Group items tagged

This article explains the need for e-portfolios, how they can be used as a tool, and several examples from colleges who have successfully implemented them with students. The author makes connections to the National Survey for Student Engagement (NSSE) survey, suggesting that e-portfolios may be associated with high-impact practices to improve engagement and retention. This new way of documenting evidence of learning and learning outcomes considers students as able to exercise their voice in presenting and representing their learning, with a focus on reflective learning. The author argues that since pedagogy and curriculums are changing, the way we assess students should also change to reflect this shift. This article would be most helpful for faculty and faculty development centers looking for concrete ways to implement and maximize the use of e-portfolios. The author is Vice President for Quality and Assessment at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC & U) and writes from an assessment perspective.

Since 2002, the New Media Consortium has partnered with experts in the field of educational technology, including the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI), to conduct a Delphi study and generate its annual Horizon Report on emerging trends in educational technology. The report, widely considered a respectable analysis of issues and a guide to addressing those issues, is disseminated with a Creative Commons open license for public distribution and consumption. Key themes in the NMC Horizon Report include: Infrastructure, leadership, organizational strategies, teaching and learning, curricular content, and assessment (pg. 4). The framework of the report includes sections on policy, leadership and practice (pg. 6). The report includes references for further reading on every issue presented. The references are evidence of the research conducted by the panelists involved in developing the annual report. Trends are also described as short term, mid term or long term trends, helping the reader estimate the impact of the trends on existing campus IT issues and initiatives. Some of the trends in the 2014 report support trends identified by EDUCAUSE and Gartner, while others are unique. Social media is an issue in the NMC report, but not the others, while assessment strategies using student data and technology are common among all three. The Horizon Report is unique in its daring presentation of topics that challenge conventional thought about higher education. The report predicts a significant threat to higher ed coming from online learning and emerging models of formal education. The report also highlights the power and impact of data - from learning analytics to predictive instructional models - that seem to transfer authority from professors to technology and technologists. There is a lot to consume in the Horizon Report. Analysis can be augmented with blogs and conference proceedings which review the report in part or in whole. Reading the report and supporting re

Weiss' dissertation topic centers on the required skills and knowledge of a higher ed CIO. Her research examines CIO titles, roles, responsibilities, professional development and formal education and training. Her aim was to define a process by which to evaluate the performance and success of a higher ed CIO. While I do not agree that CIOs can be assessed equally, I think the inquiry conducted by Weiss yields a valuable trove of information with which to illustrate the functional responsibilities of a CIO. She looks at the role of CIO from the perspective of campus IT stakeholders and makes an assessment based on their view and opinions of competency in a CIO. This differs from literature on the subject told from the CIO perspective, thus has value in subsequent research on the topic of CIOs.

This article covers the challenges faced by institutions who offer online courses and seek accreditation. The authors from American Public University System in West Virginia share a successful example of how their fully online institution addressed this issue by implementing an open source warehouse and semantic engine to analyze content and materials, while aligning learning activities to goals and objectives across all of the courses in their School of Business. The results shared by the authors indicate a detailed and accurate way of mapping the knowledge base to formed goals and objectives. The article demonstrates that using this technique allows for connections between goals and objectives and course content. For online colleges, this technique provides administrators the ability to quickly assess materials and effectively plan in advance for staffing and development needs. This article would be beneficial for administrators of online programs and faculty to assess learning outcomes as an automated process which might allow for more transparency within an institution.

This is a global quantitative research study conducted by SMART technologies on the outcomes of investing in collaboration technologies. There were 319 participants, selected from the United States, Europe, United Kingdom, and Asia. 100 of the participants were administrators, 158 in teaching and instruction and 58 were IT or media specialists. The participants all worked in higher education, k-12 establishments and other institutions such as ministries. A few were education administrators not affiliated with any school in particular. The study measured participants' performance levels on thirty-two best practices/ elements grouped into six dimensions namely: student collaboration, engagement and learning outcomes; teacher efficiency and retention; assessment for and of learning; flexible/blended learning; holistic system-wide practices; successful implementation. The highest scoring elements were learning through collaboration, learning culture, positive impact through sense of achievement or creativity, problem solving, online information sharing, digital content implementation and knowledge sharing. The lowest recorded scores were for advanced learning modes, remote learners and social development. The study concluded that while technology enables student improvement and better learning outcomes, a strong support system should also be in place to provide training, high quality content, and best practices. This study is valuable to educators who are interested in locating research on the effect of collaborative technology on student learning outcomes.

Since the year 2000, the higher education information technology (IT) organization EDUCAUSE has published a top ten list of issues identified by a selected panel of higher education IT professionals. The 2014 report is different because, for the first time, members of the organization were invited to rank the issues in a survey conducted after panelists had assembled lists themselves. Because of this change, the resulting data sets can be evaluated across institutional types, as defined by Carnegie Classifications, and compared to determine what differences exist for IT issues across the institution types. This data set is important when investigating emerging technology trends and assessing research from various entities such as the New Media Consortium's annual Horizon Report.

The author, Dale Niederhauser, provides important commentary on frameworks used to speculate the future of technology in schools. He explains, in brief, how Delphi studies are used by various entities to conduct inquiry and generate ideas from experts. This is important information to consider when assessing resources such as the annual Horizon Reports, published by the New Media Consortium and considered a seminal piece of the emerging technology conversation in both K-12 and higher education. The article appears in a publication of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), a world recognized leader in educational technology and aims to help educators understand the historical context in which emerging technology reports are created and delivered.

This article explains how one institution, Abilene Christian University (ACU) has focused on mobile phones and how they are successfully changing the classroom and data collection efforts. This is one example of how the traditional teaching and learning model is becoming more collaborative and interactive, now that instructors and students have equal and flexible access to information. ACU does regular self-reporting surveys of students and teachers to assess their opinions and evaluations. Based on the data collected since using devices in their courses, students are participating more during class and communication between faculty and students has increased. This article also describes how this institution has incorporated "mobile learning fellows", faculty who are given time to work on and evaluate a mobile learning project of their choice. The author is the Senior Editor of Network World magazine and this information would be helpful for faculty and administrators in information technology or instructional technology, in order to successfully implement curriculum onto mobile devices.

This article summarizes the requirements for an authentic version of a personalized learning environment, making the case that no existing system currently meets the multidimensional needs of learners. As a solution, the author proposes a new model that will meet this need, defining culture, attitude, personality, and behavior as necessary dimensions to consider in a learner-based model. The new model suggests a method to select, discover, and adapt the content considering all of the factors assessed by a "learner's profile", which looks at the relationships between these factors. This new model would be important to consider in implementing new Learning Management Systems into curriculum and working with faculty as they are using new technologies with their students. The author is a Computer Science faculty member at the University of Applied Sciences in Worms, Germany.

This blog focuses on the current lessons learned through the trends and emphasis on using video games, sometimes known as the "edutainment" movement in higher education. The author is a technology blogger for The Chronicle of Higher Education and describes how faculty can use technology to incorporate many of these lessons. One example includes: games can be used to teach problem-solving and collaborative learning. Another point of advice is similar to how video games keep track of scores; giving frequent and detailed feedback to students is important. The author cautions faculty to test online courses before going live and incorporate user design. Other suggestions include using stories and interactive games as a way to engage students, but also warns that not every course subject works as a game, and that deep learning with assessment should always be considered in implementation. This is a helpful snapshot of how to incorporate aspects of video-games for faculty who may be less familiar with edutainment strategies.

The authors of this study are two faculty members from New Zealand who sought to improve the standard of writing for their students in their first-year courses for undecided students. They describe at length how they used similar ways to improve the students' literacy skills. The faculty focused specifically on discipline-specific writing skills by engaging the students in their digital literacy skills through course assignments and group projects. This research would be helpful to use as a guideline for faculty teaching in undergraduate disciplines who are interested in learning how best engage students by tapping into their technology skills and familiarity with using online resources. The authors point to a need for supporting the unique journey students experience through their online social interactions as well as designing the online course assignments based on an initial assessment of student learning profiles.

Satish Patel, ICT coach at Umea University, describes the processes involved in designing net-based courses. Through this video, he provides a comprehensive break down of steps to take from rationale, to delivery. Patel is of the opinion that just as poorly written essays are the result of poor structural foundation or lack of understanding of teacher expectations, so are poorly taught courses the fall out of course design expertise. Course design should begin with the consideration of time and space requirements, along with learning goals. Course work can be delivered in numerous constructs of time and space, but planning should take into account the syllabus and any challenges associated therein. He recommends that teachers ask themselves what the rationales are for selecting certain tools such as wikki, blogs, etc., to determine if there may be roadblocks such as prior student preparation, and time. The next step is alighting on an ICT blend. Tools should be matched with tasks and intentions. Based on John Brigg's model of constructive alignment, Patel states that the challenge lies in figuring out how to get students to learn what teachers want them to learn. In other words matching intentions with activities, deciphering how learning objectives will be examined and related to students. Patel's preferred format for course design is a table that outlines objectives, assessment measures, practice opportunities, and presentation tools. He recommends incorporating verbs from Bloom's taxonomy into the table. The final step is conferring with an ICT specialist to recommend appropriate tools.

Gordon Friedman, president of the non-profit National Laboratory for Education Transformation, employs metaphoric prose to portray the relationship between technological advances and faculty inertia that has hindered the advancement of higher education into the twenty first century. He uses the term cloud to refer to the virtual, server-based world, and fog to depict the technological apathy and bureaucratic red taped nature of higher education that refuses to tap into the data mine available through technological systems. The cloud offers a transparent and cost effective way to systemize institutional operations. Friedman clarifies that what he advocates is not mindless extrapolation of data, but rather a shift to embrace the reality of twenty-first century students, who exist in a world where their personal data is captured by the various web applications they routinely patronize. Unlike these applications that use captured data to construct the essence of their customers, higher education remains an impersonal enterprise that does not utilize the existing data to design a more personal learning process. To Friedman, online courses, digital curricula components and apps are not sufficient, because unlike the cloud, information flow is one directional. This article is directed at higher education institutions. To lift the fog, Friedman states that colleges ought to adopt three principles of the cloud namely: identity formation and management whereby students develop a sense of ownership through the maintenance of their own identities; social networks and learning communities where learning is student centered and self paced; and data mining and assessment faculty collect and use student data to monitor the teaching and learning process.

This is a prezi by Laura Taylor, listing the stages required to sustain and integrate technology into teaching and learning. Taylor illustrates that while this is a complex endeavor, technology is now a central feature of student learning, and is constantly changing and evolving. As a result it is vital to constantly evaluate and assess learning spaces. When all stakeholders acknowledge the value of technology, educators will be more likely to implement it in their course work. The challenges however range from teacher training to the alignment of technology to learning goals. These problems can be surmounted with both technical and administrative support. For successful integration of technology, teachers should be given time to adjust and provided access to technical support. When integrated successfully, technology produces motivated learners and skilled confident staff. This prezi is for the benefit of institutions looking for resources on integrating technology into learning programs.

The author is a professor of Information Systems Management at Duquesne University. This article seems to have an intended audience of future technology professionals in higher education. The article begins with an overview of how large technology organizations such as Dell, HP, ISM, Sun, Hitachi, and Fujitsu have introduced green and sustainable initiatives. The author explains the difference between "green" and "sustainable". He differentiates that "green" is generally understood to mean friendly to the environment and energy efficient, while sustainable implies planning and in¬vesting in a technology infrastructure that serves the needs of today and the future, while conserving resources and saving money. These steps are stated in general terms throughout the article and could be considered as a guide for administrators looking to move their institution to "green IT." The recommended steps include the following: identify and prioritize the goals of a green IT initiative, assess the current situation relative to high¬ priority goals, find and execute "quick wins", and craft and communicate an action plan. The author also discusses energy efficiency improvement measures, which can range from a series of simple and inexpensive ac¬tions to much more expensive infrastructure upgrades. The author also discusses potential challenges, such as significant increases in power consumption in data centers since 2000. The article also identifies several areas of opportunity for improved energy efficiency, and encourages future leaders of higher education to demonstrate a sense of commitment to these practices through their actions. He argues that building a strong sense of awareness of green and sustainable practices may produce innovative ideas for conservation of energy and preserving the environment.