Alyssia Hunter's List: msu

• many of the new wave of online teachers are Web novices entering the field without a deep understanding of online technology. A closer look at how course management systems work, combined with an understanding of how novices use technology, provides a clearer view of the manner in which a CMS may not only influence, but control, instructional approaches.
• experience with the CMS over time does not necessarily lead to more creative pedagogy, or even to more expansive use of system features. Even after several years of working with the CMS, faculty requests for help focus on what the technology can do, rather than how their pedagogical goals can be achieved. They want speed and ease of use rather than more features
• Educational technologists look at a CMS and see its many features, but faculty see an inflexible system that cannot be customized
• Few instructors are consciously aware that CMS design is influencing their pedagogy.
• One solution to the CMS pedagogy trap is to support novice online instructors differently than advanced instructors. With Web novices, pedagogy must be emphasized before features and tools. Starting with the CMS features creates a backward process. When faced with a CMS for the first time, faculty begin by experimenting with one or two tools that they already understand, then adapting the tools gradually as they gain more experience using them (West, et al., 2007). Most training encourages this approach, because it gets faculty using something in the system, even if they don’t understand the whole structure of the CMS. But creating a course piecemeal means that the pedagogical goals are left behind in the interest of mastering a few tools. That replaces the instructor’s main strength (their expertise in their discipline and their teaching) with their main weakness (technological literacy). Teaching faculty to consider their teaching approaches first, before they enter the CMS, could help prevent tool availability from limiting their pedagogy.

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• • /on.mash.to/fuUhLt 2 months ago
   
• why Angry Birds is a truly winning user experience.
• adding more detail to the user’s mental model at just the right time.
• slowed response time, combined with a carefully crafted trajectory trace
• fast is good, clever is better.

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