Thoughts on Instructional Design and Other Stuff

  As an instructor who teaches both face-to-face and online courses, one key factor that I must consider every semester is cheating and plagiarism. Nowadays, students can easily find tools that can help them plagiarize or cheat on papers, exams, and discussion forums, such as ChatGPT and Google Bard (Claybourn, 20024). Due to this, several plagiarism detection tools are available to online instructors. These tools and others can help instructors identify potential cases of plagiarism. Some common tools are Turnitin, EVE (Essay Verification Engine), and Grammarly (Jocoy & DiBiase, 2006). Turnitin is a well-known plagiarism detection software that can check a student’s work against an extensive database of sources. It can also prove the instructor's feedback on citation and referencing issues (Baker et al., 2008). These tools help instructors identify potential cases of plagiarism and should be used in conjunction with clear polices to prevent cheating in the first place. These p...

Instructors must consider several factors when it comes to creating an online course. Some of these factors are choosing an online platform that is suitable and accessible for students, developing and creating engaging learning materials, and implementing technology. Creating an online course affects how the students engage with the course material and their overall experience with the course. In online learning, technology and multimedia are tools that can play a key part in the effectiveness of the course. For instance, games and simulations in online education have become a popular strategy to engage students and improve learning outcomes (De Freitas, 2006). Games can be defined as tasks that engage students, involve decision-making, and promote knowledge acquisition from a new perspective. In contrast, simulations can be defined as an activity to explore and replicate real-life situations (Conrad & Donaldson, 2011). These tools cater to di...