Welcome to Designing for Learning -- Tips for Designing and Teaching Online Learning

An updated set of Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online is the best starting point, particularly for faculty new to online teaching.

Don't miss the Library of E-Coaching Tips for Online Learning -- now numbering over 85 -- developed by Judith and colleague, Rita-Marie Conrad, Ph.D. These ecoaching tips address many of the key issues for designing and teaching online and blended courses.

These tips, core principles and best practices are also now available in a new book, The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips by Judith V. Boettcher and Rita-Marie Conrad (authors) from Jossey-Bass. This book organizes and updates many of the ecoaching tips plus providing what is essentially a short course in pedagogy in the first three chapters. Many teaching centers are using this book for their faculty development programs and as a resource for new faculty.

A recent interview from March 2011 summarizing three of the tips --Early Feedback, Wrapping Discussions and Being Present -- is at the Jossey-Bass Online Teaching and Learning Community site.

How Much? How Many? What's Next?

This site is also a reference site for articles spanning the last 20 years or so from my work in online and distance learning, faculty development and the future of teaching and learning. These years included time at Penn State, Florida State, the University of Florida, Duquesne University and the non-profit organization CREN as a consultant, instructional futurist, online program advisor and ecoach. Many of these writings examine frequently asked questions about online learning, including cost questions about "how much" and "how many" and "how long"; basic principles about online learning; and what might the future bring?

Many keynote presentations have focused on the future of teaching and learning, combining a look at the past while looking forward to the future of teaching and learning possibilities.  Here is the August 2009 keynote at the Wisconsin Distance Teaching & Learning conference, Remembering forward: Scenarios for the future of distance teaching and learning. Other 2009 keynotes included the League for Innovation's annual Conference on Information Technology (CIT) in Detroit in October 2009 and the Curricular Change Summit for the American Association of the Colleges of Pharmacy in Scottsdale, Arizona in September, 2009.

In addition to the tips, be sure to explore some of the other writings, including an early article titled, Let's Boldly Go... to the Education Holodeck that appeared on the Syllabus /now /Campus Technology/ magazine in 1998. That one is still fun to read as we don't have holodecks quite yet!

More of my articles and webinars from the CREN years are at Campus Technology. Here are some continuing favorites:

1. Evidence of Learning Online: Assessment Beyond The Paper (2/2011)
2. Socializing' the CMS (7/2008)
3. The Rise of Student Performance Content (2/2006)
4. Designing for Learning: The Pursuit of Well-Structured Content (12/2002)

Also, don't miss the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Distance and Online Learning. This edition has contributions from many of you, old and new friends, colleagues and new acquaintances.

Workshops, Presentation, Faculty Coaching - How to contact me

The best way to reach me regarding presentations, faculty workshops, consulting and individual faculty coaching is by email. One of these usually works quite well -- judith followed by designingforlearning.org or jboettcher followed by comcast.net. I try to acknowledge all email within 48 hours. This is also the best way to reach me for permission to use materials in faculty development events and resources. Permission is usually readily granted in all cases so long as materials provide an appropriate citation; it is just nice to know. Of course you do not need permission to link to these materials.

My teaching and learning philosophy is grounded in constructivism, and a deep belief in the power of instructional design, learning research and theory to support the goals of effective and efficient learning.

A Bit of Background

Over the years, I have consulted with a wide range of universities, colleges, and business organizations and have been widely published in higher education publications. Since 2003 I have been consulting and coaching faculty, administrators, and deans on program planning for online and blended courses and programs, giving workshops, presentations, and keynotes as well as writing, of course.

As a Syllabus scholar in the decade of the 1990s, I conducted many seminars on online learning and instructional design and was a long-time member of the Syllabus/Campus Technology conference board, a co-editor of the faculty and staff development section of Innovate, and member of the advisory committee for Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
My background includes six years as Executive Director of CREN from 1997-2003. During that time CREN produced the CREN TechTalk series, bi-monthly audio webcasts. I served as the program director and cohost of these audio webcast series with Howard Strauss of Princeton. Check out the format of these early webinars with this 1998 webinar on the Future of Network Security.

I earned my Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction and cognitive psychology at the University of Minnesota and completed my undergraduate and master's degrees from Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI.