They make the learning for the students (and the public) go on beyond the boundaries of the semester or the class, and they give students a commitment and an engagement to their work. And they give students real evidence that their work can really matter-that they can learn not just to think like historians (or literary critics or biologists or whatever), but to actually do what historians do.
Putting Educational Innovations Into Practice
Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education.
Open educational resources (OER) are "digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research."[1] Being a production and dissemination mode, OER are not involved in awarding degrees nor in providing academic or administrative support to students.[2][3] However, OER materials are beginning to get integrated into open and distance education.[4]
Timelines enable chunking. Another ideal feature of timelines is that by their nature, they chunk information. Because events on a timeline occur at a point in time or during a segment of time, you're residing in a chunking environment. Chunk away!Timelines are a good source for interactions. Asking learners to build their own timeline or to drag and drop events on a timeline can make an effective online learning activity.
"Babson Survey Research Group (BSRG) just released its annual survey of online learning in US higher education (press release here). This year they have moved from use of survey methodology for the online enrollment section to use of IPEDS distance education data. Russ Poulin from WCET and I provided commentary on the two data sources as an appendix to the study."
Innovations in pedagogy and technology could revolutionize academic records, moving our approach from one of checking off boxes to one of connecting the dots. This article highlights technological and pedagogical models that connect the dots toward agile, personalized evidence of learning.
The Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education asked SRI to talk to industry experts and convene a panel of researchers to understand the state of the art, the state of the practice, and the emerging field of learning analytics and educational data mining.
"The ninth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States. Based on responses from over 2,500 academic leaders, the complete survey report, "Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011" can be downloaded here."
"This page offers an introduction to IMS Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®), a brief history of the development of the specification, and details about current work being done by IMS and its members around LTI. Links to other resources and information about how to get involved in the LTI work or to begin implementing the specification are also provided."
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.