Bing Image Creator: A SyllabusWow...it's been almost two months since I started this post! It's hard to believe that it took this long to return to this thought experiment.  Just to remind the diligent reader of this blog, this came out of not one, not two, but multiple places on the web (including professional development conferences!) whereby instructional designers (and other professionals)

The other day I came across this PhD Comics strip on grading rubrics. As a trained instructional designer (and having worked with instructional designers on and off since I started university as an undergraduate student) the concept of rubrics has really stuck with me.  That said,  I generally struggle with rubrics. In theory they are brilliant - a way to objectively measure how well

I wrote (a few days ago) that I am re-designing  an introductory course in instructional design (see syllabus here).  In my assessment activities I've decided to go with a pass/not pass model.  There will still be something approximating traditional rubrics and categories for different things that learners need to address in each activity, but I am toying with the idea of doing

A few things happened this week which seemed to point to a nexus on grading, grades, and a throwback to Week 3 of Rhizo15 on what counts. The three thing that came together for me were Whitney's post from Week 3, My own grades from EDDE 802, and me designing (or rather re-designing) the introductory course in instructional design which I will teach/facilitate/rhizolead this summer.  All these

Note: An MS Word or PDF version of this can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/205134044 Introduction It’s been a few years of extreme sentiments around MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). 2012 was proclaimed the year of the MOOC (Pappano, 2012). 2013 was the year that MOOC criticism was the new trendy or “in” thing (Rees, 2013). Perhaps in 2014 we’ll move away from such dichotomies

Last weekend I finished reading the book Second Language Teaching and Learning in the Net Generation. It was an interesting book, recommended for both Instructional Designers and Language Teachers alike. Some chapters as admittedly better than others, but as a whole the book was quite good (related note: follow me on GoodReads). Hot on the heels of this I came across a post on ProfHacker called "How

Earlier this month I was reading the sinkhole ahead blog post on Inside Higher Ed, which prompted me to read this little rant on the D written by the same author.You know it's funny, I've been a student for quite some time now and I've never thought of the "D" much. One semester in my undergrad I just wanted to get a D in calculus II so that I can pass and move on. Calculus II wasn't required for

Recently I was reading an article on Inside Higher Ed titled the dreaded grade appeal. Before I read it I thought to myself "here we go again! more faculty complaining about students appealing their grades!" I was pleasantly surprised to see that the article isn't really about grade appeals, but rather (if you read it clearly), about being clear in your expectation of the students taking your class.I