Group items tagged

The Guardian HE paper in the UK recently published an article highlighting 12 UK blogs on higher education worth following (on things from HE planning, pedagogy, online learning, research, etc.)

Interesting article that describes the student data being collected at some universities. The data is be used to "eAdvise" students into the proper programming and courses, which leads to higher retention rates. The data may be used to go as far as even monitoring card swipes and analyze student social interactions.

"The Wikipedia Education Program's vision is to mobilize and empower the next generation of human-knowledge generators to contribute to Wikimedia projects. Based on the learnings from the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program to use Wikipedia in university classrooms in the 2010-11 academic year, the Wikipedia Education Program strives to expand Wikipedia's use as a teaching tool worldwide. Professors who participate in our program assign their students to edit Wikipedia articles as part of their coursework. Students are assisted by trained Wikipedia Ambassadors, who help both in the class and on wiki. You can get a quick introduction to how the program is structured at Wikipedia Education Program/A-Z. Additional resources are available at the Education portal."

Brief article exploring: 1. What is adaptive learning technology? 2. What can it do in 2013? 3. What are it's limitations in 2013?

This article explores a few good ways to make your lectures more interactive.

"The Digital Polarization Initiative is an attempt to build student web literacy by having students participating in a broad, cross-institutional projects around issues of digital polarization. The primary purpose of this wiki is to provide a place for students to fact-check, annotate, and provide context to the different news stories that show up in their Twitter and Facebook feeds. It's like a student-driven Snopes, but with a broader focus: we don't aim to just investigate myths, but to provide context and sanity to all the news - from the article about voter fraud to the health piece on a new cancer treatment."

"Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance. This provides for consistent structural support, when required (Hogan & Pressley, 1997)."

"More than a decade after Prensky's influential articulation of digital natives and immigrants, great disagreement exists around these characterizations of students and the impact of such notions within higher education. Perceptions of today's undergraduate learners as tech-savvy "digital natives" (Prensky, 2001a), who both want and need the latest emerging technologies in all learning situations, continue to dominate the discourse in education technology research and practice. Popular yet largely unsubstantiated conceptions of digital natives are often embedded within the assumptions of contemporary research on student perceptions of emerging technologies, seemingly without regard for a growing body of evidence questioning such notions. In order to promote critical discussion in the higher education community considering potential directions for further research of these issues, especially within the Canadian context, the purpose of this review of recent literature is to analyze key themes emerging from contemporary research on the Net generation as digital natives. "

"Students pay many thousands of dollars for a college education in order to prepare themselves for the job market. If the college or university is providing the wrong stuff, that's a poor investment for the students."

"Almost 25 years have passed since Chickering and Gamson offered seven principles for good instructional practices in undergraduate education. While the state of undergraduate education has evolved to some degree over that time, I think the seven principles still have a place in today's collegiate classroom. Originally written to communicate best practices for face-to-face instruction, the principles translate well to the online classroom and can help to provide guidance for those of us designing courses to be taught online."

Extensive list of OER via Sacred Heart University.

"The following list offers 15 sources of quality digital content to use in your courses without worrying about the price tag."

"In any discipline or field, a key goal as well as challenge is supporting the learning of all students despite their many differences. Through programs, consultations, and resources, CRLT supports teachers in creating learning environments where students of all identities and backgrounds can flourish." This website provides an endless supply of fresh resources regarding inclusivity, with one page of invaluable articles or links, leading on to more and more. Spending a little or a lot of time on this site will vastly increase your understanding of inclusive teaching, provide you with tools and ideas to implement, and provide you with some of the research that substantiates all that has been included on the site.

"Generation is often used to explain and rationalize the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. However, a comprehensive review of the research and popular literature on the topic and an empirical study at one postsecondary institution in Canada suggest there are no meaningful generational differences in how learners say they use ICTs or their perceived behavioural characteristics."

This article, written by David Breneman in 1990, about the loss of liberal arts colleges is an interesting read, particularly for those who attended the Ken Steele talk.

A Toronto techie has dreamed up a website that lets students click a red "Confused" button when they don't get the lecture, sending an immediate red warning to the professor's laptop that shows what portion of the class is stumped - on a "Confusometer." The prof then can stop, explain it again and hope students start clicking their green "Understood" buttons and gradually light up the class "Understandometer.""

"Twitter is what you make of it, and its flexibility is one of its greatest strengths. I'm going to explain why I have found it useful, professionally and personally, and lay out some guidelines for academics who don't know where to start."

"A growing literature suggests that there is a disjuncture between the instructional practices of the education system and the student body it is expected to serve, particularly with respect to the roles of digital technologies. Based on surveys and focus group interviews of first-year students at a primarily undergraduate Canadian university and focus group interviews of professors at the same institution, this study explores the gaps and intersections between students' uses and expectations for digital technologies while learning inside the classroom and socializing outside the classroom, and the instructional uses, expectations and concerns of their professors. It concludes with recommendations for uses of digital technologies that go beyond information transmission, the need for extended pedagogical discussions to harness the learning potentials of digital technologies, and for pedagogies that embrace the social construction of knowledge as well as individual acquisition."

"Some professors are using Twitter in innovative-and effective-ways that benefit students. Here are five unique ways Twitter is enhancing education:"