The APA 6e Guide is considered a living document as it is routinely updated. In this series, Jule Kind, Director of Off Campus Library Services (OCLS), shares about some of the most used library resources....Continue Reading »

At the conclusion of the Establishing and Maintaining Positive Relationships With Students webinar simulcast, we asked attendees to participate synchronously in five concurrent chat sessions. In the first session, attendees shared their best strategies for...Continue Reading »

Although they makeup a fraction of the teaching population in the College of Adult and Professional Studies, full-time faculty devote all of their energies to the many aspects of teaching.  Andragogy, curriculum, and Scholarship of...Continue Reading »

At the conclusion of the Establishing and Maintaining Positive Relationships With Students webinar simulcast, we asked attendees to participate synchronously in five concurrent chat sessions. In the second session, attendees shared their best strategies for...Continue Reading »

She is the student with a closed posture who wants nothing to do with God stuff.  Then along comes a painful, sometimes tragic life event.  The walled off student now asks, Will you pray for...Continue Reading »

At the conclusion of the Establishing and Maintaining Positive Relationships With Students webinar simulcast, we asked attendees to participate synchronously in five concurrent chat sessions. In the third session, attendees shared their best strategies for...Continue Reading »

Helicopter professors are always there, always helping students. They build scaffolds of crutches for students to lean upon for the duration of a course. But do we want to teach helplessness? Should we allow some...Continue Reading »

At the conclusion of the Establishing and Maintaining Positive Relationships With Students webinar simulcast, we asked attendees to participate synchronously in five concurrent chat sessions. In the fourth session, attendees shared their best strategies for...Continue Reading »

Hello everyone and welcome to the Synap Blog! We’re incredibly excited to launch Synap later this year. In the meantime we wanted to share some information on what it is and what it’s going to achieve. Synap is an online education platform that uses insights in neuroscience to help people to learn more in less The post The Surprising Neuroscience Behind How We Learn appeared first on Synap.

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We are happy to announce Acrobatiq’s first Intelligent Courseware available for faculty to use in courses starting January 2014. If you teach Introduction to Psychology, Introduction to Biology, Probability & Statistics, Statistical Reasoning, Anatomy & Physiology or STEM Readiness, I invite you to sign up and explore our courseware on your own, or schedule a demo with one of my colleagues. You may be asking yourself, "Who is Acrobatiq and what exactly is courseware? Acrobatiq (Ac-ro-bat-ic) is not just another ed tech/adaptive learning start up. We’re in the unusual position of being a new company with a long history. Backed by Carnegie Mellon, we’re building upon the work of its Open Learning Initiative, a pioneer in online learning. Our Intelligent Courseware design is based on 10+ years of research, and tested in hundreds of classrooms. A simple way to think about courseware is that it’s like a textbook, only smarter.  Courseware: Contains content you assign students to work on outside of class. Covers all the topics in your course. Includes the reading that a textbook covers. Complements your teaching. What makes courseware intelligent? Unlike a textbook, Intelligent Courseware is a more thorough and integrated learning solution that pulls together disparate parts of a course for faculty. Readings, multimedia, assignments, practice, and formative and summative assessment are combined into a cohesive, well-designed learning product.   Then, faculty can use tools we provide to make changes to the courseware to better suit their needs. Intelligent Courseware: Involves students in learning by doing, with hundreds of embedded activities. Provides immediate & targeted feedback to keep students on track. Pinpoints what students know (and don’t), so you can provide targeted help. Won’t break the bank. Costs students less than the average textbook. Works with your LMS. Arms you with online tools, and real-time data and insights to measurably improve learning outcomes. Intelligent Courseware may just be a smarter way for your students to spend their time outside of class, actively building up their foundation of knowledge. For the first time, you know what students are learning (and not). One of the benefits of students interacting with learning materials on the Web is that you can actually measure learning.  For the first time, at a very granular level, you can see what students are learning, and what they’re not.    And then draw causation. The assessments embedded within Acrobatiq courseware tell you the level of skills, knowledge and outcomes students have for each course; for each module and unit in that course. Textbooks can’t do that. Nor do textbooks let you monitor student progress in real-time, provide targeted feedback, or make timely course adjustments. Intelligent Courseware does. Explore Acrobatiq Intelligent Courseware today, and decide for yourself whether it’s a smarter alternative for you.                 

We are starting a conversation about learning analytics here at Acrobatiq. We’d love for you to join us. We’ll use this blog, social media (I’m on Twitter @keithhampson), and a new 11-Minute Webcast series to keep the conversation moving. Our first 11-Minute Webcast is October 9, Wednesday, 12 pm, EST.  Learning Analytics: Forget the Hype. Trust the Evidence. Sign up and bring your questions and ideas. Use hashtags #LearningAnalytics and #11MinuteWebcast The field of Learning Analytics involves the capturing, measuring and reporting of student data, for the purposes of understanding and improving learning outcomes. While research into the potential of learning analytics goes back a number of years, it is only now starting to truly take shape in higher education. You and I have an opportunity - at this early stage - to shape one of the more important developments in higher education. The emergence of learning analytics at this point in the history of higher education is no accident. Certainly, advances in technology are part of the story.  The rise of Web-based instruction makes capturing student-learning activity recordable in a way that was never feasible in the classroom. But also important is the growing pressure to fully account for student learning. This is driven by regulatory pressures, climbing tuition rates, and growing budgetary constraints. Moving closer to the great promise For me, the great promise of learning analytics is that it helps us move closer to addressing the unique needs of our increasingly diverse student population. Students benefit when they are presented with the right type and level of instructional media; assignments that are suitably challenging; and social interactions that match their way of learning. Learning analytics can help us make this possible. What do you see as the promise for learning analytics in higher education? Add your voice to the conversation. Join us on the 11-Minute Webcast on October 9.

As an educator, did you ever finish a class, a tutoring session or an entire day when you felt on top of your game? You know the feeling. The flow and sequence of content was perfect. The students were engaged and involved. You were able to anticipate and correct student misconceptions. And best of all, you saw light bulbs going off in your students. As a learning engineer at Acrobatiq, it’s my goal to take those aspects of the "perfect" teaching day and translate them into the online learning environment. "How is that possible?" you may ask. The qualities you need to be an effective teacher − whether it’s online or in the classroom − are the same qualities you need to design effective online courseware: a clear vision, a thoughtful approach to the subject and teamwork. Align content, assessments & learning objectives The vision for Acrobatiq courseware originates from Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI), and is based on the findings of learning science.  A clear sense of how students learn best − by doing and not just by reading or watching − comes from years of OLI research and classroom experience.   We incorporate this principle into every course we develop. This vision includes strict adherence to aligning the course content, assessments and learning objectives.  We call these three elements the Course Design Triangle.  It contains: Student-centered and measurable objectives A clear and logical sequence of content Numerous adaptive, problem-solving activities (which we call ADAPTivities) Authentic assessments Be creative in crafting activities Take the example of the heredity module in Acrobatiq’s Introduction to Biology courseware.  I had fun interacting with our course authors on this module. We were creative in crafting a variety of activities that scaffold the student carefully through the concepts of heredity, and help head off misconceptions. This is a critical part of the education process. The final result is a module with a minimum of text. Students are kept engaged and motivated with: Interesting visuals & drag and drops Video walkthroughs Multiple choice Essay and fill in the blank activities Along with carefully constructed content, it takes teamwork:  learning engineers, authors, instructors, subject matter experts and software engineers, who are all passionate about creating exceptional educational experiences for students. The light bulb effect So, what about those light bulbs going off? We capture the "light bulb effect" at Acrobatiq through The Learning Dashboard, which gives instructors a visual picture of how well students are meeting the course objectives. The Learning Dashboard allows you to see, in real-time, where students are having difficulties and misconceptions. Now, you can adjust your lessons and instruction quickly to meet the specific needs of your students. As a result, your students are better prepared, so you can spend less time on the basics and more time focused on giving them a deeper understanding and more memorable learning experience. If that’s not a perfect teaching day, it comes close.        

Is a digital revolution sweeping higher education? Perhaps, but like the so-called paperless office revolution, which has been with us for decades, it feels more evolution than revolution. In part, the perception of revolution and disruption comes from the relative pace of change in higher education. Much like human presence on earth is a blip compared to the 165 million-year reign of the dinosaurs (mental image intentional), we need to take the long view of recent changes in higher education and the evolving role of faculty. Consider the traditional classroom lecture. As a cultural touchstone, the idea of sitting through a lecture goes back to medieval times. Thanks to Wikipedia (its own influence on learning the topic of another discussion), I found images of manuscripts showing sages in the mid-1300′s lecturing in front of classrooms. Learning objectives play a big role, and therefore must be carefully constructed. We believe effective learning objectives are both student-centered and measurable. In the 21st century, it can be difficult keeping students attentive for long periods, particularly in large settings. Education and educators need to advance, along with the toolbox they use to facilitate better teaching and student learning. ‘Students are actually paying attention’ I recently worked with a faculty member who was teaching a lecture to more than 300 students. We had just put together a module of content for his course and let the students use it before the lecture. I showed him a learning dashboard that reported on how students were faring in their efforts at the learning objective level. Looking at the dashboard, the professor sat back and said, "I’ve got to rethink some things. I usually walk in and do a prepared 90-minute lecture. Now I see that students already have the basics, so I can focus on the areas they’re having trouble with. And I need to come up with some better examples in my slides!" He then shared the dashboard with his students and explained how he was adjusting the lecture to address what they really needed him to teach. His follow up with me was inspiring: "I’ve never seen so many students in such a large lecture actually paying attention and being engaged." That’s because he was making good use of their time - and his own. He was free to do what a teacher does best: explain the finer points of the subject he’s an expert in. Faster feedback, better outcomes This is a perfect example of how good teachers can become better teachers - indeed great teachers - by taking advantage of tools that improve their instruction and personal teaching experiences, rather than passively reciting notes. We know from classroom studies that providing students with real-time feedback helps them learn better and faster than having them hand in homework and wait a couple of weeks to get evaluated. Revolution or evolution, technology that significantly shortens feedback time is the kind of teaching tool that can have immediate and long-term impact. And it’s based on sound experimentation and evidence. Ultimately, it’s the role of the teacher to select the tools that work best for him and decide how to apply them. Just as an abundance of word processing tools for "going paperless" didn’t replace the need for people to write (here I am typing away after all), the most effective teaching tools for "going hybrid" or "flipping classrooms" don’t aim to replace teachers, but to elevate them and the importance of their role in advancing education.  

The quality of instructional content hasn’t kept pace with other developments in online higher education. In too many online courses, the instructional media is no more than hastily repurposed print and classroom materials. Early hopes of taking advantage of the medium’s extraordinary capacity to enable new types of instructional media and activities have been largely unmet or lost. Finally, there are signs of change. Sign up for this month’s 11-Minute Webcast: Trends in Instructional Content for Online Higher Education, Tuesday, November 19, 12:30 pm, EST. Join us as we explore: The social, educational and economic trends that have led higher education to refocus attention on the role and potential of high-quality instructional content. Learning Analytics as a key driver in the pursuit of quality instructional materials. How you can make better use of your resources, improve learning outcomes and scale your online program, without reducing quality. Are you paying more attention to the quality of the instructional content in your course? Share your ideas and questions at the 11-Minute Webcast, Nov. 19, 12:30 pm, EST.

Learning Analytics - powerful and promising, however you define it. Yes, learning analytics has become a buzzword. And at this early stage, definitions abound.  However you define it, learning analytics is one of the key developments in higher education, as these articles attest. At its core, learning analytics is about capturing the right data; reporting data; analyzing data; and acting on the data to improve the student experience and outcomes. Technology will make the process of capturing and manipulating data scalable, affordable and ultimately better. Each week in Acrobatiq Annotations we’ll share curated articles and resources about relevant topics in online higher education. Data-Driven Online Course Design and Effective Practices Mary R. Grant, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Continuing Higher Education Review, Vol. 76, 2012 In this paper, Grant offers a useful discussion on the value of data in higher education, and makes a distinction between "academic analytics" and "learning analytics." Academic analytics - essentially the application of "business intelligence" to higher education - focuses on administrative and institutional concerns, such as student retention, distribution of funds, and the like. Learning analytics concerns student performance and behaviors in courses and programs. Grant uses the term "learning analytics" broadly. She includes most of anything concerned with teaching and learning. Excerpt: "Analytics is more than evaluating what learners have done or predicting what they will do, it is about restructuring teaching and learning strategies to repurpose pedagogical paradigms and academic systems. Learning analytics is only as effective as the institutional capacity to accept and encourage a data-driven model of assessment". (185)  Data Changes Everything: Delivering on the Promise of Learning Analytics in Higher Education Ellen D. Wagner, Phil Ice, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 47, no. 4, 2012 This article provides a high level overview of the evolving learning analytics landscape. The authors make comparisons to other sectors (advertising, Major League Baseball) to help readers imagine how analytics can be applied to higher ed. Excerpt:  "The recent movie Moneyball, based on the 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, tells the story of how the Oakland Athletics applied the principles of what became known as "sabermetrics" to analyze every aspect of their game…. It is not a story of how statistics saved the day for Oakland, any more than collecting more and more data on everything we do in higher education is going to save the day for colleges and universities. Our Take: Like Grant’s paper, Wagner and Ice also define learning analytics broadly - including teaching and learning activities, as well as administrative functions. This broad definition differs from ours at Acrobatiq. We focus on learning-centric issues, rather than mere signals of student presence, which can be useful, but misleading (see the 11-Minute Webcast). Leadership and Learning Analytics Veronica Diaz and Shelli Fowler, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, Nov 2012 This brief is based on a 2012 event during which participants considered learning analytics in the context of leadership and institutional change. A particularly interesting aspect of the paper is the degree to which the participants hold out great hopes and expectations for analytics to not merely capture information, but to drive institutional change in higher education. Excerpt: "Developing and employing learning analytics that can help us envision and build a new model for improving teaching and learning—a tool with both the scope and depth to become a foundational driver of systemic change—requires more than a change-management approach. The widespread adoption of learning analytics that can foster significant results and drive systemic change requires us to develop a change-leadership mind-set." (2) Our Take: Analytics is not simply a new tool to help us do what we’ve always done, but more efficiently, but a means of changing the institution. In this context, the paper’s focus on leadership is especially apt. 11-Minute Webcast: Learning Analytics The team at Acrobatiq provides a primer on learning analytics via slide deck and audio, along with a list of resources for a deeper dive.  Note: This month’s 11-Minute Webcast highlights Trends in Instructional Content for Online Higher Education, Tuesday, November 19,12:30 pm, EST.          

We attribute value and meaning to people, objects and other things on the basis of the circumstances in which we experience them. Art is the classic example. If we take a work of art out from behind the red ropes, away from the quiet guards, and out of the art gallery, the meaning and value of the art typically changes a great deal. In fact it may no longer be interpreted as art at all by some people - particularly in the case of some modern art.  Context is crucial in commercial markets, too. Vendors go to great lengths to control the context in which their products and services are positioned. Television advertisers, for example, avoid placing ads in the middle of programs that address unsettling topics; that evoke emotions and sensibilities that are not supportive of the product being promoted. "The Day After" was a fictional "made for TV movie" about the aftermath of a nuclear attack on US soil. The film’s producers found it so difficult to attract advertisers that they choose to run all ads prior to the point in the film when the nuclear attack occurs.  Apparently, convincing people that having fresher breath will make them one of the "beautiful people" is more difficult after witnessing death and destruction. What, if anything, does this have to do with higher education? Until now, not much. Historically, higher education has been able to control the context in which student’s experience the institution and what it has to offer. Compared to other types of organizations, colleges and universities are like islands, "all-in-one" organizations, in which the student - if they chose - could spend their entire educational career without ever leaving the campus. Our Educational Content in New Contexts But the walls around higher education are becoming less substantial, primarily because of student behaviour. Whether creating work groups on Facebook or adding their opinion to RateMyProfessor, students are taking elements of their experience outside of their schools to the broader public, piece by piece. Institutions are cautiously joining in the dismantling of the walls by, for example, creating institutional Facebook pages. But the most interesting effort to reach beyond the walls is the placement of the institution’s instructional materials (course notes, lectures) on public platforms, like  Connexions and Merlot and Academic Earth. The fact that these materials are publicly available is significant, of course. Traditionally, these instructional materials were carefully hidden behind secure university course management systems, available only to students registered in the course. But it’s also significant that the materials are now subject to evaluation and comparison with materials from other institutions. This exposes the institution to an entirely new type of evaluation with its own criteria. The Net is doing to higher ed what it did for so many other sectors - exposing competitors to brutal side-by-side comparisons; creating a far more informed buyer. As these shared platforms for educational content become more user-friendly visitors may soon be able to compare lectures like they compare fridges. What the users experience is not always pretty. Philip Greenspun did a minute by minute evaluation of a well known finance professor’s lecture performance on Academic Earth, suggesting that the professor’s lecture was wasteful, self-indulgent and incoherent. On the other hand, some of the instructional materials on the sites are celebrated for their quality. (Platforms like Academic Earth highlight the higher rated materials.) This move to greater transparency is a positive development. But I’m not sure that the majority of academic managers are yet fully conscious of the implications. Indeed, the decision to put educational content online is, at most institutions, left to the individual academic. As these platforms become more popular and the ability to compare educational content/institutions becomes that much easier, we may see leaders paying closer attention to what is published publicly.

Like many of my colleagues, who have been working in digital higher education for a long time, my initial reaction to MOOCs was a mix of indifference and confusion. Yes, it’s obvious that we need to do a better job of distributing access to education. Our investments in education can and should be shared with learners in less developed nations. But it was clear from the beginning of MOOC Mania that the interest of prestigious institutions had as much to do with branding as catering to under-served students. The fact that these courses used the lecture format ignored much of the last 20 years of research into how students learn online. And given that MOOCs were technically feasible 15 years earlier - had schools been interested - made all of the excitement hard for us to understand. That said, MOOCs have generated new discussions and a sense of urgency in higher education that may prove to be one of its most powerful drivers of innovation, albeit indirectly. Below, we’ve collected some of the more interesting posts, presentations and essays that signal the end of MOOC Mania. Let us know your thoughts. MOOCs, MIT and Magic & video presentation, MIT Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC) 2013 Conference. Start video at 2:05:00. (Dr. Tony Bates, Research Associate, Contact North, ) Thrun Enters Burgeoning Sieve Market (Mike Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver, Hapgood, Nov. 14, 2013) Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before (Martin Weller, professor of education technology at the Open University, UK, The Ed Techie, Nov 15, 2013) in the wake of MOOC hype, what shall we talk about? (Bonnie Stewart, TheTheoryBlog, 15 Nov 2013) Udacity: Shifting Models Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry (Rolin Moe, doctoral student, Pepperdine University, All MOOCs, All the Time, Nov. 15. 2013) WANNABE (University Ventures, August 23 2013)

"Microwave ovens were a clever idea, but their inventor could hardly have realized that their effect would ultimately be to take the preparation of food out of the home and into the, increasingly automated, factory; to make cooking as it used to be into a matter of choice, not of necessity; to alter the habits of our homes, making the dining table outmoded for many, as each member of the family individually heats up his or her own meal as and when they require it."   Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason Handy’s microwave example illustrates the point that technological innovations often have repercussions well beyond the original and intended purpose. As each innovation is launched, it inevitably interacts with a range of social, economic and cultural forces, leading to often surprising results.  Massive open online courses —MOOCs — are no different. The primary intention of MOOCs was to provide free online access to anyone via the web; not to create a radically more transparent form of higher education. But this aspect may prove to be MOOC’s greatest impact. Transparency and Instructional Quality Instructional resources and activities have historically been kept behind closed doors, available to only registered students. But, of course, MOOCs make instructional courses and their contents available to people outside of the institution; this is the format’s fundamental value.  As a result, universities and individual instructors find one of their core activities on display in ways not seen before. University leaders soon came to recognize the tremendous attention these courses were generating. Always concerned with reputation (the currency of greatest import in higher ed), universities began to see MOOCs as a new platform for competition; another means to establish and extend their brand, while fulfilling the institution’s social mission. But on what basis will institutions and academics compete through MOOCs? At this stage, it appears that the competition will be fought primarily through instructional content; the materials developed for students, such as video, illustrations, audio and text. During the past 18 months, the attention paid to the quality and production value of instructional content of high-profile MOOCs (e.g., Coursera, edX) has increased significantly. Video lectures and presentations are better written. Production values - such as professional lighting and sound - have improved. We are seeing less traditional lectures and more "performances. An instructor teaching a Udacity course begins by interviewing passersby in a style lifted straight out of late night TV comedy. The three-part edX course," Fundamentals of Neuroscience," features 5  to 10 minute NOVA-like episodes. In a recent article, edX CEO Anant Agarwal said, "From what I hear, really good actors can actually teach really well," and floated the idea that using actors in the future was a possibility. And I know of at least one digital higher education publisher that has turned to actors, rather than academics, to "star" in the company’s video lectures. While the vast majority of online courses in North American universities are made for $20K to $25K, I’ve been told (privately) that investment in MOOCs has reached 10 times that amount, due to the cost of higher production value. How Context Influences Value It’s important to emphasize that this heightened attention to the quality of instructional content is not the result of changing ideas of best practices for pedagogy or even demands by students for better quality content.  At least not directly. Rather, it’s the result of the new context in which the course is experienced. Typically, a university-level course is evaluated as part of a larger set of experiences that constitute the traditional university experience: a credential system, being part of a program of study and living on campus. Pulled out of this traditional context, the MOOC is evaluated on the basis of other criteria. Now what matters most to the student is what can be learned, full stop. So, what determines value for the learner depends more on factors such as the clarity of exposition, whether the course inspires interest in the learner (and maintains that interest), and how quickly and easily learning occurs. While these factors are certainly important in the traditional university context, they are less important, and are often outweighed by other factors, such as obtaining a degree. Using instructional content as the basis of competition for public recognition between institutions will likely increase the quality of instructional content in online higher education. To date, instructional content in online higher education has received remarkably little attention. At many institutions, the process of developing digital instructional materials still operates in a cottage-industry fashion. Individual instructors with limited funds, incomplete skill sets and insufficient incentives bear most of the burden for course design and development. While service departments provide technical support and instructional guidance, they’ve made only a small dent in the instructional model, to date. Instructional Content and Competition At the very least, I hope that increased attention given to instructional content in MOOCS will generate more focus on the design of online courses. A more disciplined, team-based approach will improve the quality of learning. And it’s also encouraging that the basis of this competition between participating institutions is actually directly related to instruction. As any education marketing professional will tell you (if their employer is not within earshot), instructional quality is not, sadly, a potent recruitment strategy. For institutions, competition based on instructional quality introduces interesting possibilities.  The elite institutions that grabbed the early MOOC headlines (Harvard, MIT, Stanford) are not necessarily better prepared (dollar-to-dollar) to offer high quality instructional content than less prestigious institutions. In fact, it could be argued − although difficult to quantify − that the focus of elite institutions on research, rather than teaching, makes these early MOOC adopters less prepared to compete on this new basis. Share your ideas in the comments section or contact me directly at: keith@acrobatiq.com or @keithhampson.  

If you’re interested in how higher education operates, or are doing research on the issues, trends and emerging technologies shaping higher education, these 20 organizations may be of value. You’ll find plenty of research, surveys, analysis, ideas and blogs, of course. Ithaka S+R The Center for College Affordability and Productivity Education Sector Contact North Survey Reports | The Sloan Consortium NMC Horizon Project | The New Media Consortium EDUCAUSE Library | EDUCAUSE.edu The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy OECD: Higher Education Management Publications | HESA Pullias Center for Higher Education  National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education Lumina Foundation Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) UCLA Jisc - supports digital technologies in UK education & research Nexus Research & Policy Center LH Martin Institute Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI)  The Delta Cost Project  on postsecondary education costs, productivity and accountability Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario  

Design is having its moment.  Apple’s  Jonathan Ive, Philippe Starck and Michael Graves are among a growing number of designers enjoying rock-star status. Businessweek, Fast Company and other pubs now dedicate entire issues to design. Enrollment in college design programs has spiked. But what role does - or should - design play in education, specifically digital higher education? A lot, it turns out. As we move from the classroom to the screen, design matters more than ever. The qualities that create great design are also the qualities needed to create great online learning experiences.  The relationship of design and higher education is the theme of a series of posts we’re kicking off.  This first post highlights what great design and great educational experiences have in common. The parallels are many. Next, I’ll explore how the migration from the classroom to the online environment requires a commitment to design. The third installment will review the state of design in higher ed.  I’ll wrap up the series by exploring the parallels between design and learner data. So, exactly what is design?  There isn’t a single definition; the field is broad and expanding. In the context of this series, think of design more as user experience (UX), than instructional design. Design in digital higher ed is about how people interact with screens, software, interfaces and information in a holistic, multidisciplinary way. Similarities between design and education: Great design and great education is user/student-centric. A great designer, like a great educator, takes what is complicated and makes it easy to understand. Well-designed services and systems are elegantly integrated and easy to use; so are the best educational web sites, services and systems. Great design leverages the user’s existing knowledge, just as great education builds upon the learner’s prior knowledge. Great design connects users with information and experiences in ways that makes it memorable and "sticky." So does great education. Great design attracts the user by making the experience as compelling as possible. Great education strives to engage learners and increase interaction - a key determinant of learning success. Great design evokes an emotional response, which can alter the user’s cognitive state. Great education can evoke positive emotions that make students more creative and open to new approaches when learning. Great design saves time by focusing the user’s attention on the most important information. Great online learning experiences maximize students’ time by focusing their attention on the key learning objectives and outcomes of the course. Great design seeks to transcend passive, one-way communication towards active engagement with the user. Isn’t this the goal of all great educators and institutions? We know from retention and completion rates that just providing knowledge is not enough. Other sectors and industries have recognized this. Design is a differentiator in the market because it adds real value. It’s a lesson that higher ed is just beginning to learn. How do you see the relationship between design and higher education? Share your comments here or on twitter: @KeithHampson or email: keith@acrobatiq.com. Note: We are offering an 11-Minute Webcast on this topic, Leveraging Design, on December 19, 2013.  Next post: Design & Screen-Based Learning in Higher Education Resource: Glossary of Design Terms

As part of our series on the importance of intelligent, high-quality design in online education, we’ve gathered a list of articles, books, videos and other resources that you may find helpful. Most of the selections come from the world of design, rather than education, specifically. Hopefully, in time, there will be more to resources to share on the role of design in education. If you have a resource we should include on this list, please let us know at: Keith@Acrobatiq.com or post a comment below. Reminder: We will be looking at design in an upcoming 11-Minute Webcast, Thursday, December 19, 2013 at 12:30 pm EST. Register here. Articles/Posts A Brief History of Design Thinking Design Thinking Sparks Learning in Rural North Carolina The Three Future Waves of Design and How to Ride Them Welcome to the Era of Design In Defense of Eye-Candy Academic Articles/Books Designing for People  A Designer’s Art The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel The Design of Everyday Things Improving the Environment in Distance Learning Courses Through the Application of Aesthetic Principles The Impact of Design and Aesthetics on Usability, Credibility, and Learning in an Online Environment The Pleasure of E-Learning: Toward Aesthetic E-Learning Platforms The Influence of Aesthetics and Content Structuring to E-Learning Systems’ Users Behavior  Websites/Videos Design Thinking for Educators Don Norman: Designing for People Design Genius (BBC Documentary) A List Apart (Magazine) Core77 A Glossary of Design Terms

". . . design has spread like gas to all facets of human activity from science and education, to politics and policy making. For a simple reason: one of design’s most fundamental tasks is to help people deal with change." (Economist, 2011). It’s widely thought that the rise of design during the past couple of decades owes much to the rapid pace of change that characterizes modern life. Design facilitates change for those seeking to stimulate change.  And for end users, design serves as a means of making changes less jarring and uncomfortable. As Ray Kurzweil, author, inventor and director of engineering at Google has argued, the rate of change is accelerating as never before.  The time between invention and mass adoption of, for example, consumer technologies, such as mobile phones and social networking, has dropped dramatically. The migration from the classroom environment to the Internet is one of the most dramatic changes in the history of higher education.  Although the Internet has been in Western households for 20 years, the vast majority of students and educators have grown up in the physical classroom model. Our institutions are designed according to the needs and logic of place-based learning. (We shouldn’t be surprised that the initial approach to web-based education was to try to replicate the classroom environment). Screen-Based Learning But the migration from the classroom to a screen-based environment is a change like no other. It’s a migration to a design-dependent environment. The digital learner’s experience is highly-dependent on the quality of design. The particular mix of colors, layout, audio, animation, words per page and other design elements can make the difference between a good and bad experience for learners on laptops, smartphones and tablets. To date, digital higher education has largely ignored the role of design in online learning. It’s not part of the conversation. You’ll be lucky to find it discussed at conferences or in journals. This is partly because good design practices are not part of most institutions’ DNA.  (Have you ever tried to find your way around an unfamiliar campus? Signage, anyone?). And partly because institutions often frame aesthetics and related matters as enemies of science. It’s time that digital higher education recognize the demands of this new online environment. The factors that determine the quality of learning are different than those that ruled the classroom in which we grew up. We need to include design talent and processes in our course design and development practices if we are going to make better use of this (still) new environment. As the saying goes, "When you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other end." Note: We are offering an 11-Minute Webcast on this topic, Leveraging Design, on December 19, 2013.  Resources Understanding the Accelerating Rate of Change        

If you can fit in some time for professional development over the well-deserved break, here are a few webcasts, videos, papers and blog posts from the Acrobatiq team on some of the hottest topics in online education. The 11-Minute Webcast This series offers a primer on some of digital education’s biggest trends. Learning Analytics Online Instructional Content Design for Online Education Resources for Teaching Papers and blog posts with valuable insights for online, hybrid or flipped classroom instructors. Best Practices in Online Teaching MOOCs: Content & Competition Lecture to Learning Dashboard Why design matters in digital higher education Acrobatiq Intelligent Courseware Walkthroughs Learn about our efficacy-based approach to improving student outcomes in these webcast walkthroughs. Intro to Biology Intro to Psychology Statistics STEM Readiness