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Assessment and feedback Our work on assessment and feedback supports the sector, as we advise on policy and strategy, develop resources, and coordinate a series of activities to identify and share effective practice. We work with institutions and their students to improve their approaches to assessment and feedback, including setting criteria and emphasising the importance of assessment for learning. Our Academic Integrity Service exists to raise awareness and enhance understanding of academic integrity issues in higher education, including student plagiarism We have a range of resources, both generic and subject-specific, on feedback and assessment, which you will find valuable.

Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? © 2008 Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3 (July-September 2008) A faculty development survey analyzed what faculty want and need to be successful teaching online By Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan The number of courses offered online grows every year, resulting in an increasing number of higher education faculty entering a virtual classroom for the first time.1 It has been well documented that faculty need training and assistance to make the transition from teaching in a traditional face-to-face classroom to teaching online.2 Faculty professional development related to teaching online varies widely, from suggested readings to mandated training programs. Various combinations of technological and pedagogical skills are needed for faculty to become successful online educators, and lists of recommended competencies abound.

"The tenth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States.  Based on responses from over 2,800 academic leaders, the complete survey report, "Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States" can be downloaded here. Read the press release"

"EFFECTIVE PRACTICE EVALUATION CRITERIA"

ISTE developed the NETS with input from the field and pioneered their use among educators. The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) are the standards for learning, teaching, and leading in the digital age and are widely recognized and adopted worldwide. The family of NETS-NETS for Students (NETS*S), NETS for Teachers (NETS*T), NETS for Administrators (NETS*A), NETS for Coaches (NETS*C), and NETS for Computer Science Teachers (NETS*CSE)-work together to transform education.

Literacies Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois Bill Cope, University of Illinois Paperback ISBN:9781107402195 Publication date:May 2012 464pages Dimensions: 247 x 170 mm Weight: 0.84kg In stock £45.00 With the rise of new technologies and media, the way we communicate is rapidly changing. Literacies provides a comprehensive introduction to literacy pedagogy within today's new media environment. It focuses not only on reading and writing, but also on other modes of communication, including oral, visual, audio, gestural and spatial. This focus is designed to supplement, not replace, the enduringly important role of alphabetical literacy. Using real-world examples and illustrations, Literacies features the experiences of both teachers and students. It maps a range of methods that teachers can use to help their students develop their capacities to read, write and communicate. It also explores the wide range of literacies and the diversity of socio-cultural settings in today's workplace, public and community settings. With an emphasis on the 'how-to' practicalities of designing literacy learning experiences and assessing learner outcomes, this book is a contemporary and in-depth resource for literacy students.

New York Times to Suspend Online-Education Program June 11, 2012, 6:37 pm By Angela Chen The New York Times is bowing out of the online-education business just as a growing number of colleges are putting their own courses on the Web. Knowledge Network, the distance-learning initiative started by the company in September 2007, will suspend operations on July 31, a company spokesperson said today.

"Wednesday, July 10, 2013 Bring Your Own Device #BYOD - 5 Lessons for Success Guest post by Craig Crittendon The Network Engineer's Nightmare.. I knew it was going to be an interesting phone call (any call usually is before 8:00 in I.T.).    When the teacher asked why she couldn't get to "insertwebsite.com" and her kids were arriving in 15 minutes for the first BYOD pilot class, I took my first deep breath of the morning…. The second call came about 8:25…  She was still trying to get students logged into their devices…  A technology specialist and a tech were trying to assist….  Some had limited connectivity to our wireless; others were trying to reach their carrier network, which didn't have a good signal in that part of the building.  The app she was trying to get everyone on wasn't working and wouldn't pull up for everyone… And that's how the first couple of weeks went... The teacher was frustrated and her students were behind schedule.  The principal was not pleased.  One month and a half into the program, they ordered 30 iPads, and the official BYOD pilot unofficially became a 1:1 iPad project. What happened?  The teacher seemed prepared the week before. Here are lessons we learned."

"Thought Leadership Over the past twenty years, Don and others have literally "written the books" on organizational transformation to meet the emerging context of the Knowledge Age. The Strategic Initiatives team has combined thought leadership and artful practice to shape the leading edge of thinking on leading and navigating change, crafting and executing strategy, focusing on value, and performance measurement. Our team has also defined best practice in e-learning, knowledge-sharing and developing e-knowledge repositories, and designing technology-rich facilities for Knowledge Age applications. Strategic Initiatives uses thought leadership to generate the insights that position our clients for success. Our thought leadership has been manifested in publications, presentations and speaking appearances, satellite/Web broadcasts, and other venues."

Exploring Students' E-Textbook Practices in Higher Education ShareShare RecommendLog in to Recommend by Aimee deNoyelles, John Raible, and Ryan Seilhamer Published on Monday, July 6, 20150 Comments Key Takeaways A two-year university-wide study of students' e-textbook practices found that e-textbook use has increased and become broader demographically. Lower cost and convenience remain the top reasons students purchase an e-textbook, not the interactive features designed to enhance learning. The instructor's role has not changed significantly in the past two years, suggesting the need for further professional development including increased awareness, instruction, and active modeling.

Watch the final video that caps the entire Reinvent the University for the Whole Person series. The 15-minute documentary-style video synthesizes what we accomplished through the work of all six roundtables and weaves together the very best contributions from 40 top-tier experts and innovators who helped figure out how universities could integrate the best aspects of a liberal arts education for the whole person with the new possibilities of digital tools, the online world, and the learning sciences.

Russell T. Osguthorpe Center for Teaching and Learning Brigham Young University

Action research is any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn. The information is gathered with the goals of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in general, and improving student outcomes.

"The 2010 Sloan Survey of Online Learning reveals that enrollment rose by almost one million students from a year earlier. The survey of more than 2,500 colleges and universities nationwide finds approximately 5.6 million students were enrolled in at least one online course in fall 2009, the most recent term for which figures are available. "This represents the largest ever year-to-year increase in the number of students studying online," said study co-author I Elaine Allen, Co-Director of the Babson Survey Research Group and Professor of Statistics & Entrepreneurship at Babson College. "Nearly thirty percent of all college and university students now take at least one course online.""

"NEW YORK - A soldier in Afghanistan learned about the death of Osama bin Laden on Facebook. A TV producer in South Carolina got a tip from comedian Kathy Griffin on Twitter. A blues musician in Denver received an email alert from The New York Times. And a Kansas woman found out as she absently scrolled through the Internet on her smartphone while walking her dog."

"Introducing Open Badges: a new online standard to recognize and verify learning"

(CNN) -- Anything creative begins with a question. The problem is that questions take us into uncertainty, which is a very dangerous place to be. If there were a predator next to you and your brain wasn't absolutely sure what to do, then it'd probably be too late. The need to translate ambiguous sensory information into meaningful behavior has been the fundamental drive of brain evolution, without which survival in a complex world would not have been possible. And yet a deep irony is that the best questions -- i.e., the ones that challenge our deepest sense of what is true -- create the most uncertainty.

March 29, 2012 No Financial Aid, No Problem. For-Profit University Sets $199-a-Month Tuition for Online Courses Matt McLoone Of his tuition pricing for New Charter University, the educational entrepreneur Gene Wade says: "This is not buying a house. This is like, do I want to get cable?"Enlarge Image By Marc Parry It's a higher-education puzzle: Students are flocking to Western Governors University, driving growth of 30 to 40 percent each year. You might expect that competitors would be clamoring to copy the nonprofit online institution's model, which focuses on whether students can show "competencies" rather than on counting how much time they've spent in class. So why haven't they? Two reasons, says the education entrepreneur Gene Wade. One, financial-aid regulatory problems that arise with self-paced models that aren't based on seat time. And two, opposition to how Western Governors changes the role of professor, chopping it into "course mentors" who help students master material, and graders who evaluate homework but do no teaching.

STELLARnet Deliverables Repository D1.1 The STELLAR vision and strategy statement D1.2 Trends in Connecting Learners. First Research & Technology Scouting Report. D1.3 1st report on the Delphi study D1.3A Additional report on the STELLAR Delphi study. D1.4 The 2nd Grand Challenge Vision and Strategy Report D1.5 Trends in Classroom Orchestration. Second Research & Technology Scouting Report. D4.1 Establishing the Doctoral Academy D4.2 Establishing the scholarship programme D4.4 Achievements and Perspectives (2010) in Building Next Generation Capacity

Reflections on panel session: Institutional minimum standards for VLE use (Durham Blackboard Conference 2012) Part of a series of posts on the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference 2012. This post is a summary of the discussion that took place in the panel session on the topic 'The Implications and Practicalities of Agreeing and Enforcing a Threshold Standard of use of a VLE in an Education Institution' chaired by Mike Cameron of Newcastle University. The session took place at 4.30pm on 5 January 2012. Throughout I have added my own take on the issues raised.