Group items tagged

Looking for a guest speaker for your online class? Check out Merlot.org's virtual speakers bureau. Some charge a fee; some are free. 

Engineering students at Penn State have developed an immersive virtual reality system and explain the benefits of an an immersive, tactile classroom experience for distance education students.

Interesting blog post about how VR is being used in nursing education - having students experience the world from the patient perspective. Curious how this approach might be used in courses that we're developing - public health, etc?

Interesting article about how you might go about incorporating a virtual international exchange (VIE) experience into an online course; has the potential to significantly impact student learning in many ways; this article focuses primarily on language courses, but it could easily be adapted to other disciplines. (One of OSU's goals is to increase the international exchange opportunities students receive - this could potentially become one component of achieving this.)

11 minute TED talk by the company making cool virtual labs in Unity. notes that students are bored by classic classroom teaching, and most of the current "innovations" in online teaching involve putting that same boring approach online. backs it up with some research. Points out that when you make an entertaining virtual lab with a story, students forget to check facebook for hours. Final takeaway is that the tech is here, and the next leap forward in education will come when teachers adopt it.

Join a community of learners, do-ers and teachers. Journey through a Design Thinking experience, apply it in the real world, and go forth and teach others the methodology. This is a paired activity, so there must be an even number of participants. Internet connection, a large screen or projector with sound.