Group items tagged

"MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a set of investments intended to explore the potential of MOOCs to extend access to postsecondary credentials through more personalized, more affordable pathways."

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.

Increasingly, universities are using technology to provide students with more flexible modes of participation. This article presents a cross-case analysis of blended synchronous learning environments-contexts where remote students participated in face-to-face classes through the use of rich-media synchronous technologies such as video conferencing, web conferencing, and virtual worlds. The study examined how design and implementation factors influenced student learning activity and perceived learning outcomes, drawing on a synthesis of student, teacher, and researcher observations collected before, during, and after blended synchronous learning lessons. Key findings include the importance of designing for active learning, the need to select and utilise technologies appropriately to meet communicative requirements, varying degrees of co-presence depending on technological and human factors, and heightened cognitive load. Pedagogical, technological, and logistical implications are presented in the form of a Blended Synchronous Learning Design Framework that is grounded in the results of the study.

The framework consists of four parts: Collect, Relate, Create, and Donate. In Schneiderman's framework, projects begin with a chance to Collect knowledge, and students research the factual building blocks of their learning project. From there students Relate with one another - since collaboration and cross-cultural communication skills play essential roles in our economic and civic spheres. Based on the collection of building blocks and relating their knowledge to one another, students the Createsome kind of tangible demonstration of their understanding. The final part of an activity is to find a forum to Donate the student work so that students can enjoy the opportunity to publish their work and be of service to others.

A good overview with links to related resources

"rapport is necessary in DE because of the absence of face-to-face communication. Challenges to building rapport relate to the geographic dispersion of students, the asynchronous nature of DE, teacher workload, limits of the software, teachers and students not seeing the need for rapport, and DE traditions. We identified six categories of rapport-building in DE as follows: Recognizing the person/individual; Supporting and monitoring; Availability, accessibility, and responsiveness; Non text-based interactions; Tone of interactions; Non-academic conversation/interactions."

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

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."

"Thousands of educators across the country use the Understanding by Design framework, created by the late Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, to get a handle on standards, align programs to assessments, and guide teachers in implementing a standards-based curriculum that leads to student understanding and achievement. "