December 2024 |Tech Teaching Tips from Timothy Corvidae

This month’s tech tip is to get off your computer and read a book! Specifically, come to the Learning and Teaching Commons to browse our online teaching books. We have a small but carefully selected collection. Here’s my pitch for a few of the best, using the filter criteria of readability, usability, and practicality.

 

Books for Supporting Digital Learners

Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It,  James Lang

This is a beautiful book that helps us think with students about distraction, and provides many thoughtful ways of structuring our teaching to address it. This book is not specifically for online educators, but we sure know that we can use it!

 

Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading, Jenae Cohen

Let’s all appreciate Jenae Cohen for bringing this book into the world! Who wouldn’t like to help our students strategize how to read more effectively?!? 

 

Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning 

Jose Bowen and C. Edward Watson

You might be tired of hearing about it, but AI isn’t tired of you! It’s indefatigable! This is the book everyone’s passing around right now, and it is a quick introduction to orienting yourself in this brave new world, including ideas about how to get your students to NOT use AI if that’s where you’re at.

 

Books to Help with you make videos and graphics

99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos: A Guide for Online Teachers and Flipped Classes, Karen Costa

The title may sound like a Buzzfeed listicle, but I promise you this book is so well-written! It reads like a sit down with your favorite teaching colleague when they’re on fire, recounting every cool idea they tried last quarter and their thinking behind it. 

 

Graphics for Learning: Proven Guidelines for Planning, Designing, and Evaluating Visuals in Training Materials, Ruth C. Clark and Chopeta Lyons

This one really helps you understand how to design all manner of graphics for effective learning. This book goes deep, but it’s got very useful ideas for those of us who keep solidly in the powerpoint lane of graphic design.

 

Books to help you think through engagement and belonging online

Each of these is full of specific little ideas that can help you make the magic happen. 

Designing for Care, Jerod Quinn editor

Pedagogy, Presence, and Motivation in Online Education, Aaron Perez and Şenol Orakcı

The Facilitator’s Guide to Immersive, Blended, and Hybrid Learning, Cindy Huggett

Teaching Effectively with Zoom, Dan Levy

 

Books that Cover Learning Science

Learning Science for Instructional Designers: From Cognition to Application, Clark N Quinn

Not a catchy title, but I assure you this little gem walks you through the science efficiently and effectively. And it IS little! Just enough about how to design for cognition.

 

E-Learning by Design, William Horton

Also not a catchy title, and this one is a true TOME. That said, I want to turn your attention to the interesting way it organizes teaching ideas by type. Absorb-Type activities inform and inspire students; the authors walk through when you might use different forms of presentation, and offer many ideas. Do-Type activities help learners practice and experiment with applying knowledge. Connect-Type activities help students integrate what they’re learning into what they already know. This section is perhaps the most critical to attend to, because without it we risk learners losing whatever knowledge they might be gaining. This is a great chapter to peruse for ideas on how to build connective tissue into your students’ learning experience. The book also covers games and simulations, social learning, designing effective tests, and more. And it’s an easy read. It’s a Sears Catalog of online teaching moves.

 

Books that do (some of) it all

If you want a one stop shop, these are some of the most approachable but thorough walk-throughs of online course design and teaching.

Design for Learning: User Experience in Online Teaching and Learning

Learning Experience Design: How to Create Effective Learning that Works

Online Teaching At Its Best

The Online Teaching Survival Guide 3rd Edition