Group items tagged

"Survey confirms that majority of Canadians agree mobile phones are an invaluable tool for students; unlimited mobile data plans enable Mobile Student 2.0 movement Toronto, ON - August 9, 2012 - Mobilicity today released new research findings pointing to the increasing role smartphones are playing in and out of the classroom. The Mobile Student 2.0 Survey found that 66 per cent of Canadians would use a mobile phone to conduct online research anywhere, anytime; 46 per cent would download mobile apps to help stay organized; 41 per cent would record lectures and tutorial sessions; and 42 per cent would coordinate school and social activities if they were a student. Moreover, the majority of Canadians (56 per cent) think that mobile phones are an invaluable tool for students. The Mobile Student 2.0 refers to the next-gen student who relies on a smartphone with Internet usage to enhance their education and social life. "

"This is the 6th annual conference on blended learning sponsored by COHERE (Collaboration for Online Higher Education & Research) and CSSHE (Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education). It will feature Dr. Tony Bates, the well known scholar and commentator on the use of technology in higher education. His latest book is Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2011). In addition to taking an active part in the entire conference and doing the conference wrap-up, Tony will deliver the following keynotes: Meeting the challenge of technology: are we failing as managers? Designing university teaching to meet the needs of 21st century students The conference will also feature a number of concurrent sessions, for which we invite proposals related to one of the following streams: 1. Taking stock of blended learning in higher education: Management, policy, and research issues 2. Case studies of teaching and learning issues related to blended learning"

Research Methods in Education

"It found that more structured on-boarding tactics made employees happier and more confident, and more likely to believe they fit both the job and organization. In turn, those who went through a structured program were significantly more likely to feel engaged and loyal to their employer than those that didn't the researchers estimate "In most organizations, they think of the on-boarding process as primarily imparting information, which is necessary, but that's not enough," Prof. Gruman said. Additionally they need to create opportunities for employees to quickly develop a social network, establish where to get information and support, provide work that's engaging enough to make them feel they are making a contribution and feedback that they are valued, the researchers found."

"Mobile Initiatives 'Breaking Down the Walls of the Classroom' at Abilene Christian U Small private college Abilene Christian University has entered the fourth academic year of its mobile education initiatives, and the program's momentum and influence is still growing. The Texas institution, which has added the Apple iPad to its list of devices made available to students and faculty, along with the iPhone and iPod touch, recently hosted a Connected Open House, with attendance by people from dozens of other schools. The university is also running numerous mobile-oriented research projects among its faculty and recently opened three new mobile research centers sponsored by a sizeable grant from AT&T."

This article discusses research on students' ability to read text presented online. It provides some good food for thought in designing our courses, especially the content-heavy courses. Should we be encouraging more page breaks? What do you think?

"Online education is often held out as a way to increase access to higher education, especially for those -- adult students, the academically underprepared, members of some minority groups -- who have historically been underrepresented in college. But that access is meaningful only if it leads somewhere, and if the education students get helps them reach their goals. New data from a long-term study by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University's Teachers College suggest that some of the students most often targeted in online learning's access mission are less likely than their peers to benefit from -- and may in fact be hurt by -- digital as opposed to face-to-face instruction. The study did not, however, account for the quality of the online courses studied, making it difficult to draw from its findings overly sweeping generalizations about the efficacy of online learning."

Interesting article on online learning - completion rates, completers . . .

Analytics in Higher Education: Benefits, Barriers, Progress, and Recommendations The objectives of this research were to assess the current state of analytics in higher education, outline the challenges and barriers to using analytics, and develop a maturity index to provide a common means of assessing progress in analytics.

These skills and competencies for digital curators include seven areas: 1) Communication and interpersonal competency: This competency is required for clear and effective communication with a variety of audiences, including users, creators, managers, researchers and collaborators. 2) Curating and preserving content competency: This competency is required to understand and carry out a range of activities as defined in the digital curation lifecycle model, including the creation, acquisition, management, representation, access, organization, transformation and preservation of digital content. 3) Curation technologies competency: This competency is required to identify, use, and develop tools and applications to support digital curation activities. The context of this competency is the information technology infrastructure, including the tools and applications deployed to support digital curation. 4) Environmental scanning competency: This competency is required to identify and use resources to stay current and on the leading edge regarding trends, technologies and practices that affect professional work and capabilities within the field of digital curation. 5) Management, planning and evaluation competency: This competency is required for planning, coordinating, implementing, and assessing programs, projects and services related to digital curation. 6) Services competency: This competency is required to identify, understand and build services to respond to a community's and/or institution's digital curation needs. 7) Systems, models and modeling competency: This competency is required for high-level, abstract thinking about and critical analysis of complex systems, workflows and conceptual models related to digital curation.                                                                      Robin Good

Instructional Gaming & What research tells us about creating game based learning.

"The author of the best-selling What the Best College Teachers Do is back with more humane, doable, and inspiring help, this time for students who want to get the most out of college-and every other educational enterprise, too. The first thing they should do? Think beyond the transcript. The creative, successful people profiled in this book-college graduates who went on to change the world we live in-aimed higher than straight A's. They used their four years to cultivate habits of thought that would enable them to grow and adapt throughout their lives. Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame, or the admiration of people in their field, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguished the best college students from their peers. These individuals started out with the belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, to develop a "meta-cognitive" understanding of their own ways of thinking, and to find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for right answers. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn't achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks in order to learn and grow."

Look what BC has for their students. A live chat for students to ask questions about research, citations, libraries, etc. It doesn't matter what school you go to. Cool!

A summary of common learner experiences with MOOCs and Open Online Learning. Compiled using reflective pieces directly from students. Outlines common themes that came out of the research

This article raises some great questions - how much "instruction" do we still need to give to students on using things such as the "play" feature etc.? Can we assume they have the skills - or do we need to do a little research to find out what types of instructions that seem obvious to us might not be obvious to them, and vice versa. Food for thought! Connie