Vendor Trouble
I know I’m stating the obvious when I say that online and digital learning would not exist without modern technology tools. During my time in higher education, however, I’ve observed that many users of those tech tools (faculty and administrators in particular) express disdain toward the companies that provide them. Some of this tension comes […]
The Future Isn’t Something We Inherit. It’s Something We Illuminate.
Two years ago, we attended an OLC conference and walked away energized by a presentation on an AI tool we had never seen before. We could immediately picture how it would support our students’ learning and how to integrate it into our courses. At the time, it felt like the future of online learning. […]
How to Turn AI Panic into Institutional Learning
Think about the last AI conversation you were part of on your campus. Was it about a dazzling new tool someone wanted to get up and running immediately? A policy that got bogged down? A student question that made you realize you don’t have the answer? We’re all having those conversations each day, sometimes every day… and sometimes it’s even the same conversation but with different groups, different units! And […]
Discussion Boards Don’t Have to Suck
You open the discussion board on Sunday night and see twenty-seven versions of the same sentence. “I agree with your post.” A few students have added a polite compliment. Others have stretched their response just far enough to satisfy the word count. The timestamps cluster suspiciously close to the deadline. Somewhere in the course, a rubric box has been […]
The Holistic Instructional Designer: Why Cross-Sector Experience Benefits Us All
Instructional design has emerged as one of the most boundary-spanning professions in education and workforce development. Professionals increasingly move among K–12 education, higher education, corporate learning, healthcare, government, and non-profit organizations while continuing to apply many of the same core competencies: analyzing learning needs, designing effective instruction, evaluating outcomes, and facilitating organizational change. Instructional designers possess a diverse portfolio of competencies […]