I.D.E.A.S March Digest

Every month, we aim to post an I.D.E.A.S digest to share some of the resources, tips, tricks, and tools that our team has come across over the past month. I.D.E.A.S. is an acronym for Instructional Design Educational Activities Summary. Below are some reflections/resources from our team of instructional designers that might be helpful in your course design.

Instructional Designer 1

Accessibility is always at the forefront of concern as an instructional designer. Thus, finding and sharing resources that consider accessibility can be great for learners’ engagement. For example, PhET has simulations that can be embedded within Brightspace HTML for different concepts. 

Instructional Designer 2

Within the last month’s, I.D.E.A.S shared significant resources for royalty-free images usable generically within courses. However, sometimes for more specific topics such as medical illustration/images resources such as the following can be used:

• MedicalGraphics
• Smart. servier
• Public Health Image Library (P.H.I.L.)

Instructional Designer 3

To add an Alt text or not? Well, I think this flow-chart will be helpful: Decision Tree.

Instructional Designer 4

For basic image editing, cropping or modifications of images or a quick sketch. Free platforms can be used, such as Photopea (alternative for Adobe Photoshop), Vectr (alternative for Adobe Illustrator), Figma (alternative for Adobe X.D.).

Instructional Designer 5

Recently a website I have been using to convert my files from .pdf to .jpg etc. is convertio; it’s an easy-to-use platform that converts the files within a minute without having to sign in or create an account.

Instructional Designer 6

As an Instructional Designer, I am consistently looking for resources within the Brightspace community that have simple instructions that users can use. For example, recently, to resolve the navigation content issue, the following articles are for the different versions of the Brightspace platform:

• Classical Content
• New Learner Experience
• Lessons Experience

Instructional Designer 7

Within Brightspace, Peer Assessment can create student-to-student engagement and learning opportunities. Similarly, Turnitin is a platform to check for plagiarism and get peer review. The instructor can create PeerMark Assignments to submit the assignment so that individuals within the course can share their ideas and receive feedback on the clarity of their idea. You can randomize assigning of assignments, make it anonymous, and set a minimum of how many assignments each person needs to review. Within Brightspace, both options are available when designing the course.