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.

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.

With a presence both on the internet and on TV (PBS), Teaching Channel calls itself a "showcase" of "inspiring and effective teaching practices in America's schools." The organization's mission "is to revolutionize how teachers learn, connect, and inspire each other to improve the outcomes for all K-12 students across America." Browse videos by subject, grade level or topic (all from the left-hand navigation). In addition, there is a blog. Users are encouraged to subscribe, and the Teachers space is also organized by subject and grade-level, as well as by roles. The site also provides a workspace.

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.

JISC is a UK-based group that "inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies...." The e-learning program offers 5 tracks to will help teachers learn how to teach in the e-learning environment. Support includes OER.

"Technology enhanced learning (TEL) aims to design, develop and test socio-technical innovations that will support and enhance learning practices of both individuals and organisations. It is therefore an application domain that generally covers technologies that support all forms of teaching and learning activities. Since information retrieval (in terms of searching for relevant learning resources to support teachers or learners) is a pivotal activity in TEL, the deployment of recommender systems has attracted increased interest. This chapter attempts to provide an introduction to recommender systems for TEL settings, as well as to highlight their particularities compared to recommender systems for other application domains. "

According to Professors Anderson and McCormick, the Ten Principles may help designers to construct pedagogically sound e-learning materials and related activities. The principles may also help teachers to choose resources; design teaching and learning activities based on those resources; and support such activities while they take place.

By Jabari Mahiri, published by Digital Culture Books, University of Michigan Press, 2011. This book documents a collaboration between a university and a local public high school, where the high school teachers "extended their own professional learning to revitalize learning in their classrooms." The collaboration was called TEACH (Technology, Equity, And Culture in High-performing schools). The book is offered free, through this web page.

Published by the University of Nottingham (UK). This site is a "continually updated collection of peer-reviewed academic development resources...[ranging from] "2-5 minute videos [to] 500-1000 word texts...." There are a variety of entry points to access the materials, ranging from discipline areas (on this page) to themes (see Teaching & Learning themes at the top). I also like the Guest editor block (this page, lower left), where a faculty member writes a brief editorial and selects resources of interest.

By Catherine M. Casserly and Marshall S. Smith. This is a free pdf download of a chapter from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching publication, Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content and Open Knowledge.

The National Education Research and Development Centers are funded through IES's NCER. The mission of the R&D Centers is to contribute to the production and dissemination of rigorous evidence and products that provide practical solutions to important education problems in the United States. The R&D Centers achieve this mission by developing, testing, and disseminating new approaches to improve teaching and learning, and ultimately, student achievement. Each of the Centers conducts a focused program of education research in its topic area. In addition, each Center works cooperatively with NCER, conducts supplemental research within its broad topic area, and provides national leadership in defining research and development directions within its topic area. Currently, there are 18 National R&D Centers.

Considered a well-established e-COP for those interested in learning and technology (participants include ICT policy-makers, teachers, researchers, and commercial developers), the MirandaNet site shows a wide array of offerings, including publications, resources, professional development, and forums. MirandaMods, the group's version of the "unconference" is especially interesting.

I thought that this was an interesting group with an interesting website. Wondering if others of you are already familiar with this group and their work. I did see that one MirandaMod on CoP in teaching and learning included Etienne Wenger.

This journal, published since January 2004, looks to address research and innovation in teaching and learning. The journal is refereed. All issues and articles from this journal are available for free download.

from the U.S. Department of Education. Plan calls for applying the advanced technologies used personally and professionally to the U.S.'s entire education system. The plan presents five goals with recommendations for states, districts, the federal government, and other stakeholders. Goals address the five essential components of learning powered by technology: Learning, Assessment, Teaching, Infrastructure and Productivity. This page has a link to the plan (PDF).

This graduate program at NYU's Steinhardt School of Education offers an MA in Digital Media Design for Learning, a PhD, and an advanced certificate in Digital Media Design for Learning. There is a lot of emphasis on games and gaming and the primary focus appears to be K-12.

Shared because there are likely affinities between some of the students (or faculty) in this program and our own interests.

Published by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET), March 2012. This paper argues that, based on two recent studies, "job-embedded PD can be highly effective, but only when there is a sufficient infrastructure in place to support it." NIET's own program, TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement, is such a program. Cited studies: Biancarosa, G., Bryk, A.S., & Dexter, E.R. (2010, September). Assessing the value-added effects of Literacy Collaborative professional development on student learning. The Elementary School Journal, 111(1), 7-34. -- and -- Saunders, W.M., Goldenberg, C.N., & Gallimore, R. (2009, December). Increasing achievement by focusing grade-level teams on improving classroom learning: A prospective, quasi-experimental study of Title I schools. American Educational Research Journal, 46(4), 1006-1033

While this analysis seems somewhat biased (clearly written in support of NIET's own program), many of the characteristics of their program match work that KPI has done in PD.

This is the blog space of Dr. Alec Couros, professor of educational technology and media at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina. He's been blogging in this space since 2004 and, according to the About page, posts "personal reflections and resources related to teaching and learning, democratic media, critical media literacy, digital citizenship, openness, and social justice."

By Robin Wilson in the Faculty section of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept 5 2010. This article looks at the resistance to measuring learning outcomes -- and the progress that is being made, as well.

Oxford Brookes University (UK) is developing a 5-week MOOC based on the content of their course, First Steps Into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. The project is being funded by the Higher Education Academy. Many of the February 2012 posts to this blog describe the project. Stay tuned for more information.