critical instructional design - Sean Michael Morris

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."

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

critical digital pedagogy

Innovation through Reflection: A Call for Teachers

“Didn’t we have bigger dreams for instructional technology?” ~ Phil Hill at ITC 2015 It is a truism that learning can happen in any environment. Learning does not require a teacher, though traditional

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

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