Imported from Diigo

The CREST+ model, a model for writing effective online discussion questions, covers the cognitive nature of the question, the reading basis, any experiential possibility, style and type of question, and finally ways to structure a good question.  This model encourages students to participate in online forum discussions, provides a template for new online faculty to use in creating effective discussion questions, and promotes a higher level processing of the material.

The CREST+ model covers the cognitive nature of the question [C], the reading basis [R], any experiential [E] possibility, style and type of question [ST] , and finally ways to structure a good question [+]. 

<p>When you hold a meeting over chat, develop an idea on a wiki, discuss solutions to problems on a discussion board, or collectively edit a document, you leave little traces of the process everywhere. There are transcripts, different versions of documents, and there is an actual record of who made what comment and contributed what material.</p> <p>In a f2f meeting, we rely on a person to take notes. We all know that Meeting Minutes are nothing more then a list of decisions and action items. Meeting minutes do not reflect the decision process, the tension a topic may have induced, or the crazy idea that got thrown on the table and very quickly was swept under the rug. Meeting minutes are the sanitized version of what really happened. Sometimes, they are so sanitized as to be completely useless to those who were not in attendance.</p> <p>Conducting committee work on the web can be dirty, it can be chaotic, and, in most instances, it is open for all the world to see. Moving committee work to the web is the picture of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_transparency">radical transparency</a> and that scares people. Big organizations hate admitting failure and process can look like failure.</p> <p>We have to get over the idea that conducting our work in the open is bad. We have to get over the idea that f2f meetings are the most productive way to work. They are not. They never will be. Get over it already.</p>

But the point is that these writers and researchers totally ignore or overlook people like me who were the earliest users and adapters, and are ourselves ‘natives’. Or more properly, we’re <em>pioneers</em>, since we’re the ones who built, tested, and worked the bugs out of many of these things. We were the people in the university computer labs, or in the military communications shops, who put this technology to real-world use, and, when we could, started bragging about it to our outside friends.

<p>I admit to having overlooked <code>alt</code> text. Until a year ago I sniffed at the idea of creating useful <code>alt</code> text for images. “If a user is blind,” I reasoned, “what does he care that I have a photograph of the university tower on my website?”</p> <p>My fellow designer shrugged. “Well, I guess if you don’t really care about what the image <em>says</em>,” she said slowly, “you really don’t need it in the first place.”</p>