Group items tagged

Online collaboration tools While Skype and other real-time collaboration tools make it easier for dispersed students to “get together,” Mandernach cautions against overusing synchronous tools. Instead, she says, you should encourage your students to take advantage of the many asynchronous collaborative tools inside your course management system or some of the new Web 2.0 tools. Some of her favorite Web 2.0 tools include: Tokbox, VoiceThread, Creately, Google Docs, and Teambox. These tools are relatively easy to use and help build a sense of community in the online classroom. They’re also another way to get students to buy into group work activities and using them makes the students more marketable upon graduation. “If you can use the collaborative environment to really bring them into your classroom and get connected to you and connected to their peers you’re going to see a lot of benefits besides increased test scores,” Mandernach says. “Many employers and graduate schools really view online learning as learning in isolation, and I think it’s important for students to show that they are capable of collaborative work — that they can work independently and with others.”

In the recent online seminar Online Group Work: Making It Meaningful and Manageable, Mandernach provided tips for adapting proven face-to-face group work strategies to the online environment. The key is to design tasks that are truly collaborative, meaning the students will benefit more from doing the activity as a group than doing it alone. Effective online group activities often fall into one of three categories: There’s no right answer, such as debates, or research on controversial issues. There are multiple perspectives, such as analyzing current events, cultural comparisons, or case studies. There are too many resources for one person to evaluate, so a jigsaw puzzle approach is needed with each student responsible for one part.

Nevertheless, these students still pay attention to tasks, activities, and media messages that are low in sensation-value, if the topic is particularly salient to them. For example, individuals may attend to a seemingly boring documentary on cancer research, if they have close relatives or friends who is suffering from the disease; they may attend to a lecture on the stock market if they have just received the gift of a larger sum of money.

Students with a high sensation needs benefit from instructional practices that meet those needs. It certainly is not possible to meet the needs of these students at all times, but some lessons can be altered to better hold their attention.

In the [asynchronous discussions] it is easier to find some more facts, maybe have a look in a book and do more thorough postings.In fact, according to Kock’s estimate,18 an exchange of 600 words requires about 6 minutes for complex group tasks in face-to-face settings, while exchanging the same number of words over e-mail would take approximately one hour.

Almost every sentence in the asynchronous discussions of the smaller group, and a vast majority of sentences in the larger group, were classified as content-related. This is a remarkable result—imagine if learners on campus spent more than 90 percent of their time discussing issues related to course content. These results can also be interpreted as troublesome, however. If e-learners seldom meet face-to-face and teachers mainly rely on asynchronous e-learning, students might feel isolated and not part of learning communities, which is essential for collaboration and learning.15

Be Self-directed Learners Go beyond basic mastery of skills and/or curriculum to explore and expand one’s own learning and opportunities to gain expertise Demonstrate initiative to advance skill levels towards a professional level Demonstrate commitment to learning as a lifelong process Reflect critically on past experiences in order to inform future progress

Work Independently Monitor, define, prioritize and complete tasks without direct oversight

Manage Goals and Time Set goals with tangible and intangible success criteria Balance tactical (short-term) and strategic (long-term) goals Utilize time and manage workload efficiently

Carole Ames of Michigan State University points out that it isn’t “quantitative changes in behavior” – such as requiring students to spend more hours in front of books or worksheets – that help children learn better.  Rather, it’s “qualitative changes in the ways students view themselves in relation to the task, engage in the process of learning, and then respond to the learning activities and situation.”  In turn, these attitudes and responses emerge from the way teachers think about learning and, as a result, how they organize their classrooms.  Assigning homework is unlikely to have a positive effect on  any of these variables.  We might say that education is less about how much the teacher covers than about what students can be helped to discover – and more time won’t help to bring about that shift.

Finally, any theoretical benefit of practice homework must be weighed against the effect it has on students’ interest in learning.  If slogging through worksheets dampens one’s desire to read or think, surely that wouldn’t be worth an incremental improvement in skills.

He sits on a silver exercise ball, rather than a hard school chair

but can also learn in the living room or in the basement by hooking up the computer to a television

The telephone.

“Students need to feel like they know their instructor and that you’re interested in how they’re doing,” says Mandernach, noting that these random calls make such a favorable impression on students that they always comment on it in their course evaluations.

online learning environment where students are not only isolated from their instructor and fellow students, but must be disciplined enough to ward off distractions and other commitments that compete for their time.

Students as teachers in order to improve the learning-process

Jean-Pol Martin developed the concept systematically for the teaching of French as a foreign language and gave it a theoretical background in numerous publications.[9] 1987 he founded a network of more than a thousand teachers that employed learning by teaching (the specifical name: LdL = "Lernen durch Lehren") in many different subjects, documented its successes and approaches and presented their findings in various teacher training sessions.

. The new material is divided into small units and student groups of not more than three people are formed. Each group familiarizes itself with a strictly defined area of new material and gets the assignment to teach the whole group in this area

measurable criteria that can be counted or marked as present or not present in the work that is being evaluated. 

This allows the rubric to be used as an ongoing dialog between the teacher and student and allows the student to know when each criterion has been met and then make improvements as needed. (Lockett, 2001)

Although allowing student involvement in creating rubrics is time consuming, by allowing students a voice in creating their own rubric, the students have more ownership over their own learning and evaluation.

Encourages contact between students and faculty

Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students

Encourages active learning.

Good Practice Encourages Student-Faculty Contact

Good Practice Encourages Cooperation among Students

Good Practice Encourages Active Learning