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Nils Peterson

Does having a computer at home improve results at school? | A World Bank Blog on ICT us... - 0 views

  • Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between and rich and poor? and Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities? In this case, Vigdor and Ladd found that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      so there is some contextualization of computers in the home that is also needed... as I find when my daughter wants to spend computer time dressing up Barbie.
  • A 2010 report from the OECD (Are New Millennium Learners Making the Grade? [pdf]) considers a number of studies, combined with new analysis it has done based on internationally comparable student achievement data (PISA), and finds that indeed that gains in educational performance are correlated with the frequency of computer use at home.
  • One way to try to make sense of all of these studies together is to consider that ICTs may function as a sort of 'amplifier' of existing learning environments in homes.  Where such environments are conducive to student learning (as a result, for example, of strong parental direction and support), ICT use can help; where home learning environments are not already strong (especially, for example, where children are left unsupervised to their own devices -- pun intended), we should not be surprised if the introduction of ICTs has a negative effect on learning.
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  • On a broader note, and in response to his reading of the Vigdor/Ladd paper, Warschauer states on his insightful blog that the "aim of our educational efforts should not be mere access, but rather development of a social environment where access to technology is coupled with the most effective curriculum, pedagogy, instruction, and assessment."
    • Nils Peterson
       
      specific things need to be done to 'mobilize' the learning latent in the computing environment.
Theron DesRosier

Critical Thinking as a Distributed Course - 2 views

  • Drawing from two years of experience offering the 'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge' course in a distributed online environment, the National Research Council's Personal Learning Environment (PLE) project is expanding the model to courses outside the discipline of education. Specifically, Stephen Downes and Rita Kop - who have both offered Critical Thinking courses through more traditional online and offline means, are adapting this material to the distributed model. The purpose of this course is two-fold. First, the design of the course is based on an understanding of the skills and capacities required to effectively learn using a PLE. Second, the offering of the course is intended to test whether learners can employ a PLE environment in order to develop those capacities. Thus, combined, the objectives of the course are intended to demonstrate whether learning may be self-directed with a PLE, or whether an additional pedagogy is required prior to the use of a PLE. Research will form an integral component of the course.
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    "This course attempts to teach the literacies I believe are needed to flourish in a connectivist environment." --Downes
Gary Brown

Views: The White Noise of Accountability - Inside Higher Ed - 2 views

  • We don’t really know what we are saying
  • “In education, accountability usually means holding colleges accountable for the learning outcomes produced.” One hopes Burck Smith, whose paper containing this sentence was delivered at an American Enterprise Institute conference last November, held a firm tongue-in-cheek with the core phrase.
  • Our adventure through these questions is designed as a prodding to all who use the term to tell us what they are talking about before they otherwise simply echo the white noise.
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  • when our students attend three or four schools, the subject of these sentences is considerably weakened in terms of what happens to those students.
  • Who or what is one accountable to?
  • For what?
  • Why that particular “what” -- and not another “what”?
  • To what extent is the relationship reciprocal? Are there rewards and/or sanctions inherent in the relationship? How continuous is the relationship?
  • In the Socratic moral universe, one is simultaneously witness and judge. The Greek syneidesis (“conscience” and “consciousness”) means to know something with, so to know oneself with oneself becomes an obligation of institutions and systems -- to themselves.
  • Obligation becomes self-reflexive.
  • There are no external authorities here. We offer, we accept, we provide evidence, we judge. There is nothing wrong with this: it is indispensable, reflective self-knowledge. And provided we judge without excuses, we hold to this Socratic moral framework. As Peter Ewell has noted, the information produced under this rubric, particularly in the matter of student learning, is “part of our accountability to ourselves.”
  • But is this “accountability” as the rhetoric of higher education uses the white noise -- or something else?
  • in response to shrill calls for “accountability,” U.S. higher education has placed all its eggs in the Socratic basket, but in a way that leaves the basket half-empty. It functions as the witness, providing enormous amounts of information, but does not judge that information.
  • Every single “best practice” cited by Aldeman and Carey is subject to measurement: labor market histories of graduates, ratios of resource commitment to various student outcomes, proportion of students in learning communities or taking capstone courses, publicly-posted NSSE results, undergraduate research participation, space utilization rates, licensing income, faculty patents, volume of non-institutional visitors to art exhibits, etc. etc. There’s nothing wrong with any of these, but they all wind up as measurements, each at a different concentric circle of putatively engaged acceptees of a unilateral contract to provide evidence. By the time one plows through Aldeman and Carey’s banquet, one is measuring everything that moves -- and even some things that don’t.
  • Sorry, but basic capacity facts mean that consumers cannot vote with their feet in higher education.
  • If we glossed the Socratic notion on provision-of-information, the purpose is self-improvement, not comparison. The market approach to accountability implicitly seeks to beat Socrates by holding that I cannot serve as both witness and judge of my own actions unless the behavior of others is also on the table. The self shrinks: others define the reference points. “Accountability” is about comparison and competition, and an institution’s obligations are only to collect and make public those metrics that allow comparison and competition. As for who judges the competition, we have a range of amorphous publics and imagined authorities.
  • There are no formal agreements here: this is not a contract, it is not a warranty, it is not a regulatory relationship. It isn’t even an issue of becoming a Socratic self-witness and judge. It is, instead, a case in which one set of parties, concentrated in places of power, asks another set of parties, diffuse and diverse, “to disclose more and more about academic results,” with the second set of parties responding in their own terms and formulations. The environment itself determines behavior.
  • Ewell is right about the rules of the information game in this environment: when the provider is the institution, it will shape information “to look as good as possible, regardless of the underlying performance.”
  • U.S. News & World Report’s rankings
  • The messengers become self-appointed arbiters of performance, establishing themselves as the second party to which institutions and aggregates of institutions become “accountable.” Can we honestly say that the implicit obligation of feeding these arbiters constitutes “accountability”?
  • But if the issue is student learning, there is nothing wrong with -- and a good deal to be said for -- posting public examples of comprehensive examinations, summative projects, capstone course papers, etc. within the information environment, and doing so irrespective of anyone requesting such evidence of the distribution of knowledge and skills. Yes, institutions will pick what makes them look good, but if the public products resemble AAC&U’s “Our Students’ Best Work” project, they set off peer pressure for self-improvement and very concrete disclosure. The other prominent media messengers simply don’t engage in constructive communication of this type.
  • Ironically, a “market” in the loudest voices, the flashiest media productions, and the weightiest panels of glitterati has emerged to declare judgment on institutional performance in an age when student behavior has diluted the very notion of an “institution” of higher education. The best we can say is that this environment casts nothing but fog over the specific relationships, responsibilities, and obligations that should be inherent in something we call “accountability.” Perhaps it is about time that we defined these components and their interactions with persuasive clarity. I hope that this essay will invite readers to do so.
  • Clifford Adelman is senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. The analysis and opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the positions or opinions of the institute, nor should any such representation be inferred.
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    Perhaps the most important piece I've read recently. Yes must be our answer to Adelman's last challenge: It is time for us to disseminate what and why we do what we do.
Theron DesRosier

The Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center » Blog Archive... - 0 views

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    In 2004, the LIFE Center and the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington established the LIFE Diversity Panel. The Panel's goal was to summarize important principles that educational practitioners, policy makers, and researchers can use to build upon the learning that occurs in the homes and community cultures of students from diverse groups. We are pleased to announce the culmination of this two year consensus process. On May 11th, 2007, the centers released the consensus report produced by the LIFE Diversity Panel called Learning In and Out of School in Diverse Environments: Life-Long, Life-Wide, and Life-Deep. A major assumption of this report is that if educators make use of the informal learning that occurs in the homes and communities of students, the achievement gap between marginalized students and mainstream students can be reduced.
Corinna Lo

The End in Mind » An Open (Institutional) Learning Network - 0 views

shared by Corinna Lo on 15 Apr 09 - Cached
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    Jon said "I wrote a post last year exploring the spider-starfish tension between Personal Learning Environments and institutionally run CMSs. This is a fundamental challenge that institutions of higher learning need to resolve. On the one hand, we should promote open, flexible, learner-centric activities and tools that support them. On the other hand, legal, ethical and business constraints prevent us from opening up student information systems, online assessment tools, and online gradebooks. These tools have to be secure and, at least from a data management and integration perspective, proprietary. So what would an open learning network look like if facilitated and orchestrated by an institution? Is it possible to create a hybrid spider-starfish learning environment for faculty and students?"
Corinna Lo

Powering Personal Choice for Global Impact (PEIR) - 0 views

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    PEIR, the Personal Environmental Impact Report, is a new kind of online tool that allows you to use your mobile phone to explore and share how you impact the environment and how the environment impacts you.
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    They use the term "participatory sensing" but the example in the youtube video is something more like "participatory research". Great link Corinna, thanks.
Nils Peterson

2009 Annual Meeting | Conference Program - 0 views

  • This session explores the notion that assessment for transformational learning is best utilized as a learning tool. By providing timely, transparent, and appropriate feedback, both to students and to the institution itself, learning is enhanced – a far different motive for assessment than is external accountability.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      need to get to these guys with our harvesting gradebook ideas...
    • Nils Peterson
       
      decided to attend another session. Hersh was OK before lunch, but the talk by Pan looks more promising
  • Academic and corporate communities agree on the urgent need for contemporary, research-based pedagogies of engagement in STEM fields. Participants will learn how leaders from academic departments and institutions have collaborated with leaders from the corporate and business community in regional networks to ensure that graduates meet the expectations of prospective employers and the public.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      here is another session with links to CTLT work, both harvesting gradebook and the ABET work
  • Professor Pan will discuss the reflective teaching methods used to prepare students to recognize and mobilize community assets as they design, implement, and evaluate projects to improve public health.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      Students tasked to learn about a community, ride the bus, make a Doc appt. Then tasked to do a non-clinical health project in that community (they do plenty of clinical stuff elsewhere in the program). Project must build capacity in the community to survive after the student leaves. Example. Work with hispanic parents in Sacramento about parenting issue, ex getting kids to sleep on time. Student had identified problem in the community, but first project idea was show a video, which was not capacity building. Rather than showing the video, used the video as a template and made a new video. Families were actors. Result was spanish DVD that the community could own. Pan thinks this is increased capacity in the community.
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  • Freshman Survey annually examines the academic habits of mind of entering first-year students.  Along with academic involvement, the survey examines diversity, civic engagement, college admissions and expectations of college. 
  • The project aims to promote faculty and student assessment of undergraduate research products in relation to outcomes associated with basic research skills and general undergraduate learning principles (communication and quantitative reasoning, critical thinking, and integration and application of knowledge).
  • They focus educators on the magnitude of the challenge to prepare an ever-increasingly diverse, globally-connected student body with the knowledge, ability, processes, and confidence to adapt to diverse environments and respond creatively to the enormous issues facing humankind.
  • One challenge of civic engagement in the co-curriculum is the merging of cost and outcome: creating meaningful experiences for students and the community with small staffs, on small budgets, while still having significant, purposeful impact. 
  • a)claims that faculty are the sole arbiters of what constitutes a liberal education and b) counter claims that student life professionals also possess the knowledge and expertise critical to defining students’ total learning experiences.  
    • Nils Peterson
       
      also, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
  • This session introduces a three-year national effort to document how colleges and universities are using assessment data to improve teaching and learning and to facilitate the dissemination and adoption of best practices in the assessment of college learning outcomes.
  • Exciting pedagogies of engagement abound, including undergraduate research, community-engaged learning, interdisciplinary exploration, and international study.  However, such experiences are typically optional and non-credit-bearing for students, and/or “on top of” the workload for faculty. This session explores strategies for integrating engaged learning into the institutional fabric (curriculum, student role, faculty role) and increasing access to these transformative experiences.
  • hands-on experiential learning, especially in collaboration with other students, is a superior pedagogy but how can this be provided in increasingly larger introductory classes? 
  • As educators seek innovative ways to manage knowledge and expand interdisciplinary attention to pressing global issues, as students and parents look for assurances that their tuition investment will pay professional dividends, and as alumni look for meaningful ways to give back to the institutions that nurtured and prepared them, colleges and universities can integrate these disparate goals through the Guilds, intergenerational membership networks that draw strength from the contributions of all of their members.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      see Theron's ideas for COMM.
  • Civic engagement learning derives its power from the engagement of students with real communities—local, national, and global. This panel explores the relationship between student learning and the contexts in which that learning unfolds by examining programs that place students in diverse contexts close to campus and far afield.
  • For institutional assessment to make a difference for student learning its results must result in changes in classroom practice. This session explores ways in which the institutional assessment of student learning, such as the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, can be connected to our classrooms.
  • Interdisciplinary Teaching and Object-Based Learning in Campus Museums
  • To address pressing needs of their communities, government and non-profit agencies are requesting higher education to provide education in an array of human and social services. To serve these needs effectively, higher educationneeds to broaden and deepen its consultation with practitioners in designing new curricula. Colleges and universities would do well to consider a curriculum development model that requires consultation not only with potential employers, but also with practitioners and supervisors of practitioners.
  • Should Academics be Active? Campuses and Cutting Edge Civic Engagement
  • If transformational liberal education requires engaging the whole student across the educational experience, how can colleges and universities renew strategy and allocate resources effectively to support it?  How can assessment be used to improve student learning and strengthen a transformational learning environment? 
    • Nils Peterson
       
      Purpose of university is not to grant degrees, it has something to do with learning. Keeling's perspective is that the learning should be transformative; changing perspective. Liberating and emancipatory Learning is a complex interaction among student and others, new knowledge and experience, event, own aspirations. learners construct meaning from these elements. "we change our minds" altering the brain at the micro-level Brain imaging research demonstrates that analogical learning (abstract) demands more from more areas of the brain than semantic (concrete) learning. Mind is not an abstraction, it is based in the brain, a working physical organ .Learner and the environment matter to the learning. Seeds magazine, current issue on brain imaging and learning. Segway from brain research to need for university to educate the whole student. Uses the term 'transformative learning' meaning to transform the learning (re-wire the brain) but does not use transformative assessment (see wikipedia).
  • But as public debates roil, higher education has been more reactive than proactive on the question of how best to ensure that today’s students are fully prepared for a fast-paced future.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      Bologna process being adopted (slowly) in EU, the idea is to make academic degrees more interchangeable and understandable across the EU three elements * Qualification Frameworks (transnational, national, disciplinary). Frameworks are graduated, with increasing expertise and autonomy required for the upper levels. They sound like broad skills that we might recognize in the WSU CITR. Not clear how they are assessed * Tuning (benchmarking) process * Diploma Supplements (licensure, thesis, other capstone activities) these extend the information in the transcript. US equivalent might be the Kuali Students system for extending the transcript. Emerging dialog on American capability This dialog is coming from 2 directions * on campus * employers Connect to the Greater Exceptions (2000-2005) iniative. Concluded that American HE has islands of innovation. Lead to LEAP (Liberal Education and America's Promise) Initiative (2005-2015). The dialog is converging because of several forces * Changes in the balance of economic and political power. "The rise of the rest (of the world)" * Global economy in which innovation is key to growth and prosperity LEAP attempts to frame the dialog (look for LEAP in AACU website). Miami-Dade CC has announced a LEAP-derived covenant, the goals must span all aspects of their programs. Define liberal education Knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world intellectual and practical skills responsibility integrative skills Marker of success is (here is where the Transformative Gradebook fits in): evidence that students can apply the essential learning outcomes to complex, unscripted problems and real-world settings Current failure -- have not tracked our progress, or have found that we are not doing well. See AACU employer survey 5-10% percent of current graduates taking courses that would meet the global competencies (transcript analysis) See NSSE on Personal and social responsibility gains, less tha
  • Dr. Pan will also talk about strategies for breaking down cultural barriers.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      Pan. found a non-profit agency to be a conduit and coordinator to level the power between univ and grass roots orgs. helped with cultural gaps.
Gary Brown

For Accreditation, a Narrow Window of Opportunity - Commentary - The Chronicle of Highe... - 4 views

  • After two years as president of the American Council on Education, I feel compelled to send a wake-up call to campus executives: If federal policy makers are now willing to bail out the nation's leading banks and buy equity stakes in auto makers because those companies are "too big to fail," they will probably have few reservations about regulating an education system that they now understand is "too important to fail."
  • Regardless of party, policy makers are clearly aware of the importance of education and are demanding improved performance and more information, from preschool to graduate school. In this environment, we should expect college accreditation to come under significant scrutiny.
  • It has also clearly signaled its interest in using data to measure institutional performance and student outcomes, and it has invested in state efforts to create student-data systems from pre-kindergarten through graduate school.
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  • Higher education has so far navigated its way through the environment of increased regulatory interest without substantial changes to our system of quality assurance or federally mandated outcomes assessment. But that has only bought us time. As we look ahead, we must keep three facts in mind: Interest in accountability is bipartisan, and the pendulum has swung toward more regulation in virtually all sectors. The economic crisis is likely to spur increased calls from policy makers to control college prices and demonstrate that students are getting value for the dollar. The size of the federal budget deficit will force everyone who receives federal support to produce more and better evidence that an investment of federal funds will pay dividends for individuals and society.
  • If we do not seize the opportunity to strengthen voluntary peer accreditation as a rigorous test of institutional quality, grounded in appropriate measures of student learning, we place at risk a precious bulwark against excessive government intervention, a bulwark that has allowed American higher education to flourish. When it comes to safeguarding the quality, diversity, and independence of American higher education, accreditors hold the keys to the kingdom.
  • all accreditors now require colleges and universities to put more emphasis on measuring student-learning outcomes. They should be equally vigilant about ensuring that those data are used to achieve improvements in outcomes
  • share plain-language results of accreditation reviews with the public.
  • It takes very little close reading to see through the self-serving statements here: namely that higher education institutions must do a better PR job pretending they are interested in meaningful reform so as to head off any real reform that migh come from the federal authorities.
  • THEREFORE, let me voice a wakeup call for those who are really interested in reform--not that there are many.1.There will never be any meaningful reform unless we have a centralized and nationalized higher educational system. Leaving higher education in the hands of individual institutions is no longer effective and is in fact what has led to the present state we find ourselves in. Year after countless year we have been promised changes in higher education and year after year nothing changes. IF CHANGE IS TO COME IT MUST BE FORCED ONTO HIGHER EDUCATION FROM THE OUTSIDE.
  • Higher education in America can no longer afford to be organized around the useless market capitalism that forces too many financially marginalized institutions to compete for less and less.
  • Keeping Quiet by Pablo NerudaIf we were not so singled-mindedabout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death.
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    It is heating up again
Joshua Yeidel

Blog U.: The Challenge of Value-Added - Digital Tweed - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

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    Quoting a 1984 study, "higher education should ensure that the mounds of data already collected on students are converted into useful information and fed back [to campus officials and faculty] in ways that enhance student learning and lead to improvement in programs, teaching practices, and the environment in which teaching and learning take place." The example given is an analysis of test scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District by the LA Times.
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    It's going to take some assessment (and political) smarts to deflect the notion that existing data can be re-purposed easily to assess "value-added".
Theron DesRosier

Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense | Video on TED.com - 0 views

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    This demo -- from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry -- was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.
Theron DesRosier

Participatory Learning and the New Humanities: An Interview with Cathy Davidson | Acade... - 0 views

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    "Participatory Learning includes the ways in which new technologies enable learners (of any age) to contribute in diverse ways to individual and shared learning goals. Through games, wikis, blogs, virtual environments, social network sites, cell phones, mobile devices, and other digital platforms, learners can participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another's projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together. Participatory learners come together to aggregate their ideas and experiences in a way that makes the whole ultimately greater than the sum of the parts."
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    Theron helped me keep up with developments at HASTAC by socially sharing this bookmark and excerpt in the CTLT and Friends Group. I add this comment to acknowledge his contribution to my ongoing professional development. The comment function also gives me a link (perma?) to his bookmark.
Joshua Yeidel

TLChallenges09 | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - 0 views

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    After four months of spirited discussion, the EDUCAUSE teaching and learning community has voted on the, "Top Teaching and Learning Challenges, 2009." The final list for 2009, ranked by popularity, includes (click on individual Challenges to visit their wiki page): 1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation. 2. Developing 21st-century literacies among students and faculty (information, digital, and visual). 3. Reaching and engaging today's learner. 4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with IT. 5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning (with technology) in an era of budget cuts.
Theron DesRosier

Building a Network, Expanding the Commons, Shaping the Field: Two Perspectives on Devel... - 0 views

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    " The two articles presented here discuss the possibilities of using online technologies to respond to these challenges. Authors Jennifer Meta Robinson and Tom Carey consider the question of how online environments might not only house collections of SOTL contributions and reflections on pedagogical practice, but also host ongoing exchanges about how these contributions can be used and developed more fully by both teachers and researchers. While Robinson and Carey share much common ground--indeed, as will be obvious, they have participated together in many discussions about these issues--they come at the challenges from different perspectives."
Gary Brown

How Colleges Could Better Prepare Students to Tackle Society's Problems - Students - Th... - 1 views

  • Employers increasingly want to hire students who are highly adaptive, who can work in a fast-paced environment, be creative and problem-solve—and these are not necessarily core skills universities focus on. Most universities focus on knowledge acquisition, but what the world requires is much more about learning how to work within a fast-changing environment and be a leader in that context.
  • social entrepreneurship is relevant in different disciplines
  • We're not just bringing them into the classroom, but we're involving them in more research collaborations and conversations, so the learning students do is guided by that.
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  • I just heard from a faculty member at Cornell who has increased the amount of experiential learning she requires for class projects. More students are asking for it, and she's using every opportunity to get people out in the community or talking to people so they can engage in real-world experience.
  • Maryland has created a Center for Social Value Creation
  • Siloed disciplines are one of our biggest challenges. The world doesn't operate in disciplines—its problems and organizations are cross-cutting. The more interdisciplinary people can think and learn, the more equipped they will be to deal with the complexity of the real world.
Joshua Yeidel

ILT - Jan 2010 issue - 2 views

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    Jane Hart describes five kinds of learning that social learning environments "have to support", describes Elgg as a platform for social learning, and lists some success factors based on her consulting for (no surprise) Elgg-using organizations.
Joshua Yeidel

ILT - Nov 2009 issue - 0 views

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    "In three issues for Inside Learning Technologies, Jane Hart shares the rpos and cons of building three types of social learning environment, and how to deliver them at low or no cost."
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    Assessment is not even mentioned, but the series is still useful.
Nils Peterson

What Intrigues Me About Google Wave - 0 views

  • The basic idea was to make a radically editable learning environment in which students as well as faculty members could rearrange content, functionality, and navigation in the learning environment.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      What fraction of faculty will be excited by radical editability? Its a paragidm shift
    • Joshua Yeidel
       
      Also, what fraction of _students_ will be excited by radical editability? Will a readiness assessment be needed?
Joshua Yeidel

Coopman - 0 views

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 01 Jul 09 - Cached
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    CRITIQUE OF E-LEARNING IN BLACKBOARD "Just as utopic visions of the Internet predicted an egalitarian online world where information flowed freely and power became irrelevant, so did many proponents of online education, who viewed online classrooms as a way to free students and instructors from traditional power relationships . . ." In "A Critical Examination of Blackboard's EˆLearning Environment" (FIRST MONDAY, vol. 14, no. 6, June 1, 2009), Stephanie J. Coopman, professor at San Jose State University, identifies the ways that the Blackboard 8.0 and Blackboard CE6 platforms "both constrain and facilitate instructorˆstudent and studentˆstudent interaction." She argues that while the systems have improved the instructor's ability to track and measure student activity, this "creates a dangerously decontextualized, essentialized image of a class in which levels of 'participation' stand in for evidence of learning having taken place. Students are treated not as learners, as partners in an educational enterprise, but as users."
Corinna Lo

University World News - OECD: Head attacks university 'conservatism' - 0 views

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    "We should abolish faculties in universities. Faculties are the most conservative bulwarks against change. Europe must move to a radically different trans-disciplinary approach. Most of the interesting things happen on the boundaries of the discipline," he said. \n\n"Second, I emphasised the social perspective: the selection and meritocratic functions of schools often impose themselves as external limitations on the innovative capacities of schools. The 'pedagogy of failure', which often dominates schooling, is not the best environment for the development of creativity and heteronymous thinking. Innovation and creativity in the classroom can only flourish in a 'pedagogy of success', in which all talents of all children have the chance to develop. Well-performing school systems are those where the drive for excellence is linked with a strong equitable ambition."\n
Nils Peterson

Shifting Faculty Roles for New Learning Environments « Center for Teaching, L... - 0 views

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    This is the packet for AAC&U. Comments welcome, changes hard to implement at this late hour.
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    Materials for the AAC&U Conf April 2-4, 2009. The last link is to a new Theron-inspired JamyeJ graphic.
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