Group items tagged

an account of using diigo vs. evernote

Thanks Leah, I have been playing with diigo this week and am sure that eventually it will become a "go to" site, as Evernote currently is for me. Unfortunately, I am not tech savvy, such as the people who write these commentaries, rather I am like the "old dog" who has mastered "one bone". Having become familiar with my "bone" no matter how chewed-up it is, and how old it is... it is comfortable. In this lies perhaps my biggest challenge with technology - I am not comfortable jumping from one platform to the next and transforming my "work" into new platforms at what appears to be constant speed! Is this type of classroom rendering perhaps more appropriate for younger generations??

I think it might be just like buying a car: Most will get you where you want to go, but you have to take it for a test drive to feel if it is right for you. I've not used Evernote, but now I will certainly kick the tires on it to see how it compares. When designing sound for theatrical productions, I often use Audacity, a free program, over more sophisticated programs such as Amadeus and Logic, because it is quicker to move through the interface. It cannot do as much as the other programs, but the comfort level is higher with the "get you where you need to go" mantra. And then I use the more sophisticated programs as necessary.

If you're like many individuals today, you may be feeling at least a little overwhelmed by the technology confronting you. Or maybe more than a little overwhelmed, making you think: How did I get so far behind? Don't worry, you're not alone.

The Web Literacy Map is a map of competencies and skills that Mozilla and our community of stakeholders believe are important to pay attention to when getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web.

This article breaks down some terms and nuances of online teaching that would be helpful when designing a course.

I like the way this gives a lot of information but by using bullets makes it a quick and useful read.

Comprehensive. Several individual topics covering course management to syllabus design. I couldn't find a date of publication, however. The website facultyfocus.com has other good blog posts.

Peggy, this was a great find. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these tidbits and tips. Thanks so much. The get acquainted idea and cultural diversity ideas were wonderful.

This is a great resource... I really liked the different ideas about how to organize the course.

Since we were delayed in getting to the e-Gallery, I looked around for info on strategies and found this. It provides thumbnail sketches of ten very useful strategic considerations.several of which ring very true for me. I especially like the blended teaching approach and the early participatory orientation (which Leah did with us and it worked really well!)

Results of the 8th Annual Survey of Learning Tools is a survey of over 1000 educators in 61 countries. Spoiler alert Twitter is #1. This to me negs the question how deep can learning get in 140 characters?

Universal Design in the ESL classroom

I like this list, Jane, though I feel the author Kregg Strehorn could have elaborated on some of the suggestions to explain more clearly what is meant and what a particular method entails. Maybe there was a strict word limit to which Strehorn had to adhere. In any case, some of the ideas are very interesting but also seem to be very time-consuming and potentially confusing. Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that Stehorn reads and records some of the texts they are using in the class, reads and records and transcribes lectures, gives students different assignment choices, writes detailed class outlines and shares them with students, etc. All of these ideas make sense to me, but how do you have time as a teacher (and in my/our case instructor and full-time staff member) to do all that, unless you teach the same course over and over again? I am a great supporter and believer in universal design; plus, online classes in particular are, almost by nature, using a range of tools, thus serving students with different needs. Yet, Strehorn should discuss the amount of work involved in creating this course and should also address students' responses to this course as well as potential pitfalls in terms of student assessment. Perhaps Strehorn has done so in a different place.

This 2002 essay by Wilson and Peterson may be a bit dated, but it is one of the few broadly reflective essays I found on the anthropology of online communities. It is not a "how to" for online teaching, but I think an occasionally more critical, reflective piece can be very useful both for understanding our place in broader social processes related to online learning and in piercing through some of the enthusiastic corporate-talk through which these technologies are presented by our universities. I have included the abstract below. The URL is to the JSTOR site, which you probably need to access through your Emory account. I was not sure how to add a link here that would get you in directly, and that is something I need to follow up on with Leah. Abstract: Information and communication technologies based on the Internet have enabled the emergence of new sorts of communities and communicative practices-phenomena worthy of the attention of anthropological researchers. De- spite early assessments of the revolutionary nature of the Internet and the enormous transformations it would bring about, the changes have been less dramatic and more embedded in existing practices and power relations of everyday life. This review ex- plores researchers' questions, approaches, and insights within anthropology and some relevant related fields, and it seeks to identify promising new directions for study. The general conclusion is that the technologies comprising the Internet, and all the text and media that exist within it, are in themselves cultural products. Anthropology is thus well suited to the further investigation of these new, and not so new, phenomena.

nice place to get help in creating rubrics. can be tailored for individual courses ad content.

This article outlines some ways to evaluate online courses - get faculty involved from the start and develop the rating scales...Is this authentic evaluation?

Over the last decade, larger student numbers, reduced resources and increasing use of new technologies have led to the increased use of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) as a method of assessment in higher education courses. This paper identifies some limitations associated with MCQs from a pedagogical standpoint....

Trying to catch up and get ahead as I leave town this week :) I teach beginning undergraduates in typically large (150+ students) classes, often with little or no (or ineffective) TA assistance. Multiple choice questions are an absolute necessity as a management tool. I find that many of my colleagues in traditional liberal arts colleges think that multiple choice questions are unacceptable as a means of student assessment. However, I've noticed that many of the online adaptive learning tools and licensing exams required by many professional programs (nursing among them...) are also based primarily on multiple choice questions. I looked for an article to rebut the reading from the flaguide website (http://www.flaguide.org/) which stated, "...the multiple choice test..... [is] usually most effective at measuring fact-based knowledge and the ability to perform algorithmic problem-solving...However, if our goals include different student outcomes than these....then this assessment technique will not provide useful feedback about attainment of these goals." The above article gives several ideas for creating and using multiple choice questions to assess higher order thinking, my favorite being the idea of assigning scores based not only on student answers to the questions but also their confidence in their answer. I also liked the idea of the self-tests that students can take repeatedly to check their mastery of concepts, which seems to play into the instructional design loops that we were studying in M3.

Graphics-based exampled of questions to answer in the syllabus. Ignoring the ugly UT brown color, this is a bulleted document that offers good points in simple fashion.

This lays a lot of information out nicely and is especially helpful in thinking about what the students need to get oriented to the class. Hideous brown, though, it's true.

I agree with all the above, including the poor color choice, however ... am I the only once feeling daunted and this point? I am beginning to wonder if it takes a certain "type" of faculty member to create an appropriate online course - someone who can think and manage in multiple platforms, constantly, both synchronously and asynchronously!! What about all the rest of our work engagements? how do they fit in?

I thought some of you might find this document helpful for thinking through your approach to plagiarism. The Council of Writing Program Administrators is a national organization comprised of college and university faculty who run or have professional interest in researching and running writing programs. This document is a statement of best practices for educating students about plagiarism and for building educational environments in which academic honesty flourishes.

David, This is very useful for those of us teaching writing intensive courses - thank you.

I like that this encourages working with students (even PLAGIARISTS) in order to help them get past bad or misguided habits and develop better, more ethical writing practices. Even in the short time I've been teaching, it seems like students are becoming both (a) less attentive to issues of casual plagiarism and (b) less responsive to punitive approaches. I think these guideline could be helpful, for both online and traditional courses, in helping students to think about the kinds of writers they want to be. (...or the kinds of writers *I* want them to be)

Simple concept-Great learning! This is an excellent video demonstrating 8 key tips to effectively manage, engage and get the most out of your online classes. The best part is that it is clear, straight forward and very easy to understand.

Very nice to the point tips that can easily be implemented. Also doesn't feel so overwhelming at this point in the learning curve. Thanks for sharing

McLaughlin, Jacqueline E. PhD, MS; Roth, Mary T. PharmD, MHS; Glatt, Dylan M.; Gharkholonarehe, Nastaran PharmD; Davidson, Christopher A. ME; Griffin, LaToya M. PhD; Esserman, Denise A. PhD; Mumper, Russell J. PhD In recent years, colleges and universities in the United States have faced considerable scrutiny for their apparent failure to adequately educate students.

I read this article and found it to be enormously interesting and enlightening. The course coordinator was a seasoned veteran; there were numerous resources dedicated to this venture (full time graduate TAs, dedicated IT personnel) and yet the authors report that the coordinator still required 127% more time to prepare the online components of this course. I also noticed that many of the active learning strategies discussed (think-pair-share, as an example) are things that could easily be incorporated into a non-flipped classroom.

One idea came to mind as I read the article about offloading lecture material for students so that synchronous class time can be used for discussion and problem solving: the use of case studies. Public health, business, and development work often relies on group engagement in response to case studies. The background could be presented, along with vital tools for assessing and analyzing the situation, then on-line classes could be used for rich discussion of the range of solutions and opportunities. I'm thinking of a model of a traditional pilgrimage in which pilgrims keep coming together in larger numbers the closer they get to their destination.

This is one of the techniques that I try to use when I find myself easily getting distracted. The Pomodoro Technique is a way to stay focused by alternating set periods of work and breaks (each period is a "pomodoro"). Once the basic habits are set, one can start planning out how many pomodoros an activity will take and establish a set plan for the day.

I do so enjoy the Pomodoro Technique...when I remember to use it! Excellent resource to share, Robert. One app I actually purchased.