The purpose of this study was to explore group forming strategies by examining participation behaviours during whole class discussions associated with active participation in a following small group activity. Written communication data, posted in class discussion forums (843 messages/70,432 words) and small group forums (732 messages/59,394 words), were analyzed quantitatively. The result indicated that individuals' participation quantity in small groups was significantly correlated with their own participation behaviour in whole class discussions. Also, a significant portion of small group participation was explained by their group members' participation (i.e., group member effect). Based on the results, we suggest instructors use the information of participation behaviours during the initial period of whole class activities for allocating students into small groups heterogeneously.
Interesting discussion on the Higher Education Teaching and Learning (HETL) group on LinkedIn (itself an interesting resource). You may need to be a LinkedIn member and join the HETL group to access the discussion.
Abstract - Staff and students in the UK often dismiss MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions) as being associated with rote learning, but not understanding. However one of the biggest results ever published in education shows how mistaken this attitude is. The most important aspect of deep learning is probably being concerned with reasons rather than only with conclusions. If you want to test for knowledge of reasons then you can easily design MCQs to give the facts and ask about reasons. More interestingly, you can use MCQs that ask about facts to provoke learners to search for reasons. One method is to have students design MCQs (together with automatic feedback explaining why each response is right or wrong): the PeerWise software can organise this as an assignment in large classes. Another method is to use questions delivered by EVS (electronic voting systems) to catalyse peer discussion, even in huge classes. This talk will discuss some of the big educational results, and also psychological research that partially illuminates the mechanism.
Supporting website for a SALT seminar presented by Steve Draper of Glasgow University at Swansea on 23rd November 2011.
"At the ALT C conference I went to a few sessions where VLE discussion came up, most notably Lawrie Phipps and Donna Lanclos's session "Are learning technologies fit for purpose?". They asked us to reflect on the main question in groups and nearly all of the discussions came back to complaints about the VLE. Lawrie picked on me to give the first response and I mentioned that the problem was not so much the technology but the "institutional sediment" that builds up around it. "
"On 24 April 2015 forty educators from 19 institutions discussed key issues in MOOC design and implementation at a one-day workshop hosted and funded by the University of Reading, a leading member of the FutureLearn MOOC consortium. The workshop offered the opportunity to evaluate practical lessons from the design and delivery of MOOCs, particularly those encouraging skills development. The focus was on problem-based discussion of approaches to teaching and learning, and the extent to which MOOC learning outcomes can be defined, measured, or achieved."
"This presentation provides an overview of the existing research on online higher education, including prior research on four-year colleges, CCRC's research on two-year colleges, and implications in terms of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and hybrids. It also discusses the notion of online course outsourcing, and the contrasting notion of a coherent curriculum that supports students throughout college to graduation."
"Clickers and Classroom Dynamics By Derek Bruff, Vanderbilt University
Classroom response systems create new opportunities for managing student discussions and assessing student learning"
"The massive open online course on 'e-learning' will cover the most important trends in e-learning. Participants will be analysing an existing educational offering on its strengths and weaknesses regarding the use of learning technologies and designing their own blended or online course. Students can participate in several learning activities such as online masterclasses, brief video lectures, group discussions and individual assignments. Covered are themes like e-learning 101 (basic), Learning Analytics, E-learning trends, TPACK, Multimedia learning resources and Mobile technology. Participants are able to select learning activities, learning content and time they want to invest in this MOOC."
"The Learning to Teach Online (LTTO) MOOC is based upon the multi award winning open educational resource of the same name, developed by Simon McIntyre and Karin Watson. We have built upon these resources in this MOOC, supporting them with a course structure that puts them into a supportive framework for you all to help you find and connect with each other to share your own experiences in the Discussion Forums.
This course is not intended as a comprehensive manual for online teaching. Rather, it is intended as a starting point to help you develop your understanding of the principles involved; a place where you can get advice about strategies you might try; and a means from which you can begin to build your confidence and capacity to continue the learning journey in your own contexts and practice"
Publishing recordings of lectures and other recorded audio and video teaching materials is a growing practice supported by a loose family of technologies, often awkwardly labeled 'lecture capture'. At this seminar Dr Jon Anderson of the School of City and Regional Planning, Steven Vaughan of Cardiff Law School, and Dr Steve Rutherford of the School of Biosciences presented three contrasting perspectives on how this practice can be used to supplement, or even redefine, teaching practice. The session was well attended, with around 50 members of staff hearing from the speakers and engaging in question and answers and discussion.
This paper reports on a study at a research intensive University in the North of the UK exploring academics' perceptions of the potential of Web 2.0 for their teaching and any influences shaping those perceptions. It looks at the perceptions of academics 'on the ground' as well as those leading teaching and learning strategies at the University. The study identifies a range of perceptions among academics. These are influenced predominantly by academics' beliefs of what constitutes good teaching in their contexts. The paper concludes with an exploration of ways in which the range of perceptions evidenced may inform discussion of Web 2.0, arguing that academics' perceptions are crucial to context-based understandings of its potential.
PeerWise supports students in the creation, sharing, evaluation and discussion of assessment questions.
From Twitter: "@busynessgirl Have you seen Peerwise? http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/ #socrait (via @polarisdotca)"
Whether or not you take a constructivist view of education, feedback on performance is inevitably seen as a crucial component of the process. However, experience shows that students (and academic staff) often struggle with feedback, which all too often fails to translate into feed-forward actions leading to educational gains. Problems get worse as student cohort sizes increase. By building on the well-established principle of separating marks from feedback and by using a social network approach to amplify peer discussion of assessed tasks, this paper describes an efficient system for interactive student feedback. Although the majority of students remain passive recipients in this system, they are still exposed to deeper reflection on assessed tasks than in traditional one-to-one feedback processes.
Another app that I've seen discussed in the context of electronic assessment and feedback. Useful if the original document is Word or one of the other Office files. Reviews claim that it doesn't work with an external keyboard. Premium edition syncs with Dropbox and Google Docs and costs £11.99. Worth a punt at that price anyway?
"Want the world to hear what you have to say? Well, with Hangouts On Air, you can share and record your live discussions and performances with everyone! Hangouts On Air lets you:
Broadcast: Invite circles or individual people to join you in a Hangout On Air, then broadcast it to the world. A live player of your broadcast will be posted to your Google+ Home page and YouTube channel.
Edit and share the recorded broadcast: Your Hangout On Air will be recorded as a public video and will be available on your Home page once the broadcast has ended. You'll also be able to edit the recording when the broadcast is over. If you edit your video, your post (including the video URL) will automatically be updated to show the edited version."
"In part 1, I looked at the shifting definition of educational (or learning) technology; in the second part, I looked at a brief history of educational technology; part 3 explored the rise of the "new professional"; the fourth part discussed the "bipolarisation" of the "new professional". This is the fifth in a series of short posts concerning the field of educational (or learning) technology and the people who are practitioners and theoreticians within the field."
"Objective - To describe the development and implementation of two courses designed to help university students avoid plagiarism.
Design - Quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Setting - A university in the United Kingdom.
Subjects - An unknown number of university students who took a Plagiarism Awareness Program (PAP) course between 2008 and 2011, and approximately 3,000 university students enrolled in a Plagiarism Avoidance for New Students (PANS) course delivered via a virtual learning environment (VLE) between October and December 2012. The authors attempted to collect rates of continued plagiarism among students who had taken plagiarism education courses. The authors also surveyed 702 university students about plagiarism in 2011.
Methods - Data collected from PAP participants informed revision of the authors' approach to plagiarism education and led to development of the second course, PANS. At the end of the course, students completed a test of their knowledge about plagiarism. Authors compared scores from students who took a course supervised by a librarian to the scores from students who took the course independently.
Main Results - Students reported that many aspects of citation and attribution are challenging (p. 149). The authors discovered that 93% of students who completed the PANS course facilitated by a librarian in-person passed the final exam with a grade of 70% or higher, while 85% of students who took the same course independently, without a librarian instructor, in an online VLE scored 70% or higher (p. 155). The authors report that referrals of students who plagiarized declined significantly (p-value < 0.001) since the implementation of a plagiarism avoidance curriculum.
Conclusion - As reported by the authors, first-year university students require more extensive education about plagiarism avoidance. A university plagiarism avoidance program instructed by librarians reduces the total number of students caught plagiarizing an
"The ALT News Blog is created by the membership for the membership. It includes short, topical entries from ALT members and invited pieces from experts in the field help keep us all up to date with developments in learning technology. Comments allow feedback and discussion from ALT members.
Writing for the blog gives you the opportunity to disseminate your work, share something you are excited about, explore a common problem, or express an opinion. You can contribute as much or as little as you like."
"The purpose of this team-led course is to help you build and improve your skill in online teaching. Basic strategies for sharing your expertise, facilitating deep discussion, and designing experiential assessments will be covered. Both small and large-scale teaching models will be presented - including MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses. This course will be of particular benefit to adult educators with some classroom teaching experience. Whether you are a corporate training and development facilitator, community educator, or a higher education faculty member, this introduction to teaching online will be an opportunity to explore the possibilities of open education, and network with a diverse, global community of practitioners."
"In Higher Education Focus Groups and Nominal Group Technique are two well-established methods for obtaining student feedback about their learning experience. These methods are regularly used for the enhancement and quality assurance. Based on small-scale research of educational developers' practice in curriculum development, this study presents the use of a combined approach that potentially offers more benefits than the use of Focus Groups alone. It proposes a combined method, 'Nominal Focus Group', which includes the benefits of in-depth discussion of a Focus Group and the prioritising of results of Nominal Group Technique. These benefits include questions for further exploration, initial data analysis and increased ownership of the process by students. In practice, the method gave rise to rich data and actionable outcomes that were used to make informed curriculum enhancements for the programme teams."
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