Mary Engstrom

Authentic assessment is within the reach of most online instructors. It's just a matter of starting small and considering some basic principles in designing effective learning experiences, notes Mary Engstrom, senior instructional designer at the University of Montana. Mary discusses a framework for developing authentic tasks and identifies a number of examples.

As part of a series that focusses on practical strategies for designing effective online courses, the IDL team focus on how to avoid cognitive overload this week.

We discussed a numberof practical suggestions from experience and the research and indulged a little in information overload. Lots of good discussion and resources!

John Graves, the lead faculty in the Master of Science in Science Education program at Montana State University, Bozeman, spends 30 minutes sharing over a decade of expertise in the design and delivery of online courses. John touches on a number of key considerations in terms of engaging learners in the early stages of an online course:

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.

Professor Charles Reigeluth from Indiana University shares his thoughts on Instructional Theory for education in the Information Age. Charles and Allison Carr-Chellman recently co-edited Volume III of the seminal Instructional Design Theories and Models (The Green Book): http://www.amazon.com/Instructional-Design-Theories-Models-III-Knowledge/dp/0805864563