Time to put a little fun into online learning--with good reason: 'Emotional arousal helps the brain learn'. Medina, Brain Rules (2008). Joni Dunlap leads the IDLive team in considering how to incorporate fun into the fabric of a course to provide a more stimulating learning experience.

Dr. Helen Barrett, recipient of the EIFEL lifetime achievement award for her contributions to e-portfolio research and development, joins us this week to put a firm emphasis on having students control their learning through e-portfolios. In addition to highlighting the ‘two faces of e-portfolios’, Helen makes the case that universities have been placing too great an emphasis on e-portfolios for summative learning. 

According to Garrison (2009), Social presence is “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities.”

Defining, creating and maintaining social presence in online courses is the focus of this week's show and is part of a three-part series that considers the Community of Inquiry framework.

This week Cammy Bean, VP of Learning Design for Kineo and ID-live co-host, discusses what e-learning means from a corporate perspective. The discussion focusses on the following issues:

• E-learning in the corporate environment
• How corporate and academic instructional design intersect
• How to design effective e-learning materials
• Skills that are expected of today's Instructional Designers

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