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bartmon

Newell sees no distinction 'between games and educational games' | Joystiq - 0 views

www.joystiq.com/...en-games-and-educational-games

shared by bartmon on 24 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • "The interesting thing about Portal 2 is it doesn't sort of fit the traditional simplistic model of what a game is. It's not a collection of weapons. It's not a collection of monsters. It's really about science. It's about spatial reasoning, it's about learning physics, it's about problem solving.
  • "There seems to be this distinction between games that are educational, and games that are going to be commercially successful. I'm not really sure I buy into that."
  • A lot of times [the label] 'educational games' is a way of being an excuse for bad game design or poor production values."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "Games are becoming increasingly useful as educational tools. From our perspective, it's one of the things we always think about -- we always think about games as a learning experience. You can't design a game without thinking about the progression of experiences and skills that a person is gonna have. The value that we have is that they're self-directed. Rather than that being a problem -- rather than resisting the chaotic nature of an individual one-on-one play experience that people have, we embrace it."
  • "Someone should write a book, "Everything I Needed to Know to be Successful I Learned From World of Warcraft."
  • "In terms of what educational psychologists are sort of starting to discover about what are the highest value educational experiences, games are a lot closer to being those things than traditional middle school/high school kinds of curriculum,"
  • bartmon on 24 Jun 11
     
    Some interesting notes from Gabe Newell's keynote at Games for Change. This is interesting because it's the first time a president and figurehead for one of the biggest game developers out there has really put a stake in the ground for using games as educational tools.
Allan Gyorke

Penn State Live - Garden of delights: The Arboretum at Penn State - 1 views

live.psu.edu/53752

mobility mobile learning ipad ipod college of education

shared by Allan Gyorke on 22 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Chris Millet on 22 Jun 11
     
    A project out of College of Ed that ETS collaborated on.  This group created some augmented reality apps for the iPod and iPad to help young students (I believe 3rd or 4th grade) learn about their natural environment, in particular how to identify trees.  Pretty cool stuff.
  • Allan Gyorke on 28 Jun 11
     
    "During the event, faculty and staff led children through a variety of hands-on learning stations. For example, Zimmerman, along with Associate Professor of Education Susan Land and a team of six education graduate students, led a station titled, "Tree Investigators," in which they used iPads and iPods (provided by Penn State's Educational Technology Services) to give the kids an in-depth lesson on how to identify trees. "We used iPads to figure out what type of tree we were planting," said Collin Wayne, a student from Park Forest Elementary School, who attended the event. "We were in groups and we used a tree-finder app. You take a picture of a symbol and it tells you about the tree.""
  • Allan Gyorke on 28 Jun 11
     
    Penn State Live article about a College of Education project. Elementary school students used iPads and iPod Touches to interact with data about trees in the arboretum. We talked with Susan Land and Heather Zimmerman about the project and helped out by loaning them some equipment. Future partnerships with them are in the works.
gary chinn

Where to hack education and where to stack it | VentureBeat - 0 views

venturebeat.com/...ducation-and-where-to-stack-it

education innovation

shared by gary chinn on 29 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • It’s great to have smart people and money helping to discover and build innovations in education. But does Fred Wilson really advocate getting rid of schools entirely in favor of teaching each other on the internet? If not, then how far do we want to go? Indeed, we need to make distinctions here. Education is a many fangled thing, not all of it served well by hacking. In some areas, our kids will be better served if we stack (that is, double down on what already works) instead of hack their experiences
  • gary chinn on 29 Jun 11
     
    interesting perspective, I like the notion that education isn't a monolith but instead a collection of intertwined areas.
bartmon

Portal 2 Authoring Tools for schools: Newell explains | Joystiq - 0 views

www.joystiq.com/...ls-for-schools-newell-explains

shared by bartmon on 23 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • turning the game into a more direct learning experience, with custom tools to match educational programs. "We just add another layer on top of the authoring tools to simplify the production of those spaces," Valve head Gabe Newell explained to us this afternoon.
  • the level creation tool for the PC version of Portal 2 gets another layer of interaction on top of the placement of, say, platforms or boxes. "If you give us a lesson plan, we can give you a tool that allows kids to build content to lock down those lessons,"
  • "The layering on top of it of the framework for giving people a direct physical experience of physics is there, but you have to tell me exactly how you want to measure whether or not your students are successful or not."
  • bartmon on 23 Jun 11
     
    This is crazy...one of the top developers (Valve) building an 'educational layer' on top of Portal 2's authoring environment specifically for education, likely physics education. Even crazier...Gabe wants the implementation ASSESSED! We already have a great relationship with Valve, being an early adopter of SourceU that runs our Steam installs. Anyone know science/physics profs we can approach for this? I plan on sifting through the Institute's database to see if we have any contacts that might want to play in this space.
Cole Camplese

Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade - NYTimes.com - 4 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...on-needs-a-digital-age-upgrade

education psuhack digitalliteracy digitalhumanities

shared by Cole Camplese on 10 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • According to Cathy N. Davidson, co-director of the annual MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions, fully 65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet.
  • For those two-thirds of grade-school kids, if for no one else, it’s high time we redesigned American education.
  • What she recommends, in fact, looks much more like a classical education than it does the industrial-era holdover system that still informs our unrenovated classrooms.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • An institutional grudge match with the young can sabotage an entire culture.
  • When we criticize students for making digital videos instead of reading “Gravity’s Rainbow,” or squabbling on Politico.com instead of watching “The Candidate,” we are blinding ourselves to the world as it is.
  • But digital video and Web politics are intellectually robust and stimulating, profitable and even pleasurable.
  • It’s possible that any of these educational approaches would be more appropriate to the digital era than the one we have now.
  • “What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school — the term paper — and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” She adds: “What if ‘research paper’ is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?”
  • Her recommendations center on one of the most astounding revelations of the digital age: Even academically reticent students publish work prolifically, subject it to critique and improve it on the Internet. This goes for everything from political commentary to still photography to satirical videos — all the stuff that parents and teachers habitually read as “distraction.”
  • The new classroom should teach the huge array of complex skills that come under the heading of digital literacy. And it should make students accountable on the Web, where they should regularly be aiming, from grade-school on, to contribute to a wide range of wiki projects.
  • Cole Camplese on 10 Aug 11
     
    Reminds me of the things Chris Long and I were trying to articulate in our Hacking Pedagogy talk from last year's LDSC.  Must read.
Chris Millet

Governing Boards Turn to Technology to Reinvent the University - Leadership & Governanc... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...127023

shared by Chris Millet on 06 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Eduardo M. Ochoa, assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, said at a panel session on Monday that "less labor-intensive" instruction methods will be required to increase the nation's number of college graduates. He conceded that technology presents upfront costs for colleges. But, he said, "eventually, the way things are done becomes qualitatively different."
  • While the course redesigns differ from campus to campus, they often involve the use of low-stakes online quizzes to promote student mastery of material. Such quizzes and other online tasks can replace the need for class time and reduce the number of professors required to teach a course, Ms. Twigg said. On average, the course redesigns reduce costs by 37 percent, she said.
  • Ms. Twigg has argued for more than a decade that, when used effectively, technology can both improve student achievement and reduce costs.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • It is a "myth" in higher education that "we can cut our way into survival," Mr. Yudof said.
Cole Camplese

Is lecture capture the worst educational technology? | Mark Smithers - 32 views

www.masmithers.com/...e-worst-educational-technology

psutlt

shared by Cole Camplese on 15 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Cole Camplese on 15 Mar 11
     
    Should we be investing in a University wide initiative?
  • ...12 more comments...
  • Allan Gyorke on 15 Mar 11
     
    This is a pretty standard critique. Reasons for lecture capture from my readings on class podcasts: Accessibility (physical, sensory, and learning disability), time shifting (TiVo), exam review, increased student satisfaction, ESL students, hybrid learning, and student feedback (on presentations). I could probably list several more. Smithers doesn't really address these kinds of uses. He also mentions that preparing short videos to augment classroom materials is a worthwhile effort, and we'd get desktop capture along with the system that we'd purchase.
  • Chris Millet on 15 Mar 11
     
    When I first started thinking about lecture capture, what this article is saying pretty much summed up my position. Lectures represent poor instruction, and all lecture capture does is perpetuate that. I've come to have a more nuanced perspective on this issue than this author seems to have. First, there are certain realities we have to deal with. Large-enrollment courses and large lecture halls aren't going away anytime soon. In fact, they're only going to get more common as higher educational institutions try to operate more efficiently. Given this, as educational technologists, we need to look into technologies which provide the best teaching and learning experience with this contraint. Clickers are a good example of encouraging student engagement in large lecture halls. Lecture capture can improve this situation in a number of ways. If a student falls behind and is not able to ask questions due to the sheer size of a section, they can review the lecture later and engage with peers using the collaboration features of most lecture capture systems. Faculty can use lecture capture to create supplementary materials to supplement their instruction and minimize rote lecture, which may open an opportunity for incorporating critical dialogue in class. There are many other ways to use lecture capture to address the difficult teaching challenge of large lectures. Second, one situation that came up numerous times in my focus groups was that lecture captures helped students particularly in courses where the content was particularly challenging or informationally dense. No matter how good an instructor is, there are times that information presented in a lecture needs to be reviewed, and the presence of a lecture capture system provides that capability. Good systems, like the ones we're looking at, capture multiple sources like slides and document cameras, do OCR to make content searchable, etc., so review is a fairly rich experience.
  • Chris Millet on 15 Mar 11
     
    (continued.. Diigo cut off my comment) Third, another affordance good lecture capture systems offer is collaboration. Reviewing a lecture capture is not a one-way consumption of a capture, but rather a place for contextual discussion of course materials with peers, or a place for students to ask targeted questions regarding a particularly difficult section of a lecture. Given that this discussion is contextual, it's often far more useful than an LMS discussion area. Finally, this technology aids teaching by offering instructors the ability to more easily see where students are having problems (via observing what sections they are reviewing the most or where they have the most questions) so they can address this in class. There's more value in lecture capture beyond what I've suggested here, such as in supporting distance or hybrid instruction (another growing need at this institution). Perhaps the problem is in the name 'lecture capture', as this doesn't really encapsulate much of what I just described. And there's definitely a faculty training need created here, in order to help develop pedagogies to properly leverage this technology and not just perpetuate bad teaching. But I think that's the case with any technologies we introduce. In short, this article provides a very one-dimensional view of lecture capture, and is probably based on observations of a small handful of poor uses. I think we can do better, and I am much more hopeful about this technology.
  • bkozlek on 15 Mar 11
     
    I think the original author would argue that the points you bring up would be better suited by series of short desktop recordings. It is a better way to present informationally dense materials. Students can collaborate around the desktop recording as much as a recorded lecture, and analytics on desktop recordings can reveal areas where students are struggling just as well as a recorded lecture. To the first point of classrooms getting larger - maybe it is incumbent on ed technologists to find ways to increase efficiency in ways other than increasing capacity of lecture halls - like allowing faculty to present content from their desktop via the web and rethinking the assumptions of getting everyone together in a large room. I certainly don't have all the answers or all the information, but just a little advocating for the devil.
  • Chris Millet on 15 Mar 11
     
    That's a good point, Brad. You're right that desktop capture applications can do some of what systems like Echo360 can do. Something like Camtasia Relay is a good example of a desktop capture app that publishes into a centralized system, which could then integrate into an LMS, blogs, or whatever. I would say that Echo360's personal capture solution might be able to produce a more rich capture of multiple sources, and has some other collaboration and analytics features that Camtasia doesn't (can you tell I've been evaluating these tools for the last two months?). But still, you might say Echo360 is overkill if primarily what you want to do is desktop recording. I'm not convinced that that's all faculty will want to do, or if that's the right approach pedagogically speaking. But I guess that's why we need to pilot this stuff. I agree that packing students into larger and larger classroom isn't the right answer being more efficient. To some extent it's inevitable though, at least until more modern pedagogies that include active and social learning become more mainstream, and there's proven technology to support that on a large scale. Maybe lecture capture is just an interim step towards that model. I'm not sure..
  • gary chinn on 02 Apr 11
     
    this is a highly relevant article for me. by way of background, my director & I have been making the rounds to faculty meetings for the departments in our college (there are 13 in total) to talk about our center and what we do. one of the first comments/questions we get has something to do with lecture capture as a proposed "online course" model. for myriad reasons, I am against the notion that lecture capture can represent the foundation of a high-quality online learning experience. and, in fact, I am positive that the reason it comes up so often is that it is far and away the lowest burden on faculty in terms of effort: no course redesign; no reconsideration of teaching approaches; no change in anything, really, just record an already-ongoing in class presentation and stream it. I think it's lazy work and leads to a subpar instructional experience. that said, I have no issue with it at all as an ancillary resource for a res class. in fact, the content covered in many of our classes would benefit from allowing students to go back and review example problems, equations, in-class demos, etc.
  • Allan Gyorke on 02 Apr 11
     
    At the ELI meeting, I went to an excellent session by some folks at George Washington University where they're using lecture capture as the primary delivery platform for a distance education program. According to them, it works very well and both on-campus and on-line students are happy with the program. My notes are here: http://www.personal.psu.edu/asg102/blogs/portfolio/2011/02/echo-360-at-george-washington.html
  • Chris Millet on 02 Apr 11
     
    Lecture capture is just a technology. It can be used poorly (using it to re-broadcast bad teaching) or it can be used well (to prompt students and facilitate in-class discussion). The important thing is to understand its affordances and apply sound instructional design to its use. Again, I think people get hung up on the term "lecture capture" and miss all the other compelling uses of the technology. It take your point though, Gary, and there is a chance that these systems will encourage people to be lazy and call it innovative teaching practice anyway. But isn't that true with any technology?
  • gary chinn on 03 Apr 11
     
    good points, chris. again, my issue is with lecture capture as the foundation (ie primary content delivery approach) of a completely online course. as a way to making materials available outside of a residential course, I think lecture capture has clear application. we've also been working on "classroom flip" models for years in our college, which provide students with recorded lectures in preparation for in-class meetings. our architectural engineering department has done a good deal of these over the years and refined his process. so there is clear value to providing recordings of lectures. my criticisms are in the specific context of online instruction. we're incorporating lots of screencasts and other shorter video clips into courses currently under development, and have been doing so since I joined the center three years ago. but in terms of effective content delivery in an online environment, 50-minute captured lectures are a poor approach; if folks are interested in more info, I have a lit review I assembled last year on this exact issue. in short, long uninterrupted blocks of video are a poor choice for engagement & the realities of learner attention. however, steps can be taken to address these issues with pacing and building in opportunities for learner-to-content interaction within the larger elearning framework. to put another way, many of the benefits of redesigning for distance instruction are not the obvious ones: tasks such as revisiting learning objectives; reconsidering how interaction will work; reconsidering the balance between student-centered and instructor-led content delivery; how central student discussions or presentations are to mastery of specific course goals; and so on. i'm of the mind that simply posting recorded lectures does not force a closer examination of the course, and thus is philosophically equivalent to posting PPT slides/PDFs and calling that an online course. would we (as learning design professionals) la
  • Cole Camplese on 03 Apr 11
     
    I think it is better than the Aqua Bar, that's for sure ;-). I also wonder if this discussion would have happend as a comment thread to a blog post ... I doubt it. I like that the discussion is happening though. I wonder if we should organize an open discussion with people from around campus to see what they think. Conversations with designers and faculty might prove really interesting. Would the implementation of LC in all GPC's on campus change the design models for web courses or the world campus? Would that be a good thing? I just don't know. Anyone want to consider this as a way to get a larger conversation going?
  • gary chinn on 03 Apr 11
     
    aside: is there a character limit for these comments? I was looking over my second comment and the last 2 paragraphs are truncated. here they are: i'm of the mind that simply posting recorded lectures does not force a closer examination of the course, and thus is philosophically equivalent to posting PPT slides/PDFs and calling that an online course. would we (as learning design professionals) laugh at the notion that posting slides from a lecture constitutes a "quality course?" I think we might. and if we would, what makes a recorded lecture different? in my opinion, not much. and according to the educause quarterly article from 2009, there's no empirical evidence of an impact (pro or con) on grades, test scores or learning outcomes. anyway, thanks for the good discussion. I like this diigo thing, it's certainly got a leg up on delicious in the conversation department. :)
  • gary chinn on 03 Apr 11
     
    regarding a larger discussion, I think there would be interest. some collegues & I talked about it as a possible topic for the all-ld meeting late last fall, but the timing didn't work out. I've had conversations about it with elearing peers because "why don't we just post lectures as an online course?" is a common question from faculty. how, specifically, lc might change things is an interesting question. the ability to quickly & easily capture video would certainly have a benefit to online learning units, even if it's not full lectures. but something akin to a "one button studio" for faculty to create a quick demo/intro/expand on a confounding point? that would be great for sure.
  • Chris Millet on 04 Apr 11
     
    It would be great to get others involved in this discussion. Lecture capture has the potential to very broadly affect teaching and learning at Penn State, and there no better time than now to develop our thinking and strategies on the subject. The weekly All-ID meetings and the Learning Design Summer Camp would both be great forums for the discussion. A focused discussion with World Campus would be a good idea as well.
  • gary chinn on 04 Apr 11
     
    agree that all-ld is a good place to talk about things. would you be interesting in providing an overview of the lc committee's work? what you're looking for, how vendors are being evaluated, etc? then perhaps we could segue into a discussion of the larger implications with the group. if that sounds reasonable, we can talk to jeff about getting on the agenda. as for a focused session with WC, that's a good idea. I wonder if it could be a WC + online learning units from colleges, since we'd all be interested in impacts for online instruction.
Kevin Morooney

9 things Education Technology has wrong | Gradebook - 3 views

blog.learnboost.com/...education-technology-has-wrong

education technology

shared by Kevin Morooney on 27 May 11 - No Cached
  • Allan Gyorke on 27 May 11
     
    Ugh - the title got me. I was hoping it would be more of a post about changing the way we're thinking about educational technologies. It's more of a review of education technology companies and conferences.
Cole Camplese

10 Ways Open CourseWare Has Freed Education | MindShift - 1 views

mindshift.kqed.org/...courseware-has-freed-education

OCW OER opencourseware

shared by Cole Camplese on 23 Apr 11 - No Cached
Derek Gittler liked it
  • The decision by the MIT faculty in 2001 to allow anyone to use their course content was a seminal move,  one that had a profound effect on democratizing education.
  • ALLOWING CUSTOMIZATION. MIT OCW is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike-Non-Commercial License. That means that teachers and learners are able to share and remix the content that’s available.
  • ENCOURAGING SHARING. Do educators have an ethical responsibility to share? Open CourseWare reminds us that a large part of our role as educators is to share knowledge, and we should work to remove the barriers that make that possible.
Chris Lucas

iPads for College Classrooms? Not So Fast, Some Professors Say. - Technology - The Chro... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...126681

ipad

shared by Chris Lucas on 15 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Despite the iPad's popularity—Apple has sold nearly 15 million of them and just came out with the iPad2; and there are dozens of competitors, like the Samsung Galaxy—early studies indicate that these finger-based tablets are passive devices that have limited use in higher education. They are great for viewing media and allow students to share readings. But professors cannot use them to mark up material on the fly and show changes to students in response to their questions, a type of interactivity that has been a major thrust in pedagogy.
  • Chris Lucas on 15 Mar 11
     
    Despite the iPad's popularity-Apple has sold nearly 15 million of them and just came out with the iPad2; and there are dozens of competitors, like the Samsung Galaxy-early studies indicate that these finger-based tablets are passive devices that have limited use in higher education. They are great for viewing media and allow students to share readings. But professors cannot use them to mark up material on the fly and show changes to students in response to their questions, a type of interactivity that has been a major thrust in pedagogy.
  • Allan Gyorke on 16 Mar 11
     
    I think Stuart Selber would disagree with many of the limitations pointed out in this article. Most of the criticisms can be easily overcome with an app or accessory such as a stylus, bluetooth keyboard, or an app like iAnnotate. The people who were interviewed may have lacked the support of a good technologist.
Elizabeth Pyatt

Happiness Education in Bhutan - 2 views

www.thesolutionsjournal.com/...934

globalization south asia

shared by Elizabeth Pyatt on 25 May 11 - No Cached
  • Elizabeth Pyatt on 25 May 11
     
    Article about how Bhutan is struggling to reconcile Buddhist principles with the modern more secular West within the education system.
  • Jeff Swain on 26 May 11
     
    Really interesting article. I've become fascinated with the inherent tension between local & global communities as the transmission of culture happens faster & in more abundance. It's become part of my dissertation. It also fits in well with Michael Elavsky's work and summer camp.
  • bkozlek on 31 May 11
     
    I have long been intrigued by Bhutan's gross national happiness concept. This article really gets at the heart of wondering what should be in the curriculum and what the goals of education really should be. Thanks so much for sharing.
Chris Millet

2 Universities Under the Legal Gun - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...127688

copyright fairuse

shared by Chris Millet on 31 May 11 - No Cached
  • What they're fighting about: The educational video publishers claim that UCLA is violating copyright and breaching its contract by copying DVD's of Shakespeare plays acquired from Ambrose and streaming them online for faculty and students to use in courses. They say UCLA had the right only to lend copies to teachers for in-class use or to show the DVD's in the library itself.
  • The university did not "secure the right to stream our programs from a library server to any class and any student whenever it chooses," said Allen Dohra, president of the trade group, in a written statement. UCLA says copyright law permits streaming.
  • Much is also at stake for publishers, who say UCLA's practice could be catastrophic for the educational-video business. They fear it will cut off new markets for distributors like Ambrose, which sells its own streaming service.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Kevin Smith, the university's scholarly-communications officer, described the plaintiffs' request to limit how much material can be used as "a nightmare scenario for higher education."
  • Publishers Weekly described the case as "the most significant copyright trial for publishers since the Kinko's course-pack litigation," referring to a 1991 case in which Basic Books sued the Kinko's chain for copyright infringement. (The publisher won.)
Cole Camplese

Free Online Class Shakes Up Photo Education | Raw File - 4 views

www.wired.com/...lass-shakes-up-photo-education

photography education open opencourseware openeducation

shared by Cole Camplese on 14 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • “The key thing is to use existing architecture where possible. Institutions develop institutionalized approaches. Like locking themselves into inefficient, inappropriate and expensive software systems,” says Worth “Twitter granted me access to the discourses that I wanted to listen to, learn from, and engage with.”
    • Cole Camplese
      Cole Camplese on 14 Aug 11
       
      This is the money quote and one to think about as we adopt various technologies for teaching and learning.
  • “That ideological program is pushing an out-moded model of learning, where more time in the classroom listening to a teacher’s broadcast is the goal. Thinking creatively about teaching demands an emphasis on engagement. Leveraging social media technologies to extend learning beyond the classroom is central to engagement.”
  • The classes are centered around experimentation with – and use of – social media tools, because Worth believes them essential to his students’ future career. In the internet age, the photographer is not only a producer, they are also distributor and publisher. Getting the University to adopt services like Flickr, Soundcloud, Audioboo, Twitter and Google Docs was essential to eliminate any barriers to entry, but it was a difficult battle to wage.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Worth uses Twitter as “a listening device” and a means “to tune the network.”
  • bkozlek on 15 Aug 11
     
    A lot to think about here - How the practice of so many disciplines are changing due to changes in media How open Education doesn't just mean some pages put up on the web - Actually open people, not just open content. How the existing communications systems out there are the fertile ground that communities of practice sprout from, not institutional management systems. The future will be found at the confluence of these trends.
gary chinn

How Big Can E-Learning Get? At Southern New Hampshire U., Very Big - Technology - The C... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...128809

E-Learning online

shared by gary chinn on 30 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • In a former textile mill in downtown Manchester, the university's president, Paul J. ­LeBlanc, has installed a team of for-profit veterans who help run a highly autonomous online outfit that caters to older students, with classes taught mostly by low-paid adjuncts. Their online operation is the institution's economic engine, subsidizing its money-losing undergraduate campus, known as University College, whose 2,350 students enjoy a new dining hall, Olympic-size pool, and small classes taught largely by full-time professors. "The traditional campus, in some ways, now has the resources to be even more traditional," Mr. LeBlanc says in his office on the suburban main campus, four miles from the online college. "And the nontraditional, with this split, has the ability to be even more nontraditional."
  • "It doesn't seem to me to be the 'disruptive innovation' that's going to transform things," says Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at New York University and one of the authors of Academically Adrift, a harsh critique of undergraduate learning. "It seems to me like just business as usual.
  • A lucrative one, too. With 7,000 online students, up from 1,700 four years ago, the College of Online and Continuing Education is on track to generate $73-million in revenues this year and more than $100-million next year. It posted a 41-percent "profit" margin in the 2011 fiscal year. The university plows the surplus into new buildings, employee salaries, financial aid at the traditional campus, and improvements in the online program.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But can a mainstream organization harness a disruptive innovation? "With few exceptions," he writes in The Innovator's Dilemma, that approach has succeeded only when managers "set up an autonomous organization charged with building a new and independent business around the disruptive technology."
  • Ms. Cohen, the math professor, has felt that some online courses failed to match those offered face to face. She is in a unique position to judge, as a full-time professor who teaches both in classrooms and online, and who also serves on the Web college's curriculum committee. Visiting online classes in past years, she found personal interaction with students lacking. Online faculty were teaching without any tests, only assignments and discussion. "That's not teaching a math course," she says.
  • Nationally, undergraduates complement their educations with online classes, but little evidence exists that students under 23 are actively pursuing all or the majority of their study online, says Mr. Garrett, of Eduventures
  • gary chinn on 30 Aug 11
     
    very interesting article from the chronicle, touching on online teaching, innovation, instructional quality, faculty roles, and the needs of different student populations.
Cole Camplese

ELearning Platform Reviews - ETS - 3 views

ets.tlt.psu.edu/...ELearning_Platform_Reviews

ETS elearning reviews psutlt learning

shared by Cole Camplese on 07 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Cole Camplese on 07 Sep 11
     
    In early 2010, Cole Camplese, then Director of Education Technology Services at Penn State, created a Web site (hereafter referred to as the OCDM wiki) that invited University Park learning designers and administrators to provide a summary of their unit's online course development models in order to capture a snapshot of practice at Penn State's main campus. In Summer 2010, an invitation was sent to the entire learning design community at Penn State to elicit the same information for other campus locations.  In January 2011, Ann Taylor, Assistant Director of the Dutton e-Education Institute in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and Chair of the Senate Outreach Committee, joined Camplese in his efforts to gather and analyze information about University-wide course development models. Several additional invitations were made to the University community, asking learning designers and administrators to update and/or to add their unit's online course development model summary to the OCDM wiki.
Allan Gyorke

Social Media in the Classroom? - Walking in LA - 4 views

www.personal.psu.edu/...al-media-in-the-classroom.html

social media faculty

shared by Allan Gyorke on 26 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Some of the key takeaways are: 38% of respondents agree or strongly agree that educators should use social media to reach students where they are, while 24% disagree or strongly disagree.  To me, the fact that 39% rated this item as "neutral" says that many faculty are still trying to figure this out.  58% agree or strongly agree that social media can be a valuable tool for collaborative learning, and 70% believe video, podcasts, blogs and wikis are valuable tools for teaching.80% of faculty reported that they were using social media in some aspect of a course that they are teaching.  A smaller number of respondents felt Facebook and Twitter had value in the classroom, though it was interesting to see that they rated Facebook as a tool that they use personally (57%) and professionally (45%) outside of class.  The statistic that really blew me away was the fact that 91% of faculty use social media either for professional purposes or in their classes, or both, and a similar study conducted by McKinsey of workplaces showed only 47% used it.  Are faculty in higher education more cutting edge than they are given credit for?  This statistic seems to indicate that. 
  • Allan Gyorke on 26 Apr 11
     
    John Dolan's highlights of a new Pearson-related study on perceptions of social media in higher education. Some interesting stuff in there. I'll have to look more closely at the study to see if I can trust some of these findings.
bartmon

A 'Moneyball' Approach to College - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 2 views

chronicle.com/...130062

shared by bartmon on 13 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Think of it as higher education meets Moneyball.
  • Today, half of students quit college before earning a credential. Proponents feel that making better use of data to inform decisions, known as "analytics," can help solve that problem while also improving teaching.
  • In April, Austin Peay debuted software that recommends courses based on a student's major, academic record, and how similar students fared in that class.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • One analytics tactic—monitoring student clicks in course-management systems—especially worries critics like Gardner Campbell, director of professional development and innovative initiatives at Virginia Tech. He sees these systems as sterile environments where students respond to instructor prompts rather than express creativity. Analytics projects that focus on such systems threaten to damage colleges much like high-stakes standardized testing harmed elementary and secondary schools, he argues.
  • Mr. Mazur argues that his new software solves at least three problems. One, it selects student discussion groups. Two, it helps instructors manage the pace of classes by automatically figuring out how long to leave questions open so the vast majority of students will have enough time. And three, it pushes beyond the multiple-choice problems typically used with clickers, inviting students to submit open-ended responses, like sketching a function with a mouse or with their finger on the screen of an iPad. "This is grounded on pedagogy; it's not just the technology," says Mr. Mazur, a gadget skeptic who feels technology has done "incredibly little to improve education."
  • By the eighth day of class, Rio Salado College predicts with 70-percent accuracy whether a student will score a C or better in a course.
  • bartmon on 13 Dec 11
     
    Great article on Learning Analytics. I respectfully disagree with Gardner Campbell's quote, but I do see where he's coming from and that is something that universities need to be careful of.
Emily Rimland

Apple - Education - Apple iPad Learning Lab - 2 views

education.apple.com/ipad_learning_lab

ipads tablets mobility education teaching

shared by Emily Rimland on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Emily Rimland on 08 Nov 11
     
    Just learned about this nifty thing and heard that EMS may be getting one? Lots of possibilities with this!
Allan Gyorke

New U.S. Dept. of Ed. Guidance on Accessibility and Emerging Technologies | EDUCAUSE - 1 views

www.educause.edu/...229706

accessibility ATeam ADA

shared by Allan Gyorke on 27 May 11 - No Cached
  • Allan Gyorke on 27 May 11
     
    "Requiring use of an emerging technology in a classroom environment when the technology is inaccessible to an entire population of individuals with disabilities - individuals with visual disabilities - is discrimination prohibited by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) unless those individuals are provided accommodations or modifications that permit them to receive all the educational benefits provided by the technology in an equally effective and equally integrated manner."
  • Allan Gyorke on 27 May 11
     
    This was written specifically to address e-reader pilot programs. It doesn't specifically mean that you can never technologies that are not completely accessible, but it does set the bar pretty high to ensure that blind students would have an equivalent educational experience.
Jeff Swain

Why Are So Many Students Still Failing Online? - Do Your Job Better - The Chronicle of ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...127584

shared by Jeff Swain on 25 May 11 - No Cached
    • Jeff Swain
      Jeff Swain on 25 May 11
       
      need to look up some studies
  • gary chinn on 26 May 11
     
    jeff, I was very interested in this article and went looking for the "mountains of research" regrading success rates in online & f2f environments. after not having much success, I noticed that the author of the piece posted the 3 articles he used to support his argument in the comments section. you can draw your own conclusions from them, but I'll just say that I'm unconvinced of the 50%/75% gap that he mentions. retention & quality control are real issues in online education, and they are legitimate points to discuss. in terms of useful data, controlling for learner type would seem to be obvious; working adults are more likely to take online courses, and more likely to drop out. conflating these two findings is not all that useful, in my opinion, because working adults cannot always prioritize education the same way full-time 'traditional' students can.
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