Instructional Materials
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- “Chunk It”
- Break your lecture into key concepts/topics and create lectures (live or recorded) of no more than 10 minutes
- Review your lecture slides/notes, and ask:
- Do I need to say all of this?
- Can students read or watch a video about some of it instead?
- Create a cycle of listening and doing
- After each ‘chunk’ of new material, give students an opportunity to participate in a learning activity: discussion, Q&A, debate, reflection, small-group assignment, practice examples/problems, etc.
- Use illustrations and real-life examples
- Concepts are better understood and ‘stick’ when applied to a real-life situation
- Illustrate concepts with actual images/videos and examples
- Be personable and use humor
- Be yourself and allow your personality (and some humor!) to shine through while you are lecturing
- It’s okay to make mistakes; your video lectures don’t need to be polished Hollywood productions
- Take a “less is more” approach on the slides
- Use minimal text on your presentation slides and enhance with photos, images, etc.
- Use simple, sans-serif fonts and contrasting colors, so your text is easily readable
A note on instructor notes
Instructors often have notes and slide decks that accompany their lectures. Providing copies of these supplemental notes to students is not only helpful to students with a documented disability—but also to all other students, especially those who are more visual learners or who could not attend the live lecture due to a variety of circumstances.
Providing students with these notes is not “doing the work for them” but rather providing them with another quality, reliable resource to help them learn and succeed. This practice also aligns with the principles of Universal Design for Learning.
Technology for Lectures
- For live, synchronous lectures, Zoom is the platform commonly used.
- Schedule a Zoom meeting and practice Meeting With Your Class in Zoom
- For asynchronous lectures, you can use Echo360 or VoiceThread – which is a more interactive tool that allows for students to comment on and respond to the lecture with text, video, etc.
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OER are created by individual educators and institutions that seek to provide an alternative to the rising costs of education—and the create a more participatory, collaborative and global approach to teaching and learning.
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Review your course, asking yourself:
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