Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness

"Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research."

Brand new article that just came out in the Higher Education Research and Development journal. It features researchers from La Trobe University in Australia, but may be of interest to people at the U of S.

This website is from the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sydney. It features the work of Simon Barrie on graduate attributes, which is particularly interesting and important for units working on curriculum development.

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

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.""

"The Problem During lectures, it's hard for every student to let you know if they understand or if they're confused. Especially in large classes, many students are reluctant to express their confusion which limits both their learning and their enjoyment. The Solution Understoodit addresses this issue by allowing students to anonymously, and in real-time, indicate if they understand or are confused. Understoodit runs on devices that you and your students already own: smartphones, tablets, netbooks and notebooks."

"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."

"Here's a brief look at the evolution of classroom technology."

"Welcome to Piazza-a place where students can come together to ask, answer, and explore under the guidance of their instructor. It'll save you time, and your students will love using it. It's also free, and easy to get started."

An interesting resource for assessing outcomes in HE

The recent report from the Council of Ontraio Universities on Degree Level Expectations

Create and share great video lessons with your iPad or browser.

"Research indicates that students learn best by doing (the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy: applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating).  Because projects that incorporate these levels of cognition take time, they're often not included into the curriculum.  The flipped model helps to solve this issue."

David Trottier, from our ICT services on campus at the U of S, has begun a repository of interesting information related to educational technology and instructional/course design.

"Dr. Rankin, professor of History at UT Dallas, wanted to know how to reach more students and involve more people in class discussions both in and out of the classroom. She had heard of Twitter... She collaborated with a graduate student, Kim Smith, from the Emerging Media and Communications (EMAC) and reached out to EMAC faculty for advice.  As a Graduate student in EMAC I assisted her in The Twitter Experiment and documented the project to share with others. "

"I've previously highlighted a pedagogical framework for using Twitter in the classroom, as well as shared more practical advice for teaching with Twitter. Both of these posts came out of my early integration of Twitter in my classroom, way back in 2009. After taking a two-semester break from using Twitter in any of my courses, I'm back at it again this semester. Unlike previous semesters, when I had been using Twitter in an open-ended fashion, I have been much more focused this time around. Rather than trying to encourage the free-form dialogue I myself enjoy on Twitter, I've been giving my students very structured Twitter "assignments."

"Twitter is a tool that can enable ad hoc conversations and interactions among your students, in ways that you can track and foster. Your students may not all be familiar with Twitter, but its simplicity and availability, much like text messages on a phone, has a broad appeal."

This is an interesting post on using Evernote as an ePortfolio tool. It's written by a K-12 educator, but I think much of it could apply in higher ed. Students in my educational technology course used Blogger for their ePortfolios, but i can see this as an option in the future.

"Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room. Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found that Twitter is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture."

I do think that the author's conclusion about it being a great way to deal with growing class sizes due to budget cuts is simplistic and misses the point about it being a great way to engage students, period. Be sure to watch the video.

Here is the link to the current and past ISSOTL (International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) Conferences. The past conferences often feature presentations of the plenary speakers. This past year (2011) the presentation by Peter Felten and Keith Trigwell is of particular use for people working in SOTL.