ACRL 2009 - Creating Instruction To Go

I didn't immediately share the notes from this excellent session about online learning late this morning because I continued my path of scholarly learning bailed on ACRL with Marie for a few hours to have lunch & check out some nuclear pants at Archie McPhee. HOT!

I have to say that not only was the content of this paper about creating learning objects very informative, but the presentation itself is one of the best ones I've seen at a conference. The presenters walked the talk: they didn't merely read their Powerpoint (far more elaboration than that) but engaged us as the audience from the beginning with our questions about what they had. After explanations, they had us follow in their footsteps of identifying learning objects, brainstorming steps to accomplish meeting the objective of the learning object, then shared the tools they used along the way.

Par for course, a few teasers from my session notes:

• Faculty love the idea of information literacy but do not want to compromise their class time to offer it.
• What is a learning object? An online resource or set of resources that have been developed to achieve a specific learning outcome.
• Needs to be able to stand alone and remove any contextual references to other learning objects
• So much of what we do is related to interfaces so this is especially difficult to do.
• Always include a check for understanding via a quiz or learning exercise at the end of a learning object.
• Microlectures: 60 minute lectures, cut extra verbiage, in less than 2 minutes communicate cores. (published in Journal of Higher Learning and EduGeek blogged it well)

.. and much more including more specific how-to's with free online tools I hadn't heard of before such as Mindmeister and trailfire. I'm really looking forward to using these methods on some online course development roadblocks I've hit and am hopeful I'll move on from frustration/guilt that things aren't going forward to some clearer objectives and ways to meet them.