Full PDF Overview
2023–2024 Webinar Series
Instructors as Designers: Considering UX Design in OWI
“Students in the driver’s seat of course design: Branching scenarios in online writing instruction”
April 26, 2024, 4:00 – 5:30pm ET
Presented by: Tiffany Bourelle (She/Her)
Mitch Marty (He/Him): Adjunct Professor & Instructional Designer
Joseph Bartolotta (He/Him): Associate Professor
Webinar overview
This webinar will introduce participants to an active-learning strategy called “Branching Scenarios,” which challenge students by offering them various learning paths for composing a project. For instance, students are provided a writing assignment, given two rhetorical situations from which they can choose, and are prompted to choose the branch or path that best fits their learning styles and choice of audience, purpose, and medium for their chosen rhetorical situation. Whereas most instructional design or user-centered scholarship in online writing instruction focuses on instructors controlling the design of a course, Branching Scenarios insist that students become active participants in the design process. To model this approach, we’ll present a course module where students are provided an assignment that offers choices of rhetorical situation, various discussion boards based on their choices, and small-stakes activities based on their chosen medium for communication. We’ll then guide participants in brainstorming what assignment can work best for a scenario in their own courses and in thinking through what choices students can make along the process path of learning and creating the project. Participants will leave with an action plan and one scenario drafted to begin working in their courses.
Participants will
1. Understand the philosophy behind Branching Scenarios as they relate to Online Writing Instruction.
2. Consider how Branching Scenarios align with PARS (Personal, Accessible, Responsive, and Strategic) course design.
3. Discover how Branching Scenarios can be developed with Backwards Course Design to address the Student Learning Outcomes of an online-based writing course through a module designed by the attendees.
4. Learn how to deploy a Branching Scenarios activity in their own course by using basic tools in an LMS and through Storyline, a common software program used to develop Branching Scenarios.
Register now! https://gsole.org/event-5439481
