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Matthew Tedder

U.S. students behind in math, science, analysis says - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

education

shared by Matthew Tedder on 26 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 26 Aug 09
     
    At Books-A-Million (the big book store here in Gainesville, FL), I noticed the science section is very small, there is no psychology section (but only a large Self-Help section that is heavily religious), and no biology section. The religion section is by far the largest of all. I wondered, does this reflect the interests of people in the area? If so, the lack of interest in science is really sad. The contrasting (as opposed to just commparing) science and religion is also a sad societal phenomenon, I think. But then again--while stores mostly buy inventory they think will sell best, the inventory that builds up on the shelves is that which sells the least. So I don't know how to guage this.
Gary Brown

Education ambivalence : Nature : Nature Publishing Group - 1 views

www.nature.com/...465525b.html

science undergraduate teaching

shared by Gary Brown on 02 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Academic scientists value teaching as much as research — but universities apparently don't
  • Nature Education, last year conducted a survey of 450 university-level science faculty members from more than 30 countries. The first report from that survey, freely available at http://go.nature.com/5wEKij, focuses on 'postsecondary' university- and college-level education. It finds that more than half of the respondents in Europe, Asia and North America feel that the quality of undergraduate science education in their country is mediocre, poor or very poor.
  • 77% of respondents indicated that they considered their teaching responsibilities to be just as important as their research — and 16% said teaching was more important.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • But the biggest barrier to improvement is the pervasive perception that academic institutions — and the prevailing rewards structure of science — value research far more than teaching
  • despite their beliefs that teaching was at least as important as research, many respondents said that they would choose to appoint a researcher rather than a teacher to an open tenured position.
  • To correct this misalignment of values, two things are required. The first is to establish a standardized system of teaching evaluation. This would give universities and professors alike the feedback they need to improve.
  • The second requirement is to improve the support and rewards for university-level teaching.
  • systematic training in how to teach well
  • But by showering so many rewards on research instead of on teaching, universities and funding agencies risk undermining the educational quality that is required for research to flourish in the long term.
  • Gary Brown on 02 Jun 10
     
    Attention to this issue from this resource--Nature--is a breakthrough in its own right. Note the focus on "flourish in the long term...".
Theron DesRosier

Aviation High School - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/dents-take-learning-new-levels

theme based school

shared by Theron DesRosier on 14 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 14 Nov 08
     
    "In addition to core courses in math, science, language arts, and social studies, we offer electives such as art, environmental stewardship, forensics, Japanese, and science olympiad, plus a series of seminars focused on aviation and aerospace, including Aviation and the American Character, History of Aircraft Design, and Robotics. In each course, students complete projects that demonstrate a depth of understanding and skill related to our essential questions and schoolwide learning goals. The more complex projects are developed in collaboration with industry experts, such as a wing-design engineer, a transit planner, an Arctic researcher, and a local river-cleanup coalition. "
Theron DesRosier

Networked Governance - John F. Kennedy School of Government - Colloquia - Papers - 0 views

www.hks.harvard.edu/..._NIPS_conference_schedule.html

network analysis politics 2.0 learning networked governance

shared by Theron DesRosier on 31 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 31 Oct 08
     
    The Harvard Networks in Political Science Conference\nThis site contains papers and presentations on network applications in political science. Interresting titles include: "Network Analysis for International Relations", "Social Networks and Correct Voting", "Partisan Webs: Information Exchange and Party Networks", "Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere ", and "Mining Political Blog Networks".
Gary Brown

Computing Community Consortium - 0 views

www.cccblog.org/...y-students-in-computer-science

authentic learning computer science

shared by Gary Brown on 29 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Landmark Contributions by Students in Computer Science Filed Under computer history, resources  There are many reasons for research funding agencies (DARPA, NSF, etc.) to invest in the education of students. Producing the next generation of innovators is the most obvious one.
Joshua Yeidel

Wired Campus: Student Beats Cheating Charges for Posting Work Online - Chroni... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...index.php

assessment higher_education

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 08 Jul 09 - No Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 08 Jul 09
     
    "A student majoring in computer science at San Jose State University said he fought against a professor who had tried to force him to remove his homework from the Internet, and won..." For computer science assignments where a working solution to a specific problem is the expected response, the implications are clear. But what are the implications for assessment (and for higher educaiton generally)?
Joshua Yeidel

Putting Learning Under a Microscope - Curriculum - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...48997

higher_education learning assessment

shared by Joshua Yeidel on 02 Nov 09 - Cached
  • First, the faculty has designed a unified curriculum.
  • Second, the faculty members are organized under a single academic unit, no matter their disciplinary backgrounds.
  • Third, the program plans to collect an enormous amount of data about student performance and to analyze those data in new ways.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • an elaborate database that will help them track the success (or lack thereof) of various instructional techniques.
  • Joshua Yeidel on 02 Nov 09
     
    A startup campus in health sciences attempts to put into practice many OAI-like approaches in health sciences. Amid the enthusiasm there is some anecdotal evidence about practical difficulaties like coordinating curriculum and finding time for research.
Theron DesRosier

Debate Over P vs. NP Proof Highlights Web Collaboration - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...17proof.html

learning peerreview

shared by Theron DesRosier on 23 Sep 10 - Cached
  • The potential of Internet-based collaboration was vividly demonstrated this month when complexity theorists used blogs and wikis to pounce on a claimed proof for one of the most profound and difficult problems facing mathematicians and computer scientists.
  • “The proof required the piecing together of principles from multiple areas within mathematics. The major effort in constructing this proof was uncovering a chain of conceptual links between various fields and viewing them through a common lens.”
  • In this case, however, the significant breakthrough may not be in the science, but rather in the way science is practiced.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • What was highly significant, however, was the pace of discussion and analysis, carried out in real time on blogs and a wiki that had been quickly set up for the purpose of collectively analyzing the paper.
  • Several of the researchers said that until now such proofs had been hashed out in colloquiums that required participants to be physically present at an appointed time. Now, with the emergence of Web-connected software programs it is possible for such collaborative undertakings to harness the brainpower of the world’s best thinkers on a continuous basis.
  • collaborative tools is paving the way for a second scientific revolution in the same way the printing press created a demarcation between the age of alchemy and the age of chemistry.
  • “The difference between the alchemists and the chemists was that the printing press was used to coordinate peer review,” he said. “The printing press didn’t cause the scientific revolution, but it wouldn’t have been possible without it.”
  • “It’s not just, ‘Hey, everybody, look at this,’ ” he said, “but rather a new set of norms is emerging about what it means to do mathematics, assuming coordinated participation.”
  • Theron DesRosier on 23 Sep 10
     
    "The difference between the alchemists and the chemists was that the printing press was used to coordinate peer review," he said. "The printing press didn't cause the scientific revolution, but it wouldn't have been possible without it." "The difference between the alchemists and the chemists was that the printing press was used to coordinate peer review," he said. "The printing press didn't cause the scientific revolution, but it wouldn't have been possible without it."
Nils Peterson

U. of Phoenix Reports on Students' Academic Progress - Measuring Stick - The Chronicle ... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...27584

shared by Nils Peterson on 10 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • In comparisons of seniors versus freshmen within the university, the 2,428 seniors slightly outperformed 4,003 freshmen in all categories except natural sciences, in which they were equivalent.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 10 Dec 10
       
      This is the value added measure.
  • The University of Phoenix has released its third “Academic Annual Report,” a document that continues to be notable not so much for the depth of information it provides on its students’ academic progress but for its existence at all.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 10 Dec 10
       
      Provides a range of measures, inc. demographics, satisfaction, indirect measures of percieved utility and direct measures using national tests.
  • The Phoenix academic report also includes findings on students’ performance relative to hundreds of thousands of students at nearly 400 peer institutions on two standardized tests
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  • University of Phoenix seniors slightly underperformed a comparison group of 42,649 seniors at peer institutions in critical thinking, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and moderately underperformed the peer group in reading, writing, and mathematics.
Corinna Lo

Twenty years of the world wide web | What's the score? | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...displaystory.cfm

www

shared by Corinna Lo on 14 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Corinna Lo on 14 Mar 09
     
    Scientists have therefore proved resourceful in using the web to further their research. They have, however, tended to lag when it comes to employing the latest web-based social-networking tools to open up scientific discourse and encourage more effective collaboration...... No one yet knows how to measure the impact of a blog post or the sharing of a good idea with another researcher in some collaborative web-based workspace. Dr Nielsen reckons that if similar measurements could be established for the impact of open commentary and open collaboration on the web, such commentary and collaboration would flourish, and science as a whole would benefit.
Corinna Lo

A computer science professor at an Australian University is doing something revolutiona... - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...college_credit_via_youtube.php

youtube learning

shared by Corinna Lo on 16 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Corinna Lo on 16 Mar 09
     
    A computer science professor at an Australian University is doing something revolutionary with YouTube - he's offering students who can't attend his classes college credit for watching his videos. Richard Buckland, a senior lecturer at the University of NSW in Sydney, Australia, was frustrated that high school students with a passion for computing and capable of studying at the college level were not able to make the commute to the university fit into their school day. Buckland then decided to turn YouTube into a remote classroom where the students could attend lectures virtually and then complete coursework just as his other students do.
Gary Brown

Evaluations That Make the Grade: 4 Ways to Improve Rating the Faculty - Teaching - The ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...65226

evaluating teaching

shared by Gary Brown on 27 Apr 10 - Cached
  • For students, the act of filling out those forms is sometimes a fleeting, half-conscious moment. But for instructors whose careers can live and die by student evaluations, getting back the forms is an hour of high anxiety
  • "They have destroyed higher education." Mr. Crumbley believes the forms lead inexorably to grade inflation and the dumbing down of the curriculum.
  • Texas enacted a law that will require every public college to post each faculty member's student-evaluation scores on a public Web site.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The IDEA Center, an education research group based at Kansas State University, has been spreading its particular course-evaluation gospel since 1975. The central innovation of the IDEA system is that departments can tailor their evaluation forms to emphasize whichever learning objectives are most important in their discipline.
  • (Roughly 350 colleges use the IDEA Center's system, though in some cases only a single department or academic unit participates.)
  • The new North Texas instrument that came from these efforts tries to correct for biases that are beyond an instructor's control. The questionnaire asks students, for example, whether the classroom had an appropriate size and layout for the course. If students were unhappy with the classroom, and if it appears that their unhappiness inappropriately colored their evaluations of the instructor, the system can adjust the instructor's scores accordingly.
  • Elaine Seymour, who was then director of ethnography and evaluation research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was assisting with a National Science Foundation project to improve the quality of science instruction at the college level. She found that many instructors were reluctant to try new teaching techniques because they feared their course-evaluation ratings might decline.
  • "So the ability to do some quantitative analysis of these comments really allows you to take a more nuanced and effective look at what these students are really saying."
  • Mr. Frick and his colleagues found that his new course-evaluation form was strongly correlated with both students' and instructors' own measures of how well the students had mastered each course's learning goals.
  • The survey instrument, known as SALG, for Student Assessment of their Learning Gains, is now used by instructors across the country. The project's Web site contains more than 900 templates, mostly for courses in the sciences.
  • "Students are the inventory," Mr. Crumbley says. "The real stakeholders in higher education are employers, society, the people who hire our graduates. But what we do is ask the inventory if a professor is good or bad. At General Motors," he says, "you don't ask the cars which factory workers are good at their jobs. You check the cars for defects, you ask the drivers, and that's how you know how the workers are doing."
  • William H. Pallett, president of the IDEA Center, says that when course rating surveys are well-designed and instructors make clear that they care about them, students will answer honestly and thoughtfully.
  • In Mr. Bain's view, student evaluations should be just one of several tools colleges use to assess teaching. Peers should regularly visit one another's classrooms, he argues. And professors should develop "teaching portfolios" that demonstrate their ability to do the kinds of instruction that are most important in their particular disciplines. "It's kind of ironic that we grab onto something that seems fixed and fast and absolute, rather than something that seems a little bit messy," he says. "Making decisions about the ability of someone to cultivate someone else's learning is inherently a messy process. It can't be reduced to a formula."
  • Gary Brown on 27 Apr 10
     
    Old friends at the Idea Center, and an old but persistent issue.
Matthew Tedder

Researchers Mod Unreal Tournament to Teach Science | SciTechBits - Interesting Bits of ... - 0 views

www.scitechbits.com/...al-tournament-to-teach-science

education games game

shared by Matthew Tedder on 07 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Matthew Tedder on 07 Oct 09
     
    The holy grail of education, at least for software designers, remains a highly addictive game that teaches effectively, at its core.
Gary Brown

Might Companies, Not Colleges, Deserve the Blame for a Shortage of Engineers? - Faculty... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...48948

employers education

shared by Gary Brown on 28 Oct 09 - Cached
  • But in fact the number of talented college graduates in the sciences is "quite in excess of the demand," said Harold Salzman, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University. In a new paper, he and a colleague argue that the real problem is at the employment end of the pipeline.
  • It may not be so easy to convince companies, however, that they're the main problem. Susan L. Traiman, director of public policy at Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of the largest American companies, said the analysis by Mr. Salzman and Mr. Lowell has some potential shortcomings that may explain why its findings contradict the experience of many engineering companies.
  • The fundamental suggestion by Mr. Salzman and Mr. Lowell—that science and engineering companies perhaps should be doing more to grab science and engineering students—may even have trouble winning support on university campuses, where engineering deans increasingly take pride in graduating students with a diverse set of talents, who are able to take on a range of professional challenges, rather than simply follow traditional engineering paths.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • And Ms. Traiman, despite questioning some of the specifics in the report, said she understands the need for American companies—including those in engineering—to compete harder on both salary and lifestyle issues to attract graduates like Ms. Anderegg.
  • Gary Brown on 28 Oct 09
     
    A new twist on what Dewey worried about: the forfeit of the shaping roleof higher ed.
Gary Brown

Colleges May Be Missing a Chance for Change - International - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...124417

employers accountability future of education

shared by Gary Brown on 14 Sep 10 - No Cached
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 14 Sep 10
       
      And what are people for, after all?
  • Peter P. Smith, senior vice president for academic strategies and development at Kaplan Higher Education, said that if traditional universities did not adjust, new institutions would evolve to meet student needs. Those new institutions, said Mr. Smith, whose company is a for-profit education provider, would be more student-centric, would deliver instruction with greater flexibility, and would offer educational services at a lower cost.
  • both education and research must become more relevant and responsive to society.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The gathering drew about 500 government officials, institutional leaders, and researchers
  • Speakers at an international conference here delivered a scathing assessment of higher education: Universities, they said, are slow to change, uncomfortable in dealing with real-world problems, and culturally resistant to substantive internationalization.
  • many faculty members may be "uncomfortable" with having deeper links to industry because they don't understand that world. Students, however, are highly practical, Mr. Fadel said, and are specifically seeking education that will get them a job or give them an advantage in the workplace.
  • "I'm sorry, as a student, you do not go to university to learn. You go to get a credential," he said.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 14 Sep 10
       
      And if you graduate more appreciative of the credential than what and how you have learned, then the education.
  • That does not mean colleges simply ought to turn out more graduates for in-demand professions like science and engineering, Mr. Fadel added. Colleges need to infuse other disciplines with science and engineering skills.
Gary Brown

Disciplines Follow Their Own Paths to Quality - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Educa... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...125055

assessment accreditation critical thinking

shared by Gary Brown on 29 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • But when it comes to the fundamentals of measuring and improving student learning, engineering professors naturally have more to talk about with their counterparts at, say, Georgia Tech than with the humanities professors at Villanova
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 29 Oct 10
       
      Perhaps this is too bad....
  • But there is no nationally normed way to measure the particular kind of critical thinking that students of classics acquire
  • er colleagues have created discipline-specific critical-reasoning tests for classics and political science
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Political science cultivates skills that are substantially different from those in classics, and in each case those skills can't be measured with a general-education test.
  • he wants to use tests of reasoning that are appropriate for each discipline
  • I believe Richard Paul has spent a lifetime articulating the characteristics of discipline based critical thinking. But anyway, I think it is interesting that an attempt is being made to develop (perhaps) a "national standard" for critical thinking in classics. In order to assess anything effectively we need a standard. Without a standard there are no criteria and therefore no basis from which to assess. But standards do not necessarily have to be established at the national level. This raises the issue of scale. What is the appropriate scale from which to measure the quality and effectiveness of an educational experience? Any valid approach to quality assurance has to be multi-scaled and requires multiple measures over time. But to be honest the issues of standards and scale are really just the tip of the outcomes iceberg.
    • Gary Brown
      Gary Brown on 29 Oct 10
       
      Missing the notion that the variance is in the activity more than the criteria.  We hear little of embedding nationally normed and weighted assignments and then assessing the implementation and facilitation variables.... mirror, not lens.
  • the UW Study of Undergraduate Learning (UW SOUL). Results from the UW SOUL show that learning in college is disciplinary; therefore, real assessment of learning must occur (with central support and resources)in the academic departments. Generic approaches to assessing thinking, writing, research, quantitative reasoning, and other areas of learning may be measuring something, but they cannot measure learning in college.
  • It turns out there is a six week, or 210+ hour serious reading exposure to two or more domains outside ones own, that "turns on" cross domain mapping as a robust capability. Some people just happen to have accumulated, usually by unseen and unsensed happenstance involvements (rooming with an engineer, son of a dad changing domains/careers, etc.) this minimum level of basics that allows robust metaphor based mapping.
Theron DesRosier

Complexity and Social Networks Blog - 0 views

www.iq.harvard.edu/netgov

research complexity socialnetworks blog networked governance

shared by Theron DesRosier on 31 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 31 Oct 08
     
    "Complexity and Social Networks Blog of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Program on Networked Governance, Harvard University\n\nWelcome! The objective of this blog is to offer a forum for the discussion of the intertwined subjects of network analysis and complex systems theory. "
Theron DesRosier

Nature: Science blogging - 0 views

www.nature.com/...executeSearch

blogging nature science

shared by Theron DesRosier on 26 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 26 Jan 09
     
    Blogs related to scientific topics from Nature.
Theron DesRosier

Our Mission: The Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice - 0 views

www.sljhs.org/mission.php

theme based school

shared by Theron DesRosier on 14 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 14 Nov 08
     
    SLJ offers an engaging, law-themed curriculum, with the goal of providing a high-quality, 9-12 education to under-resourced students. SLJ's focus on the study of law builds upon the success and experiences of The Bronx School for Law, Government, and Justice (BLGJ). BLGJ opened in 1997 in the South Bronx and has maintained 95% graduation rates in the first three graduating classes, with 90% of those graduates going on to college. Over its seven years, BLGJ has developed an array of law-themed courses that range from constitutional law to forensic science, and has established a successful internship model through which seniors spend three afternoons a week in courthouses, law firms, and non-profit organizations. SLJ was developed in conjunction with members of the BLGJ community including teachers, students, parents, and the principal.
Corinna Lo

How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition - 0 views

books.nap.edu/catalog.php

book learning

shared by Corinna Lo on 21 Dec 08 - Cached
  • Corinna Lo on 21 Dec 08
     
    This book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods--to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. You can read the entire book online for free.
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