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Learning Environments

Live Teaching

Live Teaching: Subject Matter Experts  -

Part 1

-  Part 2

Project | 03

Software Used

  • Moodle

  • PowerPoint

  • Microsoft Word

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Goal: To teach subject matter experts best practices in e-learning and to introduce them to the most up-to-date multimedia technology available to them. 

Process Part 1: As the lead instructional designer, I helped develop and launch the program with the highest student retention rate of all University of Southern California/Pearson partnerships.  To maintain this success, the program director realized that the subject matter experts needed continuing education about e-learning. To initiate this effort, the program director asked me to give an in-person presentation to the faculty about online presentations, discussions, and multimedia. She specifically asked me to teach faculty to improve their PowerPoint presentations, online discussions, and use of multimedia. 

 

Result: I created a 90-minute lesson that used PowerPoint to illustrate best online practices. I applied a new Moodle tool to explain how to produce effective PowerPoint presentations. I then led an activity to help faculty improve online discussions. The lesson ended with a demonstration of scenario-based learning, VideoScribe, and Powtoons. The faculty and program director were thrilled with the lesson, and faculty said they were very motivated to bring their courses to the next level.

 

Please click on the arrow on the right to view the

PowerPoint and then scroll down to see the activity. 

Part 1
Part 2

Process Part 2:  I distributed a handout with anonymous sample discussions from people's courses and asked the faculty to improve these, based on what they had just learned. During and after this lesson, some faculty members told me that they were now motivated to redo their entire course (though, as I said above, the classes were already quite good, so revamps were not necessary). The next phase of the live session was to return to a group discussion to reflect upon the activity.

Handout: Discussion Questions

 

Discussion Questions should be specific, provoke critical thinking, and lead to engaged responses.

 

Structure of discussions

  • How many do you need?

  • Does everyone need to respond to the first post

  • Discussions in groups, pairs, whole groups

  •  

Collaborative Problem Solving 

  • Instructor generated questions

  • Students work in pairs or groups

  • Can have more than one discussion to solve the problem (instructor scaffolds discussion questions

  •  

Student Led Discussion

  • Students can share components of a long-term project

  • They can present recordings or other artifacts such as 

    • Diagrams, visual models, visual glossary (Pinterest), YouTube video, podcast, prototype, infographics

  • Students Provide critical thinking questions for other students 

 

Muddiest point

  • Ask students to identify a concept or topic that remains unclear

  • Students should try to explain to other students or work with other students to figure out what is unclear

  • You may want to have a discussion like this a few times a semester


Some Specific Ideas and Language

  • evaluate, compare/contrast, predict, analyze: find and challenge or support assumptions, apply different assumptions and predict how that might change something, estimate, bring in information from what you have read and appropriately cite it in the discussion, email to someone in a company (scenario) and role play with each other; assign students opposing positions, interpret data (diagram, measurements, survey), reflect on learning,  process, debate, panel discussion, infer outcomes from a case study or even personal story from your professional life, hypothesize solutions, recommend alternative actions, struggle with contradictory ideas,

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