Digital Learning

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.

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.

Collection of articles and resources related to using the Diigo social bookmarking tool in education

Instructional consultations have consistently been shown to have a positive impact on teaching, and though one factor that influences their impact is the kind of data that guide them, little research has rigorously analyzed this aspect of the consultation. In this study, instructional consultants used either data from a midterm student feedback (MSF) session, videotaped class sessions or student ratings data as the basis of a consultation. The impact of consultation on the instructor's teaching was then assessed. Our research shows that the kind of data used in consultations has a significant influence on the impact of the consultation. In general, faculty who received MSF-based consultations had greater gains in student ratings, reported more detailed changes in teaching, and rated most aspects of the consultation at least as high as faculty who had not received such consultations. During an MSF, the instructional consultant observes part of a regular class. Afterwards, the instructor leaves the room, and the consultant confers with students about what is going well and what changes would improve their learning. The consultant prepares a summary report for a follow-up debrief with the instructor. Findings from this study also demonstrate that the instructional consultant plays a key role in assisting the faculty member to both interpret the available data and to identify strategies for teaching improvement. Drawing on their experience and professional judgment, instructional consultants had the ability to quickly direct faculty attention to specific teaching practices and avoid overwhelming the instructor with too much information.

 Motivational scaffolding consisted of using chat to run study skills support groups, where stu- dents were helped to stay on task, and instructor office hours. Students were classified as either high or low procrastinators, and randomly assigned to each version, and two instructors alternated between versions taught from one term to the other. Results showed that procrastinating students, for whom the lack of structure of distance learning may be problematic, performed better in the motivationally-scaffolded version than the traditional, while non-procrastinating students performed equally in both.

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.

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/

Digital Learning Day is a nationwide celebration of innovative teaching and learning through digital media and technology that engages students and provides them with a rich, personalized educational experience. On Digital Learning Day, a majority of states, hundreds of school districts, thousands of teachers, and more than a million students will encourage the innovative use of technology by trying something new, showcasing success, kicking off project-based learning, or focusing on how digital tools can help improve student outcomes.

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.

The PER User's Guide is a web resource for physics educators to learn how to teach more effectively by applying the results of physics education research (PER) and teaching methods based on these results. Research in the field of PER has made enormous advances in understanding how students learn physics most effectively and in developing teaching methods that apply this understanding to achieve improved student learning. The goal of this site is to provide a synthesis of decades of physics education research in a format that is easy for busy physics instructors to understand and apply.

Almost everyone today has flown in an airplane. Many ask the simple question "what makes an airplane fly?" The answer one frequently gets is misleading and often just plain wrong. As an example, most descriptions of the physics of lift fixate on the shape of the wing (i.e. airfoil) as the key factor in understanding lift. The wings in these descriptions have a bulge on the top so that the air must travel farther over the top than under the wing. Yet we all know that wings fly quite well upside down where the shape of the wing is inverted. To cover for this paradox we sometimes see a description for inverted flight that is different than for normal flight. In reality the shape of the wing has little to do with how lift is generated and everything to do with efficiency in cruise and stall characteristics. Any description that relies on the shape of the wing is wrong.

Why not replace a staid writing exercise with a medium that gives the writer the immediacy of an audience, a feeling of relevancy, instant feedback from classmates or readers, and a practical connection to contemporary communications? Pointedly, why punish with a paper when a blog is, relatively, fun?

The ECP submission form and the extensive ECP rubric provide an outstanding frame of reference for reflecting on and reviewing online course elements.  Through the years I've served as a director in the program, I have spoken with many individual faculty members as well as many members of design and development teams. Many have used the ECP rubric in a number of creative ways - helping to raise awareness on what is needed for quality online learning strategies and guiding course evaluations.  In fact, the ECP rubric identifies seventeen important elements needed for effective online learning and provides details on the criteria that would deem each category exemplary.  The ECP submission form requires careful thought and reflection about course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment, and learner support as well as a narrative describing the best practices demonstrated in the course for each category. 

12. Sign your review. Or, if you can't bring yourself to do that, at least write your review as if the author will learn your identity and you wouldn't be embarrassed. I sign all of my reviews and have done so for many years. I think if everyone did, most of the problems of nastiness in reviewing would disappear. As psychologists have repeatedly shown (e.g., Zimbardo's prison experiment), human beings do not display their best behavior when they are cloaked behind the mask of anonymity. Signed reviews will usually be more polite and diplomatic, with much less tendency for brutal, unvarnished criticism. Of course, you still want to give your honest opinion, but (as discussed above) there are helpful and unhelpful ways of relating that opinion. Nonetheless, many discussions over the years have convinced me that people object to signing their reviews for all sorts of reasons. If you fall into this category, my advice is to still write the review as if you were going to sign it. This makes it more likely that you will follow the golden rule of "review unto others as you would have them review unto you." You may still frequently need to criticize papers, but you can learn to do so in ways that are not blatantly offensive. Signed reviews may not win friends because often you are saying "don't publish this paper," but it's the right course of action, at least for me. Be willing to stand behind your words, not snipe from behind the hills. Also, if you blow a point in your review, you can be sure that the author will let you know and you can be more careful in the future.

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.

Part 1 of edited highlights of a talk given by John Hattie who has led a team at Auckland University, New Zealand which compares the effect on learning of over 100 classroom interventions. This section looks at methods with negative, or very low effect sizes. Hattie points out that most educational debate is about things which do not really work well. See also Part 2 of the lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pD1DFTNQf4&feature=related

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

Today we move that effort forward by providing a number of videos that help us better understand how these devices work and what we can do with them in the classroom.

Today's kids don't just write for grades anymore. They write to shake the world. Moreover, they are writing more than any previous generation, ever, in history. They navigate in a bewildering new arena where writers and their audiences have merged. These are among the startling findings in the Stanford Study of Writing, spearheaded by Professor Andrea Lunsford, director of Stanford's Program in Writing and Rhetoric. The study refutes conventional wisdom and provides a wholly new context for those who wonder "whether Google is making us stupid and whether Facebook is frying our brains," said Lunsford.