Mind the gap. From our early days in school, we’re told of the importance of conducting literature reviews as a means of finding “the gap” in the literature that will guide our work. However, most of us ignored this advice and launched into our early projects doing things backward. Instead of starting with a literature…
The AECT annual convention call for proposals is fast approaching and participants on our various projects are getting ready to submit SEVEN Designers for Learning related proposals. There are a couple that I could cut as they aren’t directly reporting on our work, but instead focus on topics that are near and dear to our mission….
Instructional design is all about choices. Well … and constraints. Oh, and requirements. And, let’s not forget preferences. Pretty soon our choices feel limited. I’ve been told my designs are too text heavy. However, there are reasons: Openness: David Wiley notes in his overview of the 5R permissions (i.e., retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute) that…
As we all know, you learn the most when you teach. The same is true when you design educational experiences. This semester is no exception. Here is something I’m learning about the role of external impact. As a student, I wrote countless papers, but I always felt I was first a consumer of work done by others. When…
Throughout my graduate program, we read study after study examining the effects on learning outcomes. Even my own dissertation considered the relationship between students’ perceptions of community in an online environment and learning outcomes (spoiler: no relationship was suggested in my data). However, the students’ perceptions of community within the class were significantly positively correlated with…
The first 17 years after college, I followed a traditional career path for a person graduating with a Finance major. I worked for large corporations, came to work early, stayed out late several times a month entertaining clients, dropped everything for last minute out-of-town work trips, picked up an MBA along the way, made enough…
This photo popped up on Facebook today reminding me of a daunting project I undertook in 2017 to scan, identify, and share family photos I inherited from my parents. They accumulated or inherited the photos over decades, and I hadn’t touched the box since my mom died in 2011 making the identification part kind of…
Truth be told … until I started working on our projects to design educational supports for adult basic skills education, I don’t think “empathy” for the learner played a huge part in my design decisions. Sure, I thought of the learners, but more as some set of characteristics and/or demographic data. From what I see…
Despite being eclipsed by Notre Dame tonight (see what I did there), my favorite school gave fans a unique chance to cheer on the hockey team at the United Center here in Chicago. #GoBadgers #OnWisconsin
Purpose. Truth be told, I think it’s what we’re all striving to find and achieve. In setting a course in life, we often conflate purpose with passion, but purpose is the selfless and external-facing iteration of passion. Purpose involves capitalizing on your talents and passions for a reason beyond yourself. Tonight, we watched Dumplin on Netflix….