Group items tagged

This article discusses "the importance of structuring activities for balancing electronic communication during e-collaboration (i.e., videoconference, email, chat session, distributed use of group support system) to bridge cultural and stereotypical gaps, to increase profitable role repartition between the participants, and to prevent and solve conflicts." This is especially useful as we work to design our courses for diverse learners

An oldish but still useful Edutopia article on online video in the classroom, with some notes on fair use and on video editing software

Researchers say that some online students don't like group work. How to deal with dissonance? One idea is to have students list their reasons and then discuss. Another is to show them a video on collaboration and team-building. There are a lot of lousy team-building videos on YouTube. But here's a fun and engaging Ted Talk presentation. Why are kindergarteners better at collaboration than business school students? Tune in.

An interesting idea: student collaboration to lead and facilitate online discussions. This study says the student leaders elicited meaningful dialogue, high levels of participation and quality conversation.

Reconceptualization of the CoI framework that proposes learning presence as an additional construct in the framework. Reflects the unique contributions of students and teachers and embeds the social dimension as part of each presence (i.e., Social-Learning Presence, Social-Teaching Presence, and Socio-Cognitive Presence).

Kristy, thank you so much for locating and sharing this article and study. It's an important find. I really like the fact that it is hosted within our library system and that the authors are suggesting that the model may need some revisions - there is still much to learn and develop in the digital learning environments. Bookmarked!

This study of 80 faculty breaks out how they spend their time while teaching online.

Great article - very useful.

This is a succinct, two-page summary of OERs. It would be useful background to hand out to students.

The American Council on Education (ACE) has released a new paper on the importance of implementing a standardized approach to recognizing online degree programs across different states.

This study sets out criteria--pluses and pitfalls--to judge the effectiveness of online collaborative learning. And its conclusion summarizes with good advice: don't be afraid to overhaul and seek new methods if you find the collaboration isn't working.

This link includes a useful summary of virtual team technology tools. I like this list because it is categorized by the function/goals for the team and needs for collaboration. A way for us to consider guiding our exploration of team tools for educational groups.

"...information about online repositories, curriculum-sharing websites, sources for lesson plans and activities, and open alternatives to textbooks."

This is a good summary of how to organize our thoughts about "flipped classrooms".

This is a good summary of how to organize our thoughts about "flipped classrooms".

This is a link to an article written by a Debbie Morrison who is an instructional designer trained at George Washington University. The two salient points made in this article are that students want group activities that are meaningful to them, in other words a project about a subject, in which they have a passion or at least strong interest. The other point addressed avoiding "social loafing" which was defined as individuals believing that less work is required on their part because of they are in a group. Some of her suggestions included a group charter and keeping the group size small, such as three participants per group.

This website is designed for practitioners that want to develop online environments to build and sustain new audiences by using facilitation techniques that affect learning in these informal spaces. Below you'll find different tools that we believe can help you successfully facilitate an online environment.

This is a pretty short, not-too-challenging read with some good ideas and strategies for having teachers (K-12, but certainly could be extended to include higher ed instructors) incorporate more resources into their classrooms and learning environments. The article is from 2002, but the strategies still seem sound.

MERLOT is a CoI revolving around technology and learning objects. It is a repository of learning objects that can be accessed and used. The objects are grouped according to subject / content, and they are peer-reviewed. This is an excellent resource with something for everyone. (My personal favorite object - the "eye simulator," which demonstrates the actions of the 6 extrinsic muscles of the eye and lets you "paralyze" muscles specifically to examine the effect on eye movement - completely cool!) There is also a wealth of other information on their site (sorry - within their community :) Best of all - all the resources at MERLOT are free.

Mobile Learning: A Designer's Guide to Fighting Learner Distraction One of the biggest issues in eLearning is distractions. The brain is constantly bombarded with stray thoughts even when users exert great self-control. The problem is yet more pronounced in mLearning, as devices themselves may cause distractions such as phone calls, email alerts, and the knowledge that the user could easily be doing something different.

I follow this blog although it is primarily for course design. In any case, this topic seemed relevant to our course design assignment.

As we move into different modalities, it is nice to remember that our students will arrive in our classroom familiar with these technologies. As the use of on-line tools increase in public education, our students will arrive with a baseline comfort level with the google tools, which still remain robust for many activities. These graphics really bring this home.

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/06/handy-google-hangout-cheat-sheet-for.html This is a cheat sheet for the Google Hangout...