highlighting the purpose of the tools (e.g., skill-building) and stating clearly that the learners can choose their preferred tools
The Technological Dimension of a Massive Open Online Course: The Case of the CCK08 Cour... - 7 views
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Although formal attendance seemed to be the main driver for completing assignments and the course, the main reason for not completing the course was a lack of time
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Learners, in the absence of a stronger motivation, attend only partially
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The Technological Dimension of a Massive Open Online Course: The Case of the CCK08 Course Tools Problematic study of CCK08 -- sample size was way too small, would have been more interesting to examine ways in which instructor choices of tools influenced student tool use -- choices are exclusive, so can't put "confusing" and "overwhelming" at the same time.
The Dirty Little Secret About the "Wisdom of the Crowds" - There is No Crowd - 0 views
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Wikipedia isn't written and edited by the "crowd" at all. In fact, 1% of Wikipedia users are responsible for half of the site's edits. Even Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has been quoted as saying that the site is really written by a community, "a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers."
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I think your headline is misleading and Vassilis Kostakos should read the book before poking holes. Surowiecki is very clear about the conditions necessary for a wise crowd to prevail and those conditions are: 1. Diversity of opinion 2. Independence 3. Decentralization 4. Aggregation If your crowd possesses those qualities then it is wise and then it will be better at making decisions under Surowiecki's paradigm. The crowds used in the research (and the crowd in general) doesn't possess those qualities and therefore is an unfit data set. We should be trying to create the ideal crowd before we can obtain superlative results and not try to get good results from any random crowd.
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Limitations in predictions market are well documented (and include Muhammad's points above), and constrain their practical application to a well-defined number of situation. Crowdsourcing suffers from the same limitations, which is not a problem, as long as you limit its application correspondingly. The problem occur when you stretch it outside the required constraints and yet present the results as "scientific", i.e. as a good proxy for what the crowd thinks. That's what professor Vassilis Kostakos's theory ultimately comes down to (or should - I don't know, I haven't read his report). Apps like Digg or Amazon's review are not scientific applications of crowdsourcing, and thus their results should not be seen as precise representation of our collective thinking.
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Technology and Restoration of Voice | TechTicker - 5 views
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A colleague in the faculty is currently researching the opportunities that use of asynchronous discussion forums can offer to leveling the playing field, and providing more equitable opportunities for people to share their thoughts. From what I’ve heard, the results so far are exceptionally promising.
Neuro-tweets: #hashtagging the brain - Research - University of Cambridge - 4 views
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human brain networks represent a balance between high efficiency of information transfer and low connection cost
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Members of the audience and other Twitter users were asked to tweet during the lecture about the concepts that were being discussed, using the hashtag #csftwitterbrain. At the end of the talk Professor Bullmore displayed the resulting image showing the interconnectivity of the hashtagged tweets, and explained how Twitter networks can be compared to the human brain network. “We found that the #twitterbrain network was somewhat like the brain network in being small-world and modular with highly connected hub nodes; however the brain network was more clustered and less efficient than the twitter network. So at first sight there were some points in common and some points of difference between these two information processing networks.”
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“It has been intriguing to see the spectacle of watching the twitter network grow or evolve over the course of several days. And I have learnt a lot about the power of new media to engage and communicate, and the potential scientific value of using Twitter to map and measure social networks.”
The Transducer » Blog Archive » Brain Behavior and Behaving like Brains - 2 views
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boundaries are inserted where the brain experiences what Zacks calls “prediction error” — when things break a pattern of repetition and thus signal to the brain a boundary that is used to construct the temporal model for the event — its typical sequence.
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the response of the audience — comprised mainly of educational experts — and of Zacks himself is that one practical lesson from his research is that creators of narrative content, such as film, should make an effort to provide more obvious segmentation in their products. Clearly, if this is how the brain works, we should work this way too. I think this is a major fallacy that pervades the reception of brain science research. People tend to assume that if the brain works a certain way, then so should we.
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the lesson is to get good at perceiving and creating event boundaries, which requires not pre-segmented media, but the opposite — hard to grasp art, stuff that violates expectations and rewards the perciever with a different perspective. In fact, giving students media with well defined boundaries may cause their capacity to construct boundaries to atrophy, much as caffeine causes our adrenal glands to shrink. (I know, it’s a good reason to stop drinking coffee.)
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Reflections on open courses « Connectivism - 4 views
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In education, content can easily be produced (it’s important but has limited economic value). Lectures also have limited value (easy to record and to duplicate). Teaching – as done in most universities – can be duplicated. Learning, on the other hand, can’t be duplicated. Learning is personal, it has to occur one learner at a time. The support needed for learners to learn is a critical value point.
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Excellent insight!
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Here's the key: if what we are typically doing in our classrooms can be easily duplicated, then it has lost its value in both the wider economy and in the educational ecosystem. We university professors must redefine the way we add value to our students' personal learning networks.
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Learning, however, requires a human, social element: both peer-based and through interaction with subject area experts
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Content is readily duplicated, reducing its value economically. It is still critical for learning – all fields have core elements that learners must master before they can advance (research in expertise supports this notion). - Teaching can be duplicated (lectures can be recorded, Elluminate or similar webconferencing system can bring people from around the world into a class). Assisting learners in the learning process, correcting misconceptions (see Private Universe), and providing social support and brokering introductions to other people and ideas in the discipline is critical. - Accreditation is a value statement – it is required when people don’t know each other. Content was the first area of focus in open education. Teaching (i.e. MOOCs) are the second. Accreditation will be next, but, before progress can be made, profile, identity, and peer-rating systems will need to improve dramatically. The underlying trust mechanism on which accreditation is based cannot yet be duplicated in open spaces (at least, it can’t be duplicated to such a degree that people who do not know each other will trust the mediating agent of open accreditation)
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Hyperconnectivity and Overuse | TechTicker - 3 views
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If 15 to 17 hours a day spent online experimenting and experiencing is an average time commitment needed for the average academic to come to terms with social media, and understand the potential it has for learning and teaching – and God help us if it is – then the movement is doomed.
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there is simply not enough flexibility and space allotted for open exploration of emerging technologies during working hours
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in some regards the emergence of hyperconnectivity arises from working conditions and obstacles to access as much as personal research obsessions.
elearnspace › The Problem with Literature Reviews - 6 views
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a literature review is a controlling, heritage-preserving system
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