Group items tagged

Interesting article incorporating experiential learning theory into online teaching. This allows courses to enhance the learning power of learners, empower learners and challenge learners as they move through a series of planned learning cycles.

somewhat of a commercial for online learning, but does a good job of outlining global concerns of non-traditional learners. Curiously, like many articles that are older, it seems to attempt to define the non-traditional learner as an older learner, not younger technology savvy learners and those who learn differently.

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.

Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum

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!)

Since 1948 we have helped millions of students who are blind, dyslexic or have other learning disabilities achieve confidence and independence in the classroom and in life. More about our mission We work with our partners to raise awareness of learning differences.

When I was a graduate student, I volunteered with this organization (formerly known as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic). I read fiction books and textbooks, recording in a booth on my own or with a director. Volunteers completed training to learn how to cue the audio reader to turn book pages, to transition between text and pictures or figures, and to indicate punctuations (ellipsis, quotations, subscript/superscripts, etc.). The experience helped me to improve the use of my voice in communicating to learners and the ways to chunk the information appropriate for visually impaired and dyslexic learners. As Learning Ally, the organization now offers professional development for teachers to help them with utilizing the wide range of audiobooks in their collection.

Downloaded the free 40 page book from this site. Logic + emotion = learning. Some really great tips about adult learners. Hints on visual design, "telling a story to engage the learner." allowing them to finish the story and lot of other jewels in these 40 pages. Great find!

I'm sharing this slideshow from a presentation I gave last year on Facilitating Metacognition in Asynchronous Online Discussions because 1) the topic is relevant to our discussion this week, and 2) SlideShare is one of our Mashup options in Blackboard. I tested it this week and it shows up well, so wanted to demonstrate for any faculty interested. The analytics are a nice additional feature. FYI for those experimenting with social media ideas with your learners, I have also embedded SlideShare links into Tweets, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that you can view an entire slideshow in a tweet.

Although I am not completely enamored of the final proposed model, which I think oversimplifies the very issues their analysis distinguishes, I do find this article useful in giving names to a number of factors we have found ourselves discussing: e.g., learner-interface interaction, transaction v. interaction, interaction v. interactivity, provocateur v. academician. Useful for our ongoing conversation.

The centrality of teaching actively comes up a lot. All is not lost! Teaching presence is the key to social and cognitive presences.

This study affirms the need to attend to individual differences among learners. Whatever technologies we use or approaches we take, we need to keep in mind that there will be significant variation in how students use all these components of the course. Aim too low and we lose the top to boredom. Aim too low and we lose the bottom to confusion. I think this means we need to be reactive and be ready to alter plans and methods as needed. Leah demonstrated this when she made the group project optional.

faculty development specialists must pay close attention to the aspects of course development that are critical to the success of student learners. The likelihood of success is greatly increased when instructional design is integrated with the course's delivery tool. At ISU such integration is facilitated through the use ofWebCT, the course management system (CMS) supported by the university. Does Emory have such a tool?

Authors: Lehman, Rosemary M. and Conceicão, Simone C. This volume highlights the need for creating a presence in the online environment. The authors explore the emotional, psychological, and social aspects from both the instructor and student perspective. It provides an instructional design framework and shows how a strong presence contributes to effective teaching and learning. Contains methods, case scenarios, and suggested activities.

Practitioners are regularly confronted with significant events which present them with learning opportunities, and yet many are unable to recognise the learning opportunity these significant events present. The ability to recognise a learning opportunity in the workplace and learn from it, is a higher-order cognitive skill which instructors should be seeking to develop in learners.

These guidelines focus specifically on hybrid course design and instruction beginning with Fundamental Questions, moving through Best Practices and also covering pitfalls and practices to avoid.

Hey, Ginny, I liked this post. It is bulleted and right to the point. It also brings up something that concerns me for our students, specifically tidbits for what to do (and NOT do) when students are enrolled in multiple hybrid courses. Thanks

This is a very helpful resource, as it is presented for the novice learner and has lots of basic details that I'm trying to make sense of. Thanks for sharing.

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

Tinto, V. (2003). Learning better together: The impact of learning communities on student success. Higher Education monograph series, 1(8). The theme for M5 is "community, presence and interactions." This piece by Tinto is a pretty quick read and although it doesn't address online learning in particular, I thought it was appropriate as it emphasizes the idea that it takes a community of learners to make effective learning happen. He discusses 3 things all learning communities have in common: shared knowledge, shared knowing and shared responsibility (which really struck me as we start our group project).