Group items tagged

Deals with the reality of distributing quality education to most of the people in the world. "DRIVERS OF CHANGE IN THE WAY WE TEACH AND LEARN The increasing recognition the world over of the central role that post- secondary education plays in social and economic success has resulted in many drivers for change, including the following which have been identified by Bates: 1) An increasing demand for college and university places 2) Changing demographics (more older and part-time students) and more learner diversity (broader intellectual, language and cultural ranges) 3) Growing numbers of students at ease with new technologies and social media who are demanding the same sort of flexibility and access from post-secondary education that they already enjoy in their daily business and social interactions. 4) Pressures on institutions to be more open and accountable 5) Recognition of society's needs for skilled knowledge-based workers and the associated focus on learning outcomes indicating the extent to which graduates have such requisite skills as critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, independent learning, and the ability to work in a variety of contexts, to work in teams and to navigate cultural differences. 6) Research evidence of the effectiveness of more interactive approaches to learning that engage students more intensively 7) The continuing evolution of Web-based technologies which make knowledge much more accessible and bring learners together without the constraint of time or place..."

For several years, there has been a rule-of-thumb, called "90-9-1″, that 90% of online participation in groups/communities consists of "lurkers" or more politely, "passive participants", and only 1% are active creators. Jacob Nielsen's 2006 post on Participation Inequality provides a good overview of this phenomenon. A recent BBC survey of 7,500 people shows significantly different results. Here we see that passive lurkers make up only 23% of participants; active (intense) participants have increased to 17%; and there is now an "Easy" group in the middle who, " … respond largely to the activity of others. This includes replying, 'liking' and rating, all activities where there's little effort, exposure or risk."

Found this paper useful for clarification of what makes good scaffolding. My original intro to the subject focused on the notion of threshold concepts which can reside too far into an expert domain for getting students engaged. Definition: "adult controlling those elements of the task that are essentially beyond the learner's capacity, thus permitting him to concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within his range of competence" Do not defeat learning by going too far out into the unfamiliar. "Scaffolding is no longer restricted to interactions between individuals-artifacts, resources, and environments themselves are also being used as scaffolds." "...six types of support that an adult can provide: recruiting the child's interest, reducing the degrees of freedom by simplifying the task, maintaining direction, highlighting the critical task features, controlling frustration, and demonstrating ideal solution paths." "Central to successful scaffolding is the notion of a shared understanding of the goal of the activity. Although some elements of the activity may be beyond what the child could accomplish in working alone, intersubjectivity (Rogoff, 1990; Wertsch, 1985), or a shared understanding of the activity, is considered critical. Intersubjectivity is attained when the adult and child collaboratively redefine the task so that there is combined ownership of the task and the child shares an understanding of the goal that he or she needs to accomplish."

What can the Grateful Dead teach adjuncts about organizing and community building? How is the Grateful Dead community like a rhizome?

What can the Grateful Dead teach adjuncts about organizing and community building? How is the Grateful Dead community like a rhizome?

Smoothness and Striation in Digital Learning Spaces by SIÂN BAYNE

Smoothness and Striation in Digital Learning Spaces by SIÂN BAYNE

"In my teaching, I stress the importance of the creative process over the product, but the impact of how or when this shift in understanding takes place came into sharp focus only recently. In preparation for the final of my Studio Design{ course, I took my class to the study Room at the RISD Museum to view a portfolio of paper folding structures by the artist Tauba Auerbach. The Complex structural and color interactions in the portfolio make it a favorite to show[….] instead of witnessing surprised joy, I watched a roomful of heads and shoulders slump in desperation. I was startled to realize the little more than half-way through their first semester, my students were projecting themselves into this portfolio not with the passive eyes of spectators, but with the knowledge of makers. No longer just an end product to them, this portfolio now embodied hours of toil and experimentation, trial and error, measuring and calculating. Seeing it demonstrated to the students that if they wished to make successful work they needed to build up their creative muscles." Page 37

"The Rhizomik initiative is inspired by the rhizome metaphor when working with knowledge from a scientific, technological but also philosophical point of view. This metaphor has accompanied us in our research about knowledge in many different fields, fundamentally Semantic Web, Human-Computer Interaction, Web Science, Complex Systems and Cognitive Science."

"The Rhizomik initiative is inspired by the rhizome metaphor when working with knowledge from a scientific, technological but also philosophical point of view. This metaphor has accompanied us in our research about knowledge in many different fields, fundamentally Semantic Web, Human-Computer Interaction, Web Science, Complex Systems and Cognitive Science."

HT @darrenmjones

Elizabeth Sillence. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. June 2013, 16(6): 480-485. doi:10.1089/cyber.2013.1512. Published in Volume: 16 Issue 6: June 10, 2013 Published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking Advice has been defined as "opinions or counsel given by people who perceive themselves as knowledgeable, and/or who the advice seeker may think are credible, trustworthy and reliable," (pp. 519).11 This definition highlights the difficulties involved for both parties in managing the interaction. For the advice seeker, asking for advice is in a way undermining their identity as a competent person, playing down their own knowledge and abilities while the advice giver has to demonstrate they are worthy of offering advice. Advice givers also have to pay attention to the cues of the advice seeker. They have to be sensitive to their needs, even recognizing that advice is being sought. The way that the advice is presented is crucial as well if the giver is to succeed in passing on his or her way of thinking on the topic. The context may require that the advice giving is mitigated. Locher and Hoffman suggest that such mitigation occurs in the form of humor or through the use of lexical hedges such as "maybe" or "perhaps." While relatively little research has examined "peer" advice online, it does seem that the extent to which advice exchange is seen as an important or even defining aspect of a community varies between forums. In a study of an online support group for depression, Lamerichs found advice exchange was not seen as central to the community's functioning,5 while Kouper, in a recent study of an online motherhood forum, noted that offering and receiving advice was an important type of social interaction within that community.14 The structural and pragmatic features of the advice exchange process are one indicator of its value within the online community.

"We often use these words interchangeably, but they represent fundamentally different ways of contributing to a group and each comes with its own dynamics and power structures that shape groups in different ways …"

"We often use these words interchangeably, but they represent fundamentally different ways of contributing to a group and each comes with its own dynamics and power structures that shape groups in different ways …"

"This book arises from a series of workshops on collaborative learning, that gathered together 20 scholars from the disciplines of psychology, education and computer science. The series was part of a research program entitled 'Learning in Humans and Machines' (LHM), launched by Peter Reimann and Hans Spada, and funded by the European Science Foundation. This program aimed to develop a multidisciplinary dialogue on learning, involving mainly scholars from cognitive psychology, educational science, and artificial intelligence (including machine learning). During the preparation of the program, Agnes Blaye, Claire O'Malley, Michael Baker and I developed a theme on collaborative learning. "

"This book arises from a series of workshops on collaborative learning, that gathered together 20 scholars from the disciplines of psychology, education and computer science. The series was part of a research program entitled 'Learning in Humans and Machines' (LHM), launched by Peter Reimann and Hans Spada, and funded by the European Science Foundation. This program aimed to develop a multidisciplinary dialogue on learning, involving mainly scholars from cognitive psychology, educational science, and artificial intelligence (including machine learning). During the preparation of the program, Agnes Blaye, Claire O'Malley, Michael Baker and I developed a theme on collaborative learning. "

'Power' in its most generic sense simply means the capacity to bring about significant effects: to effect changes or prevent them. The effects of social and political power will be those that are of significance to people's lives. When these effects of power are such as to affect people's interests adversely we speak of power being held or exercised over them - and the social scientist's quest is to try to reveal what this involves. There are other ways of identifying social and political power: for instance, as collective power to achieve shared goals (as when people co-operate to promote a cause or pursue a campaign), or as positive or beneficent power, where power serves others' interests "

'Power' in its most generic sense simply means the capacity to bring about significant effects: to effect changes or prevent them. The effects of social and political power will be those that are of significance to people's lives. When these effects of power are such as to affect people's interests adversely we speak of power being held or exercised over them - and the social scientist's quest is to try to reveal what this involves. There are other ways of identifying social and political power: for instance, as collective power to achieve shared goals (as when people co-operate to promote a cause or pursue a campaign), or as positive or beneficent power, where power serves others' interests "

a curated collection