Group items tagged

Editorial from The New York Times, February 18 2013. This editorial points out the pitfalls of online college, identifying student attrition rates (in online courses) and the extra attention that "struggling" students need. The Times advocates for hybrid courses, as well as improving course design for any courses that are delivered 100% online.

Quia is short for Quintessential Instructional Archive. It provides instructional tools including: templates for creating online activities, online testing tools, access to over 3 million online activities and quizzes, a schoolwide network to promote collaboration, a centralized classroom management system, a class Web page creator and online surveys for gathering student and teacher feedback

Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. This resource hosts communities for members to contribute and share learning and teaching materials. The communities are categorized by higher education disciplines. In addition to contributing materials, members can comment about outside learning materials that are used, share information about themselves and knowledge about their discipline, put together personal collections to use in the classroom and become a Peer Reviewer of learning materials in member's discipline. In addition to discipline communities, there is the Community of MERLOT Partner Academic Support Services (COMPASS). This community is made up of ePortfolio, Faculty Development, Library and Information Services, Online Courses and Pedagogy. The ePortflio Portal centers educational resources around ePortfolio use in higher education, among students and faculty. Partner Communities like GLOBE extend the MERLOT network. The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) alliance was established between ARIADNE Foundation in Europe, Education Services Austrailia, LORNET in Canada, National Institute of Multimedia Education (NIME) in Japan and MERLOT with the goal to "work collaboratively on a shared vision of ubiquitous access to quality educational content." The majority of MERLOT members are faculty/instructors and the balance are students, campus administrators, librarians and other members of higher education who are concerned with online learning materials, technology, teaching and learning, and innovation.

By Anya Kamenetz in the Education column of GOOD magazine (Online), August 29 2011. The idea behind the Edupunk concept is a DIY approach to education in order to make education truly student-driven, and to make good use of the great variety of resources available on the Internet. To that end, Kamenetz, author of The Edupunk's Guide (a free ebook) offers these ideas regarding online research.

Much as the Edupunk movement fails to value the importance of a good teacher to guide and support the student's learning experience, this post fails to take librarians and libraries into account. That said, there are some great sites and sources on this list, though no mention of how students should evaluate the accuracy, currency, or authority of these sites. What do you think?

By Josh Fischman, and part of The Chronicle (of Higher Education's) 2011 Special Report on Online Learning, published Nov 6 2011. Central Piedmont Community College developed an Online Student Portal learning system to improve retention among its students. They have had success with the system (in use 2004-2008). Now, with a Next Gen grant, they will roll the system out to 6 additional local schools to see if they can match the retention improvements. The system is based both on learning styles and on frequent intervention by students and counselors.

Originally bookmarked by Brenda. By Terry Anderson. Chapter 2 of The theory and practice of online learning, ed Terry Anderson, published by Athabasca University, 2E, 2008. In this chapter, Anderson looks at learning theories generally, in order to look at and develop more useful theories of online learning.

By L. Kupczynski, P. Ice, R. Wiesenmayer, and F. McCluskey in Journal of Interactive Online Learning, vol 9 (1), Spring 2010, pp. 23-43. Based in the Community of Inquiry Framework, this paper looks at the interactions between teaching, social and cognitive presence in the online learning experience.

This is an online exercise where writers can practice creating a Works Cited page (MLA style). Books and articles are given, and there is a link to the correct version of the Works Cited page, so students can check their answers. There is no attribution, but this is a learning object presented by Wisc-Online. Items in this digital library were "developed primarily by faculty from the Wisconsin Technical College System...."

M.Z. used this resource in class, week 11, semester 2.

Developed by Wisc-Online and authored by Tracy Helixon and Dan Rooney, n.d.

AH shared this example of a Wisc-Online offering for the English/writing folk.

Wisc-Online, developed by faculty form the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) is a "digital library of Web-based learning resources called 'learning objects'." Categories include Business, General Education, Health, Professional Development, Service and Technical, with sub-categories under each.

AH recommended this library of learning objects, also drawing attention to the "game builder area," in which you can create an account and save favorites which can later be compiled to resource lists.

by Jon Marcus on The Hechinger Report, December 26, 2011. Open University, a successful British online public university to be used as a model in the U.S. The goal is to help students who are intimidated by higher education adapt to and succeed in college. Next Generation Learning Challenges, a Gates funded initiative, will adapt two free Open University, at-your-own-pace online courses for use at about a dozen U.S. colleges and universities this academic year: one to help students be more comfortable with math so they do better on placement tests or move more quickly through remedial courses, and another to teach students skills to prepare them for college.

World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that enables thousands of players from across the globe to come together online for an adventure through the fantasy worlds.

Novel by Cory Doctrow. Published by Tor Teen, 2008. This book has been published both in print (see WorldCat or Amazon to find a copy) and for free, online (at this link) under Creative Commons license. This is tagged with technology; online texts provide new opportunities for teachers and students.

MyWritingLab, a product of Pearson Education, is an online learning program that includes diagnostic tests, online exercises, and an online gradebook.

L.H. mentions this as a textbook plus online grammar arrangement that she is planning to use this semester.

L.H. describes her efforts to test My Writing Lab with her students, see Week 3, semester 4.

"This article provides a rationale for incorporating the development of critical thinking skills into the online learning environment. The author also presents possibilities for building these cognitive skills into online classes. She maintains that incorporating critical thinking skills is a necessary component of learning; these skills assist learners to evaluate and link the abundance of information and ideas that is available via information communication technologies (ICTs). "

By Kevin Carey in the Commentary section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15 2011. Carey cites a recent negotiation between the US Departments of Education and Labor in which community colleges can compete for federal funds "to serve students online" but, in exchange, will also provide those online tools, free, via Creative Commons license.

Posted by Tony Bates to his blog on August 1, 2011. Bates, who runs a consultancy to teach about e-learning, argues that online learning is ever more important in post-secondary education (he writes from Canada, but his statistics are for all of North America), but that most post-secondary teachers have been trained very little in pedagogy and "teaching" at all, less so in online teaching and learning. He seeks comments and feedback to his argument.

A learning object developed by Wisc-Online. This object, also titled Factoring a Quadratic Trinomial, was authored by Roy Peterson, n.d.

AH shared this object to the coffeeklatch, reflecting that many in her Circle were teaching polynomials this week.

Website of the online journal, published at Bowling Green State University. The journal publishes on the theoretical and the practical, as well as articles covering professional development and reviews of relevant products/apps.

WHEN a college textbook, "Principles of Biology," comes out from the Nature Publishing Group in January, one place it won't be is on the shelves of school bookstores. Enlarge This Image An interactive graphic in "Principles of Biology," an electronic textbook from Nature Publishing, teaches students about the symptoms of a stroke. Enlarge This Image An interactive graphic from Wolfram Research lets readers change the display parameters of an oil spill. That's because the book was designed to be digital-only. Students will pay not for a printed edition at a bookstore, but for permanent access on the Internet ($49).