Critical Instructional Design

Critical Instructional Design

Critical Instructional Design is a theoretical approach to the design of teaching and learning that grows out of the theory, practices, and praxis of critical pedagogy, especially as applied to digital or online learning. Through this lens, we understand education to be a practice of freedom, a discursive, digital act of resistance.

Humanizing Digital Pedagogy: the Role of Imagination in Distance Teaching

critical digital pedagogy Featured

Humanizing Digital Pedagogy: the Role of Imagination in Distance Teaching

We have to begin to imagine better digital pedagogies, more critical digital pedagogies, which go farther than the mere implementation of design.

A Problem-Posing Learning Design

Critical Instructional Design Featured

A Problem-Posing Learning Design

There's a movement across the field of learning and instructional design to create a digital education which seeks to confront or dismantle the what-already-is of learning design.

We Rise and Fall Together: Assessment during COVID-19

COVID-19 Featured

We Rise and Fall Together: Assessment during COVID-19

How we reimagine assessment when sick and dying dogs, sleepless nights, and cleaning up dog fur are as much a factor as whether or not a student did the reading or writing may be the most pressing question we face as educators.

Fostering Care and Community at a Distance

critical digital pedagogy Featured

Fostering Care and Community at a Distance

There’s no built-in function in any technology which can produce community. Nor can building community be done from the front of the room; it is not an exercise or a manoeuvre.

Love Letters and Pen Pals: Community through Correspondence

critical digital pedagogy

Love Letters and Pen Pals: Community through Correspondence

There are myriad ways that teaching online can preserve the most cherished or favorite parts of classroom pedagogy. What is required is thinking past the screen, past the platform, and beyond the distance that separates teachers and students.

Times which Require Greater Care: Ethos in Online Learning

critical digital pedagogy

Times which Require Greater Care: Ethos in Online Learning

Jumping into online offerings the way so many universities are wont to do these days is unhealthy for faculty and students alike. That move must be considered, careful, slow, and deliberate.

After Babel: Designing for Community

critical digital pedagogy

After Babel: Designing for Community

There are countless brilliant students who need the opportunity of school.

Education is not a field for mediocre hopes and mediocre dreams

critical digital pedagogy

Education is not a field for mediocre hopes and mediocre dreams

"Education lifts, inspires, changes lives, builds futures, starts careers, reveals new knowledge. It’s this profoundly odd and profoundly unlikely and profoundly beautiful endeavor that strikes at what humans do most naturally and best: learning."

The (Critical) (Instructional) Design of Digital Pedagogy Lab

Critical Instructional Design

The (Critical) (Instructional) Design of Digital Pedagogy Lab

Critical instructional design moves toward realizing the possibility for learning that blends a new form of rigor with agency through a practice of inquiry, empathy, and emergence.

Critical Pedagogy and Learning Online

critical digital pedagogy

Critical Pedagogy and Learning Online

For critical instructional design to begin, those undertaking the design of learning must themselves become more critically conscious of the work at hand.

A Call for Critical Instructional Design

Critical Instructional Design

A Call for Critical Instructional Design

Critical instructional design is an early, emerging attempt to get at some concrete methodologies for creating agentive spaces in online and hybrid learning environments.

Reading the LMS against the Backdrop of Critical Pedagogy, parts 1 and 2

Critical Instructional Design

Reading the LMS against the Backdrop of Critical Pedagogy, parts 1 and 2

There is an essential difference between the ‘science’ of education, positivism, evidence-based teaching, and behaviorism (which I see as coterminous within the LMS) and the ideas of education forwarded by critical pedagogy.

Subjectivity, Rubrics, and Critical Pedagogy

critical digital pedagogy

Subjectivity, Rubrics, and Critical Pedagogy

We must remain aware of the way in which traditional classroom management and instructional strategies have a nearly hegemonic hold on our imaginations.

Discussing Discussions

Critical Instructional Design

Discussing Discussions

The first order of business when talking about discussion forums in online classes is to ask, what do we want a discussion to accomplish?

Reimagining the Syllabus

Critical Instructional Design

Reimagining the Syllabus

I like to think of a syllabus as an invitation, a here's the what, when, why, and what-you-can-bring kind of document. I would prefer my syllabus to be legible (read: interesting), so that students will not only read the whole thing, but they'll remember what it said.

Saying No to Best Practices

Critical Instructional Design

Saying No to Best Practices

The worst best practice is to adhere to, or go searching for, best practices. Digital tools, strategies, and best practices are a red herring in digital learning. Learning always starts with people.

Critical Digital Pedagogy and Design

critical digital pedagogy

Critical Digital Pedagogy and Design

I was invited to speak to and work with teachers at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado in May 2017. What follows is the transcript of my presentation to the school's core faculty. The invention of the learning management system was a mistake. And here I’

Critical Instructional Design and Acts of Resistance

Critical Instructional Design

Critical Instructional Design and Acts of Resistance

Post once, reply twice: the epitaph for online learning. Post once, reply twice: the fundamental flaw of instructional design. Critical Instructional Design is new, and as such is grounded in the work of a very few people. I coined the term in January 2016 in an article on Hybrid Pedagogy

Courses, Composition, Hybridity

critical digital pedagogy

Courses, Composition, Hybridity

The course is an old idea. In the old days of teaching, a course was a path, a set of obstacles, or a journey through ideas toward some end. The path was marked by learning objectives, and further broken down by units and lesson plans, exercises and quizzes. Scaffolding, people

Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Learning Management

critical digital pedagogy

Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Learning Management

A great deal of education today is fucking absurd. Or, if not a great deal, too much. Because in truth, there should be no identifiable quantity of fucking absurdity present in education at all. Hilarity, improvisation, wit, digression, performance—these lead to critical thinking, to fresh observation, to engagement (and

Innovation through Reflection: A Call for Teachers

critical digital pedagogy

Innovation through Reflection: A Call for Teachers

> “Didn’t we have bigger dreams for instructional technology?” ~ Phil Hill at ITC 2015 [http://events7.mediasite.com/Mediasite/Play/d1292b23f34342efb3fced22bf4dc9dd1d?catalog=9331c15c-e46b-4775-9661-8b323dc957cb] It is a truism that learning can happen in any environment. Learning does not require a teacher, though traditional education relies upon the sage-on-the-stage (or at

Asynchronous Improvisation

Critical Instructional Design

Asynchronous Improvisation

When I was a grad student teaching creative writing I used to walk a mile-and-a-half to class. My walk was valuable time for me to think about my lesson plan, and to tune in—in that psychic way that teachers have—to how the day felt, and whether changes should

5 Things to Do When You Teach Digitally

critical digital pedagogy

5 Things to Do When You Teach Digitally

My first time working synchronously in Google Docs felt like a caffeine buzz. Cursors flew about madly on the page. My sentences were completed before I could finish them. New ideas sprung fully formed onto the page as I struggled to formulate my own. My first Twitter hashtag chat was