Group items tagged

How can Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters per tweet, have any relevance to universities and academia, where journal articles are between 3,000-8,000 words long? Can anything of academic value ever be said in just 140 characters? A new Twitter guide published by the LSE Public Policy Group |and the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog |seeks to answer this question, and show academics and researchers how to get the most out of the micro-blogging site. The Guide is designed to lead the novice through the basics of Twitter but also provide tips on how it can aid the teaching and research of the more experienced academic tweeter.

A practical resource demonstrating the benefits of a more progressive and less proprietorial approach to knowledge transfer, and makes a strong case for a new, open, technology-enabled approach: - achieving more with less - the importance of a team rather than individualist approach to KT - the benefits of an open innovation approach, for example accessing new knowledge and perspectives through crowd-sourcing (for more see http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/kt/about)

"The series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation." The ten innovations are: Assessment for learning Badges to accredit learning Learning analytics MOOCs New pedagogy for e-books Personal inquiry learning Publisher led mini-courses Rebirth of academic publishing Rhizomatic learning Seamless learning

In our new world of online plenty, "no matter what you are interested in you can go online and join a group of people attracted to something because they want to learn about it", ... "It also means education, knowledge and achievement are opening up to a much broader range of students, particularly visual learners who didn't have a chance to shine in text-based education systems, international e-learning expert Marc Prensky says. "What many educators often forget is that reading and writing, although they have enjoyed primacy for hundreds of years, are very artificial ways to communicate, store and retrieve information," he says." ... "We have to get over the myth that mobile phones have eaten the brains of our children and talk productively about using new communications tools. "There is an untapped reservoir of interest and enthusiasm, and if you can find the right tasks [that] empower students, it's like reaching a [teaching] tipping point," Allen says.

New free LMS back by Google

July 30-August 1 = a free, online program of webinars, activities, resources, and discussions focused on the transformative elements of MOOCs-connectedness, scale, data, and new models-and IT's role.

I note particularly the planed "engaging ed" competition. QUT staff could be part of this...

Keep up with new goodies from Google...

EDUCAUSE announced today a new initiative to advance analytics at U.S. colleges and universities. EDUCAUSE will work with the higher education community to provide thought leadership and education to develop institutional capability for analytics.

A new resource about blended learning. See project website - https://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/blended-approaches-learner-engagement

April 3-4 2013: ...we will engage the teaching and learning community in exploring this new online course model. Tour institutional examples of MOOCs, various instructional designs and delivery models, processes, methodologies for setting up and evaluating the model, and implications for teaching and learning.

The Mobile Learning infoKit is a developing resource from JISC infoNet launched at ALT-C 2011 alongside the new JISC publication Emerging Practice in a Digital Age (September 2011). Sections = Introduction; Strategy; Pedagogy; Implementation; Snapshots; Case Studies

New Educause Website 

"A growing appreciation for the porous boundaries between the classroom and life experience, along with the power of social learning, authentic audiences, and integrative contexts, has created not only promising changes in learning but also disruptive moments in teaching." (Randy Bass (bassr@georgetown.edu) is Associate Provost and Executive Director of the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. )

...a new open source platform that will give individual educators and universities the ability to create MOOCs of their own

Will produce 5 five stand-alone reports focusing on: part-time learners and learning; employer engagement and work-based learning; new pedagogical ideas; technology-enhanced learning; institutional systems and infrastructures.

The presenters will describe their work over the past two years with 53 researchers in blended learning from all over the world. The result of the project was the book Blended Learning Research Perspectives: Volume II.

Seems like a new tool from AFLF that may have some application to higher ed and summarise some important LD ideas. A PDF Guide is also available: http://ldt.eworks.edu.au/documents/Learning%20Design%20Tool_Paper%20Guide.pdf