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Why don't even the brightest students truly grasp simple science concepts? These video programs pick up on the questions asked in the Private Universe documentary and further explore how children learn. Based on recent research, as well as the pioneering work of Piaget and others, Minds of Our Own shows that many of the things we assume about how children learn are simply not true. For educators and parents, these programs bring new insight to debates about education reform. 1. Can We Believe Our Eyes?  Why is it that students can graduate from MIT and Harvard, yet not know how to solve a simple third-grade problem in science: lighting a light bulb with a battery and wire? Beginning with this startling fact, this program systematically explores many of the assumptions that we hold about learning to show that education is based on a series of myths. Through the example of an experienced teacher, the program takes a hard look at why teaching fails, even when he uses all of the traditional tricks of the trade. The program shows how new research, used by teachers committed to finding solutions to problems, is reshaping what goes on in our nation's schools

Alarmed by the tendency of engineering programs to hemorrhage undergraduates, at a time when the White House has called for an additional million degrees in science, technology, engineering and math fields-known as STEM-education researchers here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science proposed ways to improve the numbers. At a symposium on engineering education, one group outlined a broad revamping of curriculum, while another proposed more modest changes to pedagogy.

According to UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, of all Black, Native American, and Hispanic students who aspire to a STEM degree in their first college year, just 19 percent, 20 percent and 22 percent, respectively graduate from a STEM department.

most of those systems do not yet allow instructors to deeply tailor the material to meet their course needs. And highly-interactive systems are often too complex for pioneering professors to adopt and sustain on their own.

Students in academic difficulty who took the "Learning and Motivation Strategies" course in their first quarter at Ohio State were about 45 percent more likely to graduate within six years than similar students who didn't take the class. Average-ability students who took the course were also six times more likely to stay in college for a second year and had higher grade point averages than those who didn't take the class. "We are taking the students who are least likely to succeed in college and teaching them the skills they need to stay in school and graduate," said Bruce Tuckman, a professor of education at Ohio State, and creator of the course.

Academic staff generally perceive students to be more digitally capable than is really the case. A JISC study of 3,500 learners found that while the so-called Google generation have high expectations of digital technology, for example that it will be robust, flexible, responsive to their personal needs, and available anywhere, many learners do not have a clear understanding of how courses could or should use technology to support their learning.

Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today announced the launch of edX, a transformational partnership in online education. Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.

Many of us working in the field of learning technologies take for granted the need for innovation, but it is incumbent on us that we do not push innovation for innovation's sake. Nevertheless, my view is that at least for post-secondary education, we are in desperate need of innovation, and that e-learning and online learning needs to be a major component of changes to the system. In this post I want to discuss why I think that innovation is essential, and why learning technologies need to be a central part of such innovation

Student evaluations and a heavy reliance on them can be problematic for several reasons, the authors of the paper argued. Departments can misinterpret these evaluations by comparing averages for all instructors in similar courses, which can be a very imprecise measure. Moreover, instructors may alter their teaching methods solely to boost their student evaluation scores. The potential problems, according to the paper. Teachers might try to entertain and not educate. "To instructors, generating positive student answers to questions about overall effectiveness and communication skills may smack of entertainment and dumbing down," the paper says. Professors might try to drive out malcontents or otherwise unhappy students before the end-of-semester evaluations. Instructors might avoid attempts at innovation and play it safe in the classroom just to get better evaluations.

They "don't want to ask librarians or tutors in the study center or stuff like that," she says. "It's more the informal networks that they're using."

Review of Literature on Remote and Web-based Science Labs

Why College Students Leave the Engineering Track http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-leave-the-engineering-track/ Actually another study of science students asked the students why they were transferring or dropping out of science majors, and the number one reason cited was poor teaching: http://www.science20.com/news_releases/6_researchers_take_science_education "when college students abandon science as a major, 90 percent of them do so because of what they perceive as poor teaching; and, among those who remain in the sciences, 74 percent lament the poor quality of teaching" via http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/50-examples-of-the-need-to-improve-college-teaching/

here is a handy guide to some of the most common arguments made against the use of technology in education, and how to counter them

Then something odd happened: The students, all in their mid- to late 20s, became self-conscious about carrying iPads. They refused to use them in public. They felt elitist. In their eyes, the iPad represented snobbery, a technological tool that no one needed and whose utility was far from apparent. Used to a graduate student frugality, they didn't want to be seen as profligate.

Some of the most innovative applications for hand-held devices, however, have come from professors working on their own. They find ways to adapt popular smartphone software to the classroom setting, or even write their own code. That's what I discovered when I put out a call on Twitter, as well as to a major e-mail list of college public-relations officers, asking about the areas in which professors and college officials are making the most of their mobile devices. Here are the six scenarios that people mentioned most often. I have highlighted the apps in each category that got users' highest marks.

student evaluations are most correlated with: expected grade, teacher personality, attractiveness. "Administrators rely heavily on student evaluations of teaching, but the reality is, they don't correlate with good teaching. Students don't necessarily "like" teaching that makes them think."

Last month, we began inviting students across the countries to fire up their Web cameras or camera-phones to send us video commentaries about whether lectures work for them. Below are highlights from the first batch of submissions, which are full of frustration with "PowerPoint abuse" - professors' poor use of slide software that dumps too much information on students in a less-than-compelling fashion.

Science, math and engineering departments at many universities are abandoning or retooling the lecture as a style of teaching, worried that it's driving students away.