08
Dec
2016
Truthy Lies and Surreal Truths: A Plea for Critical Digital Literacies
Misinformation abounds. This has always been the case, but the problem has become acute in the age of digital communication. As Mike Caulfield and Zeynep... Read More
19
Oct
2016
Confessions of a Graduate Teacher (Once Lost, Now Found)
This is a story about two hemispheres of graduate school: teaching and dissertating. It is a story about how those two parts sometimes cohere but... Read More
16
Aug
2016
Not Enough Voices
On Friday, 12 August 2016, Sean Michael Morris gave one of two closing keynotes at the Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute held at the University of... Read More
30
Sep
2015
Death of the Discussion Forum: a #digped Chat
The semester begins. Servers everywhere fire up. And students across the globe introduce themselves in discussion forums. In Canvas, in D2L, in Blackboard, in Moodle.... Read More
21
Aug
2014
Designing for Emergence: The Role of the Instructor in Student-Centered Learning
My experiences as a graduate student of writing studies and online education have repeatedly left me inspired by the various “–isms” (e.g., constructionism, connectivism) that put the... Read More
22
Apr
2014
Best Practices: Thoughts on a Flash Mob Mentality
I have colleagues who invoke “Best Practices” the way that evangelical Christians quote the Bible: God has spoken. During these conversations, I am tempted to... Read More
26
Feb
2014
Toward an Interactive Criticism: House of Leaves as Haptic Interface
“And now,’ cried Max, ‘let the wild rumpus start!” ~ Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are When I first read Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of... Read More
26
Jan
2014
MOOC MOOC: Dark Underbelly
“Too many people are drinking the MOOC Kool-aid (or dumping it out hastily) when what we need to do is look closely at the Kool-aid... Read More
25
Oct
2013
Gaining Insights into Online Teacher Training through Essential Questions
My favorite pedagogical tool is the essential question. Briefly, these attempt to focus student attention on the broader implications and deeper meanings behind content. I had... Read More
01
Oct
2013
How to Build an Ethical Online Course
The best online and hybrid courses are made from scraps strewn about and gathered together from across the web. We build a course by examining... Read More
29
Aug
2013
Engaging Students: Lessons from the Leisure Industry
While on a cross-country trip a few years ago, I stopped at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and had a revelation. It was a few... Read More
07
Aug
2013
A Plea for Pedagogy
It goes without saying that technology is changing education. Children’s brains are being rewired, universities are being threatened with extinction, and we will be in... Read More
22
Jul
2013
MOOCagogy: Assessment, Networked Learning, and the Meta-MOOC
“Building community doesn’t mean that learning happens.” ~ from an audience comment at InstructureCon 2013 Learning in a MOOC Instruction does not equate to learning. This... Read More
11
Apr
2013
The Early Days of Videotaped Lectures
“It’s early days for online education,” declared a recent article in the technology blog Techcrunch, with its typical giddiness about the changes that technology is... Read More
11
Apr
2013
How NOT to Teach Online: A Story in Two Parts
Here’s a little secret: when I started teaching people how to teach online, I had no clue what I was doing. It was 1998. I... Read More
09
Apr
2013
The Failure of an Online Program
It’s evening. An Irish pub in Louisville, Colorado. Fish and chips. Beer. A game of soccer on the TV. I’m sitting down with one of... Read More
08
Apr
2013
Why Online Programs Fail, and 5 Things We Can Do About It
This is the first of a four-part colloquy of articles. Each piece has been contributed by authors who have intimate experience with the struggles, failures, and... Read More
08
Jan
2013
A User’s Guide to Forking Education
At exactly this moment, online education is poised (and threatening) to replicate the conditions, courses, structures, and hierarchical relations of brick-and-mortar industrial-era education. Cathy N.... Read More
03
Dec
2012
Online Learning: a Manifesto
Online learning is not the whipping boy of higher education. As a classroom teacher first and foremost, I have no interest in proselytizing for online... Read More
27
Aug
2012
Udacity and Online Pedagogy: Players, Learners, Objects
This sentence is a learning object. Wayne Hodgins, the “father of learning objects,” first came up with the idea for them while watching his son play... Read More
05
Jan
2012
Trading Classroom Authority for Online Community
Early web commenters referred to the Internet as a primitive, lawless place like the “Wild West.” Plenty still needs to change to make certain parts... Read More
05
Jan
2012
Rules of Engagement; or, How to Build Better Online Discussion
All participation is not equal. Digital media prompt us for comments, but in an academic setting we should harness this cultural habit to teach the... Read More
