Group items tagged

Editorial - Becoming Well Read: Charting the complexities of academic reading and navigating the reading journeys of undergraduate and postgraduate students Angela Rhead and Christopher Little

E-book - I have not read it but it looks comprehensive

I have read it (so has Sam I think). It is well worth reading through (at least quickly) to see the range of ideas. There are some good, fairly fundamental, things to think about e.g. encouraging social spaces, flexible spaces, group learning spaces etc. There are also some videos of some british learning spaces somewhere - I'll see if I can find the link.

Reading University's use of Drupal as a VLE type faclity

Interesting blog on reading

This is a very interesting study done by Andrea Lunsford at Stanford which suggests that the rise of social software has had a positive effect on students' writing. Interesting to read some of the things the students valued about their participation in the study - peer feedback, detailed editing-style commentary on their scripts & so on.

I like danah boyd's work on social media - her writing is very easy to read and always resists & deconstructs the simplifications that the mainstream media come up with in relation to technology and society. This talk is not as research-y as her other papers, but I like it because to a tech-novice such as myself it explains some of the principles behind social networking in easily comprehensible ways. The five properties of social media and three dynamics towards the end of the paper have been helpful for me in thinking about how to understand, and manage, the online mentoring for our social networking project.

Interesting experiment with peer assessment from a Duke prof. She stopped assigning marks (though she read every piece of work and gave feedback), the students marked each others' work, and the quality of the work improved.

Article in the Guardian Education about why students find lectures boring. Unsurprisingly, PowerPoint is mentioned as a factor although reading further it's the usual story of the inappropriate use of PowerPoint rather than the existance of Powerpoint itself. I went to some extremely tedious lectures during my degree...it is possible to bore with a blackboard too! I would be interested in seeing more details of the types of lecture that students actually *like*!

Actually, it's just struck me...we have these awards where students nominate staff. We get a lot of nominations. What is it that students actually *like* about what staff are doing?

David produced a 'tag cloud' of the words used in their nominations.

Very good advice - I did a photoreading course some time ago and the activation stage was crucial - ie when you put the book away and revise what you have learnt from it. The other thing that was not mentioned here which I think is interesting is to do a mindmap or list of what you already know before you read something - I don't know how students here would find it - at Londonmet they found it very difficult - and we really surprised at how much they did know - and how it made reading easier.

Article about teaching in seminars - with useful student quote

At last, I found this report...now I have to read it.

This report is the result of "an independent inquiry into the strategic and policy implications for higher education of the experience and expectations of learners in the light of their increasing use of the newest technologies"

ELLG at use in Harvard

Ellg used for a harvard course

I haven't read this yet but it looks interesing!

Handbook from the iCamp project giving practical advice on using social software in Higher Education.

Combined with Academic Earth, iTunesU and other online courses (e.g. list on the Open culture site: http://www.oculture.com/2007/07/freeonlinecourses.html) it is getting easier to find good lectures/courses. I wonder how this will play out in the end - will the 'best' lectures get used by students at other universities, even formally as part of the recommended 'reading'?

Useful historical overview