About

Hi. I’m Debbie Morrison—curriculum developer, course creator, and writer. I started Online Learning Insights in 2012 when I worked as the lead curriculum developer at a private university. I saw the need for supporting faculty and instructors who were creating courses for the online format and for skill development in teaching and managing online courses. This led to the launch of Online Learning Insights. It has since evolved into a valued resource for hundreds of educators, learners, and scholars from over 90 countries.

I’ve since moved on to other course design projects, including the launch of the Art History For Real platform. You can find out more about AHFR, as well as course design strategies specific to museums and other projects I’m working on, at my personal site debbiemorrison.net.

As of 2023, I’ll be posting to Online Learning Insights occasionally. Thank you for visiting!

29 thoughts on “About”

  1. Margaret Hobart

    Hi Debbie, I am wondering if you are ever available for consultation, or if you might refer me to someone who might be helpful to me; I lead a project which is working toward creating online learning for domestic violence advocates — we are looking for a little insight and guidance.
    thank you.

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  3. Terry Shaneyfelt

    I have a suggestion/request for a post. I recently was on a panel to choose 3 online courses from my university that were innovative or did innovative things. We all had different ideas of innovation with many just being good practice and not truly innovative. I am getting a Master of Educational Technology degree and have taken several courses about online teaching but I am not sure what is innovative online teaching. I know good practice but not innovation.

    Would you consider writing a post about what is innovative online teaching? I also wish I had a forum to get other educators to chime in on this. My blog is not read enough to poll my readers and I posted this request on Twitter but none of my followers responded unfortunately.

    Thanks for considering.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Debbie Morrison Post author

      Terry,
      Very good idea for a post. I agree with you that the term ‘innovative’ in its pairing with ‘teaching’ or ‘online teaching’ is vague and open to interpretation. Stay tuned!

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    2. Lynée Beck

      Innovation should include best practice but it may take a different approach to it. Take feedback for example. We know it is best practice to give fast and useful feedback to students but this can be accomplished in different ways. Rather than using an LMS tool, you might give feedback via audio, video, from peers or on a leaderboard. While innovation could be something completely new and different that does not include best practices, we run the risk of doing students a disservice. Maybe that is education “reform”. Innovation should aim to improve the student experience.

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  5. Samuel Gorbold

    Hello Debbie,

    You have a wonderful blog. Some of your advices saved my life.
    And now I try to share the knowleges I received from your site with everybody who needs help.
    Hope you will continue developing your awesome resource and I will stay your devoted fan.

    Thank you!

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  8. Madeleine

    Hello Debbie,

    Thank you for this wonderful blog! I think it is a valuable source for anyone interested in online education. I will be graduating from a distance education school (Open School of Journalism) in the fall of 2016. During my research on distance education and courses offered by different schools, I discovered your blog which helped me a lot in my decision to take online courses. I ended up taking a journalism course for three semesters at the school I have mentioned. I made a wise decision. And thank you for your blog!

    Best,
    Madeleine

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  9. Puna

    Hi Debbie, my name is Puna. A research student in University of Greenwich. l am working on MOOC for my project. I just stumbled at your blog. Very rich and educative.

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  12. Marga Yuhasz

    Hello Debbie,
    I am currently working as an Education Technology Intern for CutureWorks English as a Second Language Inc. We are working on a Project called Patha Learning – a Project-Based Online Learning program aimed at allowing faculty to accelerate in English fluency. I was wondering if you could give me some tips!? I want to know who is using online training? As our current generations become more and more involved with social media, does online training become aimed at a younger crowd, or is this only allowing companies like ours to expand into different ages of people? Just looking to get some more information from someone who has experience in the field.

    Thanks,
    Marga

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    1. Debbie Morrison Post author

      Hi Marga,
      There are several platforms that are offering language training for second language learners. A few you may want to check out are, http://www.babbel.com/?locale=en, (which also offers an app as well as web based instruction), also University of Arizona has an online program for English as a second language http://www.cesl.arizona.edu/content/online-program. Also of interest, FutureLearn a MOOC platform has enrolled over 70,000 students https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-english-language-culture. Hope that helps!

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  14. Janosz Kurowski

    Hello Debbie,
    I am online education enthusiast and a big fan of coursera. I wonder if you ever stumbled upon iversity.org and futurelearn.com – European MOOC providers. I took several courses from both that appeared skillfully-desgined and balanced in regards to content.
    Do you think they can grow and pose a competition to leading US platforms? I wonder what is actual user base of this platforms and where do they plan to expand, Is European market ready for new MOOCs?
    Regards,

    Janosz

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  15. jlranderson

    Hello Debbie –

    I stumbled upon your blog when I was searching out information on MOOCs. I recently designed a MOOC formatted course for the training of online faculty and offered it to a pilot group of our instructors. I found the process of writing a MOOC difficult and will need to rewrite the course to include authentic materials and video content. Its a work in progress and we’ll try again in February.

    I referenced your posting “The Making of a MOOC” in my lessons learned report. Thank you for the information – it helped to read that many hours are put in to MOOC development.

    Would you have an interest in reviewing the course I wrote?

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    1. onlinelearninginsights Post author

      HI Ilan, Thanks for your interest. I just added two options for searching for blog posts – you can search by ‘category’ from the drop down menu found on the right hand side of the blog main page, or from ‘archives’ which, when clicked list all posts by a given month. Hope that helps and thanks for the suggestion. Debbie

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