Category Archives: Digital Living

Page Formatting: Yes You Scan!

Are you reading this?

How about this?

  • This is a little out of the ordinary, but I bet you’re reading.
  • Maybe you aren’t.
  • How can we tell?

Readers scan in very predictable ways and patterns. The basics are pretty simple. We jump to bolded text and don’t expect to see giant, bold statements. We read with a different emphasis when text is italicized. We scan immediately to images  on the page. Big, long paragraphs **like this one** are tiresome to readers and often get skipped while scanning. Formatting text in an unexpected way can throw your reader off, but using page formatting strategically can guide your reader through a page and help keep them engaged. Some of the tactics used in best-practice writing for the web may also be useful for academic writing and assignment construction.

You’re definitely reading this.

Most of the research being done around page scanning patterns is being done so with web content, not academia, in mind. However, some of the research done for web content writing may be helpful as you write or create resources for students.

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Considering Student Privacy

Your password will expire in 10 days. Your connection is not secure. Would you like to enable two-factor authentication? Do you want to trust this site?

We are frequently reminded that security breaches are not impossible and no captcha is foolproof. Each day our actions impact our digital footprint and as educators, we are doubly tasked with accounting for what we require of students. While all modalities of teaching can take advantage of incredible opportunities provided by exciting and creative digital tools, in the words of the late Stan Lee: “with great power, there must also come great responsibility.”

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The State of Mobile Learning

The use of mobile devices for education has been an interest of mine since 2011. But a lot has changed since the days of the iPhone 4 and the Nexus S: smartphones, which used to be the cutting edge of consumer technology are now ubiquitous to the point of being taken for granted. And technology vendors, who used to think of mobile as an afterthought, are developing apps and services with mobile compatibility as the first priority.

And I’ve seen attitudes shift among faculty too. As recently as 2015, many faculty I interacted with saw using smartphones for learning as so radical as to be frightening. In the last year, many faculty seem to view the notion as so obvious as to be boring.

Given these shifts in technology and attitudes towards the technology, this is a good time to check in on the current state of mobile learning, and it’s trajectory going forward.

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Hear Your Text: Benefits of Text to Speech

What happens when you get stumped while working on a piece of writing? Many writers, students, academics, and others choose to visit writing centers. More often than not, the first thing the writing center will suggest is to read the work aloud, and listen to what has been written. Why? Because your brain processes information differently based on how you receive it. Sometimes the key to writing is actually putting aside your pen (or keyboard) and taking a moment to listen to what you have written.

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Preparing for the Future When the Virtual is so Real

PS4 gaming consoleLike any mom of teens, I am trying to pull my 13-year-old son away from his game console and get him to try something that I think would benefit him for his growth—something like reading!

“But books are history,” Grant claimed. “And this…” he tilted his head toward the screen with his hands still fixated on the bat-shaped controller, “is the future.”

But, Grant, you see, history is…

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Organizing the Digital Professorship

Female office worker and messy file cabinetSummer means vacation and working on next year’s course updates. But many faculty face a challenge that their physical and computer desktops have in common: chaos and clutter. Files for research, course materials, lecture notes, emails; it can all get overwhelming. Although we all have our personal quirks when it comes to managing our digital assets, taking steps to minimize friction from these habits can ease working with others, as well as free up time and energy to focus on pedagogical matters.

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Excelling Efficiently

Excel logoWhile I don’t love the phrase, “work smarter, not harder” (there’s a great article here on why), I think that too often we find ourselves doing tasks that we can do more efficiently. My colleagues have shared their tips for working efficiently already, such as using tabs to batch task repetitive work, using text expanders to save time, and even I’ve written variations of this idea with my post on using mail merge to quickly create data-driven documents. This time around, I’m returning to my finicky, temperamental, and all-too-powerful favorite tool: Microsoft Excel.

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Why don’t more online courses include podcasts?

graphic of RSS icon with headphonesWhen I was an undergrad, my “intellectual conversation crutch” was bringing up something from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. After moving to Chicago, that crutch morphed into inserting something I read in The New York Times or New Yorker.

Now? “I was just listening to a podcast about that…” is something I say with annoying frequency.

Thankfully, I’m not alone, as I notice many other people parroting back something they’ve recently heard in a podcast. But even though it feels like most of us are listening to podcasts, and most of us are learning interesting things from podcasts, I still don’t see podcasts as a top option when faculty are designing online courses. Why might that be?

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READY STUDENT ONE? Risks and Rewards of VR and AR in the College Classroom

While I’ll beg your forgiveness for the obvious hype-train connection in my title to the release of the film READY PLAYER ONE, the film does raise many questions about the future of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). For me, this question often comes up in the context of VR and AR in education, since my work as an Instructional Designer often means looking at new technologies that could change the way we go about the task of learning and teaching. Our office recently started a working group together with partners across the university to begin exploring what VR and AR in education could look like.

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Send Students Out on a GooseChase

metal compassFor as long as I’ve been interested in mobile learning, I’ve been on the lookout for apps that allow instructors to use mobile devices to structure student learning experiences outside of the classroom. Maybe you want students to go the Art Institute, look at three paintings in person and answer questions about them. Maybe you want students to visit seven buildings downtown with different architectural styles. Maybe you want students to go to the Bird and Butterfly Sanctuary and take pictures of migratory birds. Or maybe you want students to visit a few different ethnic neighborhoods, and you just want verification that they actually went.

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