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There are several widely-accepted rubrics (Quality Matters, the ION one in Illinois, etc.), but in my opinion, they focus on course design, not on teaching the course. When I was at Black Hawk College, we created a Best Practices for Exemplary Online Teaching set of standards based on the Chickering and Gamson's "7 Principles of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education" meta-analysis. Individual best practices for online teaching were pulled from the literature and listed as possibilities under each of the 7 principles, and an 8th was added with some of the course design elements not already mentioned in the first 7. In other words, we created a local document that could assist faculty in doing self-assessment, peer evaluations of each other's courses, and potentially institutional review of online courses. However, our instrument was not used for institutional assessment because it was not approved as part of the faculty [union] contract. It is important for a document like this to be shared with the faculty ahead of time so that they know how their courses are going to be evaluated. I also think it is helpful to have several people evaluate various aspects of online courses, such as someone who is an expert in online education who can evaluate the learning experiences and course design elements of the course, someone from the faculty member's department who can evaluate the quality and accuracy of the course content, as well as the administrator whose job it is to evaluate teaching. If the institution uses a type of rubric or assessment document when evaluating face-to-face teaching, it needs to be vetted by online experts to determine if it emphasizes appropriate, comparable variables in the online environment. For example, if activities to promote student engagement is on that form...what does that look like online? Not all administrators or faculty who have not taught online would know what to look for as indicators of student engagement.

The following are archived videos from the ELMS Pilot Evaluation Webinar Series. In those webinars, ELMS pilot faculty members talk about their experiences with each of the five ELMS pilot systems: Blackboard 9.1, Desire2Learn, Canvas, Moodle, and Sakai. The ELMS pilot evaluation faculty members give an overview of each system, highlight unique features, and talk about what works and what doesn't. Most of the webinars are available to watch either in Wimba Live Classroom or on YouTube. The following are archived videos from the ELMS Pilot Evaluation Webinar Series. In those webinars, ELMS pilot faculty members talk about their experiences with each of the five ELMS pilot systems: Blackboard 9.1, Desire2Learn, Canvas, Moodle, and Sakai. The ELMS pilot evaluation faculty members give an overview of each system, highlight unique features, and talk about what works and what doesn't. Most of the webinars are available to watch either in Wimba Live Classroom or on YouTube. Introduction

explore the design and evaluation of digital media assignments. Using basic technology tools to chart story lines and to design media projects, participants will explore the use of media as an argumentative tool. In doing so, participants will explore the different processes and stages involved in the development of media assignments. This workshop will explore the ways in which we can clearly articulate goals and criteria with our students and with a thorough knowledge of content driven media projects. Participants will leave the workshop with evaluation criteria that is useful not only for evaluating student projects but that may also be used to critique existing media productions.

2012 Learning Management System (LMS) Evaluation

I am conducting a series of workshops in Florida and was asked to share a rubric to help teachers evaluate educational apps as part of the workshop. In 2010 Harry Walker developed a rubric, and I used his rubric (with some modifications by Kathy Schrock) as the basis for mine.

Following an evaluation process that encompassed almost two years, Michigan Tech selected the Canvas Learning Management System,from Instructure, Inc. It was the clear choice of faculty and student testers, and is very intuitive and easy to use.

A pilot of the Canvas Learning Platform involving Western faculty, students and support staff, provided  strong support for a recommendation that Western transition from Blackboard to Canvas. A summary of  the results of the pilot study as well as options and timelines for the transition are presented in this  report. ATUS will continue to evaluate transition options and present those recommendations by March  30, 2013

A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs

What if we started with creativity rather than principles? My students start with the standard elements of an advertisement (product photo, copy, logo etc.)  and create a mockup.  Then students evaluate their mock-up by comparing their ads to a few professional examples and  discuss what they did right and wrong in comparison to what they've seen.

Posted on this site are excerpts of original manuscripts, each of which has been annotated by undergraduates who have spent a semester critically evaluating the work and assessing the authors' own perspectives. Deep research by UGs. By including their interviews with primary investigators, links to background information, and tips for understanding and critically interpreting data, these undergraduates have developed a unique pedagogical tool that should enhance their peers ability to navigate and understand the primary literature. Developing scholars will benefit from their colleagues' insights as they are invited to explore the living history of a scientific inquiry.

standards should emphasize creative thinking, not content  My students are learning some content-instead of a textbook, I use a primary-source reader in which the sources are accompanied by commentary by historians-but they're learning it as they perform analysis and synthesis, not before. So, for example, I don't have them read them about Puritan conceptions of salvation and then give them photos of headstones and ask them to explain how the headstones reinforce Puritan ideas.  I have them undertake Prownian analysis (description, deduction, speculation, research, and interpretive analysis) of children's headstones and furniture (e.g,. a walking stool); perform close readings of children's literature and Puritan poetry, letters, and sermons; and build an argument concerning Puritans' beliefs about children's salvation.  As they craft this argument, they must evaluate the usefulness of, as well as synthesize their findings from, these sources, along with earlier ones from the course.  The whole exercise is done in small groups, followed by discussion among the entire class.

How is a SALSA different from a traditional syllabus?

SALSAs promote:

learner-centric and accessible formatting
well-defined learning outcomes/objectives
inclusion of required policies: accommodations for students with disabilities, academic honesty, course evaluations, etc.

Students still want face-to-face contact with staff, but more use of the kind of technologies they have grown up with, though they need to be persuaded to use them to study. They also need to learn how to critically evaluate online sources, while academics need more help in using the technologies.

This course provides a thorough introduction to the emerging field of Information Visualization. The goal of Information Visualization is to use human perceptual capabilities to gain insights into large and abstract data sets that are difficult to extract using standard query languages. Specific abstract data sets that will be studied are: symbolic, tabular, networked, hierarchical, or textual information. The course objectives are:  *  Provide a sound foundation in human visual perception and how it relates to creating effective information visualizations.  *  Understand the key design principles for creating information visualizations.  *  Study the major existing techniques and systems in information visualization.  *  Evaluate information visualizations tools.  *  Design new, innovative visualizations.

it is misleading to suggests that all, or even most, aspects of providing an education should, or could, be placed into the hands of [teachers] Historically, it has been impractical to break up the roles of the teacher. You need a certain scale even to have a separate person assigned as a librarian or an audio-visual coordinator. You need a much greater scale, not to mention much better coordination, to have separate people assigned as lecturers, coaches, theorizers and evaluators. Yet relatively few of these roles need to be performed in person, and most of them scale pretty well. This means that with improved information and communications technologies we can begin to rethink how we've organized labor in education. This is in fact what is happening online, at least, outside the circles of formal education

Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with "food for thought" on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed by Lyman and associates to encourage student classroom participation. What is Think, Pair, Share? Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with "food for thought" on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed by Lyman and associates to encourage student classroom participation. Rather than using a basic recitation method in which a teacher poses a question and one student offers a response, Think-Pair-Share encourages a high degree of pupil response and can help keep students on task. What is its purpose? * Providing "think time" increases quality of student responses. * Students become actively involved in thinking about the concepts presented in the lesson. * Research tells us that we need time to mentally "chew over" new ideas in order to store them in memory. When teachers present too much information all at once, much of that information is lost. If we give students time to "think-pair-share" throughout the lesson, more of the critical information is retained. * When students talk over new ideas, they are forced to make sense of those new ideas in terms of their prior knowledge. Their misunderstandings about the topic are often revealed (and resolved) during this discussion stage. * Students are more willing to participate since they don't feel the peer pressure involved in responding in front of the whole class. * Think-Pair-Share is easy to use on the spur of the moment. * Easy to use in large classes. How can I do it? * With students seated in teams of 4, have them number them from 1 to 4. * Announce a discussion topic or problem to solve. (Example: Which room in our school is larg

From @snappity

Bb to Moodle documentation wiki

San Jose State University letter from the Provost