TCS Instructional Design

Okay, this post really will be short and sweet. This is a tip that I learned very recently while collaborating with a SME. Like many or (hopefully) all of you have already done, this SME signed up for an account with dropbox. She downloaded the program onto her work computer and promptly began loading up important documents for the class we are working on together into one of her folders. Then she emailed me and gave me her username and password so that I could access the files. I promptly emailed her back and told her that it would probably be best if she never disseminated that information to anyone. Instead I gave her instructions on how she can simply "share" her folder with me so that I could have access. It is incredibly easy to share dropbox folders, and it is much more preferable than emailing back and forth all the time. This also ensures that as long as she makes changes to the file that is in the dropbox folder, then I will have access to the latest docu...

Hey -- check out this article from from Inside Higher Ed called The Thinking LMS (this is the same site Gia pointed us to for the Blackboard/eCollege comparison ). Basically, the University of Phoenix wants to build an LMS that will automatically present course content in the modality that best suits each learner... kind of like how Amazon, Netflix and iTunes can predict what we like to read, watch and listen to. That's a pretty provocative idea, given our current model of "the course is the course" which basically hopes that one size does fit all. How many of us have had a conversation with a TCS SME about building in some flexibility for different students' learning preferences? While the idea of "learning style" has become pretty cliché in our field by now, there's of course a lot of truth to it, and I'd encourage us to bring up the idea with our more engaged SMEs... even if it's just to gauge their understanding of the concept and h...

A couple of things came to mind during some recent SME conversations that I want to share. You may be already doing these things, but I think it helps to put them down here for all of us to think about and discuss... Given our mandate from Nancy Davis to consult to our SMEs on pedagogical issues related to learning outcomes, FOs, etc., it's likely that we'll run into SMEs who are not used to spelling out their instructional rationales and strategies as specifically as we're asking them to, even if they are at some level "good teachers." I try to motivate them by noting that the coursemap is now viewed as much of a ‘document of record’ as the Prospectus and Syllabus are – so it needs to show the rigor and clarity of outcomes of a 'premier' e-learning experience. And if a SME's LO/FO/assignment connections aren't as Bloom-worthy as they need to be, let's communicate to him or her that "my job is to help your expertise shine through"...

So I'm sure you've seen the recent emails about the upcoming CAE "Storytelling in Psychology" event given by Dr. Sandy Siegel. Sandy is one of our best SMEs (she’s in the MACC program) and she is a force in the classroom because of her storytelling skills. I think instructors’ personal/professional stories and vignettes have a lot of power to give a course relevance and heart, especially in a blended or online format with limited or no F2F interaction, and so I’ve been thinking about getting Sandy to audiorecord some brief stories for the courses she SMEs, either as an introductory “tone-setter” or as a springboard for a ‘what would you do?’-type assignment. Thing is, SMEs are rarely the sole instructors on their courses, and I’m thinking that whoever the other section instructors are may not want someone else’s voice (or video) built in, as for that term it is “their” course, not the SME’s. (In a past corporate job of mine we created situation-specific ‘Expert Vi...