To start, decolonizing a reading list isn’t necessarily about removing works by seminal figures in a discipline. Rather it’s a highly intellectual exercise requiring consideration of whose knowledge is privileged and whose voice is excluded. It’s also a matter of considering how power is constructed within a discipline.

Course syllabi serve a multiplicity of purposes. They are administrative records but also constitute intellectual documents that make knowledge in a particular discipline explicit. Syllabisend a variety of messages to students. For example, they can make clear to students the major figures in a discipline, as well as which works are central to a field of study and therefore should be read for a particular course.

It is widely acknowledged in critical pedagogy literature that the act of educating does not simply refer to the act of imparting knowledge, but to the way learners construct knowledge and make sense of it. In The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, argued that teaching can reinforce or challenge learners’ existing world views. It follows therefore that the construction of a syllabus for a course is a critical activity requiring careful consideration of how different world views, knowledge sets, and forms of scholarly authority are articulated.

The good news is that many faculty are already engaged in teaching beyond the borders of our present curricula in intellectually sophisticated ways. However, a thorough review and inventory of your reading list with a critical lens is an important exercise to engage in. 

The four steps below offer a practical place to start.

Audit Your Current Reading List

What jumps out for you when you look at your syllabus? After teaching a few courses, instructors often look back over their syllabi and realize they fall into a certain pattern. This can be a surprise if the course was developed on the fly in recent years. Looking at the readings in a syllabus can help surface these patterns. For example, have all of the readings been written by people from the same country, or by people from the same type of institution? Have they all taken the same approach to presenting information? By being more aware of patterns like these, instructors can become more self-reflective about the choices they make.

Conducting a brief audit can help reveal how knowledge is represented in your course. Librarians can also be valuable partners in this process, helping to identify gaps, suggest diverse sources, and support resource selection.

Other questions to consider include:

• Where are most authors geographically or institutionally located?
• Which perspectives appear most frequently?
• For the poorest communities, what is the situation? Do they remain simply the objects of the research or also the co-authors of the conclusions ?

Who are the authors of knowledge in the materials you have assigned to read in the course? As reviewed in the literature on diverse learning environments, materials send clear messages to learners about who the important authors of knowledge are. The questions below can help illustrate and surface some of these patterns.

Examine Epistemological Dominance in Your Discipline

This work does not begin or end with the list of names or topics that go into a syllabus. It begins there but it also continues in the way that we organize the knowledge within our disciplines.

The fact that all these disciplines have come to exist in our time due to the historical and geographical conditions in which they developed. In particular, all were established in European and North American universities. As Walter Mignolo and Boaventura de Sousa Santos among others have pointed out, the coloniality of knowledge has played a very important role in this respect. Modern colonial and neo-colonial systems have imposed their own norms and values and depreciated other forms of knowledge.

For instructors, this reflection might involve questions such as:

• Which theoretical frameworks dominate the syllabus?
• What intellectual traditions are presented as foundational?
• How are alternative perspectives positioned within the course?

It is no longer a question of either replacing or abolishing tradition in the name of another, but on the contrary of recognizing that every science is the product of more than one tradition.

Rethink How Students Engage With Texts

We can always change what texts we teach, but then how will our students respond to those texts?

Rather than teaching the notion that scholarship provides an impartial or neutral statement on a topic, it can be valuable to ask students to think about what time and place the scholar lived. This approach to teaching is an example of critical pedagogy, a teaching style which was popularized by Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and furthered by hooks in Teaching to Transgress (1994). Critical pedagogy is concerned with developing the student’s ability to think critically whilst at the same time developing an understanding of the subject matter for that discipline.

For example, to encourage students to engage critically with texts, instructors might:

• Pair a canonical article with a contemporary critique
• Ask students to compare how different scholars approach the same issue
• Encourage discussion about whose perspectives are present—or missing—in a text

Literature can be an excellent tool to engage students in scholarly discussion. These strategies may help your readers become more active participants in scholarly discussions and critical readers.

Contextualize Canonical Works

Canonical texts are an integral part of the history of a discipline. Decolonizing a course does not mean removing canonical texts. Rather than removing them from their traditional historical context, we need to situate them differently.

Instructors might ask students to consider:

• What historical moment shaped this work?
• What assumptions about knowledge or society inform the author’s argument?
• Which voices were not part of this conversation at the time?

Contextualizing the work helps students to understand that canonical texts were written within particular ways of seeing the world and it is not a universal view. Smith (2012) notes: Acknowledge the history of who produced the knowledge and how it was produced, so students can learn more about the disciplines and how they come to be what they are.

Start Small

For many instructors, the most sustainable approach is incremental change.

Some simple starting strategies include:

• One or two readings per term could be replaced with works that come from other schools of thought or other locations in the world.
• Author background information will give students an idea of who wrote what. By having this background information, students will be able to understand the author’s context and perspective thus enabling them to read the text more effectively.
• Inviting students to identify emerging scholars or new frameworks in the field.
• Designing assignments that compare multiple theoretical approaches.
• Possible activities to broaden the scope of a course.

Even modest adjustments can broaden the intellectual scope of a course over time.

This approach aligns closely with UDL’s Plus-One strategy which emphasizes making one purposeful change at a time to build more inclusive and accessible learning environments.

A syllabus is a powerful statement that signals to students whose ideas count in a field and what is happening in a field. Updating and revising readings is not about getting rid of legitimate scholarly approaches but about including voices representing a more diverse group of scholars whose work is now seen as being more relevant to the scholarship in the field.

It is important to carry out this task with care and in stages so as to enhance mastery of the discipline while at the same time increasing the number of students who identify with the process of learning.

References

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress : Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, 1995.

Hurtado, Sylvia, et al. “A Model for Diverse Learning Environments: The Scholarship on Creating and Assessing Conditions for Student Success.” Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, edited by John C. Smart and Michael B. Paulsen, Springer Netherlands, 2012, pp. 41–122.

Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press.

The post Decolonizing Your Reading List: A Practical Starting Guide first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

Everything many of us had spent years learning to design appeared instantly.

When the presenter asked whether the faculty would be interested in adopting the tool, the Zoom room fell silent.

Finally, one professor spoke:

“If we ask students not to use AI to cheat, maybe we shouldn’t either.”

A Walk Down Instructional Memory Lane

As I listened, I found myself revisiting nearly thirty years in instructional technology, a field rich with theories and models for evaluating the value of AI versus human teaching.

If I were to hashtag the ideas running through my mind, they would be:

• #CAI
• #Training_vs_Teaching
• #AI_vs_Human_for_Teaching

All leading to:

#GoodTeaching_with_AI_and_Human

Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI)

From the invention of personal computers to the rise of online learning, technology has traditionally played an assistive role. In the 1950s, B. F. Skinner introduced his “teaching machine,” pioneering programmed instruction. Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) was designed to support human instruction, not replace it.

That was true, until the arrival of AI.

Within just a couple of years of ChatGPT’s emergence, studies have suggested that AI-powered tutoring systems can significantly accelerate learning in certain contexts. A 2025 comprehensive review of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), for example, found that AI can offer scalable and cost-effective personalization, something difficult for humans to replicate in large classes.

Yet what AI primarily delivers is instruction or training. And training is not the same as teaching.

Training vs. Teaching

The difference between training and teaching lies in their purpose, scope, methods, and outcomes.

Training is a systematic process aimed at developing specific skills for particular tasks. As Edwin B. Flippo (1984) defined it, training increases knowledge and skills for doing a particular job.

Teaching, by contrast, is broader. It cultivates understanding, critical thinking, and intellectual growth. According to Anita E. Woolfolk (2016), teaching guides learners to construct meaning through structured experiences.

Years ago, I attended a workshop on cognitive load theory. The presenter asked: What is the best way to demonstrate an Excel feature? Participants suggested help documents, graphics, short videos, and Q&A sheets. Hands went up in agreement.

When I suggested beginning with a real-life situation that required that Excel function, no hands were raised.

The silent reaction seemed to say: Are you out of your mind?

I later realized I was the only participant from a school setting. The others worked in corporate training. Their performance goals centered on efficiency and task completion. They were there to learn how to build user skills quickly and with minimal “unnecessary” cognitive load.

My goal was different: to help students use quantitative reasoning to navigate life.

On our way out, my friend joked, “Sharon, you’re so daring. If I gave your answer to my boss, I’d be fired.”

Today, I wonder whether the roles have been reversed. When it comes to designing and delivering training, AI outperforms humans in speed, scalability, and availability.

But raising a human being, intellectually and emotionally, is not the same as training task efficiency.

That is teaching.

Human vs. AI for Teaching

Research consistently shows that humans continue to outperform AI in areas such as:

• Emotional intelligence and empathy
• Mentorship and relational trust
• Managing behavioral dynamics
• Holistic understanding of student well-being

To teach well in the age of AI, we must understand what distinguishes us.

Human vs. AI in Teaching

Relatable vs. Irrelative

Humans share a biological journey of growth and limitation. AI is an invented, non-biological system.

Empathic vs. Phlegmatic

Humans feel and share emotions. AI simulates response without lived experience.

Active vs. Passive

Humans can act or adjust actively by reading the emotions, context, and the environment. AI operates as an answering machine to prompts.

Vulnerable vs. Powerful

Humans are exposed to risk and limitation, yet vulnerability enables connection. AI strives for comprehensiveness and error minimization.

Rigorous vs. Sycophantic

Humans can stand firm in truth and expectation. AI is often overly accommodating, optimized to please.

Humans possess embodied presence. We sense tone shifts, hesitation, and confidence. We go “off script” when the moment calls for it. We adjust not because of an algorithm, but because we care.

Even our weaknesses, our vulnerability to error, risk, and uncertainty, allow us to build authentic relationships.

That is not programmable.

Good Teaching with Humans and AI

Recently, a colleague responded to an update I shared about my son’s internship application. He had not passed the screening test. As a first-time taker, he mismanaged his time and became stuck on minor bugs.

Her email did not merely offer advice. It offered perspective, empathy, and encouragement. She shared stories. She normalized the struggle. She conveyed warmth and sincerity.

With her permission, I am sharing the message with notes that I’ve added to each sentence, from which I could build a list of what constitutes the meaning of teaching, like a human.

From the message alone, I could construct a list of what teaching, like a human, looks like:

These are deeply human acts.

AI can generate feedback.

But it cannot care.

Living with the Reality of AI

In an article called Innovating the Future: DePaul’s approach to artificial intelligence, DePaul political science professor Dick Farkas pointed out that there’s no uninventing AI. It is like nuclear weapons, you cannot just say, “let’s just push it aside.” It is a reality.

Within that reality lie both threat and opportunity.

It is a threat to those who teach as if they were content-delivery machines. If teaching becomes indistinguishable from algorithmic transmission, replacement becomes plausible.

But for those willing to let AI handle knowledge transmission and skill automation, AI can become an enabler, freeing educators to focus on what matters most:

• Human growth
• Human care
• Human development

The Algorithm of Good Teaching

The future of good teaching is not AI or human.

It is AI for efficiency, and humans for meaning.

AI for training, and humans for transformation.

AI for speed, and humans for depth.

Because in the end, education is not merely about producing correct answers.

It is about shaping lives.

And that remains, irreducibly, human.

References

The post The Algorithm of Good Teaching: AI vs. Human  first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

Often, as educators, we can conflate intellectual rigor with logistical rigor. Logistical Rigor was first introduced to me through reading the work of Dr. Kevin Gannon. In his research, he poses the idea that faculty introduce policies or expectations that make a course difficult in order to increase the “rigor” without realizing the impact it can have on a student’s cognitive bandwidth. In other words, for every minute a student has to spend figuring out how to turn in an assignment or figuring out how to find an obscure research text online is less energy they cannot spend on actually interacting with theyour course content. So, what are some examples of intellectual rigor and logistical rigor?

Logistical Rigor (Bad Hard) 

Intellectual Rigor (Good Hard) 

When students think about the difficulty of a course, they will ask themselves, “How hard is it to get an A?” A lot of the time, logistical rigors like the ones listed above can be what makes the course feel hard without the students engaging in intellectual work. Removing logistical rigor won’t water down the course, instead it will free up time for students to engage with some of the intellectual work you want them to! 

Dr Kevin Gannon poses the following questions for faculty to ask themselves in the course design process in his article titled, Why the Calls for a Return to Rigor are Wrong: 

• Does a nonnegotiable attendance policy genuinely advance learning?
• Does an inflexible deadline policy for all assignments strengthen learning?
• Is learning furthered by tests with a lot of questions and a relatively brief time limit?
• Does a pedagogical strategy that relies exclusively on lectures promote learning?

Strategies to Implement Right Away

D2L Stress Test 

• What is it: a user experience audit of your D2L course site 
• Action: use the student view in your course site to see the student experience.  Can you find the week’s readings and assignments in three  clicks or less? You can do this yourself or work with CTL’s Learning Experience Research team. Read more about the work they are doing in this blog post. 
• Impact: help you identify stumbling blocks for students that get in the way of learning

Rubrics 

• What is it: a scoring tool that identifies learning outcomes and criteria for assignments 
• Action: include a rubric for all assignments in order to make your expectations clear. Example rubrics are available on the Teaching Commons.  Your Learning Experience Designer can also work with you to design one for a specific assignment. 
• Impact: This will reduce the hidden curriculum and help your students understand why you are having them complete the assigned work. It might also make it easier for you to grade. 

Provide Students with Options for Expression and Communication

• What is it: a Universal Design for Learning guideline that encourages instructors to allow for multiple ways for students s

The post “Hard” isn’t Always Rigorous: Rethinking Course Design first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

For faculty developing asynchronous online courses, this creates a significant tension. We know that instructor presence is vital; students want to see and hear their professor to feel connected. However, being the primary visual focus for a quarter’s worth of video is daunting for the instructor and often monotonous for the viewer.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Recently, the Academic Media Production (AMP) team partnered with two different faculty members to create a solution: a “mini-documentary” production style for content lectures. It removes the slide deck entirely, brings the instructor’s personality, presence, and expertise into the course. Here is how this “mini-documentary” approach looked in two very different disciplines.

Case Study 1: English –”Literature and Film: Frankenstein Lives On; or Help, the Monster is Coming!”

The Goal: The instructor explores the evolution of Frankenstein’s monster through history, looking at everything from literature and film, to pop culture and real world scientific research. She wanted to create an immersive narrative but was uncomfortable being the on-screen “main character” for the entire term, choosing instead to only appear in her introduction.

The Execution: She recorded her lectures in our on campus studio as scripted monologues—storytelling, rather than teaching. In post-production, our editor built a visual world that matched her narrative. Because the topic included many visual references from film and pop culture, the visuals were eclectic and vibrant. The screen was filled, not with bullet points, but with vintage black-and-white stills from the early days of film, modern cinema clips, movie posters, and colorful book covers from different eras.

The Result: The video felt like a high-end video essay. The instructor appeared on screen just enough to make her present with the students, but the primary experience was a visual journey through the constant remaking of Frankenstein’s monster in various contexts of popular culture.

Instructor Introduction:

Welcome to the Course:

Case Study 2: Public Policy Studies – “The History of Tobacco Regulation and Public Policy Advocacy”

The Goal: The instructor needed to introduce the complex history of lobbying campaigns, specifically using the example of the shift from the widespread acceptance (and prolific promotion) of smoking to the implementation of regulations, warning labels, information campaigns, and smoking bans. The challenge was making a policy discussion visually engaging without resorting to dry lists of legislation dates or a simple timeline. Oh, and the instructor didn’t want to have her voice pushing the discussion one way or the other, instead letting the media clips and advertisements speak for themselves.

The Execution: Applying the same visual documentary logic and using a narrative timeline approach, we moved away from the recorded PowerPoint. The instructor shared with our team a brief history of the tobacco debate as a narrative account, highlighting both notable advertising campaigns and key dates in history. Our video team then sourced historical assets to visualize this massive cultural and public policy shift.

Instead of seeing a wall of text on a screen, students watched the era of tobacco advertising evolve over time. The video began with references to the vintage doctor recommending smoking magazine spreads, Winston and Camel cartoons, and the rugged appeal of the Marlboro Man. As the lecture progressed into the era of anti-tobacco lobbying and eventual regulation, the visuals pivoted to match the policy changes, featuring clips of anti-smoking PSAs, images of cancer survivors in PSAs or magazines, and the introduction of warning labels.

The Result: By treating the lecture as a historical documentary, the content became dynamic. The students didn’t just hear about the change in public policy; they saw the visual evidence of the culture war that surrounded it and the way that advertising itself became a part of the solution. As an introduction to the topic, students were then invited to research the specific lobbying efforts and moments in history that led to the changes. 

An Advocacy & Lobbying Case Study | Cigarette Smoking:

Why It Works: The Science Behind the Story

While these courses covered vastly different topics—from 19th-century literature to 20th-century policy—the production methodology was identical. More importantly, the pedagogical success of these videos relies on the same cognitive and pedagogical principles.

Here is why such a narrative driven “audio-first” approach is more effective than a narrated slide deck.

1. Reducing Extraneous Cognitive Load 

One of the biggest enemies of learning is Extraneous Cognitive Load—the mental effort required just to process the format of the instruction, rather than the content itself. In many cases, just trying to keep up with what the instructor is trying to teach takes up half the effort.

In a traditional lecture video, students often face the split-attention effect. This occurs when a learner is forced to divide their focus between two overlapping sources of information: reading text on a slide while simultaneously listening to the instructor narrate that same text (or worse–describe a related but not identical topic at the same time). Because the brain processes reading and listening through similar language centers, these inputs bottleneck. The student ends up expending their mental energy trying to sync the two sources or decide which to spend the most focus on rather than understanding the concept itself. 

By removing the on-screen text from these mini-documentaries, we eliminate this most immediate friction. The student listens to the narrative (auditory) without having to “decode” text (visual-verbal) at the same time. This frees up working memory to actually process the story being told. While we do utilize images, the lecture could work similarly well as a deep-dive podcast that is audio only. 

2. Leveraging Dual Coding Theory

This documentary style is a practical application of Dual Coding Theory (Paivio) and Mayer’s Multimedia Principle.

The premise is simple: humans possess two separate channels for processing information—one for visual/pictorial material and one for auditory/verbal material.

• The Conflict: When you have on-screen text and narration, you are overloading the verbal channel.
• The Harmony: When you have relevant imagery (visual) and narration (verbal), you are engaging both channels simultaneously without conflict.

In the Public Policy course, for example, when the instructor described the “glamorization of smoking,” she was engaging the auditory channel. Simultaneously, the screen showed the “Marlboro Man” or old magazine ads of happy couples smoking at a party. The visual reinforcement anchors the concept in the student’s long-term memory more effectively than words alone. This aligns perfectly with Mayer’s Redundancy Principle, which suggests that people learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and on-screen text.

3. The “Hook” of Narrative Engagement

Finally, we cannot ignore the affective domain. Research consistently shows that narrative-centered learning increases student motivation. By structuring the lectures as stories—with a beginning, middle, and end—rather than lists of bullet points, we tap into the student’s familiarity with narrative structure–they don’t need to expend cognitive effort on following along since they are already accustomed to narrative forms.

The “documentary” feel signals to the student that this content is of high-value. It mimics the media they consume voluntarily (like YouTube video essays or podcasts), lowering the barrier to entry and reducing the “chore” factor of watching course content. The added bonus here is that the videos were between 5 and 10 minutes long in length, making it easy for students to engage without having to dedicate hours to the class, as with many recorded lectures. 

How You Can Do This

You don’t need to be teaching a course on pop culture to utilize narrative technique. Many subjects have a visual history of some kind, and finding (or telling) the stories that relate your content to the real world can help pull the concept out of the theoretical realm and help build real understanding for students. 

What would happen if you wrote your next lecture as a narrative script rather than just a slide deck? What if you then ditched the slide deck entirely and worked with your school’s media production team to find the visuals to match your story? 

If you teach at DePaul and are looking to break the “talking head” mold, come talk to us at Academic Media Production. We have the studio, the editors, and the creative partnership to help you bring your story to life!

The post Beyond “Death by PowerPoint”: The “Mini-Documentary” Approach to Course Video Lecture first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

At DePaul, we discovered many years ago that live student panels are a goldmine for capturing what students really think, and faculty love them! These conversations invite students to share—in real time—what helps them learn, what gets in their way of understanding the content, and how teaching practices actually “land”. We have found that when we invite students to talk about their experience taking an online course, or what they find motivating and demotivating, or how they use generative AI in their studies, it provides a window into their world that a course evaluation cannot capture. This is supported by recent research from Larmar and Lodge (2020), who argue that student dialogue in focus groups offers a more holistic picture of student learning—highlighting cognitive, social, and emotional factors that traditional evaluations simply do not reach.

Recently, one of our Learning Experience Designers collaborated with the director of online learning in the College of Science and Health (CSH) to host a student panel focused on engagement. We sent an email inviting students to participate in a panel that would focus on sharing their perspectives on what helps them stay engaged in their classes and what they feel is the most effective learning environment for them. We also let students know that they would be compensated for their time with a gift card. Five students agreed to participate. The students represented a cross-section of majors—biology, psychology, neuroscience, physics, and pre-health—and a wide range of lived experiences. Many were commuters. Some were first-generation. Others were juggling labs, jobs, and leadership roles.

Below are some of the themes that emerged and how we might translate their feedback into practical teaching practices and inform course design:

1. Make Learning Iterative, Not One-and-Done

2. Authentic Work Creates Meaning and Motivation

3. Consistent Course Structure and Community-Building 

4. Belonging Is Foundational to Learning

5. Transparency Builds Trust

6. Empower Students as Contributors

7. Classroom Norms Are Contagious

Panels also help students feel seen. When they describe their experiences—and see faculty listening—they recognize that their voices are valuable. This strengthens trust, belonging, and shared responsibility for learning.

The CSH student panel reminded me that students are eager to share what helps them learn, and they do so with clarity and generosity when invited. Their insights reinforce what research tells us—and what many of us sense intuitively: effective teaching is relational, iterative, authentic, and grounded in trust. Student panels don’t replace course evaluations—they deepen them. They reveal the nuances that numbers miss.

References
Becker, S. A., Brandt, B. W., & Psihopaidas, D. (2021). What students value in their learning environment: Focus group insights for course design. The Internet and Higher Education, 51, 100816. 

Larmar, S., & Lodge, J. M. (2020). Students take the mic: Exploring student perspectives through focus groups to inform teaching practice. Higher Education Research & Development, 39(5), 998–1011. 

The post From Student Voices to Course Design Choices: What Student Panels Reveal About Engagement  first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

It always brings me back to an idea I explored in a previous post: the “Plus-One” approach. The concept, from Thomas Tobin and Kristin Behling’s essential book, Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone, is that making one small, intentional change is far more sustainable than a massive overhaul. It’s a philosophy of small wins. But it always raises the same crucial question: where do you start?

To help answer that, I’ve put together a short guide for a 15-minute “course tune-up.” Think of it as a self-consultation, a series of questions to help you find the one change that will make the biggest difference. This isn’t about adding more to your plate; it’s about making your course flow more smoothly for your students and, just as importantly, for you.

A 15-Minute Conversation: 4 Questions to Find Your Quickest Win

Before your next term begins, block off 15 minutes, grab a coffee, and use these four questions to find your next “Plus-One.”

Question 1: The ‘Pinch Point’ Diagnostic

“Where do students most often get stuck, confused, or disengaged in your course? Or on your end, what task creates the biggest grading or course management bottleneck?”

• Why It Works: What I appreciate about this question is that it immediately hones in on the biggest source of friction. A pinch point is just a sign that a process can be improved. Solving it is the perfect candidate for your next “Plus-One,” as it can save you hours of answering emails or grading.
• In Practice: A business professor might realize, “Students do well on the case study summary, but they always struggle to apply the theoretical framework correctly.” Their “Plus-One” could be creating a short video that walks through the framework with a simple, non-course example, or providing a graphic organizer for students to structure their analysis.

Question 2: Clear the Path for Students

“Let’s think about a busy student juggling four other courses. When they open your online course module for the week, how obvious is their very first step? Is there one small tweak you can make to the layout to make that path crystal clear?”

• Why It Works: From my experience, one of the biggest pinch points for students is simple uncertainty. It’s the root cause of all those emails we get with the subject line “question” or the simple, frustrating message: “I’m confused.” When they know exactly where to start, their cognitive load is reduced, and they can focus on learning. A simple layout change is a high-impact “Plus-One.”
• In Practice: A common pinch point is inconsistent “information architecture” from one week to the next. A powerful “Plus-One” could be establishing a consistent structure for every weekly module (e.g., always starting with an “Overview” page followed by “Readings” and “Assignments”). An even quicker win could be creating a single, short explainer video that walks students through the organization of the entire course site, so they know exactly where to find everything from day one.

Question 3: The Power of an Alternative

“Where in your course could an element of student choice have the biggest impact? Is there an assignment where students could benefit from having more options in how they demonstrate their learning?”

• Why It Works: This is one of my favorite questions because it opens up a conversation about flexibility without prescribing a solution. A lack of options can be a real pinch point for students who struggle with a single mode of expression, and adding a choice can dramatically increase the quality of their work.
• In Practice: My favorite part of these conversations is the moment when an instructor realizes, “My students all seem to struggle with the formal essay. What if I pilot an alternative where they can create a 10-slide deck with detailed speaker notes instead?” This gives students another way to succeed and often makes the work more engaging to review.

Question 4: The Action Plan

“Of these potential pinch points we’ve talked about, which one feels like the quickest win? What’s the one small adjustment you could make that would do the most to smooth out the flow of the course?”

• Why It Works: For me, the real magic of the “Plus-One” philosophy is all about building momentum. This final question helps turn a good conversation into a single, manageable to-do item.
• In Practice: What I find most rewarding is when an instructor pinpoints a tangible first step they feel confident about, saying something like, “Honestly, just making a template for my weekly announcements would solve half the problems. That’s my ‘Plus-One.’ I can do that this afternoon.”

From Overwhelm to Action

Meaningful course improvement doesn’t have to feel like a monumental project. My hope is that this 15-minute tune-up can help you turn that feeling of being overwhelmed into the satisfaction of taking one small, meaningful step forward. It’s a process of finding the friction and smoothing it out, one “Plus-One” at a time.

The post The 15-Minute Course Tune-Up first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

Just because it’s easy for you to navigate and interpret your course materials doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for your students–you have a wealth of information about the discipline and course structure that students don’t have when they first encounter it. And it’s very difficult to look at your course through the eyes of someone who doesn’t already have that context.

Implementing the methods of user experience research in higher education can provide direction. At DePaul, I lead the Learning Experience Research efforts within our Center for Teaching and Learning, and we use these methods to make student-centered design decisions within courses and the learning-management system. 

Addressing Points of Friction

Students have complicated lives. A common critique in course evaluations is “The instructor thinks my whole life revolves around this one class.” Certainly, students should expect a degree of time commitment and rigor to attain the learning outcomes of a college course. But if there’s an opportunity to reduce the friction of a course in a way that doesn’t affect the substance of the course, we should be doing that.

I like the metaphor of friction when talking about usability problems. A little friction can slow you down and make you feel uncomfortable. A lot of friction can stop you entirely. And it’s cumulative–a small amount of friction from several sources can still have a big effect.

When I’m evaluating the usability of a course, that’s the lens I’m using–many of the problems I might identify seem minor, and maybe students can recover from their confusion by clicking around the course site a little more, or re-reading the instructions a couple more times. But these little things add up. And if students are going to be grappling with something unclear in their course, I’d rather it be the nuances of your subject matter rather than the navigation of the course site!

UX Research Methods

Some of the tools in the UX research toolkit might already be familiar to instructors. You probably give surveys. But there are other methods that can offer different insights into how students interact with your course materials.

Surveys

Surveys are a staple of any sort of behavioral research. You’re almost certainly providing a university-standard survey at the end of your course, but consider also providing them mid-term. These can help you catch student experience issues when there’s still time to make adjustments for the current cohort.

Usability Testing

Usability testing involves watching in real time how students interact with course materials, whether that’s the course site in the learning management system, the syllabus, or assignment prompts. Typically in the Learning Experience Research team, we do these tests during the design process before a course is offered to determine what will trip up students as they interact with the materials. These tests can uncover simple points of confusion in wording and layout or more substantive feedback, like if the course is providing the right balance of structure and flexibility for current students.

Here’s how we approach usability testing:

1. Create a draft version of the course element we’re testing.
2. Identify a task for our users to do. This could be something like, “review the syllabus as if you were a student actually enrolled in the class”, or “identify the first steps you would do to complete this assignment.”
3. Recruit participants who resemble your target audience. We typically recruit other students.
4. Ask them to think aloud as they’re completing the task. Do not provide guidance beyond the materials themselves and what an actual student in the class might already know.
5. Observe and take notes.

We have never had a test where the results didn’t surprise us or reveal a blind spot in our design process.

Field Observation

Our Learning Experience Research team sometimes does classroom observations to give instructors insights into the student experience. Certainly you’re getting some feedback cues from students already–are they maintaining eye contact and nodding, or tilting their head confusedly? But there are other aspects of the student experience you might miss without another set of eyes in the room. Can students in the back corner hear well enough to follow the conversation you’re having with the student in the front? Can they see the screen? Are you missing raised hands when you’re looking at the other side of the room? Are you giving them enough time to think through a question and respond before answering it for them?

These observations can reveal subtle but important barriers to engagement.

What You Find Might Surprise You

Is it worth the effort to get this kind of feedback from actual students? We wouldn’t keep doing it if we didn’t keep finding things we didn’t expect–and in some cases things that we weren’t even looking for.

Here are a few surprises we’ve encountered:

• In a D2L course site, we included screenshots of the D2L interface within some orientation materials. Every student in our user testing attempted to click those screenshots thinking the buttons were functional D2L buttons–an error they easily recovered from but still an unnecessary point of friction.
• In attempting to determine if submodules–another level of categorization of materials within a weekly module–made courses easier or harder to navigate, we found that the answer was simply that students performed better (both in navigating the course site and in performance on short assignments) when they had a structure similar to one they had already seen before in a different class.
• When testing how students reacted to the D2L Grades tool’s default message when an instructor had set the lowest score in a category to be dropped from the grade calculation, one student thought the word red full caps “DROPPED!” message meant he had been dropped from the class!
• In class observations, we found instances where an instructor would miss seeing a student with a raised hand while making an extended point to one side of the room. The student kept her hand raised for more than a minute before quietly lowering it again.
• Students can tell when materials are boilerplate and not written in the instructor’s own voice. They skim and skip these materials and often distrust that anything in them will be reflective of the instructors actual practice in the course. 

Final Thoughts

My job title is “Learning Experience Designer,” but really every instructor to some degree is designing the learning experience of their students, and as any user experience professional will tell you, it’s important to keep the end user at the center of the design process.

The post Stop Guessing: How UX Research Builds Better Educational Experiences first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

It all started with a yellow bird: the American Goldfinch. After seeing a steady stream of Northern Cardinals flit in and out of my backyard for the last couple years, it was exciting to see a bird this vibrant. Within a couple weeks, I put up some new bird feeders, and even got a new pair of binoculars for my birthday.

Although I could wax poetic on the weirdest bird I’ve seen or the birds that elude me, this isn’t exactly that kind of forum. Instead, I want to reflect on how birdwatching has unexpectedly strengthened my understanding of teaching—especially the art of close reading. Because, as it turns out, the skillset of a birder and that of a close reader have a lot in common.

Imagine with me

I live just outside of Chicago, which is part of the Mississippi Flyway, one of four major migratory routes birds naturally take between warmer southern climates and cooler northern ones. During peak migration in the Spring, over 40 million birds will pass through Chicagoland. 

You know what? Let’s go birding together right now (in our imaginations). Picture a perfect, spring afternoon at my favorite spot: the Riverside Lawn River Trail. It’s just across the river from the Riverside Library, with a walking path that cuts through the middle of a field about an acre wide. We’ll stop in the middle and just pause.

As we’re stopped here, we have the opportunity to see not only the birds that nest year-round by the river, but also those that only come here for the breeding season and even birds just passing through in their path further north. My first time in this field, it wasn’t until I paused to slow down that I realized the sheer number of birds I was hearing and seeing.

The Skillset of a Birder

As we stand in the field, there are a few key skills that we’ll use to shift from “strangers in a field” to “birdwatchers:”

• Be still. Take a moment to just slow down, and let your body relax.
• Listen closely. As your body slows down, it might feel too quiet or silent, but soon, you’ll start to hear calls and songs around you.
• Look around. You’ll start to see movement in the tall grass, and new colors and shapes distinguish themselves on the branches.

Now, these skills take practice–so, it’s going to take more than one try to get the hang of it. Birders don’t become experts overnight. But as we slow down, and take the time to be intentional, patient, and observant of our surroundings, we begin to hear and see new things.

Becoming a Classroom Birder

I’ve been teaching in our first-year writing program for about 8 years now. In that time, I’ve noticed (along with others) that the reading comprehension skills of today’s students are different than they were when I started teaching. And it doesn’t seem that my observations are an anomaly: reports from The Atlantic, Frontiers in Psychology, and Inside Higher Ed agree.

In order to help students with their critical reading skills it is important to reserve time in class to discuss the assigned readings. In those discussions, we have an opportunity to model and practice three skills of birders that transfer quite well to the skills of a closer reader.

Be Still

In birdwatching, stillness is the first step. You have to slow down, let your body settle, and allow your senses to recalibrate. Then you can start to see the birds reveal themselves through sound and movement. 

The same principle applies to our classroom. Before students can engage meaningfully with a text, they need space to quiet the mental noise—notifications, deadlines, distractions—and settle into the moment. If students cognitive bandwidth is already full or stretched to its limit, it’s substantially harder to take in new information or perform under pressure.

Close reading demands cognitive presence. It asks us to notice nuance, track patterns, and interpret subtle shifts in tone or structure. But none of that is possible if our minds are cluttered. Stillness isn’t just a mood—it’s a method. It’s how we prepare the mental field so that the text can come into focus.

But how can we help students with this mental pause? In my class, I have students start with a freewrite each day. During this time, I take attendance and check in with students as needed. Students can either respond to my prompt or just do a brain dump. The idea is to temporarily offload whatever is on their mind for the next 90 minutes–similar to a reset button or turning your phone on airplane mode.

Listen Closely.

Now that we’ve slowed down and quieted our minds, we can start to take better stock of what’s around us. In birdwatching, listening becomes an art. It takes time to earn your field ear–to feel comfortable and confident identifying birds by their sounds alone. But even experienced birders can be fooled by birds that sound similar to each other. For those, we have to rely on additional cues, like pitch, rhythm, tone, and pace. 

Close reading works the same way. 

When students first read a text, they might latch onto the obvious elements, the same way new birders might over-rely on color alone to identify a species. Yet, with so many variations in plumage, looks alone aren’t always enough. Deeper understanding comes from listening for patterns or spotting anomalies. 

In my class, I model how to “listen” to a text–how to read between the lines for rhetorical choices like tone or bias.

For example, we might look for how the author used active or passive sentences. On the surface, we may not notice the use of passive sentences because we’re focused on the meaning of the sentence. But that’s the point of close reading; when we go back and re-read, we start to notice new things. 

“Listening closely” to a text can help students move beyond that surface comprehension. It will take reading and re-reading a text to hear what else is below the surface–the same way it takes practice to tease out the variety of birds singing and chirping in a tree at once. So what once felt like a cacophony of information in a text might turn out to be a rag-tag group of migrating songbirds.

Look around.

In birdwatching, what you see depends on where—and when—you’re looking. Our field by the river is bustling with warblers and orioles in spring, as they pass through on their migration north. That same field in winter? Besides the crunch of the snow, we might see a few year-round residents (like our friend, the Northern Cardinal), but nary a warbler to be found.

Rather than be frustrated that you can’t find a Blackpoll Warbler in February, it’s important to let context help create boundaries and understand what is or isn’t happening around us. That context would tell us that it’s remarkably rare to see a Blackpoll Warbler here in February.

In the same way we can help students look around to consider where (and when) they are in a text, by asking similar questions as a birdwatcher: 

• Where is this text? Am I seeing it in its natural space?
• When was it published? Is there something special about that time?
• Who is this text meant for? Am I the intended reader?

Just as birders learn to scan the landscape for clues, readers learn to scan the rhetorical terrain of a text. A statistic in a news article might be persuasive—or misleading—depending on its source and framing. Seeing a Monk Parakeet in a tree might seem improbable–unless you know your neighbor has one as a pet.

As students learn to parse through contextual clues and questions, they can begin to interpret not just what is being said, but why and how. Helping students to practice situating a text within a broader ecosystem of meaning teaches them that arguments don’t exist in isolation; that a deeper understanding can emerge from knowing context.

Spark moments

As teachers, we savor spark moments—the ones where a student sees something they hadn’t before.

Suddenly a line in a poem clicks. A historical argument takes on new meaning. A pattern of passive sentence structures in a text reveals itself. These moments aren’t always loud or dramatic. Sometimes they’re quiet, like a goldfinch quietly landing on my bird feeder on an unremarkable day in May. 

Good birders and good teachers share a belief in the power of looking again. In a world that demands hustle and rewards speed, it can be hard to not want to rush ahead. By challenging ourselves and our students to slow down and be present, we set the stage for allowing ourselves to be still, listen closely, and look around. 

For some students, adopting a new practice may come easily, but for others it might feel agonizing–especially if they feel it’s all just to read. But it’s not just reading is it? When we help students develop their critical reading skills, we’re teaching them how to be curious and notice what’s around them. And who knows, maybe one day it won’t feel just like reading, but more like seeing a bright yellow, goldfinch for the first time.

The post Spark Bird: What Birding Taught Me About Close Reading first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

In higher education, we see the fear of failure playing out daily. Grades are emphasized, and high achievers are rewarded with accolades and awards. This mindset is deeply ingrained in many students by the time they reach college. As a result, some shy away from unfamiliar subjects or challenging courses, not because they lack interest, but because they fear they won’t get an A. Others enter required classes like writing or math already convinced they’ll do poorly, often due to a single negative experience in the past.

The Freshman Fear Factor 

This fear is especially pronounced in first-year students. As Bridget noted in her discussion of David Kirp’s work, and as Kevin explored in his analysis of imposter syndrome, many freshmen arrive on campus already burdened by self-doubt. Whether due to interrupted schooling during COVID or broader societal pressures, these students often carry a profound fear of failure into the classroom. This fear often limits not only their ability to be successful, but also affects their mental health. 

So how can we, as educators, create learning environments where failure is not feared but embraced? 

Destigmatizing Failure in the Classroom 

In many classrooms, failure is still stigmatized as something “bad.” Students often interpret a low grade as a reflection of their self-worth rather than an opportunity to grow. But what if we could shift that narrative? 

In the Freakonomics episode “Failure Is Your Friend”, psychologist Gary Klein introduces the concept of a pre-mortem. Unlike a post-mortem, which analyzes what went wrong after a project fails, a pre-mortem asks participants to imagine—before the project even begins—that it has failed. Then, they brainstorm all the possible reasons why. 

In business, this technique helps teams identify blind spots and reduce overconfidence. But could it also work in the classroom? 

Years ago, while teaching an online graduate research methods course, I introduced a discussion activity that, unbenonced to me used this concept. Each time I taught the class I found that I spent much of the course helping students understand that they were not alone in their fears and anxiety and also assuring them that we would overcome those obstacles together. As an icebreaker activity I had students watch a clip from Mr. Bean Goes to the Library—a humorous take on academic anxiety—and then share what they were most nervous about before starting the class. Their responses ranged from fears about writing skills to concerns about understanding the material. The humor helped lower the stakes, and the activity created a space where students could voice their fears without judgment.  

From what we know from studies discussed by David L. Kirp in “Conquering the Freshmen Fear of Failure” community building around these fears can have a long range impact on not only a student’s sense of belonging, but also their willingness to persist through obstacles. 

Could you build similar opportunities into your own classroom? Perhaps before a major exam, project, or presentation, you could invite students to reflect on what might go wrong—and how they might respond. This not only normalizes fear but also empowers students to plan for and learn from potential setbacks. 

De-Emphasizing Grades: The Case for Contract Grading 

One powerful way to create a safe space for failure is to rethink how we assess student work. Contract grading is a system that shifts the focus from outcomes to process. Instead of assigning points or letter grades to every assignment, students agree to complete a set of tasks at a defined level of quality to earn a particular grade.  

This approach emphasizes effort, revision, and reflection over perfection. It encourages students to take risks, try new approaches, and learn from mistakes without the constant pressure of numerical evaluation. Instructors provide feedback that supports growth rather than judgment, and students focus on mastering skills rather than chasing points. A de-emphasis on grades can be just the thing to help those students whose fear is based on a bad prior experience to finally be successful. 

Contract grading also aligns with the idea of failure as a learning tool. When students know that their grade depends on consistent engagement and improvement—not on getting everything “right” the first time—they’re more likely to experiment, ask questions, and embrace challenges. 

Modeling Failure as an Instructor 

Theresa MacPhail, a professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, took the idea of modeling failure even further by designing an entire course on failure. In her interview with Stephen Dubner, she describes how she openly shares her own failures with students—whether it’s forgetting her notes or encouraging them to fact-check her lectures. One of the most powerful pieces of feedback she received was that her students’ perceptions of failure shifted dramatically. At the start of the course, many believed they were failing more than their peers. By the end, they realized: “Everyone is failing every day at everything.” 

This isn’t a bleak worldview, it’s a liberating one. It allows students to extend more grace to themselves and others. Failure becomes not a verdict, but a process. 

What Could Your Classroom Look Like? 

What would your classroom look like if failure were not feared but welcomed? What small change could you make this term to help students see failure as a step forward, not a setback? 

By creating safe spaces for failure—through humor, transparency, and alternative grading models—we don’t just help students succeed academically. We help them grow into more resilient, curious, and confident learners. 

The post Failing Forward: Embracing Productive Failure in Education first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.

“Younger generations despise older generations for creating a world they must inhabit unwillingly, an impossible accusation to rebuff. Older generations despise new generations for multiple reasons, although most are assorted iterations of two: They perceive the updated versions of themselves as either softer or lazier (or both). These categorizations tend to be accurate. But that’s positive. That’s progress. If a society improves, the experience of growing up in that society should be less taxing and more comfortable; if technology advances and efficiency increases, emerging generations should rationally expect to work less. If new kids aren’t soft and lazy, something has gone wrong.”

As an “elder millennial” myself, I have an interesting vantage point: I’ve experienced being part of a mocked generation, and now I’ve transitioned into the generation doing some of the disparaging. In fairness, though, when Instagram started feeding me reels of a “millennial manager,” which are supposed to be humorous, I could only laugh so much, given that she’s representing the way I comport myself in the workplace with upsetting accuracy. 

To be clear, I don’t think the generalized perspectives and behaviors of Gen Z students deserve derision; rather, I share the approach of my colleague Bridget Wagner, who has written about how she’s seeking out resources in order to best respond to the learning needs presented by this generation. 

At our annual Teaching and Learning Conference on May 2, 2025, I facilitated a concurrent session to check in with faculty about how our students are doing on three fronts: mental health, generative AI, and academic preparedness. I’m going to share the materials that informed the selection of these three topics and a bit about the conversation that unfolded in the session.

Mental Health

In Fall of 2024, several outlets, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, reported that the Healthy Minds Study had started to see an improving trend in rates of depression and anxiety. I’d stored this away in hopes of finding a time to see if faculty are also seeing decreasing student needs in these areas. However, a recent update from the Global Flourishing Study indicates that perhaps we’re not heading in a positive direction. 

The keynote speaker for this year’s conference, Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal, offered a comprehensive view of neurodiversity that encompasses mental health:

1. Developmental neurodiversity, which includes conditions such as autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
2. Psychiatric neurodiversity, which includes conditions like depression and anxiety
3. Acquired neurodiversity, which includes conditions like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI)

The faculty in the concurrent session who discussed student mental health provided another explanation for the uptick in students disclosing mental health diagnoses: an increased willingness of this generation to advocate for themselves. This advocacy element may also be connected to de-stigmatization of these diagnoses and the care needed to address them (like therapy and medication).

Additionally, faculty were asking questions about how they might continue their own professional development in order to be of service to their students. At DePaul, one of the best resources for this type of professional development is the Office of Health Promotion and Wellness, which offers an array of trainings in this area, such as “Mental Health First Aid” and “I Care for You: Trauma-Informed Response.”

Generative AI

While there are some general perspectives that students are using generative AI frequently and mostly to cheat, Beth McMurtrie finds those generalizations to be flawed. In my own classes, I’ve found that many of my students know that too much generative AI use undercuts their learning. They want to be the primary authors of their work, but they also want to know how AI could help them do their work better. 

The faculty discussion on generative AI in this concurrent session focused on the fact that, as with generations before, students are most tempted to cheat (via any means – illicit test banks, paper mills, generative AI, etc.) when they’re under pressure and unsure how to get started on an assignment. They talked about how clear and explicit scaffolding is more important than ever, something that Dr. Pryal also advocated for as a way to support neurodiverse students.

For instructors navigating this shift, “Beginning to Integrate a Framework for AI Literacy Into Existing Heuristics” offers a thoughtful framework for AI integration into pedagogy. “A Meditation on AI and the Faculty Member” also explores the emotional and instructional tensions faculty face when adapting to new tools like ChatGPT.

Academic Preparedness

My first response to reading this Substack post from a faculty member was frustration: I’m not a fan of the way this author speaks about their students, and I can see that the changes Gen Z students are presenting have led them to be cynical and contemptuous towards those students. Very much a lose-lose situation!

That said, I’ve heard similar frustrations from colleagues at DePaul – just usually framed more generously. We prepared ourselves for the students who would show up in our classrooms with pandemic-related learning loss, but that learning loss seems to be more broad-reaching than we’d anticipated, encompassing things like difficulty engaging in class discussions or lack of awareness in executive functioning areas, like how to plan for large class projects. 

Those concerns were echoed by the faculty in the conference session, who said that they’ve observed these shifts and are trying to be responsive to student needs while still upholding academic rigor. Faculty also noted that they sometimes struggle to meet students where they are without creating future problems. For example, one faculty member noted that in the quarter system, offering even one or two “late work” passes can compound quickly, and if a student gets a couple of weeks behind on compounding assignments, that student might end up requesting an incomplete that doesn’t get finished. In this case, the faculty member feels like they’ve made accommodating decisions (late work passes) that have unintended serious consequences (an incomplete that turns into an F).

I wish I had some sort of clear, definitive thought on the “state of the student body” at the end of the 2024-25 academic year, but I’m afraid we’re still in a complex place. That said, I want to reiterate that the place we find ourselves today, as instructors trying to meet the learning needs of a new generation of students, isn’t a new one. I’ll return to Klosterman’s point that some aspects of life should be easier for these students, and perhaps therein lies our opportunity. Rather than lamenting changes in attention spans or temptations for AI shortcuts, we might instead focus on leveraging the unique strengths this generation brings – their digital fluency, their desire for connection, their heightened awareness of social issues – while creating learning environments that address challenges. The fundamentals of good teaching haven’t changed: meeting students where they are, challenging them appropriately, and creating paths that allow them to reach their potential.

The post Checking in on Student Mental Health, Generative AI Usage, and Academic Integrity first appeared on IDDblog: Instructional Design Tips, Advice, & Trends for Online & Distance Learning | Educational Technology and Online Course Design Help.