We found 62 results that contain "instructional design"

In my ongoing quest to find how we might better motivate and engage our students, particularly within a general education context, I've come across a couple of interesting sources online.

Universal Design for Learning at a Glance -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1B6yQXsr0c
Provides an engaging, concise explanation of what UDL is and how it works in the (college) 'classroom.'

The Nora Project -- https://thenoraproject.ngo/mission
A fairly comprehensive website that addresses the intersection of disability and inclusivity. Geared more specifically toward teaching children, there are nevertheless various resources and approaches that might be tweaked a bit to fit the college 'classroom' in whatever form that takes right now.

Both are providing me with all sorts of ways that I can tailor (and expand the range of) student assessments moving toward and planning for AY2022-2023.

Religious Observance at MSU

All members of the MSU community, including educators and students, are eligible to observe their religious beliefs. Designing your course schedule to avoid conflicts with major days of religious observance will reduce the need to resolve individual conflicts and will better reflect and serve MSU's diverse and multicultural community.

The Office of the Provost website maintains a religious observance calendar and FAQ page (https://provost.msu.edu/academic-resources/religious-observance-calendar with dates through 2026) for educators and students. Educators are encouraged to consult this calendar before scheduling exams, tests, and major assignments.

The full policy on religious observance, including instructors' responsibilities to accommodate students' religious observance as well as students' responsibility to inform instructors about potential conflicts, can be found https://reg.msu.edu/roinfo/notices/religiouspolicy.aspx here.

AI Commons Bulletin 2/24/2025

🚫 No More Guidance from USDE
Beyond the AI guidance for schools and the toolkits for educators and developers, the entire Office of Educational Technology website is gone. tech.ed.gov now directs to the USDE website.

Learn More: https://www.ed.gov/

📽️ Try This: Create AI Video for YouTube
Short videos can be useful tools for teaching something, or that students can use to demonstrate something. YouTube now offers tools to use AI to generate video based on a text prompt.

Learn More: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/heres-how-you-can-create-ai-videos-in-youtube-shorts-thanks-to-google-veo/

🤔 AI Operator Can Take e-Learning Courses For You
OpenAI’s Operator tool can take an online course, which means it’s time to rethink asynchronous course design.

Learn More: https://benbetts.co.uk/the-fall-of-click-next-e-learning-what-operator-means-for-training/?ref=2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

✍️ Should We Invent New Words to Talk to AI?
Want a fresh way to discuss AI literacy? These authors argue we need new words—not just human vocabulary—to grasp AI. Encourage students to create neologisms for human concepts AI should learn or machine ideas we must understand. What might they invent?

Learn More: Hewitt, Geirhos, & Kim, (2025). We Can’t Understand AI Using our Existing Vocabulary.

Bulletin items compiled by MJ Jackson and Sarah Freye with production assistance from Lisa Batchelder. Get the AI-Commons Bulletin on our Microsoft Teams channel, at aicommons.commons.msu.edu, or by email (send an email to aicommons@msu.edu with the word “subscribe”).

If we are completely honest with ourselves, many students come into our courses lacking basic planning and organization skills. Even when armed with a syllabus, course schedule, or online course modules, many still have difficulty planning for and carrying out weekly assignments and/or projects by designated due dates.

To assist them, I suggest that we include due dates for assignments, projects, quizzes and exams not just in our syllabi or online course modules, but that we should also include what I call an 'Important Due Dates' tab in the D2L pages we set up for our courses. Likewise, I suggest we do so whether we teach in a traditional face to face setting, hybrid, or online.

A quarter century of teaching undergraduates leads me to conclude that few consult the syllabus (or online modules) in more than a cursory way after Week One. More generally, when people have to search for something, they are less likely to find it. So, be sure to drag your 'Important Due Dates' tab to the very top of all other tabs on the left side of your D2L course content page, making it as easy as possible for students to find.

They will then be able to access all of the dates for assignments, projects, quizzes, or exams in one place without the need to wade through denser, text heavy syllabi, course schedules, or weekly course modules. At a glance, they can find what they need to know and prepare accordingly.

Given the various challenges so many young people seem to face in 2021, why not make things as easy as we can for the students in our courses?

AI Commons Bulletin 1/24/2025
Human-curated news about generative AI for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

😊 The New Study Buddy: AI is Becoming a Tutor for Some College of Natural Science Students
MSU students are increasingly using AI tools like ChatGPT and the Khanmigo tutoring program to enhance learning, offering instant, interactive assistance for homework and studies.
Learn More: https://natsci.msu.edu/news/2025-01-the-new-study-buddy.aspx

🧠 Students Might Off-Load Critical Thinking to AI
This study found that using AI didn’t change students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. However, they did find that AI tended to cause “metacognitive laziness”. In other words, to avoid te work of critical thinking that AI is supposed to free them up to do.
Learn More: https://doi-org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/10.1111/bjet.13544

🏫 Perplexity Pays Students to Market For Them
At least on AI company is using stealth marketing on campuses. Perplexity’s “Campus Strategist” program gives students a budget to spread awareness of Perplexity among their classmates.
Learn More: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/perplexity-s-2024-campus-strategist-program

🦠 The Education Revolution Through AI
This open-access book offers a collection of chapters on AI’s impact on higher education. Key topics:
Potential: Personalized learning, automated tasks, and adaptive teaching
Challenges: Bias, ethics, and data privacy in education
Applications: Integrating AI into research, teaching, and course design
Learn More: https://octaedro.com/libro/the-education-revolution-through-artificial-intelligence/

Bulletin items compiled by MJ Jackson and Sarah Freye with production assistance from Lisa Batchelder. Get the AI-Commons Bulletin on our Microsoft Teams channel, at aicommons.commons.msu.edu, or by email (send an email to aicommons@msu.edu with the word “subscribe”).

Chapter 5: Notes and questions
1. Erasure: “We must engage in critical self-reflection about the conscious and unconscious ways higher education continues to participate in Native people’s erasure and develop decolonial engagement practices that foreground Native movements for cultural/political sovereignty and self-determination.”
2. Assimilation: “…the problematic goal of assimilation…”
3. Social Justice: “…scholars must work toward social change.”
4. Storying: “Stories are not separate from theory.”
5. Strategies offered:
a. Develop and Maintain Relationships with Indigenous Communities
i. Can a faculty member do this within their pedagogy? How?
ii. Can we encourage our students to do this in our classes/programs? How?
b. Honor Connections to Place
c. Build Community with Indigenous Students
d. Support and Protect Indigenous Student Cultural Practices
e. Foster Student Connections to Home Communities
f. Reframe Concepts of Student Engagement (WE, meaning the university community writ large, are the uninvited guests)

Chapter 6: Notes and Questions
1. “Whiteness is not a culture but a social concept”
2. “Critical White Studies”: ideas for how to use/introduce this to students? Will you? Why or why not? (“critically analyzing Whiteness and racial oppression from the habits and structures of the privileged group”)
3. In your current class design/structure, what ways could your own whiteness influence your students in invisible ways? Does it?
4. In your current class design/structure, what ways could your white students’ whiteness influence your POC, international students, etc… in invisible ways? Does it?
5. What aspects of “humanizing pedagogy” happen in your classes?
6. Have you ever shared your course design with a POC peer?
7. Thoughts of where “Nontraditional” white students (older students, part-time students, transfer students, commuter students, student-parents, veteran students (and I would argue other cross-sectional/intersectional identities of queerness, transgender students, religious minorities, disability, etc…)) and traditional white students INTERSECT or DIVERGE in terms of student success initiatives?

My background in Scandinavian languages and literature keeps rearing its head in various ways after many years. Specifically,when it comes to folklore, magical tales, and perilous journeys toward maturation. In a way, I have become a pedagogical Ashland, of sorts, since coming to MSU in 2015. My journey, an ongoing quest if you will, has been in trying to find that one magical key, which will unlock the enchanted door to greater student interest and involvement in their general education course requirements.

Those of us who teach these courses know that, too often, many students view gen. ed. requirements as hoops to jump through. Something they must satisfy to graduate. Subjects that, they feel, have little to do with the real world, their intended majors, or envisioned careers. Scheduling and convenience more than genuine interest seem to be the determining factor for many students when they choose to enroll in such courses. Put the head down, muddle through, and get it done with as little effort as possible.

But there might be another way.

In my own ongoing quest to motivate and engage the students in my various IAH courses more effectively, I have come back to Bloom's Taxonomy again and again since first learning about it in the 2016-2017 Walter and Pauline Adams Academy cohort. More specifically, it is Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, revised by various scholars for use with 21st century students who exist in an increasingly digital world, that has been especially useful when it comes to designing assessments for my students.

For those who are interested, there are all kinds of sources online -- journal article pdfs, infographics, Youtube explainer videos, etc. -- that will be informative and helpful for anyone who might be interested in learning more. Just search for 'Bloom's Digital Taxonomy' on Google. It's that easy.

For my specific IAH courses, I organize my students into permanent student learning teams early each semester and ask them to create three collaborative projects (including a team reflection). These are due at the end of Week Five, Week 10, and Week 14. Right now, the projects include:

1) A TV Newscast/Talkshow Article Review Video in which teams are ask to locate, report on, review, and evaluate two recent journal articles pertinent to material read or viewed during the first few weeks of the course.

2) A Readers' Guide Digital Flipbook (using Flipsnack) that reviews and evaluates the usefulness of two books, two more recent journal articles, and two blogs or websites on gender and sexuality OR race and ethnicity within the context of specific course materials read or viewed during roughly the middle third of the course.

3) An Academic Poster (due at the end of Week 14) in which student teams revisit course materials and themes related to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and identity. In addition, students are asked to examine issues of power, marginalization, disparity, equity, etc. in those same sources and look at how these same issues affect our own societies/cultures of origin in the real world. Finally, student teams (in course as diverse as Film Noir of the 1940s and 50s, Horror Cinema, and the upcoming Contemporary Scandinavian and Nordic Authors) are asked to propose realistic, concrete solutions to the social problems facing us.


Anecdotally, student feedback has been largely very favorable so far. Based on remarks in their team reflections this semester (Fall 2021), students report that they enjoy these collaborative, creative projects and feel like they have considerable leeway to shape what their teams develop. Moreover, they also feel that they are learning quite a bit about the material presented as well as valuable 21st century employability skills in the process. Where their all important assignment grades are concerned, student learning teams in my courses are meeting or exceeding expectations with the work they have produced for the first two of three team projects this semester according to the grading rubrics currently in use.

Beginning in Spring 2022, I plan to give my student teams even more agency in choosing how they are assessed and will provide two possible options for each of the three collaborative projects. Right not, these will probably include:

Project #1 (Recent Journal Article Review and Evaluation)-- Powtoon Animated TV Newscast OR Infographic

Project #2 -- (Review and Evaluation of Digital Sources on Gender and Sexuality OR Race and Ethnicty in our specific course materials) Flipbook OR Podcast

Project #3 -- (Power, Marginality, Disparity, Equity in Course Materials and Real World of 21st Century Problem-Solving) Electronic Poster OR Digital Scrapbook.

Through collaborative projects like these, I am attempting to motivate and engage the students in my IAH courses more effectively, help them to think more actively and critically about the material presented as well as the various social issues that continue to plague our world, and provide them with ample opportunity to cultivate essential skills that will enable their full participation in the globalized world and economy of the 21st century. Bloom's (Revised) Digital Taxonomy, among other resources, continues to facilitate my evolving thought about how best to reach late Gen Y and Gen Z students within a general education context.

If anyone would like to talk more about all of this, offer constructive feedback, or anything else, just drop me a line. I am always looking for those magic beans that will increase student motivation and engagement, and eager to learn more along the way. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy has certainly been one of my three magical helpers in the quest to to do that.

My background in Scandinavian languages and literature keeps rearing its head in various ways after many years. Specifically,when it comes to folklore, magical tales, and perilous journeys toward maturation. In a way, I have become a pedagogical Ashland, of sorts, since coming to MSU in 2015. My journey, an ongoing quest if you will, has been in trying to find that one magical key, which will unlock the enchanted door to greater student interest and involvement in their general education course requirements.

Those of us who teach these courses know that, too often, many students view gen. ed. requirements as hoops to jump through. Something they must satisfy to graduate. Subjects that, they feel, have little to do with the real world, their intended majors, or envisioned careers. Scheduling and convenience more than genuine interest seem to be the determining factor for many students when they choose to enroll in such courses. Put the head down, muddle through, and get it done with as little effort as possible.

But there might be another way.

In my own ongoing quest to motivate and engage the students in my various IAH courses more effectively, I have come back to Bloom's Taxonomy again and again since first learning about it in the 2016-2017 Walter and Pauline Adams Academy cohort. More specifically, it is Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, revised by various scholars for use with 21st century students who exist in an increasingly digital world, that has been especially useful when it comes to designing assessments for my students.

For those who are interested, there are all kinds of sources online -- journal article pdfs, infographics, Youtube explainer videos, etc. -- that will be informative and helpful for anyone who might be interested in learning more. Just search for 'Bloom's Digital Taxonomy' on Google. It's that easy.

For my specific IAH courses, I organize my students into permanent student learning teams early each semester and ask them to create three collaborative projects (including a team reflection). These are due at the end of Week Five, Week 10, and Week 14. Right now, the projects include:

1) A TV Newscast/Talkshow Article Review Video in which teams are ask to locate, report on, review, and evaluate two recent journal articles pertinent to material read or viewed during the first few weeks of the course.

2) A Readers' Guide Digital Flipbook (using Flipsnack) that reviews and evaluates the usefulness of two books, two more recent journal articles, and two blogs or websites on gender and sexuality OR race and ethnicity within the context of specific course materials read or viewed during roughly the middle third of the course.

3) An Academic Poster (due at the end of Week 14) in which student teams revisit course materials and themes related to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and identity. In addition, students are asked to examine issues of power, marginalization, disparity, equity, etc. in those same sources and look at how these same issues affect our own societies/cultures of origin in the real world. Finally, student teams (in course as diverse as Film Noir of the 1940s and 50s, Horror Cinema, and the upcoming Contemporary Scandinavian and Nordic Authors) are asked to propose realistic, concrete solutions to the social problems facing us.


Anecdotally, student feedback has been largely very favorable so far. Based on remarks in their team reflections this semester (Fall 2021), students report that they enjoy these collaborative, creative projects and feel like they have considerable leeway to shape what their teams develop. Moreover, they also feel that they are learning quite a bit about the material presented as well as valuable 21st century employability skills in the process. Where their all important assignment grades are concerned, student learning teams in my courses are meeting or exceeding expectations with the work they have produced for the first two of three team projects this semester according to the grading rubrics currently in use.

Beginning in Spring 2022, I plan to give my student teams even more agency in choosing how they are assessed and will provide two possible options for each of the three collaborative projects. Right not, these will probably include:

Project #1 (Recent Journal Article Review and Evaluation)-- Powtoon Animated TV Newscast OR Infographic

Project #2 -- (Review and Evaluation of Digital Sources on Gender and Sexuality OR Race and Ethnicty in our specific course materials) a Digital Flipbook OR Podcast

Project #3 -- (Power, Marginality, Disparity, Equity in Course Materials and Real World of 21st Century Problem-Solving) an Interactive E-Poster OR Digital Scrapbook.

Through collaborative projects like these, I am attempting to motivate and engage the students in my IAH courses more effectively, help them to think more actively and critically about the material presented as well as the various social issues that continue to plague our world, and provide them with ample opportunity to cultivate essential skills that will enable their full participation in the globalized world and economy of the 21st century. Bloom's (Revised) Digital Taxonomy, among other resources, continues to facilitate my evolving thought about how best to reach late Gen Y and Gen Z students within a general education context.

If anyone would like to talk more about all of this, offer constructive feedback, or anything else, just drop me a line. I am always looking for those magic beans that will increase student motivation and engagement, and eager to learn more along the way. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy has certainly been one of my three magical helpers in the quest to to do that.

Takk skal dere ha!