PDF Course Schedule Builder

The PDF Course Schedule Builder (PDFCSB) is an open-source tool that was developed at the Faculty Center for Teaching (FACT) at Utah State University (USU). The PDFCSB allows instructors to create a schedule for an online course in a native PDF environment--Adobe Reader.

Click here for a "how to" video.

Click here to download the file.

New Article on First Principles of Instruction

My friend--Dr. Joel Gardner--recently started a Wikipedia article on M. David Merrill's First Principles of Instruction. Joel has conducted an extensive amount of research into First Principles, and published the result in his dissertation and this journal article.

PDF-based GrantSAT Tool

At the request of an instructor that uses the GrantSAT instrument in her course, I've created a PDF-based tool that automates the process of scoring the 75 different criteria that GrantSAT uses to rate a grant proposal. The video is on YouTube and the file can be downloaded from the FACT website.

PDF Assignment Builder surpasses 4000 views

I was on YouTube today and saw that the "how-to" video on the first version of the PDF Assignment Builder now has more than 4000 views. When I posted the latest version, the original only had about 2500, but I guess people are still watching it :)

Presentation on the OAR model at Utah State University

On Thursday I presented to the Instructional Technology Student Association (ITSA) from the Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences (ITLS) department at Utah State University. I was speaking to graduate students and gave them an overview of the Objectives-Resources-Activities (OAR) model, explored the FACT Instructor Guidebook for online course development and answered their questions about Instructional Design.

Here's the video.

Course Activity Maps

I've posted a new video to YouTube that shows a Course Activity Map featuring the new Acquisition Activity and Application Activity icons from the OAR model. This CAM also incorporates Activity Layers and Activity Increments.

oarmodel.com

In September I was dismayed to learn that a Wikipedia Administrator decided to delete the OAR Model article. This article had been up for two years, is still (as of this post) linked to from the Instructional Design article on Wikipedia, and about six months after its creation was the top result on Google. I haven't decided if/when I will appeal the decision.

So, I bought the domain www.oarmodel.com today. Right now it just has a picture of the OAR model, but more to come....