Center for Innovative Pedagogy

We expect to upgrade to Moodle 2.5 this July; this page describes some of the coming improvements.

If the point of online discussion boards and collaborative projects is to get students discussing course ideas with each other, does it make sense to move those discussions to the social media venues they're already using?

A review of recent papers on the effectiveness of video lectures as supplemental material in a traditional class. From the article: "I think it suggests that screencasts, when done well and deployed properly, help all students - they certainly don't hurt - and they help most those students who need the most help."

Using Google Docs to share work in a writing workshop seems straightforward enough; the idea of collecting and reviewing feedback through a Google Form is an interesting twist.

An interesting application of blended learning theory to the advising process, describing ways in which a student's curation of an electronic portfolio could feed into (and benefit from) the advising process. From the International Journal of ePortfolio.

From Endicott College, an interesting set of suggestions for using the last day of the class to help culminate the class experience and show the transitions to the next steps. Some of these require a fair amount of planning (portfolios and pre- and post-tests) while others (concept mapping and syllabus review) probably could be used on a moment's notice. I particularly like the last suggestion... maybe the CIP needs a fortune cookie machine?

Interteaching is an approach to peer instruction. It may be interesting to faculty exploring blended learning.

What do classes look like as you move from infrequent, high-stakes assignments and exams to frequent grading of low-stakes activities? Warnock makes a number of claims, backed up by the literature - students become more confident and motivated, there's less incentive to cheat, the dialogue between students and faculty improves. I particularly like the last half of the article, where he talks about the practical elements of increasing informal writing or quizzing in a course.

Thoughts of a professor who is taking a MOOC. (Sorry this is a bit dated, but the Chronicle message was caught in my Spam filter.)

Many students don't know who the real audience is for their course evaluations. Brian Croxall has an interesting solution for that - tell them that the audience is the students in the next class.

I'm intrigued by Bowen's idea of courses which offer "a playlist of 25 different types of explanations in different languages using different approaches to a single concept" to support different learning preferences. Despite the title, this idea could apply to MOOCs, tuition-based online courses, and face-to-face "blended" courses. (The assertion that the pedagogical innovation will come from MOOC-land and not established campuses is also intriguing, and troubling...)

This page includes a set of general guidelines for classroom discussion and a list of guidelines developed for specific topics.

An interesting look at what drives people to adopt a particular statistical package, and what the future might hold for R, SAS, SPSS, and Stata.

Bryn Mawr's first blended learning conference was a great chance to see what colleagues at a similar institution are doing with teaching with technology; the second conference should be just as good. Kenyon is a partner on their NGLC grant so our registration fee is waived.

Admittedly this example covers engineering students and is limited to just two semesters worth of data from a large, public, research university. However, the results are encouraging if you ever wondered whether or not students might actually watch the screencast videos you are making (or plan on making).

An interesting balanced look - dare I call it a "middle path"? - at how to move toward wise, effective use of technology in the classroom.

As we think increasingly about the use of screencasting software for laptops and desktops, we should also consider those small computers in everyone's pocket.

An experiment analyzing over 1,200 undergraduate papers at a selective liberal arts institution found that requiring students to complete a tutorial on academic honesty substantially reduced the likelihood of plagiarism.

This tutorial from the Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin consortium walks through academic honesty issues in a way which might be more engaging (and more detailed) than a short policy statement could be. Part of a larger "plagiarism resource site."

"The study presented here explores the responses and perceptions of a group of first year students at an Irish university after their first contact with anti-plagiarism software in the context of peer-reviewed assignments. The results indicate that the use of anti-plagiarism software led to a decrease in Internet plagiarism and to lower grades being awarded in peer reviews. Additionally, students were found to have a positive attitude towards the anti-plagiarism software in the context of peer reviewed assignments." - from the abstract.