The logic of design failures in IDT

The unforeseen consequences of a design are often thought to be failures, and sometimes they are. Sometimes they are not. Sometimes they become "utilization," as when a product is used for a purpose other than for which it was designed. See the image of the 3-year-old utilizing an old mattress for great trampoline-like jumping! In …

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Stochastic designs and stochastic learning objectives

We need more accurate terminology to describe the instructional strategies we employ in our designs. The term learning objective is far too vague to be of much use. This blog post explains how the term fails and offers an additional term, stochastic learning objective, to clarify differences among instructional strategies. Not all learning is stochastic, …

Strategizing Project Management in Academic Settings

Getting stuck is a project's worst enemy. Academic settings have a knack for producing the endless project that never comes to fruition. Research groups and design groups a particularly prone to this. Graduate students, and those setting out to do research in groups, can get bogged down and tripped up at dozens of spots in …

The Shibboleths of PhD study

There is a point in the doctoral student experience where one ceases having ideas and begins having notions. This is a shibboleth. I’ve seen this discursive acquisition again and again, and I am beginning to feel that this shibboleth marks a significant change. While we might joke about having notions instead of ideas, hedging one’s …

Deconstructing the PhD Program of Study (POS) in Learning, Design & Technology

Craig and advanced Ph.D. candidate Khosi Lunga (mlunga@utk.edu) collaboratively wrote this blog post. Like many things in Ph.D. study, the Program of Study (POS) document is not as simple as it seems. It is not simply a list of courses a student must take to complete the degree. Rather, it’s a negotiated document that tracks …

Deliberate Design Decisions in Higher Ed Online Teaching

In an inter-university discussion group that was spawned, and is coordinated by, Jason McDonald at BYU, we recently grappled with the notion of design decisions made unconsciously. We came to understand this as options never considered. Through our discussion, graduate students and faculty from UTK, Purdue, Arizona State, and BYU, came to see unconscious design …

The work of a Faculty Fellow for Technology Enhanced Teaching during COVID-19

I was selected as a Faculty Fellow for Technology Enhanced Teaching in the Spring of 2020. I consulted 16 faculty clients in Friday workshops and held two presentations in this role. Both presentations revolved around the design of asynchronous online discussions. However, looking back on my 18 months as a Faculty Fellow, that was not …

Quick Emergency Checklist for Synchronous Online Teaching

Written with John Kennedy, IT Online student and coordinator of UTK's Office of Student Media. This post was an emergency post for COVID-19 transition to online learning. It's kept as a tool for anyone making a sudden transition to synchronous learning. The 5-minute illustration to the right identifies the blog post. Illustrations don't need to …

Getting started teaching online as a new adjunct

Often we find faculty must pick up a class on short notice. If you're coming into a new school, one might wish they had a checklist about where to start. Here's that checklist. It's not a full onboarding checklist, but it's where I start new adjuncts. January solitude by 愛怜夏, age 8. Cut construction paper, …

How Research Groups Work

It’s a common misconception that Ph.D. study is about the courses you have to take. It’s not. It’s about the work that you do, but it’s hard to find the roads into that work early in one’s program. Sometimes courses help with that, sometimes they don’t. I have heard that Ph.D. programs in other countries …