I’ve just got the latest issue of Educational Media International, which has six papers focusing on Learning Design research. The first paper by Johannes Cronje is entitled ‘What is this thing called "design" in design research and instructional design’. The paper critiques design research. It describes the design research cycle as consisting of four aspects: Explore, Describe, Develop and Explain. The second paper by Liz Masterman and colleagues is entitled ‘Computational support for teachers’ design thinking: its feasibility and acceptability to practitioners and institutions’. It describes a number of Learning Design tools, including Phoebe, LAMS and the Learning Designer.  The third paper is mine with Sandra Wills, entitled ‘Representing learning designs - making design explicit and sharable’. We describe a number of visual design representations, developed as part of the OU Learning Design Initiative and their use to represent different role-play designs. The fourth paper is by Matt Bower and colleagues and is entitled ‘Supporting pre-service teachers’ technology-enabled learning design thinking through whole of programme transformation,’ reporting on work at Macquarie University. The fifth paper by Hannah Gerber and Debra Price is entitled ‘Fighting baddies and collecting bananas: teachers’ perceptions of games-based literacy learning’.  The final paper is by Eva Dobozy and is entitled ‘Learning design research: advancing pedagogies in the digital age’. The paper reports on a meta-ethnographic review of current learning design research. So a nice collection of papers which I can thoroughly recommend. 

Source: www.curatecontent.com Deciding whether or not this is content we can add to our 8th grade curriculum? Teaching students to value information!  See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

In a recent interview, Lori Myers talked about the importance of assessment items (questions) being "reliable and valid," so as to end up with a "reliable and valid" certification or exam—something employers and regulators value highly. What does that mean—"reliable and valid"? Well, it’s a way of looking at data, whether you’re doing a scientific experiment or confirming that the results of a test actually measure what you intended them to measure. "Reliable" means that the results are precise—for a given situation, you get the same (or very nearly the same) results every time. "Valid" means that the results you get are accurate—that they can, with reasonable success, be correlated to real-world performance or conditions. Consider a thermometer for taking your child’s temperature. When you or your child is healthy, and you place the thermometer under the tongue, you expect it to read about 98.6°F. The readings may not all be absolutely identical, but if the thermometer reads 103°F the first time you stick it in, and 93°F when you stick it in again to double-check, and the third time 95°F, you would lose faith in that thermometer’s ability to accurately measure temperature. That thermometer would not be reliable. On the other hand, if the thermometer registered 95°F-96°F every time you tried to take the temperature of a healthy human, its readings would in fact be reliable, but not accurate—not valid. The same thing applies to assessments. Let’s say you have a tool—your test—that you expect to measure mastery of certain knowledge or skills. In addition, you also have an expert with a great deal of experience who will watch students demonstrate that knowledge or skill. And over the next few weeks, you also keep track of performance or incidents related to real world execution of the knowledge or skill. If the tool is properly calibrated—if the assessment is reliable and valid—when the tool says there is low mastery, the observer will independently come to that same conclusion, and the track record will show performance issues. Conversely, if the assessment measures as it should, when the tool says there is high mastery, so does the observer, and so do the real-world results. You can trust the assessment to tell you how things stand, like you can trust a good quality thermometer. Example: Question Regarding Ladder Angle Creating an assessment that is reliable and valid requires care and craftsmanship. Let’s say our objective was to make sure that people knew how far away to set the base of a non-self-supporting straight ladder leaning against a wall so as to help ensure that the ladder was safe to climb. Ideally, the horizontal distance from wall to the base of the ladder should be ¼ of the distance from the bottom of the wall to the place on the wall where the top of ladder rests, or one unit over for every four units up. If the top of the ladder rests about 12 feet up the wall, the ladder’s feet should be about 3 feet away from the wall. Keep in mind that successful assessments are not simply about content. They must also take into account the audience and the context that surrounds the performance goals targeted by the lesson. For our hypothetical online safety course, our learners include construction workers, safety-conscious housewives, 6th graders preparing for science fair projects, and love-maddened romantics planning midnight serenades on balconies. Our goal is not to teach this general audience math—or to test their math skills. Our goal is to make sure that when these individuals position a straight non-self-supporting ladder, the base of their ladder is within a few inches of the optimal distance from the wall. So let’s consider some assessment items. Question A Version 1 You have a tall straight ladder. You need to reach the top of a wall that is 13½ feet tall. The top of the ladder rests against the top of the wall and extends beyond it. Based on safety guidelines, how far should the feet of the ladder be from the base of the wall? - 3 feet 2 inches- 3 feet 4½ inches - 3 feet 9 inches - 4 feet 1½ inches Do you need a moment to do the calculations? The way this question is set up, it focuses on the mathematics component. Some students who understood the concept and who would actually be able to fairly safely set up the ladder will miss this question simply because the division or the fractions or the conversion from feet to inches threw them—not because they failed to understand the core concept of "one unit over, four units up." Conversely, students who were completely zoned out when we covered the positioning rule will also miss the question. The question, therefore, becomes unreliable. Missing the question does not necessarily correlate to lack of ladder-positioning ability. Question A Version 2 So let’s remove some of the unnecessary complexity and potential sources of error. You have a tall straight ladder. You need to reach the top of a wall that is 12 feet tall. The top of the ladder rests against the top of the wall and extends beyond it. Based on safety guidelines, how far should the base of the ladder be from the base of the wall?- 2 feet- 3 feet- 4 feet- 5 feet Now we would expect that all students who understood the 1:4 ratio and who were able to do simple division would be able to pass the question.1 We would expect the question to be reasonably reliable in measuring knowledge—but is it fully valid? If we observed these same students roaming wild in the real world, would those performance results closely correlate to our assessment results? Have we made enough improvements in the question to get to the heart of the performance issue? 1 Note that vocabulary and reading skills also impact a student’s ability to correctly answer a question. For this case, let’s assume that if there were concerns about reading level, we would consider adding audio or presenting the question in the student’s native language. Question A Version 3 In reality, how often do we really know the exact height of the wall—and how often do we guess? When our distracted amorous students are scouting out that tempting balcony, will they have a tape measure on hand (or the latest smartphone app to triangulate and estimate height)? If real-world performance comes with a high probability that folks will actually be "eye-balling" distances, perhaps a more valid question, with better correlation to mastery and real-world success, is one that shows pictures. You need to use a ladder to reach the top of a 12-foot wall. Which picture shows the proper position for the ladder, according to safety guidelines? This question is direct. It reflects ground reality. In the vast majority of real-world cases (exceptions including but not limited to those attempting to position ladders on a moonless night) the climber will see the ladder and its position with respect to the wall as he or she sets up the ladder. We would expect students who miss this question to have a relatively high likelihood of improperly positioning ladders2—and students who correctly identify the ideal position to have a similarly high likelihood of getting their ladders within a fairly safe range of the target angle. If this holds true, our question would be reliable AND valid—a simple yet effective assessment item for our online course.3 2 Whenever using images, be sure to provide suitably descriptive ALT text to support visually impaired students. In the 360training web-based course builder, this ALT text is the description associated with the image. 3 Keep in mind that in a blended learning environment, where hands-on activities are an option, the best assessment would be to have the student actually set up the ladder. But there’s more…. Even though we think the revised question is probably good, we should still test the question with focus groups, or as an extra ungraded question on an existing exam, to make sure there is no other source of confusion or false signals. Do we need to more clearly indicate that the bottom value represents the distance between the base of the ladder and the wall? Do students recognize the ‘ as shorthand for feet? Do students recognize the gray line as a representation of the ladder or is it too abstract? As question-writers, we are human and have biases. The formal testing of question sets can help surface issues we ourselves have missed. In addition, to fine tune the overall assessment, we might include a series of questions on ladder angle—some easy and requiring for most people no more than a glance, some more difficult requiring better visual discernment and / or application of math to double-check correctness. Such a strategy will help the overall assessment establish a range of mastery levels, from novices (let’s not give these folks too tall a ladder), to those you’d confidently put in higher-risk contexts requiring greater accuracy and care. Your Turn: Question Regarding Level Rungs Imagine this hypothetical safety course also covered the need for the rungs of the ladder to be parallel and level. Students should ideally find a flat stable area on which to position the ladder. Students are taught that where feasible they can excavate ground to level it—but they should not stack pieces of wood, rock, or other objects under the leg of a ladder to raise it up as this build-up can be unstable. They are also presented with the option of attaching leg-leveling extensions to their ladder. It is noted these extensions can be expensive—but not nearly as expensive as a trip to the emergency room. The target audience, again, is the same as in the earlier example. They represent a wide range of ages and come from all walks of life. Below is how one of your subject matter experts initially wrote up the assessment question. The question is interesting and could potentially work well as an opener for a discussion or scenario-based activity—but in the context of an assessment, will it provide a reliable and valid gauge of our particular audience’s ability to use ladders safely? See what you think. Question B Version 1 You need to trim some branches off a sycamore growing on uneven ground. Your neighbor is threatening a lawsuit if the offending branches don’t come down today. The flattest place you can find sends the ladder listing sideways at about a 20° angle. When you try out the first step, your shoes only slide a little on the rungs and you have pretty good balance—but you are working with a saw. There are some rocks around but they are natural and not perfectly flat. The ground is a mixture of mostly dirt with some rocks. You’re grungy from working outside, the nearest hardware store is at least 20 minutes away, and you suspect your car is just about out of gas. Looking at the approaching storm clouds, you don’t have much time left. You think you might have felt a drop or two of rain. What do you do? - Blow it off and grab a cold drink. Act surprised that the date has passed when your neighbor confronts you. - Climb the ladder, as is. - Find a rock that’s about the right height and put it under the leg of the side that is too low. - Get a shovel or pickax and dig out the ground under the leg of the side that is too high. - Drive to the store and purchase a ladder-leveling attachment for your ladder. Question B Version 2 How would YOU revise this assessment item? Why? Consider vocabulary, ambiguity in choices, implied skills and means, and socio-economic-cultural understandings. How might differences in learner background and perspective render this question unreliable? What could you do to improve reliability? Consider the performance goals: To recognize that rungs that are not level are unsafe, and to apply one of two strategies for correcting the situation. How could you focus the question (or questions, if you split it apart) to hone in on those goals and provide valid assessment? Closing Thoughts Thinking of creating and selling elearning courses? If you choose to include quizzes or a final exam, consider carefully your audience and your learning objectives. Think of your assessments as a tool—like a thermometer. Focus on making them reliable and valid, a good indicator of learner ability to apply in the real world what your course has taught. Onward and upward!Laura and the 360training Authoring Team

So it’s REF (Research Excellence Framework) time again and the game of which publications to submit, and I have to say I am not having a good time. Publications are rated on a scale of 1 - 4, which 4 being internationally excellent. My book ‘Designing for learning in an open world’ was reviewed as ‘a major contribution to educational technology’, a strong three with elements of four. Hmmm who uses the phrase ‘Educational Technolog’ these days? Gutted. If that isn’t a four nothing I have done is! A chapter in a UNESCO/COL book on a review of Open Educational Resources and the OPAL initiative was reviewed as a strong three. But two papers I put forward on Cloudworks (one in Computers and Education and one in AJET) were assessed as twos! So now the game is to find alternatives. Below is a list of publications I am considering. Need to narrow this down to a couple, no idea how to do that! 1.             Conole, G. (submitted), A new classification schema for MOOCs, submitted to the INNOQUAL journal. INNOQUAL is a newly established journal, associated with the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL). The paper is timely given the current interest in MOOCs. It describes a new classification schema, based around 12 dimensions. 2.             Conole, G. (2013), Tools and resources to guide practice, in R. Sharpe and H. Beetham (Eds), Rethinking pedagogy in a digital age, 2nd Edition, London: Routledge Falmer. This is a popular book, which has been widely cited. The chapter provides an overview of Learning Design tools and their associated characteristics. 3.             Conole, G. (2012), The state of the art of the use of technology in distance education, in O. Zawacki-Richter and T. Anderson (Eds), Online Distance Learning - Towards a Research Agenda, Athabasca: Athabasca University Press The chapter provides an overview of the use of technology in distance education. It also discusses theory and methodology associated with the field, drawing on an ESRC-commissioned study of interdisciplinarity in Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL). It summarises a review of Web 2.0 technologies and their associated characteristics. 4.             Conole, G. (2012), Learning in an open world, in R. Brooks, A. Fuller and J. Waters (Eds), Changing Spaces of Education: New Perspectives on the Nature of Learning, London: Routledge This chapter is as a result of an invited talk at Southampton University as part of an ESRC research seminar series. The chapter critiques the question ‘What is likely to be the impact of an increasingly ‘open’ technologically mediated learning environment on learning and teaching in the future?’ It begins by describing the characteristics of new technologies and provides some examples of how these can be used to promote different pedagogical approaches. It outlines a set of pros and cons of different technologies. It then describes a number of facets of openness, namely: open design, open delivery, open research and open evaluation. 5.             Conole, G. (2010), Stepping over the edge: the implications of new technologies for education, In M. J. W. Lee & C. McLoughlin (Eds.), Web 2.0-based e-learning: Applying social informatics for tertiary teaching. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. The chapter focuses on the implications of Web 2.0 technologies and how they are changing learning and teaching practices. It references a taxonomy I developed for classifying tools according to how they are being used, and using this to compare how Web 2.0 tools are different from Web 1.0 tools. It provides examples of different ways in which Web 2.0 tools are being used in Education. It then provides an account of the characteristics of new technologies and the impact on practice. It concludes by considering the implications for learners, teachers and support staff, and institutions. It provides two case study, drawing on research I was involved with: new approaches to design, and new metaphors for describing digital interactions. 6.             Conole, E., Galley, R. and Alevizou, P. (2011), Frameworks for understanding the nature of interactions, networking and community in a social networking site for academic practice, IRRODL, Vol 12, No. 3, 119-138. The paper reviews the literature on interactions and communities online and uses this to evaluate a social networking site for sharing learning and teaching ideas, Cloudworks. 7.             Conole, G. (2010), Facilitating new forms of discourse for learning and teaching: harnessing the power of Web 2.0 practices, Open Learning, Vol.25, No. 2, June 2010, 141-151. This paper is a result of an invited keynote at the Cambridge Interactional Conference on Open and Distance Learning. It draws on the result carried out as part of the JISC-funded Open University Learning Design Initiative. It describes the characteristics of Web 2.0 technologies and how they can be used in learning and teaching. It puts forward a number of reasons why Web 2.0 technologies have not had the anticipated impact on education. The methodology is: user-centred, theory-based and critically reflective and evolving, drawing on a range of sources of data (desk research, interviews, focus groups, workshop evaluations, observations, web statistics, etc.) to develop a rich picture of users’ practices and perspectives in relation to the use of technology to support their learning and teaching activities. It describes how this approach was used to evaluation a social networking site, Cloudworks. In addition to provide stats associated with the site and a description of how it is being used, the paper describes the use of the site during the Cambridge conference. 8.             Conole, G. (2010), Bridging the gap between policy and practice: a framework for technological intervention, Journal of e-learning and knowledge society, vol. 6, no.1, February 2010, 13-27.  This paper is the result of an invited keynote at the VI Congresso Nazionale della SIe-L: E-learning, creatività ed innovazione in Salerno. It argues that despite the potential of new technologies to promote learning and teaching, there is a gap between the promote and the reality. It puts forward a framework for more effective uptake of technologies,  which considers the relationship between policy, research and practice.  

A few favorites from my PLN: teaching and technology! Source: newsmix.me See on Scoop.it - Educational News and Web Tools

Authors! Have you cooked up a delectable feast of content for your elearning course? After completing your first draft, it’s time to take a taste and analyze it. How is the pace of your course? Is it "well-spiced" with things that engage and delight—but not overloaded with elements fighting for attention? Does it leave your learners feeling satisfied after they consume it? While there are many ways to improve elearning content, the following are a few easy tips to fine-tune it before serving it up to learners. Take these into consideration, and you’ll soon be on your way towards a tempting, mouth-watering course! Visual appeal: Images can play an important role in learning, either as a garnish to set the mood or as the primary element served up on a given page. That said, you can have too much of a good thing. Images that do nothing to support the learning or that clutter the slide and distract from the core message can spoil the true flavor of your course. Ensure that your images complement or support your message, are of good quality, and are of a consistent look and feel as you move from slide to slide. Bite size: We all crave tasty food, but shoving too much into your mouth at once, or mixing together too many radically different things in a single bite, is typically not the way to gustatory bliss. The same goes with elearning courses. Each slide is essentially a mouthful of content. As subject matter experts, we are often tempted to tell the student EVERYTHING we think might be helpful. Or, looking at a forlorn slide with a pitiful amount of content on it, feel the urge to go ahead and start a new topic that might have little to do with the last one. Keep in mind that information is useful to the extent that the learner is able to digest it. As elearning authors, we need to organize information, bite by tasty healthy bite, slide by invigorating slide, to help with this process. As a general rule of thumb, try to have a single core idea or message per slide. If you have excessive white space on a particular slide, consider a large relevant image that reinforces the slide’s message and gives the slide a more balanced, finished feel. Check out different slide templates in our Learning Content Management System (LCMS) and choose them as per your content needs. Flavor and nourishment: How does your content taste? Have high expectations for your learners, but as you explain things, be sure to stay within your learners’ reach given their existing knowledge and background. Understand whether they seek caviar, a hearty meal of barbeque, or tofu and sprouts. Given that context, make your content lively and understandable. Keep learners focused by asking questions, either rhetorical or integrated into activities. Involve them with compelling stories. Grab their attention by using real-life examples and use expressive words with which the learner can relate. Keep wording simple and jargon-free where possible. Make sure sentences are clear, concise, and sound natural—the way the words would come out if you were explaining the concept to them directly. Finalize your draft by reading it as if you are a learner. How do you feel? Overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? Comfortably full? Energized and eager for more? Edit out anything that doesn’t need to go on your learner’s "plate" and does not add value. Healthy, tasty, and satisfying keeps learners coming back for more! Is there a fly in the soup? While writing and reviewing content, always double-check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. Use punctuation marks and apostrophes appropriately (your/you’re, its/it’s). Pay attention to commonly confused words (their/there, principal/principle, weak/week). Avoid sentence fragments in your content. For best results, dedicate an entire review cycle to checking the written text. Need help? Try these tips on eliminating typos. Like a fly in the soup, or that insect appendage that wasn’t part of the order, sloppy text errors harm your content’s credibility and have been known to ruin a learner’s appetite. Is everything else as it should be? Copy-paste is convenient, isn’t it? Often, writers finalize their first draft of text-based content in their word processing tool of choice, and then copy and paste it into their course authoring tool. While this approach is very convenient, it can also be the source of unexpected formatting errors. The word processor and your course authoring tools are two different platforms, and the formatting that you applied in your final draft may be not always be copied over with all the formatting intact. Some tools, you may find, copy the content over with a little extra unexpected formatting. Always preview your content after you have pasted it in your course authoring tool. Common formatting errors due to platform differences include: bullet points, numbered lists, hyphens, m- and n- dashes, and special characters. Transform your elearning course into perfect dining experience, that your learners may enjoy every bite—and that you might win that upcoming contest! Here’s to great elearning meals to come!Shazia, Laura, and the 360training Authoring Team

Last week I attended a METIS project meeting in Barcelona. It was an excellent and productive meeting. We are at an important stage in the project. We have developed an Integrated Learning Design Environment (ILDE), which brings together the research work we have been doing over the last ten years. The ILDE covers conceptual design, authoring and actual implementation in a Learning Management System. It is also possible to explore existing designs in the system that others have produced. Designs can be tagged by discipline, pedagogy or free search. We had the chance to explore the ILDE and we are planning on running a series of workshops in the UK, Greece and Spain in the Autumn with teachers to evaluate it. The ILDE is available online definitely worth taking a look at! One of the key success factors for a good project is a strong consortium, of people who have a shared vision and know each other’s work. That is certainly the case with METIS. I am looking forward to evaluating the workshops and to finding out how practitioners find the tool and whether or not it is useful. 

Before we begin, let’s imagine a situation. Envision yourself taking highly effective professional development training which contributes profoundly to your career. The training is useful, interesting, and highly interactive. All is going well, when suddenly you get confused about a certain point. You reach out and ask the instructor your question, and guess what he has to say? "That’s not right! Try again." How would you feel in such a situation? While envisioning this situation is frustrating, imagine the confusion, a student in an elearning course would face if all they received was "incorrect" every time they made an incorrect selection in an online course. Apart from the learner’s frustration, ineffective feedback can erect learning barriers that prevent learners from meeting the learning objectives of the course, and result in your hard work writing reliable and valid assessment questions going in vain! Here are a few tips to help you fill in learning gaps and maximize learning transfer by writing effective feedback for your elearning courses. There is no "one-size-fits-all" feedback. The feedback students need depends on your course content, the level and type of information you are providing, the existing knowledge of your students, the learning objectives of your course, and so forth. It’s time to swap ready-made feedback ("yes," "no," "that’s correct," "that’s incorrect") with directed, context-based, useful information. Provide immediate feedback, at regular intervals, prior to the final exam. Include opportunities for learners to explore and confirm what they know throughout the course—and provide prompt coaching feedback during those elearning interactions (activities, games, quizzes…) to guide student understanding. Keep in mind that assessments can be effective tools to support learning, not just measure it. If assessment feedback is provided at the end of the quiz or exam, as a sort of report card, it may have limited impact on learner improvement. By putting it at the end, you rely on the learner to diligently go back and review the questions marked as incorrect and absorb your feedback. Many learners, upon seeing a passing grade on a quiz, even if it is not a perfect grade, will hurry forward to the next section rather than take the time to review. This can leave gaps in their knowledge that may negatively impact their performance on the final exam. On the other hand, if you provide assessment feedback immediately after a question is asked, at that moment you’ve got the student’s attention and can immediately reinforce key points and address common misconceptions and errors. Give it some thought. Explore alternatives and consequences. eLearning courses can allow learners to practice real-life situations in a controlled and safe environment. Take advantage of the opportunities available with online interactivity often not available in a live setting: Endless practice, impact-free exploration of alternate approaches and consequences, opportunity to change perspectives and goals to shed light on other aspects of a problem or situation. Combine practical engaging scenarios with helpful focused feedback in elearning interactions and assessments so that the learners are not only aware of reasonable alternatives but also the consequences inherent in those choices. Let’s suppose your elearning course is about food safety and you want to test the learner’s knowledge about handling the allergic reaction of a customer in a restaurant setting to food he or she has eaten. When there are multiple common or competing reactions to a situation, it can be highly useful to help the learner understand the consequence of each alternative (answer options). For example, when seeing the customer in distress, the server may want to make inquiries as to food allergies, carried remedies, whether there is a doctor in the restaurant, explore the possibility that the guest may simply be choking on something (unrelated to allergies), or call for an ambulance. In some cases, the quick arrival of an ambulance may help save someone’s life. In other, milder cases, where the guest carries medicine for just such events, it may be an unnecessary and problematic expense. Appropriate sequencing of inquiries to determine the nature of the situation, followed by appropriate action is critical. Allowing students to see the consequences of NOT asking the right questions can help drive home the learning. Make every feedback count. For maximum effectiveness, each feedback response should be something worthy of attention—even when the answer is "you’re right." Again, imagine the instructor in the classroom. A remark of "great job" can make you feel good, but after enough of those, the student is likely to stop paying close attention. Adding a tidbit of information (for example "Great job. Did you know that _________?") can set the feedback up as more of a conversation, where every feedback provides some useful or interesting nugget. Be clear and direct. Start your feedback with a statement that indicates immediately if the response was correct, partially correct, or incorrect. Then provide the follow-up. If the response was incorrect, explain WHY it was incorrect. Then, coach the student. If the student is likely to encounter the question in future assessment attempts (because the assessment draws from a limited bank of questions), provide a guiding hint as to the correct answer and how to approach such questions in the future. If the assessment draws from a reasonably large bank of questions, make feedback a teaching moment. Explain the thought process behind why the correct response was the best response. Keep feedback concise. In most cases, feedback should not be a mini-lecture. It’s a follow-up response to the user’s response. If you are concerned about skipping useful information in your feedback explanations, break core concepts into smaller chunks when writing assessment questions and designing elearning interactions. Focus each question or activity to address a particular aspect of the core concept. In most cases, this can help lessen the amount of feedback you need to provide at any given moment. It’s good to talk! Consider feedback as a developmental dialogue between you and your student rather than a monologue which is written to pinpoint the mistakes that the learners have committed as they moved forward in your elearning course. Write feedback in a friendly and conversational tone to help promote high order thinking by clarifying the tricky points of your course. In most cases, avoid blunt negative statements such as "You are wrong!" or "Incorrect!" It doesn’t need to be a verbal buzzer. Try replacing such openers with comments that make it clear that there is a problem, but with a little more compassion, for example: "Hmm, let’s look at that again." "Careful." For activities that allow the student to make a different selection, encourage the student with phrases like "Try again. You can do it!" or "Let’s try a different approach. What might work best?" In most cases, positive statements should not only confirm correctness, but cheer learners forward. Statements such as "Bravo!" "Great Job!" and "Way to go!" may be small phrases, but can strongly influence how the learner feels about their own performance and about the course itself. As in a conversation, keep the praise appropriate for the importance and scope of the task. "Fantastic!" for clicking the meaning of a word may strain credibility. The same remark applied to successfully analyzing a situation and identifying a solution with significant real-world impact could more reasonably merit "Fantastic!" Better learning, better feedback. We all learn from our mistakes. As online course developers, we should provide pleasant and informative learning experiences to our students and fill out any learning gap that exists between the learner and the online training that we have created. With the help of effective elearning feedback, we can ensure maximum learning transfer by helping our students embrace errors as learning opportunities. Ready to teach? Whether your interest is online courses, webinar courses, or classroom, the 360training Authoring Program can help you make that dream a profitable reality. No cost or commitment involved—just opportunity. Teach the world—and make money doing so. Sign up today to create great courses and help learners improve their performance by learning from their mistakes.

New technologies offer a rich variety of ways in which learners can interact, communicate and collaborate, however both learners and teachers need to develop a complex set of digital literacies in order to harness the potential of these media.  This edited collection is an output from a DIVERSE conference held at Dublin City University in 2011.  It is an authoritative work outlining different strands of digital literacy research and is timely given the increasing impact that technologies are having on Education.  It covers both theoretical discourses on the topic, along with practical empirical studies of the use of different technologies, such as podcasts, mobile devices and virtual worlds. Yvonne Crotty sets the scene for the book in Chapter 1, describing the origins and focus of the DIVERSE 2011 conference, which included keynotes from two eminent speakers, Michael Wesch and Roy Pea. In Chapter 2, Micheal Wesch provides a philosophical account of the impact of new media and the means in which social and participatory media enable us to actively engage, interact, communicate and collaborate, or as he states ‘We were celebrating empowerment, new forms of connection and community, and new and unimaginable possibilities.  He states that this is not just a technology revolution but also a social one.  Despite this potential his research and the research of others show that students are not extensively engaging with this media and lack the critical literacy skills to make informed judgments about the relevance of resource they find for their own studies. Roy Pea and colleagues focus on a study for fostering collaborative learning through the use of digital video technologies for collaborative knowledge constructive in a classroom. The study provided evidence of how to improve guidance for student teams solving a complex authentic task for History. In Chapter 4, Vance Martin describes the use of wikis to foster democratic teaching.  He uses an action research approach and draws in particular on the work of Vygotsky, Lave and Wenger and the concepts of social production and the open source movements.  He concludes that ‘[Technologies] can offer all students the chance to find their voice, and become creators in their own education’. In Chapter 5, Theo Kuechel plots the evolution of audiovisual technology over the last sixty years and in particular the potential shift of the use of these media from one-way presentation to the promotion of different pedagogical approaches.  He describes a pedagogical model developed as part of a JISC-funded project, which consisted of the following elements: watch/observe, analyse/predict, empathise, create, share/publish and collaborate.    McNeill and Azriel also argue that we are witnesses to a global communication revolution in Chapter 6.  They describe a study using cell phones for journalism with a group of communication students.  They used the phones to gather data on a new item and to produce a newspaper style article. In Chapter 7, Williams focuses on Visual Educational Resources. He argues that ‘Visual content can be harnessed to enliven our classes, provide illustrative examples, and enhance learning.’  He summarises the work of Hariman, Lucaites and Finnegan on the power of visualisation.  He concludes by arguing that we need to help students develop visual literacies in order to participate in today’s media-rich environment. Crotty and Farren, the editors of the book, describe the development of Information and Communication Technologies at Dublin City University, in Chapter 8.  The chapter begins by describing the Irish Government’s policies on ICT in education over the last twenty years or so.  They go on to describe the establishment of the Centre for Teaching Computing at DCU, along with a Masters in Computer Applications for Education. In Chapter 9, Whitehead focuses on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP), drawing on Schon’s research.  He concludes by stating that ‘the generation and legitimation of living educational theories takes place in contexts that have been influenced by different historical traditions and sociocultural influences and that these contexts are in a constant process of transformation’. Virtual Worlds are the focus of Fitzsimons’ Chapter 10.  Her interest is on understanding immersion in virtual worlds and the stages one moves through: from separation, through transition and finally transformation.  She describes her own experience using an ethnographical approach.  She argues that it is a challenging and experiential learning process.  In Chapter 11, Geng and colleagues describe the development of podcasts at Oxford University; the initiative was built on Oxford’s initial developments from 2008.  In particular there were a number of shortcomings identified with the then approach to developing podcasts, namely: remoteness of contributors, scattered hosting and split collection interfaces.  The JISC-funded OpenSpires project aimed to address these and to establish a rich Open Educational Resource repository.  Evaluation of the resource indicated a number of benefits: motivating distance learners, supporting existing students, helping teachings in their professional development and reuse in the classroom. Rolf and colleagues describe a lecture capture system developed at the University of Osnabruck in Chapter 12 and in particular a project funded by the Mellon foundation, Matterhorn, which involved 13 partners. In Chapter 13, Dougherty and Massanari outline best practices for bloggers.  They begin with an overview of the type and purposes of different blogs, ranging from personal diaries through to information portals.  The chapter provides a useful set of tips and hints for creating and maintaining blogs. In a postscript to the book, Vanbuel and Reynolds describe the establishment of the MEDIA awards scheme in 2007, which aimed to recognise and reward excellence in media to support learning. What I particularly like about this book is the rich set of empirically based examples of the use of different technologies to promote different pedagogical approaches.  Together they give an excellent picture of the potential of new technologies for education, but also demonstrate that both teachers and learners need to develop a complex set of digital literacies in order to harness this potential.  Providing practical examples (as given in this book), along with more structured guidance for the design of learning interventions, are the means of achieving this.  As Wesch states in Chapter 2, we are posed in a revolution in education. Technologies truly have the potential to transform; the question is, are we as teachers ready to embrace this potential?  

A picture is worth a thousand words. What pictures are you using in your course? Relevant, attractive, and appropriately stylized images can serve as powerful visual stimulation in online training. If you have software tools that let you edit your photos and carefully plan your diagrams, fantastic! If not, do you have PowerPoint on your machine? Not only is PowerPoint a powerful way to put together a presentation, it can also be a quick and simple way to export formatted, perfectly-sized images. Here are some quick tips to get you started. Set up PowerPoint to your target dimensions. To use PowerPoint as your image formatting tool, start by adjusting the dimensions of the PowerPoint deck so that the output perfectly fits the position you intend to put the pictures onscreen. In the 360training course player, the image for the visual-left or visual-right template is optimally 250 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall (or about 3.5 inches wide x 5.0 inches tall at 72 dpi). In the 360training course player, to prepare images for the visual-top or visual-bottom templates, set the image to be 900 pixels wide with a height no greater than 360 pixels tall (or about 12.5 inches x 5 inches at 72 dpi). Remember, with the visual-top and visual-bottom templates, if you have any body text it will take up some of the vertical space. Plan accordingly to avoid scrolling. To set PowerPoint to these dimensions: Create a new PowerPoint presentation. Click the Design tab, then click Slide Size > Custom Slide Size (or click Page Setup in older versions of PowerPoint). Set the target Width and Height, then click OK. Now you can place a photo or draw a diagram, and when you export the slide, PowerPoint will export it to the exact size you need for your course. Simple and reliable! Resize a photo. When resizing a photo in PowerPoint, always click and drag from the corner—NOT one of the sides. Dragging from the corner will ensure that your picture scales properly and help prevent it from becoming distorted. Once you resize, if you find that the dimensions are not quite what you need, you can always crop the image for a perfect fit. Crop a photo. PowerPoint has a variety of editing options under the Picture tools tab, yet my personal favorite is the Crop tool. When you "crop" an image, you remove (or hide) the outer parts of the image that you don’t want to show. You may need to crop a photo if it is the wrong size or shape for what you need, or if you want to get rid of certain parts of an image. Cropping can also allow you to creatively reuse the same image multiple times (for example, drawing attention to different aspects of the original photo by zooming in or reframing the view). Imagine that you have taken a picture from your smartphone that you plan to use in your training. You originally shot the picture in landscape orientation (so that it is wider than it is tall), but now that you’re building out your course, you think that it would look better in portrait orientation (so that it is taller than it is wide), leaving more room for text in the main column. You don’t want to have to reshoot the picture—and you don’t have to. You just need to crop the image. While it is possible in PowerPoint to crop images into Custom Shapes, rectangles are a standard choice and quick to accomplish. Click your picture, then the crop button. Special "handles" display on the corners and the edges of the photos. Then either: Click and drag to manually adjust the parts of the image that are shown. Use the Format Picture > Crop panel’s "picture position" "crop position" height and width boxes to precisely set the dimensions. Quick Tip: If you want to maintain certain standard proportions, try the Aspect Ratio command under the Crop option. Remove image backgrounds in PowerPoint In some cases, you may want to isolate a particular object. PowerPoint can even help you remove the background of your images. Double click the image on the slide and click the Remove Background option under the Picture Tools tab (PowerPoint manually identifies the background by highlighting it with purple color. Drag the handles in the corner to adjust). Select the areas that you want to keep by using Mark Areas to Keep option. Click Delete Mark option once you have selected the area that you want to keep in your image. Note: Although Remove Background is a handy option, it is not ideal to use for images with fuzzy surface areas. Use this option for simple pictures and illustrations. Stylize your image. If you removed the background of a given image, it may now be in its final state, ready to sit on the page. If you are working with a photo with distinct horizontal and vertical edges, you may want to stylize it further with a border. Select the image that you want to stylize and click the Picture Border button located under the Format tab. Select the desired picture border color from the available colors or use the More Colors option. Use the Weight option to specify the width of the image border. If you’ve included some background around your image, you may also want to consider visually popping your image off that background by applying a drop shadow (Shadow option in the Picture effects command) option from the Picture Tools tab. Export your PowerPoint "slide" an image. Now you’re ready to export your PowerPoint "slide" as an image you can bring into your course authoring program. Select Save As from the File tab and identify the image type (GIF, JPEG, PNG) you want to save your slide/presentation as. Once you click Save, you will be asked to specify whether you want the convert Every Slide or Current Slide Only into an image. Select accordingly and click Save. There you go! Now upload your perfectly-sized, well-formatted pictures into your course!