CP2 PhD

For those PhD students who are trying to figure out how best to study - to understand and to remember - the research sets aside some common conceptions and offers some new ones. My favorite - which I am trying tonight - is to study the same material in different rooms. Hmmmm Where to study? bedroom?? (dangerous! I will sleep!)

Blended learning is a hybrid of classroom and online learning that includes some of the conveniences of online courses without the complete loss of face-to-face contact. The present study used a causal-comparative design to examine the relationship of sense of community between traditional classroom, blended, and fully online higher education learning environments. Evidence is provided to suggest that blended courses produce a stronger sense of community among students than either traditional or fully online courses.

Engeström paper from 2001 ABSTRACT Cultural-historical activity theory has evolved through three generations of research. The emerging third generation of activity theory takes two interacting activity systems as its minimal unit of analysis, inviting us to focus research efforts on the challenges and possibilities of inter-organizational learning. Activity theory and its concept of expansive learning are examined.4 questions: 1. Who are the subjects of learning? 2. Why do they learn? 3. What do they learn? 4. How do they learn? Five central principles of activity theory are presented, namely activity system as unit of analysis, multi-voicedness of activity, historicity of activity, contradictions as driving force of change in activity, and expansive cycles as possible form of transformation in activity. Together the questions and principles form a matrix which is used to present a study of expansive learning in a hospital setting in Finland. In conclusion, implications of the framework for our understanding of the increasingly important horizontal dimension of learning are discussed.

This is the research project that I found and visited in 2000. Ricki Goldman-Segall is a digital video ethnograhper studing how children learn and think. Her book from 1998 was an inspiration for me and my study pertner, William Vonsild, and with a study grant from our university of education in Copenhagen, we were enabled to visit Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Ricki was very helpful and let us follow her multimedia students' exam projects, and supported our vist to the achool that she had used for her research project about five years earlier, Bayside Middle School. A school built in 1992 with a technology enriched infrastructure, each pod of 10 classrooms had a very well equipped computer lab and the whole building was wired in order to have access to very fast internet connection from anywhere.

Dissertation written by a CP2 member and presented via Dissertation Fest (original version). Found in the CP2 Knowledge Base in the Papers and books contributed by CPsquare members and friends section.

I had started reading her paper about a month ago. She graduated from Capella. I also spoke to her and she is very nice and helpful.

"A system that values obedience over curiosity isn't education and it definitely isn't science."

David Knowles sent me this link today. This is what we've been saying all along, so most of it is preaching to the choir. The key piece I see in it is that his list of critical technology includes an LMS! Here's the quote: Device-agnostic technology that provides access to the Internet and appropriate Learning Management Systems, coupled with a committed teacher, is often all that is needed to help students become powerful consumers and producers of knowledge.

Research Report: Measuring What Matters Most: Choice-Based Assessments for the Digital Age.

Interesting... as if more information is going to change teacher behavior in their classroom.