As instructors, we make hundreds of decisions throughout a semester as we interact with our students, explain concepts and procedures, or assess their knowledge and skills. To help us make choices - among other important factors - understanding the characteristics and needs of learners is fundamental to designing effective and efficient learning experiences. For example, as parents can tell you, there is quite the difference on how one would explain a certain concept to a 5-year-old versus someone who is in his late thirties! In addition to age, other characteristics play important parts, such as location, language, background, etc. Hence, familiarity of fundamental facts pertaining to the learner population can significantly support the learning effectiveness, efficiency, as well as the engagement. Over the past decade, the learner population of ASU Online has seen significant growth. What started with a few hundred enrolled students at the beginning of the decade has grown exponenti...

Cheating is nothing new, and with internet access and the move to online learning, the opportunities to act without academic integrity have become more readily available. The discussion about academic integrity is often seen as a student-based issue, and thus tends to focus on dishonesty, cheating, and plagiarism and how we might reduce these behaviors by students.  As an instructor, you must decide how you choose to approach and address academic integrity in your classes. Research supports that instructors might increase academic integrity among their students by creating an environment that promotes honesty, responsibility, and fairness, instead of focusing on penalties.  Instructors are facilitators of their class and as such can work to create positive relationships and an atmosphere that supports academic integrity ( Boehm, 2009 ;  Stearns, 2001 ).  One of the first steps we can take is to ensure that students understand what academic integrity entails in g...

While racism is very apparent in the world today, many don’t realize how prevalent it is within academia as well. Not only have I experienced this myself, but I have many friends with countless stories of their own. The reality is that I have experienced and witnessed racism and discrimination at almost every single school I have attended. It’s always a matter of exterior judgement. Does that student look professional? Does this student look “college ready?" Does that student look like they could be in higher classes? Throughout my public school experience I was classified as "gifted" and although anyone could technically take the tests to be in these "gifted" programs, the demographic was completely discriminatory. Not only was I literally the only black person, I was one of very few females. Because there was no representation of black people in these types of classes, I felt like an outsider, and was seen this way as well. At a volunteer event outside ...

The Decision Making Process What would be a good reason for making changes to a course? Take a minute to reflect and count how many reasons you can find.  If you want to hear more than 15 reasons, then Tuesday's TeachT@lk webinar is for you. Most importantly, not only did we talk about potential rationales for making changes to a course, we also provided planning strategies and highlighted several helpful available resources that are available to you at ASU. So, if you ever thought about change, now is a good time to start! Among the reasons for re-designing discussed are: New Content (e.g., world happenings, new perspectives) New Format (e.g., accelerated vs. semester-long) New Policies (e.g., addressing student behaviors) New Tools (e.g., technologies) Feedback (e.g., from students, peers) General Trends (e.g., Universal Design, Active Learning) When you decide you need to make a change, big or little, be sure to follow the "Decision-Making Process" ...

"According to a 2005 study done by Nature, Wikipedia contains only slightly more inaccuracies in science-related topics than does Encyclopaedia Britannica" (Chandler, 2010) Shigeru Tamura circa 1939 College courses rarely encourage students to do their research with Wikipedia, but there is value in teaching students the importance of critically evaluating sources, and contributing to the worlds' general knowledge on subjects. Faculty can guide their students, as well as contribute their expertise on subjects. Wikipedia is widely used and ambitious in that it aims to provide a free encyclopedia to anyone in the world. While the encyclopedia is the largest of its kind, there is still an imbalance in the depth and quantity of articles about women. On April 8, 2016, a group of freshly minted and enthusiast ASU editors (students, staff and faculty) participated in the inaugural “Wikipedia edit-a-thon for Women in Science and Engineering.” The event started with a short...

Millennials watch 11.3 hours of online video a week! With the average YouTube video at 4 minutes long, that means they are watching about 171 videos per week. Educators need to take note of this trend, and take some tips from the "TubeGurus" on how to create engaging videos for their courses. Our webinar on March 2, 2016 talked about a number of topics from the use of humor, to how to get started with ideas. We shared and discussed some of the best practices below, and applied them to videos for online and flipped courses.  Some of the best practices included: Shorter is Better Use the 5A's of Emotion Tell a Story Call (Students) to Action Create a "Viral" title As always, the best way to get started is to meet with an instructional designer, with your objectives and a few sketches on what you want to do.  Below is the summary video, slides and resources. Resources: Summary video PowerPoint slides Frame-by-Frame Template Video Idea L...

Guest Blogger: René Tanner, Life Sciences Librarian Wikipedia , the free, open, online encyclopedia has the potential to share information and knowledge with people around the world. However, the use of Wikipedia in higher education is often discouraged because, in general, encyclopedias are not adequate sources for college-level research. Also, anyone can edit Wikipedia, so outdated and erroneous information may be present;   But what if, the tables were turned and instead students were encouraged to be contributors and given credit for editing and improving Wikipedia?   What might they learn and how might their critical thinking skills be improved? Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, would like more experts to be part of the project. Wales notes that often enthusiasts develop entries of personal interest and that someone with a deeper understanding would add nuance and improve the quality of articles greatly. However, the number of scientist/editors in Wiki...

Today's Guest Blogger is Christian Wright, an instructional professional in the School of Life Sciences as ASU. He has a Master’s in Education and a Ph.D. in Biology where he studied the interaction between physiological condition, environment, and foraging behavior of Gila monsters in Dr. Dale DeNardo’s lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. Additionally, he was a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Sara Brownel l ’s lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. His current research is a continuation and extension of research he worked on with Dr. Brownell in her lab and focuses specifically on 1) generating a validated general biology programmatic assessment, 2) exploring potential biases in undergraduate biology classrooms as well as examining mechanisms and interventions that may explain and alleviate said biases, 3) evaluating assessments used by undergraduate biology instructors and by biology education researchers to determine if these measurement tools are indeed...