CTLT and Friends

The ability to aggregate data for assessment is counted as a plus for CS and a minus for GT

The map includes the portfolio's ability to aid learners in planning, setting goals, and navigating the artifacts learners create and collect.

Country x has, in various ways, been host to numerous initiatives to introduce computers into its schools and, to lesser extents, to train teachers and students on their use, and schools have piloted a variety of digital learning materials and education software applications.  It is now ready, country leaders say, to invest in a rigorous, randomized trial of an educational technology initiative as a prelude to a very ambitious, large-scale roll-out of the use of educational technologies nationwide. It asks: What programs or specific interventions should we consider?

What would be a useful response to such inquiries?  How would you design a program for measurable impact in a way that is immediately policy-relevant for decisionmakers contemplating large investments in the use of technology in the education sector, and what would this program look like?

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.

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.

public colleges and universities are dealing with a customer base of students who invariably are among the earliest adopters of emerging technologies. As a result, institutions of higher education, and particularly public colleges and universities, must adopt a strategy to overcome institutional inertia and a shortage of readily available resources while keeping pace with students for whom the latest technology quickly becomes the minimal level of expectation when choosing a place to pursue a degree.

The University of British Columbia's class SPAN312 ("Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation") contributed to Wikipedia during Spring 2008. Our collective goals were to bring a selection of articles on Latin American literature to featured article status (or as near as possible). By project's end, we had contributed three featured articles and eight good articles.

If all of our students are remembering the same things, the things that they learned for their standards test, the collaborative work between those students will only differ insofar as they have lived different lives OUTSIDE of school. In this sense, the education system plays NO part whatsoever in contributing to the creative economy.

if I was going to advise any *learner* about pursuing their interest (and by definition, in an “open” situation the set of learners is not prescribed), I’d urge them to find an *existing* robust community of people already talking about that subject, and then focus on helping them develop skills to engage, as a newcomer, with existing coversations and communities.

Can the two ideas– open, networked learning communities and open courses affiliated with and/or products from institutions not only co-exist, but feed off of one another? I get the asymmetry aspect, I really do, but I’m not convinced that institutions have no worth or that the situation for continuing– maybe even increasing– that worth is hopeless

@Scott Leslie. Thanks for your comment on the language of ‘courses’, or in my case ‘modules’. It has helped me realise that my approach to open education post my looming retirement may be trapped in the wrong mindset. I have been trying to think of how I can convert a module I teach at Leeds Uni that dies when I retire to an OE resource ‘in the wild’. I have been thinking about how it can be packaged as an OE module that a community of network of open learners can engage with and exploit/re-purpose according to individual and collective needs. I assumed that I and others would somehow organically become mentors (open tutors?) and flexibly help out as required. Perhaps I should be trying to develop links with existing communities engages in discussions and project around the discipline of my module and try and contribute there somehow. I think your comment illustrates the difficult transition in moving between open education as content (based on a formal education model) and open education as process that engages disparate audiences with varied agendas and objectives.