Components of an Effective Learning Activity

There are a number of components to an effective learning activity that engage students, involve critical thinking, promote discussion or interactivity and general lead to good quality learning.  Those components are listed as such:

• A good descriptive title
• A set of detailed learning outcomes that students will meet by the completion of the activity
  
• An initiation to whet the appetite of the student and orient them to the topic
• A set of thorough academic instructions with an included main question or activity
• A description of how the learner will be evaluated
• Notes for other instructors (*optional)
• Non-academic directions for completion dependent upon the course management system or method of delivery

*Notes for other instructors come in to play when multiple instructors may teach the course but those instructors were not the course developers.

It is my feeling that if you ensure that your learning activity contains these components, learners will be more likely to complete the activity, be less lost, be more likely to interact with each other and the instructor, and meet the required learning outcomes for that activity and the course.  The diagram to the left illustrates the connection between learning outcomes, activities, and the assessment of those outcomes and thus the activities.  If the learning activities include the components mentioned above including the related learning outcomes, and the method for assessing whether or not those outcomes have been met and to what degree, then a cycle is produced that strengthens the curriculum by providing a strong foundation and with the right class management provides students with the best possible learning experience.

Video Production - A Physical Assessment Instructional Video

In the past few months I have been working with an Excelsior College nursing faculty colleague to produce a video that helps students identify all the parts to a physical assessment video they must produce on their own. The video outlines all the skills and knowledge they must demonstrate within their submitted video. During this project I really ramped up my timeline for teaching myself some of the inner workings of Adobe Premiere which is their video editing software package. I was able to string together clips of video recorded in a different format than the eventual output format of flash video (.FLV), trim and adjust those clips, add sound files (edited in Garageband from Apple), create titles, and add still images for chapter headings. Although I know that Premiere is capable of much more, it was nice to explore those audio/video skills within such a nice application. I can say that I wish the interface was setup a little different as selecting various parts of video and moving them around was a bit clumsy. This could have also been my newness to the upgrade of the program as there might be some shortcuts or easier ways to do these things. I look forward to doing more like adding key-frames and transitions in the future. I should also say that I am a big fan of iMovie and Final Cut Studio from Apple as well. I can not share the video with you here, but if you have an interest in Nursing and are looking for a Nursing Degree program to take online, you can enroll at Excelsior College and take this NUR442 course.

Excelsior College Webinar on Managing Effective Discussions

On Tuesday November 9th myself and a few colleagues recorded a web conference for Excelsior College faculty called "Managing Effective Discussions". This webinar produced and recorded with the wonderful web conference software/service Adobe Connect Professional, focused on strategies for managing effective discussions in online courses at Excelsior College, and how developers or subject matter experts can structure or setup these discussions within development by ensuring they contain some key components. Those key components are learning outcomes, the method and way those outcomes will be measured, an initiation to orient the student to the topic of the discussion, some guiding questions or information to keep the student on track, and the main question or questions to discuss as well as the instructions for the student. I can not provide you with the link to the actual webinar as you must be an Excelsior College faculty (adjunct or full time) member, but I thought it would be helpful if a included a description of what took place because the principles can be applied to other instructional design related venues.

Newly Discover Application - StreamToMe

I often pick up great tips and ideas, applications, and more for many facets of my technology and learning infused life from my Google Reader pages which I read on my iPad with Reeder and on my many desktop computers through the Google Reader application. Incidentally Google also has a Google Mobile application that I use sometimes as well that includes all of the many great services offered by Google. Recently I found a very good iOS application this way. It is called StreamToMe. In the past there have been a few applications that allow you to control your Macintosh or PC from your iOS device (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch). This application actually allows you to play content on your iOS device from your computer in effect going in the opposite direction as those applications I have used in the past. StreamToMe works very well and it is very simple to set up. You simply download the StreamToMe app to your iOS device and down load the StreamToMe server application to your Mac or PC. I was impressed with the application's ability to convert almost any video format on the fly from a desktop computer to a format that iOS devices can utilize. The audio files worked very well and affords me the ability to place speakers in any room of the house, connect an iOS device to the speakers, and play content that only exists on the desktop computer. This application gets a five star rating in my book. Kudos to the developer Matt Gallagher.