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Full-Text Articles in Education

Designing For Deep And Meaningful Student-To-Content Interactions, Joanna Dunlap, Donna Sobel, Deanna Sands Mar 2016

Designing For Deep And Meaningful Student-To-Content Interactions, Joanna Dunlap, Donna Sobel, Deanna Sands

Joanna Dunlap

Online education has skyrocketed in popularity. Every year, more universities are starting online programs. This increase is mostly due to institutional economics, and the demands of students who face a number of obstacles that make the on-campus format inconvenient. The University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center is no different. Over the last few years, there have been numerous institutional initiatives to encourage faculty to create new online programs or online versions of existing on-campus programs. As part of a program level effort to offer a fully online licensure program in the area of special education that would …


Workload Reduction In Online Courses: Getting Some Shuteye, Joanna Dunlap Mar 2016

Workload Reduction In Online Courses: Getting Some Shuteye, Joanna Dunlap

Joanna Dunlap

Instructors are a key component of any successful facilitated, asynchronous online course. They are tasked with providing the infrastructure for learning; modeling effective participation, collaboration, and learning strategies; monitoring and assessing learning and providing feedback, remediation, and grades; troubleshooting and resolving instructional, interpersonal, and technical problems; and creating a learning community in which learners feel safe and connected. Accomplishing these objectives is labor and time intensive, often requiring instructors to be constantly online. Besides being impractical, this can lead to questionable instructional quality and eventual instructor burnout. Fortunately, there are instructional strategies that can help achieve instructor presence without requiring …


Preparing E-Learning Designers Using Kolb's Model Of Experiential Learning, Joanna Dunlap, J. Dobrovolny, David Young Mar 2016

Preparing E-Learning Designers Using Kolb's Model Of Experiential Learning, Joanna Dunlap, J. Dobrovolny, David Young

Joanna Dunlap

In this article, Joanna Dunlap, Jackie Dobrovolny, and David Young describe their approach to the design of a real-world learning experience that prepares online graduate students to work as e-learning designers and specialists. Using Kolb's model of experiential learning to support their instructional design decisions, Dunlap, Dobrovolny, and Young have created a series of online instructional-design courses in which students use a variety of e-learning technologies and tools to discuss instructional strategies and to provide support and feedback to each other on the e-learning products they design individually. This approach allows school and the real world to be integrated in …


From Pixel On A Screen To Real Person In Your Students' Lives: Establishing Social Presence Using Digital Storytelling, Patrick Lowenthal, Joanna Dunlap Mar 2016

From Pixel On A Screen To Real Person In Your Students' Lives: Establishing Social Presence Using Digital Storytelling, Patrick Lowenthal, Joanna Dunlap

Joanna Dunlap

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is a comprehensive guide to the research "and" practice of online learning. One of the most challenging aspects of establishing a CoI in online courses is finding the best way to attend to each element of the CoI framework in a primarily text-based environment. In our online courses, we have examined the use of digital storytelling as a way to break down the barriers that can get in the way of achieving a healthy and productive CoI. In this paper, we describe how we use digital storytelling to establish our social presence as instructors.


Co-Teaching An Online Action Research Class, Brent Wilson, Jennifer Vanberschot Mar 2016

Co-Teaching An Online Action Research Class, Brent Wilson, Jennifer Vanberschot

Brent Wilson

Two instructors report their experience co-teaching an online action research (AR) course required as part of an e-learning master’s degree. Adopting a practice-centered stance we focus on the course activities of participants (instructors and students), with particular attention to the careful crafting of course elements with the goal of achieving an excellent learning experience for students. The case narrative describes the course and ways in which we have modified the course based on a variety of considerations. We also outline problems and areas still in need of improvement. We reflect on the role of theory in our own pursuit of …