Jenae Cohn – författare

Students are reading on screens more than ever-how can we teach them to be better digital readers?Smartphones, laptops, tablets: college students are reading on-screen all the time, and digital devices shape students' understanding of and experiences with reading. In higher education, however, teachers rarely consider how digital reading experiences may have an impact on learning abilities, unless they're lamenting students' attention spans or the distractions available to students when they're learning online.Skim, Dive, Surface offers a corrective to these conversations-an invitation to focus not on losses to student learning but on the spectrum of affordances available within digital learning environments. It is designed to help college instructors across the curriculum teach digital reading in their classes, whether they teach face-to-face, fully online, or somewhere in between. Placing research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, learning science, and composition in dialogue with insight from the scholarship of teaching and learning, Jenae Cohn shows how teachers can better frame, scaffold, and implement effective digital reading assignments. She positions digital reading as part of a cluster of literacies that students should develop in order to communicate effectively in a digital environment.

Students are reading on screens more than ever—how can we teach them to be better digital readers?Smartphones, laptops, tablets: college students are reading on-screen all the time, and digital devices shape students’ understanding of and experiences with reading. In higher education, however, teachers rarely consider how digital reading experiences may have an impact on learning abilities, unless they’re lamenting students’ attention spans or the distractions available to students when they’re learning online.Skim, Dive, Surface offers a corrective to these conversations—an invitation to focus not on losses to student learning but on the spectrum of affordances available within digital learning environments. It is designed to help college instructors across the curriculum teach digital reading in their classes, whether they teach face-to-face, fully online, or somewhere in between. Placing research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, learning science, and composition in dialogue with insight from the scholarship of teaching and learning, Jenae Cohn shows how teachers can better frame, scaffold, and implement effective digital reading assignments. She positions digital reading as part of a cluster of literacies that students should develop in order to communicate effectively in a digital environment.

Online learning can be so dull—or not!

Enter Jenae Cohn and Michael Greer, experienced authors andteachers, who decided it was time to take on the challenge of making online learning more interesting and compellingfor students. So, they met in a Zoom call, contacted Rosenfeld Media, and wrote this book, Design for Learning: UserExperience in Online Teaching and Learning (many Zoom calls later).

The book is structured to teach online learning in such a way that anyone can follow its practices and create a dynamic educational presentation. Chapters cover everything fromlearning about your learners and setting learning goals to building connections with learners and giving them feedback. In addition, the authors dive into the nitty-gritty details of creating online courses, including takeaways at the endof each chapter and easy-to-follow examples throughout.

“I particularly appreciate how thoughtful Jenae and Michael are about considering the experience from the learner’s point of view and theemphasis they put on learner agency.”—Julie Dirksen, Author, Design for How People Learn

Together, Jenae Cohn and Michael Greer have years of experience designing and producing online courses for students. They wanted the tone of their book to be friendly, supportive, engaging, empathetic, and thoughtful. With that in mind, they chose examples that reflected what an ordinary user might encounter on a day-to-day basis, highlighting everything from complex skills (accessibility) to the most minute details, such as:

Writing compelling content and instructional textDesigning interesting text and visualsPlanning and producing videosRecording sound and voice-oversCreating and facilitating live website presentationsDesigning surveys for class feedbackRating whether your presentation was successful

Who Is This Book For?

Teachers, learning development professionals, and anyone tasked with designing an online course or a one-off workshopContent creators, instructional designers, user experience designers, and others who care about the experience of online learningWhether you’re a novice or experienced online instructional designer, this book will show you how to apply industry best practices, and provide how-to examples, powerful templates, and activities to craft compelling instructional content—whether text, audio, or video.

Best of all—your course will never be called dull again.