Group items tagged

By Ian Quillen of the Digital Education (blog) in Education Week, September 2 2010. This study suggests that "Algebra I teachers who were trained in and used a program that allowed them to monitor students' progress on graphing calculators led to significantly improved achievement by their students on a researcher-designed test." This blog post (and the video link) both stress that it is the combination of technology AND professional development that has provided these positive results. \nNOTE: First link to Summary of Findings is a Texas Instruments report (TI produces the graphing calculator that is part of the study). However, the study was conducted with outside consultants, including SRI.

By Sara Lipka in the Students section of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 11 2010. Reporting on the latest report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement, which states that "Increasing college completion is meaningless unless certificates and degrees represent real learning, which community colleges must work harder to ensure."

By CC (Community College) Times, published April 21 2010. This article reports on Bill Gates's visit to Foothill College to observe the Math My Way program. From the article, "Math My Way groups cohorts of students who have similar math skill levels." Students then work in small groups, and one-on-one with instructors, as well as using both computer and paper drills and games.

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.

Article by Amy Cavender on issues and gains from using eportfolios with college students. Mentions several eportfolio possibilities in article and in comments, such as Google Sites, Mahara, Yola, Weebly, or WordPress.

By Tina Marie Macias in the advertiser. com (Louisiana), May 20, 2011. The author cites analysis by The Daily Advertiser (the print newspaper) that "the majority of 2010 ACT-tested Lafayette Parish students did not meet college readiness benchmarks." The article also compares the ACT as an indicator against TOPS (Taylor Opportunity for Students Award, a local grant).

By Kristen Amundson, Op/Ed, The Washington Post, May 27 2011. Amundson argues that the state of Virginia is doing itself a disservice by allowing high school students to graduate with a "standard diploma." The diploma requires only three years of math, leaving many students unprepared for college math and thus required to enroll in developmental math.

Based in Washington State, the stated goals of this project are: (1) "aligning standards and expectations for mathematics....(2) increasing student success in completing math requirements in high school and college....(3) building capacity of teachers and instructors to align curriculum and instruction to standards....(4) communicating math expectations to students...." The project bridges the high school/college divide.

Very good infographic on the growth in digital education and need for students, teachers and professors at all levels to be prepared to play on this field. How does or should this trend affect ePD? How does or should this trend affect high school student learning and pedagogy in the classroom whether online, blended, or face to face?

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.

Created by the Advocacy & Policy Center of the CollegeBoard and published in 2012. From About the Arch, "The Completion Arch is a web based tool that provides quick and easy access to national, state and initiative-level data that describe the progress and success of community college students." Click "Explore the Arch" for an overview and to get started.

By Marc Parry, Technology column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18 2012. This piece profiles some of the new "Big Data" innovations at Arizona State University, the largest public university in the US. There are systems to track students against the requirements of their majors; recommendations about classes in which they might be successful, etc., all towards the goal of improving retention and graduation rates.

Many provocative ideas in this article, not the least of which is how these applications speak to various "recommender systems," whether telling students what courses to take, professors how to teach, administration how to track, etc.

By Jennifer D. Jordan in the Providence Journal, Oct 20 2010. One state (Rhode Island) looks at the transition from high school to college and the steady need for developmental education among nearly 2/3 of its community college students, despite efforts made in K-12.

By Tracy Jan in the Boston Globe, May 5 2010. In Massachusetts, a new plan to "measure and report student achievement," called the Vision Project. Development of the plan included all 29 of the state's public colleges, universities, and community colleges.

A collection of related studies looking at college completion and student success from the ECS Research Studies Database. Studies are from a variety of sources -- not the ECS (e.g. Journal of Higher Education, National Bureau of Economic Research, and American Educational Research Journal).

Posted by Gerry in Spectrum > Mobile Learning, Libraries, and Technologies (blog), June 17 2010. Cites Kelly Truong in Chronicle of Higher Ed (June 17 2010) on a study by Ball State University indicating smartphone use among college students has almost doubled in one year.

by Nick Anderson, Washington Post, September 2 2010. As part of the Race to the Top, grants were made to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers ($170 million) and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium ($160 million). The Partnership "would potentially replace a single, high-stakes test with a series of assessments to be averaged into one score for accountability purposes." SMARTER "would assess students through computer-adaptive technology..." Both assessments hope to do away with the existing "bubble tests" and hope to roll out in the 2014-15 school year.

By Andrea Fuller in the Government section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2010. At North Virginia Community College, President Obama signs legislation that ends the bank-based lending system for student loans. The savings from ending this program will be used to provide spending on education. The president also announces that Jill Biden will lead a community-college summit at the White House in the fall.

By Michelle M. Kazner in The Electronic Library vol 20 (5) 2002, p 395-400. This article looks at the library support that is required by the students of LEEP, the distance learning option at University of Illinois-Champaign.

Many of the ideas expressed here might be helpful as we navigate the role of digital librarian supporting the various existing KPI communities as well as any courses/new communities that might develop in the future. Part of SM's Instructional Design course 7/11.

Produced by McKinsey & Company, McKinsey on Society division, December 2012. McKinsey & Company notes that, in many countries, we are faced with "high levels of youth unemployment and a shortage of job seekers with critical skills." In this report, they have compiled case studies of best practices from around the world (with the goal of high employment of program graduates) as well as surveying students about their own prospects based on their education. On this page, links to the report itself (as well as Executive Summary) as well as access to some of the case studies.

If the goal of postsecondary education is employment, this report starts to posit some innovations and solutions.