Photo by Photoholgic. Description: Photo of wrinkled newspaper, business cards, and other historical documents.

Think of an important event in history that occurred during your lifetime. You probably remember watching the news on TV or seeing the newspaper headlines related to the event. These primary sources are part of our collective cultural memory. 

Primary sources can also serve as important learning materials for students. Helping learners step within inches of historical events and the news, primary sources are invaluable. Not only do primary sources bring benefits for learners, but they are also versatile. 

In this guide, learn how to pick out the best primary sources for your course needs. Then, discover activities you can leverage to get the most out of primary sources in instructional design.

Photo by Utsav Srestha. Photo description: Close-up of a stack of newspapers.

When presented with the question above, any educator may answer with something like “In theory, yes, current events belong in the core curriculum.” In practice, educators and curriculum designers may wrestle with the decision. What if the news is too controversial? What if the news changes within hours? How would instructional content be sourced so that it’s appropriate and age-appropriate for multiple grades?

Despite some drawbacks, including current events in courseware can bring many benefits to students. What’s more, with the right approach, adding current events can enhance curriculums to build context around course content and care for students in a holistic way.. 

Read on to discover the benefits of studying current events and historical news reports. Plus, we’ll include some tips on how to include journalism in courseware in a way that meets standards, boosts student achievement, and more:

Photo by Robo Wunderkind: Flat-lay photograph of brightly colored toys on a white tabletop, and a child's hands touching an iPad.

Multimodal learning engages learners, makes learning more effective, and also improves accessibility. Any educator would be glad to offer these advantages to their students. But, incorporating multimodal learning into courseware or making use of it in the classroom isn’t always straightforward. There are many possible ways to use multimodal learning, and not all of them guarantee the best outcomes. 

To help instructional designers and other education professionals, we’ve put together 5 tips to support multimodal learning when designing courses, curriculum materials, or planning for its use in the classroom: 

Description: A woman in a green turtleneck and glasses sits at a wooden table, smiling down at a colorful laptop.

As recently as twenty years ago, university and ongoing education courses relied on lectures and textbooks alone. Today’s students immerse themselves in course material through a wide range of multimedia resources and interactive courseware. 

A multimedia or multimodal approach to learning is not only more interesting for students but also brings learning benefits. Multimedia tools and resources can help bring abstract concepts to life, boost student motivation and interest, and introduce large amounts of information efficiently, among other advantages.

As a courseware or instructional designer, you naturally want to bring all of these benefits to your students. Here are five practical ways to create a multimodal environment in your courseware:

Description: Four speakers sit onstage at the 2022 ASU+GSV Summit.

Inspirational, innovative, and provocative are just a few words to describe the recent ASU+GSV 2022 Summit. With a theme of “Ed On the Edge,” the conference featured world-class speakers who sparked essential conversations about education.

The energy of so many talented and passionate education professionals in one place was palpable throughout the conference. We were thrilled to attend and meet other people committed to innovation in education technology. 

Most of all, we were thrilled to return to Boclips with inspiration that would influence and improve our work. 

Here are some of our key takeaways from the conference:

Photo by Yarenci Hdz

Which would be more memorable for you, reading a section of a textbook about an event in history, or watching a musical that depicts that same historical event? 

If you answered “watching a musical,” then you know the power of multimodal learning. When building effective, engaging lessons, teachers and instructional designers know that you can’t just give students reading materials and expect them to understand the content. Multimodal learning helps boost engagement, build connections, and improve learning overall. 

Yet, what exactly is multimodal learning, what are some examples of its use, and how does it benefit learners?  

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon

Learning styles are viewed in a positive light by many people. You may agree that, at worst, learning styles are harmless and at best they improve learning. What damage could the theory of learning styles possibly cause?

If everyone understood how to apply learning styles theory, the answer would be “Very little. In fact, they can do a lot of good.”

Unfortunately, people’s beliefs surrounding learning styles aren’t always accurate. Up to 90% of people believe that learners perform better when taught in their predominant learning style. Yet, the idea that visual learners should only have visually-focused lessons, or that audio lessons require audio-based lessons, is largely a myth. This rigid take on learning styles doesn’t take into account details like course content, the diversity of student needs, and more. 

So, what problems does this belief create?

Photo by Thomas Park

If you work in the field of education, then you’ve probably heard of learning styles. The idea that some people learn best visually, while others are auditory learners has long been popular in education. Perhaps you even took a learning styles quiz as a student.

People generally agree that learning styles can explain some of the differences in performance and preferences for learning among students. But, when it comes to learning styles’ effects on performance, where’s the evidence? Are learning styles valid? Or, is there more to learning styles than meets the eye? 

Description: A young girl with a red laptop sits on a microfiber couch in her home, participating in a Zoom call for school. Photo by Maria Thalassinou.

The concept of learning styles is pervasive in the field of education. Nearly 80% of educators reported that they used or had intentions of using teaching methods that matched the learning styles of their students. 

Despite their ubiquity, learning styles have recently earned a controversial reputation. As a curriculum designer, you may wonder what you should know about learning styles. What are they, where did they come from, and what are the critiques and controversies surrounding this theory? Perhaps most importantly, what are practical takeaways for curriculum designers? Let’s get into it!

Description: Close-up of a hand pinning a black string, which maps print screenshots of a user flow, on a white wall. Photo by Alvaro Reyes.

If you’re an instructional designer, you are very familiar with video content. You may have designed entire courses around a series of lecture videos.

Well-chosen educational videos that align with the curriculum and take the right pedagogical approach can be very beneficial for learning experiences. They may even improve student outcomes. That said, the internet is brimming with videos that may or may not be appropriate for any given lesson. Instructional designers must carefully consider the specific purpose a video will serve when including it in a course, training, or lesson.

Fortunately, there are many creative and effective ways to enhance course design with video content. Here are 4 different educational video strategies to add to your instructional designer toolkit: