Group items tagged

Afraid of making the leap into the new high-tech teaching arena? You are not alone. In fact, one of the champions of "active teaching with technology" has tempered his zeal after conversations with colleagues for whom the technology has not worked as well. This article offers a glimpse into the teaching philosophies of two professors at Kansas State University, both nationally recognized as outstanding teachers. But, if Michael Wesch seems to have reached one extreme (the high-tech one) and veered back, then Christopher Sorensen appears to have reached the other extreme (low- or even no-tech) and remains firmly entrenched. This title is not intended to provide anyone with an excuse not to try something innovative. Rather, I think there is a happy medium between the two extremes hinted at in the article (see my Weiman article post).

Our discussions about writing often come around to whether students actually read (and internalize) the comments. Sometimes we hear about students not knowing how to turn on Track Changes or the GradeMark panel in Turnitin, so at the most basic level electronic comments do introduce friction for some students. What do you think of the research project proposed here - do students actually approach electronic feedback differently?

I suspect this will resonate with lots of folks regarding internal communication at Kenyon. Does it apply to communicating with our students as well?

A bibliography on service learning in STEM fields from the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.

OSU hosts a free teaching with technology conference every spring. Lunch and light refreshments are provided, and the conference covers a number of emerging topics in higher education. If you are interested, you can register at this link by May 10.

Joshua Kim outlines some benefits of fast and loose teleconferences for residential colleges. Once faculty are familiar with the platform, they can use short meetings to touch base with a number of colleagues while avoiding many of the inconveniences of regularly scheduled meetings.

A sketch of how liberal arts colleges foster learning through personal encounters, inquiry-rich campus culture, and research applied in the classroom.

Virtual and augmented reality have obvious benefits in capturing student attention but face questions about their potential to help students to make substantive gains in understanding--especially considering the costs of the equipment and the time needed to build activities. But it is not too early to consider how we want to use these technologies in the classroom, and it may prove a useful exercise in reimagining how we use the technology we already have access to.

Clay Shirkey, author of "Here Comes Everybody," examines the challenge posed to U.S. higher education by massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Shirkey is the author of "Here Comes Everybody," a book he says is about "what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures." In this article, he describes the same dynamic at work in the disruptive potential of MOOCs to all but the most elite institutions of higher education in America. 

A worthwhile interview about the University of Mary Washington program to offer every student and professor their own domain name and a significant amount of control over which web publishing platforms they use. I find the discussions about privacy vs. publicy in a networked society to be the intellectual meat of the piece - the technology issues, while complex, are also just logistics to be solved or worked around.

This article deserves attention for opening up a professor's iterative process in figuring out the best structure for her class's online presence. I'm intrigued by the idea of using Facebook instead of or in addition to a professor-run website or Moodle page.

There's a fair amount of interest at Kenyon in moving lecture out of class time. This article addresses the fine points of what you do, then, with the freed-up class time. Includes a bibliography for further reading.

Fascinating examples of ways that a shared spreadsheet, thrown up on a projector, can be used to manage group work, record ideas from class conversation, and develop arguments and the use of evidence.

Proponents of OER (open educational resources) and open pedagogy respond to some common concerns.

Some goals and appropriate technological tools for designing a first year experience.

Flipping the classroom is about more than students watching videos outside of class. It is about taking advantage newly available classroom time to lead students in active and engaging activities for improved learning outcomes. Developing new and effective activities can be a challenge and differs by discipline. This useful article discusses a range of practices at various universities and the offers thoughtful quotes from faculty about the pros and cons of those activities.

It seems early for this, with a week of classes and a week of exams left to go, but perhaps these tasks are good mental breaks from all the grading. They also might form the technical side of good reflective practice.

We've got a faculty colleague working on this idea this semester. Presentations will become podcasts, and class time which used to be spent on presentations will now become a longer Q&A discussion of the topics. We're hoping this will mitigate some student issues with stage fright, and allow for better discussions since the students will have more time to prepare meaningful questions.

James Lang argues for a "pedagogy of presence" in which we are truly attentive to the individuals we meet during class time. Kenyon's size gives us major advantages in this area, but even in 5-person technology workshops I've found myself on autopilot.