Group items tagged

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 Derek Bruff, November 6, 2011. The best justification of the Innovation Lab premise that I have seen. "Sharing student work on a course blog is an example of what Randall Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, of Georgetown University, call "social pedagogies." They define these as "design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an 'authentic audience' (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course."" Often our students engage in what Ken Bain, vice provost and a historian at Montclair State University, calls strategic or surface learning, instead of the deep learning experiences we want them to have. Deep learning is hard work, and students need to be well motivated in order to pursue it. Extrinsic factors like grades aren't sufficient-they motivate competitive students toward strategic learning and risk-averse students to surface learning. Social pedagogies provide a way to tap into a set of intrinsic motivations that we often overlook: people's desire to be part of a community and to share what they know with that community. My students might not see the beauty and power of mathematics, but they can look forward to participating in a community effort to learn about math. Online, social pedagogies can play an important role in creating such a community. These are strong motivators, and we can make use of them in the courses we teach.

Presented on P2PU (Peer 2 Peer University), "a grassroots open education project," this new course on online, self-directed learning is being presented by Anya Kamenetz. In this particular course, participants are directed through the processes of writing a personal learning plan, building a personal learning network, and finding a mentor, all while sharing the process with their fellow learners. Unlike many of the other P2PU courses (which have a more topical focus), this is open to those who want to learn on any subject.

Article by Peter Chepya (professor of instructional design at Post University in CT) in 2005 on E-Personality: The Fusion of IT and Pedagogical Technique, how to create the 'there" on line. The excerpt below speaks to the transformation that occurs with Jam newcomers as they move from text-based exchange to passionate dialogue online. We need to figure out how to convey this in a Jam video. Excerpt: My online teaching relies on the "human element," expressed in features such as companionability and presence. The cumulative effect creates an atmosphere I call "presence learning" as opposed to the outdated misnomer "distance learning" often used with Internet courses. Presence learning creates a palpable connection between the instructor and the student, engaging students in "reality," not "virtual reality"--another outdated aphorism. Once while delivering a paper at a conference of online educators, I was challenged by a participant who thought my online course (being projected onto a screen) was "heavy on the text." Upon learning that the questioner's field was American literature, I asked hi if he thought Moby Dick was "heavy on the text." If the work is compelling, the medium disappears and the experience becomes actual. ...We came to accept the telegraph as "real" communication, as we then did the telephone, radio, recorded music, television, and cinema. We forgot the medium in each case.

Headed by Amy Bruckman, Associate professor at Georgia Tech, this Electronic Learning Communities center engages Ph.D. level students in studying the application of constructionist social learning online. They are doing some fascinating work, such as developing software to support leaders of learning communities, offering young A-A males the chance to be game testers and to use that experience credential as a route into computer science studies and careers, etc. These are but two research examples; there are more.

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.

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.

This research is why I was encouraging host ambassadors to upload their pictures and profiles--they can be far more successful than I at engaging their peers in Polilogue-learning prior to the Conference.

A program of the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (Australia), this is an online project that aims to help teachers "gain a working understanding of successful online teaching pedagogies that they can apply in their own unique teaching situations."

Published by Rita Kop on her blog, Jan 5 2012. Kop is working as a researcher looking at Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Personal Learning Environments (PLEs).  In this bibliography, she shared her recent research on the MOOC PLENK2012 (a MOOC about PLEs). 

Posted by dskmag on the blog Design for Learning, May 28 2011. This blog is written by Dean Groom, who has an interest in "embedding new pedagogical classroom practice to create authentic, realistic and relevant learning for today's learners." This post describes ways to make LMS (and online courses) more engaging, following a gaming/Xbox model.

By Todd D. Reeves and Joseph J. Pedulla in Professional Development in Education, vol 37 (4), 2011. A look at the USA's e-Learning for Educators (EfE), specifically and at online professional development (OPD) more generally. NOTE: This page has abstract only. For full article, check with your library.

NOTE: OPD (online professional development) might be a good keyword.

By Beth Fertig, reported on WNYC March 24, 2010. In this education feature, Fertig reports on an experimental afterschool program called School of One, an individualized math program where students work online with math tutors and also occasionally work together. Their self-paced work plan is based on frequent online assessments. Daniel Willingham is quoted for his work on learning styles. MP3 is available, in addition to the transcript.

By Oliver Dreon, PhD in Online Education section of Faculty Focus website, May 13 2013. Citing research titled Critical inquiry in a text-based environment...from The Internet and Higher Education (2000), the author have 5 steps to improve the community aspect of online classes, including introductions and a "common area" for students to meet for discussions that are off-topic.

Confirming much of what we've learned with our communities.

MOOC and higher ed

From the blog Connectivism by George Siemens, December 14 2011. Siemens argues the importance of artifacts to help students make sense of their experiences in MOOCs and other online learning experiences.

Thinking about the critical nature of artifacts to learners making sense of their e-experience makes me wonder how to encourage submission of such "sensemaking" artifacts to our Jams and e-communities.

By Ellen Wagner and Phil Ice in Eduause Review Online, July 18 2012. A look at learning analytics and how they are being utilized in higher education.

On the same theme as the recently bookmarked article in The Chronicle.

By Debbie Garber, The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, vol 5 (2), August 2004. This paper goes beyond technology to look at "the social process on which an online learning community if it is to flourish and be useful." Also stresses "importance of nurturing the community's health, and the natural life cycle of a virtual community...."

By Katie Ash in the Digital Education blog of Education Week, Sept 1 2010. Ash quotes a study by e-Learning for Educators that finds online PD improved teachers' "instruction and subject knowledge" and "produced gains in student achievement."

By Joshua Kim of the blog BlogU, part of Inside Higher Ed, March 29, 2010. Kim reflects on the more successful online learning experiences that he's taken part in, and points to three attributes that made these experiences successful. The comments section also provides some interesting links.