I really liked how they laid out the summer camp this year because I still felt fresh by this morning.

We started out with a panel about the beauty of design. The panel was intentionally comprised of non-ID’s to provide perspective. One member of the panel was Anna Divinsky who taught the Art MOOC. She started by talking about how important ID’s are in creating courses. Although she like this, she sees many other faculty not like to be challenged by ID’s. Definitely a good point and one to consider. She shared about the MOOC that just finished that they planned for students to do around 40 hours of work but students did way more than that. Later in a session that I attended she talked more in depth about the experience. One student’s feedback was that, “…it’s bizarre, but I feel a bit empowered…” in reference to taking her course. As soon as the course opened students began creating natural teams both within Coursera and outside (facebook). Luckily, she had another helper in facebook to monitor the discussion. She found that the discussion boards within Coursera often spiraled into negativity while the fb group was much more positive. She encouraged others to take a MOOC to prepare for teaching one although she hadn’t. It’s important to set realistic expectations for students concerning participation and deadlines and not set unrealistic precedents by participating too much. Peer reviews help to make assessment more manageable, but they need to be very specific for students to use them properly.

Another member of the panel was Nick Rossi, he talked about an app called Fitocracy that he thought would be a great way for us to move for education. The principles that he highlighted included the need to motivate students by providing feedback, allowing for students to easily and clearly see their progress, and build community. All of these elements are present in the Fitocracy app. Nick also hit on the idea of user testing. It needs to become a natural part of design instead of an after thought. There are too many instances when designers are designing for other designers instead of for students.

Stuart Selber was another panelist. He had an interesting idea about how good design being transparent to the point of being invisible. The design team should be a bit amorphous and faculty will sometimes find themselves in the role of the ID. It’s a good point to ponder. How much are we empowering those we work with to think about good instructional design.

This was a great session that really stretched our thinking. I hope to see these ideas being implemented to improve what we do here at PSU.