Category: Articles

Thanks to the vision and perseverance of our dedicated LEC Advisory Council this year we held our inaugural Teaching and Learning Conference. We are so grateful for the commitment of our presenters and participants that made the event successful. In the coming months, you will hear more about our other new initiative, the NSU Educator Competency Framework. We also can’t wait to share the many thank you notes that students submitted for this year’s Thank a Professor initiative.

Students and teachers can now create and share their personalized video experiences using Kaltura Interactive Video Paths, a newly acquired learning tool on SharkMedia. Interactive Video Paths allow learners to “choose their own adventure.” Interactive videos can quickly offer a guide or “hotspot” to a specific topic for information. Students can personalize their own viewing experience, rather than scrubbing through a vast video timeline and inadvertently missing valuable information which makes for a more user-friendly experience. Kaltura Interactive Video Paths offers some exciting new features including: Allowing viewers to play an active role by choosing their preferred actions and learning paths. Building choice-based video paths that increase engagement. Tracking views to better understand behavior and gain valuable insights through choices made.   Interactive video paths give students the opportunity to control the story.  Interactive video paths can transform the learning experience from a passive learning activity to an exchange of information where students take an active role. If learners can determine or control “what to what to do next” then, they are more likely to engage in learning. Interactive video increases learner-content interactivity. Here are a few suggestions for creating interactive video paths. Group Activities Video paths can be used […]

Group assignments are a useful way to bring students together and give them important real-world experiences. They can take the form of projects, presentations, or collaborative papers. This article includes some strategies that can be used to successfully manage group projects.

Bloom’s taxonomy provides a common language for designing instruction. Although Bloom’s cognitive hierarchy is typically used for designing instruction to help students move up the hierarchy in knowledge, student learning can take place in any or even all of Bloom’s three main domains of learning. Course designers can use Bloom’s taxonomy to create learning goals that will increase learners’ knowledge in the cognitive domain, develop skills in the psychomotor domain, or encourage students to move up the hierarchy in the affective domain from having passive feelings to perhaps more involved feelings.

Some learning paths involve complex, critical, or even lifesaving decisions. What path would you take to teach those details and how effective would it be? Materials, case scenarios, and exams are excellent ways to promote learning. In some areas of expertise, hands-on experience might be the best approach. But what if learning from mistakes in real-time is too costly? When it comes to the need to learn difficult tasks or perform skills safely in an active and authentic environment, immersive learning might be a solution.

With remote learning being so prevalent in our classrooms in recent years, you have likely put into consideration when and how to use web cameras for your virtual classrooms. This article looks at the benefits and drawbacks of introducing web cameras to online learning.

Candidly speaking, even with interesting discussion prompts, the same old read, write, post (and respond to two peers) discussion board routine can become a cringe-worthy event not only for students but instructors too. Even though much time and care may have gone into staging scintillating topics for captivating online discussions, they can still fall flat of the critical thinking and dialogue you were hoping to inspire. Although online discussion boards have been around for decades, unfortunately, they may have gotten a bit of a bad rap from some online course participants for generating repetitive thought sharing, voluminous posts readings for course participants, and worst of all-a lackluster conversation. However, according to the Voice of the Online Learner, sixty-three percent of online learners who recently graduated said they would enroll in an online program again. So, online discussion boards cannot be all that bad. While sharing many similarities with methods for cultivating face-to-face interactions, online discussions can offer different opportunities and limitations, in creating meaningful dialogue between students and instructors. Here are a couple of simple ways to make virtual discussions engaging and fun in online, blended, or traditional face-to-face courses.   Build a safe space for the community  There are many […]

Student assessment is a critical aspect of the teaching and learning process. It is important for instructors to strategically evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching by measuring the extent to which students in the classroom are learning the course material. Any student pursuing any course of study will be evaluated in some way. Similarly, each member of the teaching staff will be involved in assessment-related tasks at some time. Assessment consumes a big percentage of your time, and for students, it may be a key predictor of why, when, and how they learn. As a result, getting evaluations ‘right’ is critical, both for your students and for you.