Finding Quality in All the Right Places: Promoting Online Course Reviews to Faculty Designers

July 11, 2019.Reading time 11 minutes.

How do you ensure quality in online courses? That word gets a lot of buzz in higher ed! Today’s Frontiers post is all about quality and how to implement a course certification process. Joining us from the University of Central Florida is Senior Instructional Designer Aimee deNoyelles, who co-designed an online course review process for […]