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Does class size matter? http://www.magnapubs.com/newsletter/distance-education-report/270/Does-Class-Size-Matter-13523-1.html This article originally appeared in Distance Education Report. I've been the director of online education at my institution since 2007. One question I've been asked many times over the years is "What is the optimal number of students to have in an online class?" My usual response is to pretend I didn't hear the question and walk away as quickly as possible. Well, that's not totally true. But as you can imagine, this is not an easy question to answer, as there are many variables that come into play--the topic of the class, the overall course design, the academic rank of students in the class, the experience of the instructor teaching the class, etc. I've had many interesting discussions with students, staff and administrators over the years about enrollments in online courses. When I first started teaching online, my courses would fill almost immediately, sometimes within minutes. Inevitably, students would contact me and request an override for the course - not just one or two students, but dozens upon dozens of students. They were usually surprised when I said no. These frustrated students would often reply with a comment such as, "But it's an online class, so you can take unlimited numbers of students and it won't be any additional work for you." Surprisingly, I've heard this kind of comment from some faculty, staff and administrators as well. I usually view these interactions as opportunities to offer a bit of education about online learning. So I might say, for example, that if I had seven graded assignments in my online course, and 25 students, I would end up grading 175 assignments--with the emphasis on "I." However, if I doubled the number of students in my class and graded seven assignments for 50 students, that would be 350 assignments to grade. There were also 22 quizzes, two exams and multiple

Anchored discussion is a form of collaborative literature processing. It "starts from the notion of collaborative discussion that is contextualized or anchored within a specific content" (van der Pol, Admiraal & Simons, 2006). In this course, the discussions we participate in are based on prompts that address ideas included in each of the required resources for each module. However, an anchored discussion is a discussion that is focused on one piece of literature. As students read and digest the material, discussions about the meaning of that material occur within a window where the material is present. It is like having an asynchronous chat window open next to a research article. (van der Pol et al., 2006) As I started learning about anchored discussions, I saw many connections to shared annotation such as what we use Diigo for. Van der Pol et al. (2006) state that "shared annotation might leave more room for individual processes, but is shown to have some limitations in supporting interactivity". Anchored discussions take shared annotation a step further in that it requires conversation (as opposed to individual notes) regarding a resource. The collaborative piece of anchored discussions really got my attention in that it provides greater opportunity for the development of teaching presence by both students and the instructor. The opportunity to facilitate a discussion within the context of a required reading is an exciting idea for me. The use of anchored discussion allows for all three facets of teaching presence: instructional design and organization, facilitating discourse, and direct instruction (Shea, Pickett, & Pelz, 2003). I am wondering if there is a way to use Diigo in creating anchored discussions.

* Better cafeteria food with real ingredients * No school busses - nearly every child mentioned the bullying of bus rides as one of the reasons they hated school * More choice in their assignments or projects * Replace grades with feedback and portfolios (like we did in our class) * Staggered start and end times so that the school would "feel smaller" * More alternative sports in addition to the traditional ones * Off-campus community service once a week * Job-shadowing for one month of the year * A monthly educational field trip * iPads, netbooks or laptops in classes - they even brought up some interesting ways to raise money for these devices * More freedom in terms of leaving to use the restroom, eating a snack or getting a drink of water * More electives - while most of them agreed that we need math, they suggested that maybe they could choose pre-geometry or pre-algebra or in reading, they could have reading classes geared toward certain topics * A school garden

offers a great variety of video resources in several disciplines which SUNY faculty may excerpt to use in their online courses. A list of programming resources, including Annenberg/CPB (see their video catalog http://www.learner.org/catalog/catalog.html ) can be found at the following address: http://www.nyn.suny.edu/cable/programming.htm\ . If you would like to adapt any of these materials to your online course, please send your request to: geotucker@nyn.suny.edu See their online video catalog for a partial list of program providers and their web links. Their web sites are full of print and other materials designed to enhance your experience of these programs.

From simple calculator operations to large-scale programming and interactive document preparation, Mathematica is the tool of choice at the frontiers of scientific research, in engineering analysis and modeling, in technical education from high school to graduate school, and wherever quantitative methods are used. Whether you need a sophisticated calculator or an integrated technical programming environment, Mathematica provides you with a complete solution. You can perform a single task - like analyzing data or solving a tricky differential equation - or develop an entire solution, prototype, or application.

@aldofigueroa @brocansky Hi @aldofigueroa - Here is the Stanford study that found "instructors are 94% more likely to respond to forum posts by White male students": https://t.co/oHDaZpRn0z #OLCAccelerate

RT @phylisebanner: "Learners like challenges and are most creative when the learning is challenging and meets their individual needs." http…