Author Archives: Melissa A. Venable

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About Melissa A. Venable

Working at the intersection of instructional design and technology, social media, and career development.

Top Posts – at least so far

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In preparation for the BlogWorld and New Media Expo event this week, I decided to pull a list of top 5 posts on this blog. The posts linked below have had the most number of views so far.

  • Figuring Out Facebook – This post makes the list because it was picked up by All Tech Considered and as a result it had a big day. (Thank you Andy Carvin and NPR!) What helped was a list of other posts that came to me via Twitter that day, all addressing overnight privacy changes.
  • Instructional Design Documents – Prompted by a name change on the blog itself, this post provides a brief description of an instructional design document and includes a list of links to examples from different education and training organizations.
  • Course Design – Start with an Outline – This post includes a simple tool to get the course revision process going. The outline results in a one or two page guide for moving forward – practical application and a visual example.
  • Instructional Design and Project Management – Are You Certified? – Great comments here on the pursuit of professional certification in project management and how it may or may not be beneficial for an Instructional Designer.
  • Rubrics. Yes? No? Maybe… – Sparked by an exchange in an online book club this post outlines some of the pros and cons for using rubrics to assess student work in an academic course.

While total number of views is not necessarily the best metric for creating a ‘top’ list, I can see that this group of posts does have common elements – they address topics that were timely and provide  information and examples for practical application. A more in depth inventory is in the works and will be informed no doubt by the sessions and presenters at BlogWorld.

More to follow from Design Doc and the BlogWorld and New Media Expo…

Image credit: stock.xchng

Managing the Flow of Information (or Not)

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Information and advice about instructional design and technology is everywhere. And it’s being generated everyday, 24/7 – on websites, at conferences, in journals and magazines, in email newsletters, in social networking communities, and on blogs. Much of what I find sits in my Delicious bookmarks account – neatly tagged, but unread.

How do we manage the constant flow of information? And perhaps more importantly, how do we attend to it?

At the end of a recent keynote presentation titled Say it in Photos (which was apparently presented from bed), Alan Levine (@CogDog) was asked: how do you keep up with the stream of information? Alan’s answer was quick and to the point: you can’t. I think he even laughed a little bit when he said it. His advice was to focus on the things that “give you energy” and “empower the work you do.”

This advice is both permission to step off of the information treadmill and a challenge to identify those sources that can make a difference. There’s also a hint here that it’s personal. What energizes and empowers you may be different from what energizes and empowers me.

Read on…

What do you rely on for instructional design and technology news and information? What and/or who energizes your work?

Photo credit: stock.xchng

Reporting Course Issues with Screencasts

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How do students and instructors report problems with an online course? Over the past year I have been working with one faculty member that posts issues with screencasts. It has been a successful experience both from her perspective, as an Instructor, and mine, as Instructional Designer.

What are course issues?

Typical problems associated with online courses include:

  • Links: broken, misdirected, error messages
  • Errors: typographical errors, formatting problems
  • Content: missing or outdated information

The usual reporting of a course issue involves filing out an online form with predetermined fields. One of the challenges of these forms is the field titled “description of problem”. Communicating an online program via text can be difficult to do.

What is a screencast?

Using a headset and a screencast application you can create a recording of your computer screen and your narration of what you are doing.  The screencast can be uploaded to another site, think YouTube, or accessed via URL. The instructor mentioned above was already familiar with Jing, but there are other options available – many of them free.

A recent example:

A file wasn’t opening properly for students or instructor, instead opening a series of error messages and warnings. I was not able to recreate the problem. When I contacted the instructor for more information she sent a screencast that allowed me to watch her screen as she tried to open the file. I could see that the file extension was the problem. She would not have thought to mention it, or look for that as a troubleshooting step, but I knew that the LMS could be a little temperamental with the .docx extension. The screencast made all the difference in the communication and resolution process.

Benefits

The potential for decreasing resolution time is the primary benefit here. Instructors are on the front lines with these kinds of errors and students, who are not aware of the existence or role of the instructional designer, often hold the instructor responsible for problems. Screencasts help to remove the uncertainty and the need to go back to the instructor for more information.

For more information about using screencasts:

  • Ferriter, W. (2010). Preparing to teach digitally. Educational Leadership, 67(8), 88-89.
  • Griffis, P. (2009). Building pathfinders with free screen capture tools. Information Technology and Libraries, 4, 189-190.
  • Rethlefsen, M. L. (2009). Screencast like a pro. Library Journal, 134(7), 62-63.

Have you used screencasts, or screenshots, to resolve course issues? Consider incorporating screencasts into your issue reporting process!

Image credit: umwditt, Flickr