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Sheffield Hallam Uni have published a review of current literature regarding the application of technology to deliver and support the use of feedback as part of a project exploring impact of learning technology on students' engagement with feedback.

After exam boards have been conducted, letters signed and mailed to students, external examiners thanked and supplementary assessments created, there is a moment - a fracture in time - where academics breathe, reflect and consolidate. Before writing courses for the September start, I take a week to think about the semesters that have passed. I review my teaching journal, think about student reviews and locate the literature that has emerged in the past few months while I've been buried in marking, moderating and examining. This year has been special. All my students - from first year through to doctoral candidates - have been engaged, challenging and provocative. They have big personalities, work hard and care about both personal success and wider social justice. There was Alex who saw every concept, from postFordism through to information literacy, through the gauze of Lady Gaga. Toby never knew how extraordinary he was until the final seminar of his first year when fellow students burst into spontaneous applause in response to one of his comments. Aimee thought deeply, read widely and arrived 30 minutes before each lecture to make sure she did not miss it. Sophie discovered Google Scholar early in the course and proceeded to give her colleagues updates of the conference papers she had read during the week.

Defining Tools for a New Learning Space: Writing and Reading Class Blogs Sarah Hurlburt Assistant Professor Department of Foreign Languages and Literature Whitman College Walla Walla, WA USA hurlbuse@whitman.edu Abstract This paper uses specific issues surrounding course blogging to provide a series of reflections regarding the articulation between pedagogy and technology in creating a next generation learning space and discourse community. It investigates the underlying structure and necessary constituent elements of a successful blog assignment and examines the notion of natural and unnatural virtual environments and the roles of the reader and the writer-reader. It suggests that blog assignments may not succeed equally well in all subject areas and gives a number of possible reasons. Furthermore, it posits a more nuanced criterion for the definition of goals and the evaluation of the success of a blog assignment as a learning community beyond the presence or absence of comments. Keywords: Web 2.0, learning communities, reader anxiety, constructivist learning, discourse communities, comments

The University of California, Berkeley is the preeminent public research and teaching institution in the nation. From classic literature to emerging technologies, the curricula of our 130 academic departments span the wide world of thought and knowledge. Supported by the people of California, the university has embraced public service as an essential part of its mission since 1868.

Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? Added by the EDUCAUSE Librarian Author(s):Ann H. Taylor and Carol McQuiggan View a PDF of this article © 2008 Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3 (July-September 2008) Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? A faculty development survey analyzed what faculty want and need to be successful teaching online By Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan The number of courses offered online grows every year, resulting in an increasing number of higher education faculty entering a virtual classroom for the first time.1 It has been well documented that faculty need training and assistance to make the transition from teaching in a traditional face-to-face classroom to teaching online.2 Faculty professional development related to teaching online varies widely, from suggested readings to mandated training programs. Various combinations of technological and pedagogical skills are needed for faculty to become successful online educators, and lists of recommended competencies abound. Although many institutions have offered online courses for more than a decade and train their faculty to teach online, the research literature reveals that little is known about how best to prepare faculty to teach in an online environment. Designers of faculty development programs typically rely on commonly held assumptions about what faculty need to know-a constant guessing game regarding what topics to cover and what training formats to use. The resulting seminars, workshops, training materials, and other resources are typically hit-or-miss in terms of faculty participation and acceptance. To provide faculty with the proper training and resources for online teaching requires more information to determine

Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education This journal offers an opportunity for those involved in University learning and teaching to disseminate their practice. It aims to publish accounts of scholarly practice that report on small-scale practitioner research and case studies of practice that involve reflection, critique, implications for future practice and are informed by relevant literature, with a focus on enhancement of student learning. This publication thus offers a forum to develop and share scholarly informed practice in Higher Education through either works in progress or more detailed accounts of scholarly practice. There will be opportunities for discussions/comments regarding works in progress to be shared with journal readers on the journal site. The journal is published twice a year (April and October).

"Twittering the News: The emergence of ambient journalism My paper looks at new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as "awareness systems". For this I have drawn from literature on new communications technologies in computer science to suggest that these broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on systems are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them, giving rise to awareness systems that paper describes as ambient journalism."

Engagement Streams As Course Portals April 18th, 2009 This podcast comes from a presentation Chip German and I did at the ELI 2009 Annual Meeting earlier this year. Here's the session abstract: What if course portals, typically little more than gateways to course activities and materials, became instead course catalysts: open, dynamic representations of "engagement streams" that demonstrate and encourage deep learning? The session will begin with case studies in enabling and designing such course portals, from both administrative and faculty perspectives. Participants will then form groups to imagine and design their own catalytic course portals. Finally, the presenters will discuss action steps that can lead to effective innovation at participants' home institutions. Presentation resources, including a record of the participants' design work, will be posted to an online collaborative space for continued discussion after the session.