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A Tribute to Mentoring

My mentor, Christopher Knapper, recently turned 80, a milestone worthy of celebration and reflection. Here’s what I’ve learn about mentorship from one of the best.

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Simulations in Online Courses: Integrating Synchronous Experiential Learning Opportunities for Students in the Virtual Classroom

Educators have long praised the value of simulations and role-playing exercises and the impact of those experiential activities on student learning. As Bjorn Billhardt (2005) explains, “Simulations offer huge advantages over lectures, handbooks, or on-site trainers. They engage students while helping them retain and apply

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An Update on Media Multitasking

Can we talk about the perils of media multitasking enough? I don’t think so, and that belief was confirmed by a clearly organized and well-written review of the research on multitasking with various electronic devices (May & Elder, 2018). I try to be measured in

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Solutions to Online Discussion Problems

Student discussions have long been both thorn and rose of online courses. When online learning was first introduced to academia, skeptical face-to-face instructors believed that the courses must lack any discussion, likening them to a television broadcast. But online educators immediately recognized that the format

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Does Active Learning Work?

Why this article is worth discussing: A lot of us would wholeheartedly agree that active learning works. We have some familiarity with the research that supports it, and we’ve seen its positive effects in our classrooms. Done well, it engages students and overcomes the passivity

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Student-Centered Social Interaction Online

In my years as an instructional designer at Indiana University, I’ve heard the same complaint again and again across wholly disparate courses and programs: “I would like more and better student interaction in my online courses.” These teachers have used traditional online discussion boards and

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Finding Learning in Failure

I’ve been doing some reading on failure. Yes, I know, depressing subject, but it’s our need to avoid failure that makes it such a distasteful topic. We—and the reference here is to teachers and students—need to orient ourselves to the learning potential failure offers.

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