Group items tagged

“The CMS application functionality comparison by online administrators (application and network) and online instructors indicated that Moodle 1.9x has a higher perceived functionality than any version of Blackboard evaluated. The large number of “did not use” responses suggested that neither CMS platform was utilized to full capacity.” Having a system with 39,000 seldom-used features that require a course to learn how to use is not as valuable to you as having a system with 39 features that most people will find useful and can figure out how to use on their own.

“The analysis revealed the total pre-transition year cost for all four case study colleges totaled $184,410. There was a 35% increase in total cost in the transition year to $248,300, due to supporting two CMSs simultaneously. Lastly, the post-transition year cost of ownership was $52,296, which accounted for a 72% decrease in total cost compared to that of the pre-transition year. The total cost savings from preto post-transition years for all of the case study colleges was $132,114.” Consider long-run costs as well as short-run costs. Migration may be cheaper than staying put, and the more expensive migration in the short run may be cheaper in the long run.

arguments and evidence are more important than facts and figures

communicating clear goals and expectations

incorporating multiple active learning opportunities

providing frequent, prompt, and constructive feedback

creating teacher support resources

an exploratory study of the practices of exemplary online teachers, Lewis and Abdul-Hamid (2006)

efforts to provide constructive and individualized feedback to students

facilitating student interaction

paying attention to how a course is organized and how teacher presence is enhanced

involvement and learning

most of the literature deals with the “science” of online teaching rather than the “art” of online teaching. In this paper, we attempt to remedy this state of affairs

Faculty Learning Community

The program typically includes a curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning with regularly-scheduled meetings and activities that provide participants with opportunities pertaining to the FLC’s major focus. An important component of an FLC is an emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning

eLearning Pedagogy FLC

Its general goal was to increase faculty interest in learning and teaching with instructional technologies

Peers are viewed as important in the learning process by creating an environment where “students can reason together and challenge each other” (p. 53) and grapple with the content together while building a sense of community

participants attended monthly meetings that included teaching and learning activities, development and training opportunities, and community building

participants read the literature on the scholarship of teaching and designed individual projects that allowed the assessment and evaluation of their instructional changes, suitable for presentation or publication in a professional journal

At the start of our FLC, we read Bain’s book, with the goal of discussing it in terms of its implications for teaching online

during these discussions, each FLC member listed out the major and most interesting points from Bain’s book

understanding is more important than remembering

we analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of what the best teachers studied by Bain did in terms of online teaching

creating effective student interactions with faculty, peers, and content

confronting intriguing, beautiful or important problems, authentic tasks that will challenge [students] to grapple with ideas, rethink assumptions and examine mental models of reality

behaviors such as demonstrating and encouraging trust and potential in students, flexibility, self-directed learning, communicating learning and success intentions to students, and conveying realistic goals and expectations.

foster engagement through effective student interactions with faculty, peers, and content

see the potential in every student, demonstrate a strong trust in their students, encourage them to be reflective and candid, and foster intrinsic motivation moving students toward learning goals

The best teachers want students to learn, regularly assess their efforts and make adjustments as needed, and accommodate diversity with sensitivity to student needs and issues

we summarized the major categories of behaviors shown by Bain’s best teachers that are most applicable to online teaching and learning

Class content – through its design, lectures, discussions, and assignments – supports the student learning objectives

Accordingly, the best teachers use meaningful examples, stimulating assignments, and thought provoking questions to motivate students to know more about their discipline

creating a community of learners where the quantity and quality of interactions with peers and faculty foster student engagement

Student-to-faculty interaction is considered paramount in fostering student engagement

student-to-student interaction is equally important as the quality and quantity of exchanges are predictors of success

students should “feel a personal and emotional connection to the subject, their professor, and their peers

The most important role of the teacher is to ensure a high level of interaction and participation

This is achieved by means of greater student-to-faculty contact, participation in class discussions, and a more reflective learning style

it is imperative that students be active, not passive, to create a true learning environment

It is telling that for the SOM, neither cost nor feature set stood out as the biggest difference between competing LMS products, but flexibility.

In UNC School of Medicine’s case, Sakai was judged to be more flexible than Blackboard.

largely failed to empower the strong and effective imaginations that students need for creative citizenship

First, LMSs are generally organized around discrete, arbitrary units of time — academic semesters. Courses typically expire and simply vanish every 15 weeks or so, thereby disrupting the continuity and flow of the learning process.

Second, LMSs are teacher-centric. Teachers create courses, upload content, initiate threaded discussions, and form groups. Opportunities for student-initiated learning activities in the traditional LMS are severely limited.

Finally, courses developed and delivered via the LMS are walled gardens, limited to those officially enrolled in them. This limitation impairs content sharing across courses, conversations between students within and across degree programs, and all of the dynamic learning affordances of the read-write web.2

personal learning networks (PLNs) to manage information, create content, and connect with others

personal cyberinfrastructures

Campbell argued that we should embrace technologies that enable co-learners to frame, curate, share, and direct learning "engagement streams

Value accrues to the system as a whole because the more users or ‘nodes’ there are in a network, the more possible connections there are

several significant weaknesses and challenges associated with PLEs

support

support

Teachers and learners should be encouraged and supported in their efforts to find and use the most appropriate and effective best-of-breed tools outside the LMS

the University of Mary Washington deployed an instance of WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) as an alternative teaching and learning platform (UMW Blogs)

enabling the creation of blogs that automatically enroll students in courses as "members" of class blogs created by instructors

A pilot currently under way at Duke University (http://blogs-dev.oit.duke.edu) is aimed at assessing the viability of WPMU as an alternative platform for instructors teaching undergraduate and graduate courses. The list of potential uses on the pilot site includes using a WordPress blog as "the central course administrative tool" instead of Blackboard.

The LMS paradigm assumes that since some data must be kept private and secure, all data must be kept private and secure.

As depicted in Figure 1, proprietary applications and data such as the student information system (SIS), secure online assessment tools, and a university gradebook should be situated inside the private, secure university network. Personal publishing space, social networking, and collaboration tools live in the open, flexible cloud.

a loosely coupled gradebook is perhaps the essential module that brings all of the "small pieces" together.

instructors and students need a private, secure way to communicate about student performance on assignments, quizzes, and tests

If these artifacts are published on the web, they are individually addressable via URLs, so the OLN’s loosely coupled gradebook would simply require the submission of the URL instead of requiring students to upload the artifacts to a traditional gradebook. Instructors would then see a list of student names and links to the artifacts they published on the web

The research reviewed reported that 18-24 year olds do not transfer their expertise with technologies to academic contexts

students in this group use Instant Messenger when completing assignments, and Google Docs for archiving and group work, even if their professors are unfamiliar with Google Docs

The findings of this pilot survey, along with the research reviewed, indicate that undergraduates’ application of new technologies for academic purposes can be likened to the five stages of technology adoption – Awareness, Adoption, Adaption, Appropriation, and Invention - reported in the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow research

undergraduates’ creation of online content for educational purposes was low in both this and prior research

a small sample of 26 undergraduates of education at an urban private university in 2008, and can therefore not be generalized to all other contexts