Group items tagged

Ampp3d is a data journalism site from The Daily Mirror. It may provide some useful examples of data being presented and analysed, or of data that CM students could represent and reanalyse.

Article based on an interview with one of the authors of a new study about the importance of teachers' understanding student misconceptions. [The full paper is available here if you have access to the journal http://aer.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/03/06/0002831213477680.full.pdf+html] Excerpt from the paper:"An intriguing finding of this study is that teachers who know their stu- dents' most common misconceptions are more effective than teachers who do not. This particular component of PCK may allow teachers to construct experiences, demonstrations, experiments, or discussions that make students commit to and then test their own ideas. A teacher knowing only the scientific ''truth'' appears to have limited effectiveness. It is better if a teacher also has a model of how students tend to learn a particular concept, particularly if there is a common belief that may make acceptance of the scientific view or model difficult. This finding, too, has practical implications. In PD programs, an emphasis on increasing teachers' SMK without sufficient attention to the preconceived mental models of middle school students (as well as those of the teachers) may be ineffective in ultimately improving their students' physical science knowledge."

Of possible interest

Includes aforementioned Norvig piece, Seth Fletcher on Adaptive Learning; Salman Khan on blended learning; and several others.

Massively Personal - How thousands of online students can get the effect of one-on-one tutoring. Short piece by Norvig, with some recent references that might be worth following up on.

Up to date monograph from highly regarded US researchers focusing on the learning effectiveness of several fairly widespread and standard learning techniques. The person who sent it to me said: "Nor is the evidence against some common 'instructionist' practices such as formative MCQ quizzes - in fact the effect size for those and for distributed practice is consistently higher than for more creative teaching and learning practices".

Excerpt: "Now Stanford is looking to reclaim some leadership in the MOOC movement from the private companies down the street. For some of its offerings it has started using Open edX, the open-source platform developed by edX, an East Coast nonprofit provider of MOOCs. And Stanford is marshaling its resources and brainpower to improve its own online infrastructure. In doing so, the university is putting its weight behind an open-source alternative that could help others develop MOOCs independently of proprietary companies."

But... I understood that Open edX does not exist yet? I thought Open edX was the result of the marriage of (the currently only betrothed) edX and Course Builder. I suspect this is just sloppy journalism, but if Stanford has fast track access to Open edX, can we get it too? Something to check with Michel?