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Develop Online Course Activities that Produce Results

Most recent decade has seen increased interest in conducting well-designed studies that provide actionable guidelines for the design of online activities, based on measurable change in student knowledge…

Blinkist-style book-club activity: manageable book-reading

What’s the best approach to get grad students to read complete books, without overwhelming them with work? Here I explore a solution inspired in one of my favorite phone apps, Blinkist, and merging it with an old-fashioned book-club idea…

An unexamined video is not worth the time spent watching…

Did you tell your students to just “watch the video”? 😦 Luckily, there are many ways in which you can turn course videos into worthwhile activities… Here are just seven ideas to get started… All take 2 class-days: mix-and-match, without disrupting the regular micro-rhythm of your course.

Plan the Rhythm of Your Course Carefully

Create a calendar with a focus on rhythm for most of the course. Setting the rhythm is one of the most important factors – people are creatures of habit a repeating pattern will help students plan better, and – consequently – be successful.

Beyond Pandemicopticon: Remote Quizzes and Exams Now…

Cheating is a major concern when it comes to remote exams. Many people believe that throwing $$$ at the problem, is the way to go (cameras, cameras everywhere, and not a thing you’d like to see!). But is this the only option?

Helping students read (aka “Magic ink” activity)

Reading complex, information-packed content that includes many completely new concepts is challenging: students may be tempted to breeze-through the text too fast, half an hour before class for which it was assigned, or late at night, twenty minutes before the submission deadline…

How to build a 7-day jigsaw discussion

This is a really simple “template” for a week-long, time-sequenced online “jigsaw-type discussion,” and its potential effectiveness in promoting recall, and transfer of knowledge, is based on fairly basic, but solid, and well-established research evidence summarized at the end of this post.

Never, never, never of online discussions

Online discussions in some ways they are better than traditional face-to-face synchronous discussions. They are more equitable, giving everyone time to think, and leveling the playing field for intro- and extroverts (who are always guaranteed to win in face-to-face discussions!).

On my mind...

This is possibly the easiest online discussion type or “template” to implement. It is indispensable in any new or redesigned online course. I call it “see the forest discussion,” but most people call similar activities “exit tickets.” The interesting part is that it isn’t really a “discussion” in the strict sense, but is worth considering, if you don’t use it.

How to build a 7-day jigsaw discussion

by GJ2020-05-012020-05-28

Never, never, never of online discussions

by GJ2020-04-292020-07-24

Really Useful Books on TandL (No Edu-Junk Here!)

Every year hundreds of new T&L books are published, and 90% of them are not very useful (I call these edu-junk). Some are quite useful, but could have worked much better as an article or a blog post instead. Here is a very minimalist, curated super-short list of long-time favorites, and a few new acquaintances with a lot of promise (click the covers for amazon.com link, or click “more info” for… more info!).