Group items tagged

Personalized Web Learning: In this paper, educational and technical challenges for applying learning pathways in Massive(ly) Open Online Courses in higher education are outlined. We argue that quality issues and didactical concerns may be overcome by (1) reverting to small Open Educational Resources that are (2) adaptively joined into concise courses by considering (3) predefined learning pathways with proper semantic annotations and (4) the observation of learner behaviour. Such a merger does not only require conceptual work and corresponding support tools, but also a new meta data format and an engine which interprets the semantic annotations as well as the measures of learner's actions. These factors are then turned into didactically meaningful recommendations for the next learning steps, thereby creating a personalized learning pathway for each learner. The EU FP7 project INTUITEL is introduced, which has already contributed to the conceptual work and is currently developing the software to achieve these tasks

online learning insights blog

Networked Learning Conference 2010. "This paper explores the perspectives of some of the participants on their learning experiences in the course, in relation to the characteristics of connectivism outlined by Downes, i.e. autonomy, diversity, openness and connectedness/interactivity. The findings are based on an online survey which was emailed to all active participants and email interview data from self-selected interviewees."

online learning insights blog

"The toolkit links to additional resources for information on blended and digital learning, and suggests using social media to stay updated on the latest information and to connect with others who are discussing the topic. "

International Association for K-12 Online Learning Guide on How to start an online learning program

"Critical thinking is an expected learning outcome of higher education along with mastery of a studied discipline. Yet several studies including one outlined in Academically Adrift, suggests that a significant percentage of students are graduating after four years of college with little intellectual growth; critical thinking gains barely budging from the 'before' to 'after' assessment."

Reeves et al. Authentic activities in online There has been a renewed interest in the role of student activities within course units as constructivist philosophy and advances in technology impact on educational design and practice. This paper proposes ten characteristics of authentic activities, based on a substantial body of educational theory and research, which can assist teachers to design more authentic activities for online learning environments. The paper includes a short review of the literature, together with the list of characteristics attributed to appropriate authors and theorists. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the affordances of Internet technologies can facilitate the operationalisation of authentic activities in online courses of study.

""Most learning needs today are becoming too complex to be addressed 'in our heads,'" Mr. Siemens wrote in a 2008 blog post. "We need to rely on a network of people (and, increasingly, technology) to store, access, and retrieve knowledge and motivate its use. The network becomes the learning.""

2013 Survey on Online Learning Report

reference from Bates webinar

A lengthy but good overview of MOOCs, with a close look at xMOOCS - Coursera, Udacity, edX that have taken advantage of scalability but tend to reinforce a traditional teacher-student model, and cMOOCS - knowledge building/networking, flexible tools, self directed, chaotic learning. Siemens goes on to share lessons learned from cMOOCs he has been involved with and provides 9 Steps How to Plan/Create a MOOC [approx 58:00] Around 18:00 he makes a provocative statement that because of the expertise available in xMOOCs, he would throw out all of his content, tell his students to take one of these courses, interact with them around the content themes and then assess their work. Other interesting ideas include: the need for regional MOOCs to diversify and fully explore potential innovation [export vs import]; the concern that mid-range universities stand to loose to the 'superstar' professors in the xMOOC model; & the notion of teaching globally, accrediting locally [e.g. Udacity -Pearson testing option for credit]

Tony Bates

Results of reports and activities related to Online and Blended Learning

My review of this article Realigning HIgher Education for the 21st Century Learner through Multi-Access Learning. http://azbtechtrails.blogspot.com/2013/09/multi-access-learning-framework.html

How Authentic Learning is Transforming Higher Education

"In this paper, we use Bain's (2004) book What the Best College Teachers Do to discuss some of the major ways that the practices of effective teaching in general can be applied to online teaching in particular. "