Group items tagged

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.

Quickly and easily create editable DOC/RTF files, making it a cinch to re-use PDF content in applications like Microsoft Word, Excel, OpenOffice, and WordPerfect. Best of all, it's entirely free!

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?

"Imagine you receive the same lecture twice: once from a charismatic lecturer speaking fluently without notes and maintaining eye contact; and again from a hesitant speaker, slumped over her notes and stumbling over her words. Which is better? In terms of what you learn there is surprisingly little to choose between the two, according to a team of psychologists."

This paper investigates the similarities and differences between two important ideas in information processing and knowledge utilisation. Those ideas are [critical thinking] and [information literacy]. The two phrases are shown in brackets to indicate that the two words involved in each idea are not arbitrarily combined but have been coupled by authors to represent a single entity or a focus for development of concepts describing the characteristics involved. By exploring terms related to this couplet from the same sentence, the meaning of each of the central ideas can be expanded. The education, library science, and health science literature were used in this study, which analysed 8745 articles dealing with [critical thinking] and 8201 reports dealing with [information literacy] included in either ERIC or PubMed from 2000-2009.

"Last year it seemed like every new LMS company was trying to position itself as the "Facebook" of online learning. Then Facebook started to make everyone angry (or bored, or both), and we saw that idea dry up pretty quick (well, for the most part). The new catch phrase battle seems to be heating up over the words "open" and "free." Both Pearson and Blackboard are racing to establish either part or all of their services as open and/or free."

"Think in a different way about the age-old question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Which comes first, the assessment (the test) or the course? Do you have to have the course before you know what to assess or test? Or must you first define what you hope to accomplish-and how to best assess that accomplishment-before you can build the course that gets you there?"

The conference organisers welcome 500-800 word abstracts for full research papers. Submissions for other types of presentation, such as workshops, symposia, demonstration, installations are also encouraged

This document provides a simple step-by-step guide to creating and embedding audio feedback using Microsoft Word 2000 and 2007, the most common format for student text works. There is also a mention of embedding audio in PDFs, which is discussed at the en

Facebook wants to trademark the word "face." The social networker which connects more than 500 million users has already shown how we can all live together as one big happy set of FBF's by forcing other sites to drop "book" from their names, and now, in a

Art from delcious tags etc

"Pushing the laziest student in class to work a little bit harder can be an infuriating task for lecturers. However, where one-to-one mentoring and encouraging words have failed, peer pressure might just work, according to a study on how to motivate so-called "shirkers"."