Group items tagged

Facilitating the provision of detailed, deep and useful feedback is an important design feature of any educational programme. Here we evaluate feedback provided to medical students completing short transferable skills projects. Feedback quantity and depth were evaluated before and after a simple intervention to change the structure of the feedback-provision form from a blank free-text feedback form to a structured proforma that asked a pair of short questions for each of the six domains being assessed. Each pair of questions consisted of asking the marker 'what was done well?' and 'what changes would improve the assignment?' Changing the form was associated with a significant increase in the quantity of the feedback and in the amount and quality of feedback provided to students. We also observed that, for these double-marked projects, the marker designated as 'marker 1' consistently wrote more feedback than the marker designated 'marker 2'.

"Team-Based Learning (TBL) is an increasingly-popular form of small group learning."

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.

This guide, produced by the HEA, constitutes a revised and updated version of the Pedagogy for Employability publication first published in 2006. This original publication was produced under the auspices of the Higher Education Academy and the Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT), and formed part of the Learning and Employability Series, a set of publications offering guidance and information to staff in higher education institutions involved in the enhancement of student employability.

"CompendiumLD is a software tool for designing learning activities using a flexible visual interface. It is being developed as a tool to support lecturers, teachers and others involved in education to help them articulate their ideas and map out the design or learning sequence. Feedback from users suggests the process of visualising design makes their design ideas more explicit and highlights issues that they may not have noticed otherwise. It also provides a useful means of representing their designs so that they can be shared with others. CompendiumLD provides a set of icons to represent the components of learning activities; these icons may be dragged and dropped, then connected to form a map representing a learning activity. "

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.

"mooc.org is an edX destination. We're working to help educational institutions, businesses and teachers easily build and host courses for the world to take. mooc.org goes live in the first half of 2014. Are you interested in creating or hosting courses on mooc.org? Complete one of the three forms below and let us know how mooc.org fits into your plans. We'll be in touch as we get closer to launch."

Universities have been warned not to assume that "digital native" students will embrace all e-learning initiatives, or indeed prefer them to traditional forms of education.

Despite their fondness for social networking and cell phones, most college students say they prefer textbooks in printed rather than e-text form. Nearly 75% of students to recently respond to a major new research survey from the Book Industry Study Group

This guidance examines the legal implications of recording lectures at UK FE and HE institutions, focusing mainly on the issues of copyright and consent. It includes a flow chart of the legal issues and model consent form for institutions to use. It can

"The International Journal of Learning and Media (IJLM) provides a forum for scholars, researchers, and practitioners to examine the changing relationships between learning and media across a wide range of forms and settings."

The aim of TEL research is to improve the quality of formal and informal learning, and to make accessible forms of knowledge that were simply inaccessible before.

Aimed at individuals or small groups, the Talis Incubator for Open Education provides angel funding and other forms of assistance for ideas and projects that have the potential to further the cause of Open Education through the use of technology. All we a

"I have always liked David White's ideas about digital visitors and residents. And in the training sessions we run we find an increasing individual differentiation in people;s confidence and competence in using digital technologies. In this video David White (@daveowhite, http://twitter.com/daveowhite) of the University of Oxford explains how the Visitors and Residents model provides a framework to understand individuals' engagement with the Web based on motivation and context. In part 1 of this series, he argues that the metaphors of 'place' and 'tool' best represent the use of technology in contemporary society and allow us to better adapt to the challenges of new forms of academic practice."

"The existence of 'Learning Styles' is a common 'neuromyth', and their use in all forms of education has been thoroughly and repeatedly discredited in the research literature. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that their use remains widespread. This perspective article is an attempt to understand if and why the myth of Learning Styles persists. I have done this by analyzing the current research literature to capture the picture that an educator would encounter were they to search for "Learning Styles" with the intent of determining whether the research evidence supported their use. The overwhelming majority (89%) of recent research papers, listed in the ERIC and PubMed research databases, implicitly or directly endorse the use of Learning Styles in Higher Education. These papers are dominated by the VAK and Kolb Learning Styles inventories. These presence of these papers in the pedagogical literature demonstrates that an educator, attempting to take an evidence-based approach to education, would be presented with a strong yet misleading message that the use of Learning Styles is endorsed by the current research literature. This has potentially negative consequences for students and for the field of education research."

This seems to me to be one of the most significant presentations seen at this year's JISC Innovating e-Learning (online) Conference. It;s particularly relevant as it aligns closely with our own agenda.