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Ann Steckel

Integrating Digital Audio Composition into Humanities Courses - ProfHacker - The Chroni... - 0 views

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    "May 25, 2010, 02:00 PM ET Integrating Digital Audio Composition into Humanities Courses By Prof. Hacker Edison Phonograph[This guest post is by Jentery Sayers, who is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 2010-2011, he will be teaching media and communication studies courses in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. He is also actively involved with HASTAC. You can follow Jentery on Twitter: @jenterysayers.] Back in October 2009, Billie Hara published a wonderfully detailed ProfHacker post titled, "Responding to Student Writing (audio style)". There, she provides a few reasons why instructors might compose digital audio in response to student writing. For instance, students are often keen on audio feedback, which seems more personal than handwritten notes or typed text. As an instructor of English and media studies, I have reached similar conclusions. Broadening the sensory modalities and types of media involved in feedback not only diversifies how learning happens; it also requires all participants to develop some basic-and handy-technical competencies (e.g., recording, storing, and accessing MP3s) all too rare in the humanities. In this post, I want to continue ProfHacker's inquiry into audio by unpacking two questions: How might students-and not just instructors-compose digital audio in their humanities courses? And what might they learn in so doing? Designing Courses with Audio Composition in Mind One of the easiest ways to integrate digital audio composition into a humanities course is to identify the kinds of compositions that might be possible and then find some examples. Below, I consider five kinds of digital audio compositions: * recorded talks * audio essays * playlists * mashups * interviews Each entails its own learning outcomes, technologies, and technical competencies. The recorded talk consists of students reading their own academic essays a
Ann Steckel

Active Learning For The College Classroom - 0 views

  • Visual Lists - Here students are asked to make a list--on paper or on the blackboard; by working in groups, students typically can generate more comprehensive lists than they might if working alone. This method is particularly effective when students are asked to compare views or to list pros and cons of a position. One technique which works well with such comparisons is to have students draw a "T" and to label the left- and right-hand sides of the cross bar with the opposing positions (or 'Pro' and 'Con'). They then list everything they can think of which supports these positions on the relevant side of the vertical line. Once they have generated as thorough a list as they can, ask them to analyze the lists with questions appropriate to the exercise. For example, when discussing Utilitarianism (a theory which claims that an action is morally right whenever it results in more benefits than harms) students can use the "T" method to list all of the (potential) benefits and harms of an action, and then discuss which side is more heavily "weighted". Often having the list before them helps to determine the ultimate utility of the action, and the requirement to fill in the "T" generally results in a more thorough accounting of the consequences of the action in question. In science classes this would work well with such topics as massive vaccination programs, nuclear power, eliminating chlorofluorocarbons, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and so forth.
  • Note Comparison/Sharing - One reason that some students perform poorly in classes is that they often do not have good note-taking skills. That is, while they might listen attentively, students do not always know what to write down, or they may have gaps in their notes which will leave them bewildered when they go back to the notes to study or to write a paper. One way to avoid some of these pitfalls and to have students model good note-taking is to have them occasionally compare notes. The instructor might stop lecturing immediately after covering a crucial concept and have students read each others' notes, filling in the gaps in their own note-taking. This is especially useful in introductory courses or in courses designed for non-majors or special admissions students. Once students see the value of supplementing their own note-taking with others', they are likely to continue the practice outside of class time.
  •   Reading Quiz - Clearly, this is one way to coerce students to read assigned material! Active learning depends upon students coming to class prepared. The reading quiz can also be used as an effective measure of student comprehension of the readings (so that you may gauge their level of sophistication as readers). Further, by asking the same sorts of questions on several reading quizzes, you will give students guidance as to what to look for when reading assigned text. If you ask questions like "What color were Esmerelda's eyes?" (as my high school literature teacher liked to do), you are telling the student that it is the details that count, whereas questions like "What reason did Esmerelda give, for murdering Sebastian?" highlight issues of justification. If your goal is to instruct (and not merely to coerce), carefully choose questions which will both identify who has read the material (for your sake) and identify what is important in the reading (for their sake).
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  • Clarification Pauses - This is a simple technique aimed at fostering "active listening". Throughout a lecture, particularly after stating an important point or defining a key concept, stop, let it sink in, and then (after waiting a bit!) ask if anyone needs to have it clarified. You can also circulate around the room during these pauses to look at student notes, answer questions, etc. Students who would never ask a question in front of the whole class will ask questions during a clarification pause as you move about the room.
  • Muddiest (or Clearest) Point - This is a variation on the one-minute paper, though you may wish to give students a slightly longer time period to answer the question. Here you ask (at the end of a class period, or at a natural break in the presentation), "What was the "muddiest point" in today's lecture?" or, perhaps, you might be more specific, asking, for example: "What (if anything) do you find unclear about the concept of 'personal identity' ('inertia', 'natural selection', etc.)?".
  • Affective Response - Again, this is similar to the above exercises, but here you are asking students to report their reactions to some facet of the course material - i.e., to provide an emotional or valuative response to the material. Obviously, this approach is limited to those subject areas in which such questions are appropriate (one should not, for instance, inquire into students’ affective responses to vertebrate taxonomy). However, it can be quite a useful starting point for courses such as applied ethics, particularly as a precursor to theoretical analysis. For example, you might ask students what they think of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's activities, before presenting what various moral theorists would make of them. By having several views "on the table" before theory is presented, you can help students to see the material in context and to explore their own beliefs. It is also a good way to begin a discussion of evolutionary theory or any other scientific area where the general public often has views contrary to current scientific thinking, such as paper vs. plastic packaging or nuclear power generation.
Jim Aird

Digital Literacy: Why adaptability is key - Chimera EDUCATION - 0 views

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    "Give students a chunk of time without instruction to explore a new tech program before using it. Encourage students to use online resources to figure the program out. Create a backchannel discussion or an online forum where students can post links to helpful resources or ask questions.  Encourage your tech savvy students who get it faster than the others to monitor the boards and answer questions electronically.  Using an electronic forum with delayed responses instead of face-to-face assistance will encourage adaptability and eliminate the possibility that a tech-light student will sit back and let the tech-savvy student fix the problem or do the work. To avoid frustration, stop after 15 minutes and distribute a self-assessment rubric on adaptability (see my example below).  Debrief with students about their experiences.  For those who fall in the flexible and adaptable category, what strategies did they use to navigate through unfamiliar interfaces?  For those who didn't, how can they improve their experience for the next time?"
Jim Aird

An absolutely riveting online course: Nine principles for excellence in web-based teach... - 0 views

  • Simply taking material that was developed for classroom delivery and directly porting it into course management programs such as WebCT or Blackboard tends neither to be effective nor recommended (Ellis & Hafner, 2003)
  • The retooling and redesigning of course materials often takes significant time
  • The online world is a medium unto itself and if instruction is to be effective, material for online courses needs to be developed with the unique strengths and dynamics of the web in mind
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  • one of those changes is that the instructor role is moving from provider of content to designer of student learning experiences
  • As with teaching in a face-to-face environment, we need to constantly gauge our audience and discern what tools and strategies are going to be effective at the time.
  • Specific aspects of online teaching that are reported to contribute to enhanced learning and student satisfaction also include: quick turnaround time by instructor on email and assignments (Hopper and Harmon; 2000); frequent and engaged contact and individual feedback (Anderson, 2006); having goals and objectives that are clearly stated (Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000; King, 1998; Orde, et al., 2001; Sieber, 2005) and detailed enough to clarify “what the student should be able to do, the conditions under which the student should produce the desired behaviour and how well the student must be able to perform it” (Ellis & Hafner, 2003, p. 643); great communication skills (Hopper and Harmon, 2000; White, 2000); regular use of student names (Aragon, 2003) and the capacity to be real and genuine (Aragon, 2003; Beaudin & Henry, 2007).
  • Regardless of how stellar the content or how wondrous the technology, if they are to be excellent, online courses must also involve excellent online teaching.
  • Social presence and a sense of community are influenced by many things, including collaborative learning activities (Aragon, 2003), enhanced communication (Steinweg, et al., 2006), use of humour (Aragon, 2003), small group activities (Rovai, 2002) and it is an essential part of online learning.
  • The expertise involved in developing excellent online courses is not optional; it is essential. And we either gain those areas of expertise ourselves or we look for help and support. Otherwise, significant aspects of the courses we develop will be weak, and possibly even mediocre.
  • in post-secondary education instructors tend to be subject matter experts and not necessarily experts in learning theory and educational processes (Ellis & Hafner, 2003; Oblinger & Hawkins, 2006). As such, a team approach is often encouraged.
  • Excellence in online education requires multiple areas of expertise. A content expert is necessary but not even close to sufficient.
  • It is not enough to simply inform students of these areas, the instructor must request that students respond once they have found the required information or activity in question.
  • There are a few things that some online instructors/developers provide that can go a long way with students. One is to provide exemplars of the course assignments.
  • Perhaps the most common of these provide direction on being effective self-guided learners. Unless the students in an online course can manage their time and provide some degree of self-motivation, they tend not to do well in a virtual course environment.
  • Brief personal email messages are also appreciated by students
  • Another little extra is the inclusion of brief audio clips
  • The integration of related video material also provides another little extra, especially for those students who tend to be auditory or visual in nature.
  • Knowledge and understanding of such principles can help us find success in the exciting world of online education, and can help us move from the mere uploading of content to creating absolutely riveting online courses.
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    Great article about online course design.
Claudine Franquet

Turning Technologies Higher Education Newsletters - 0 views

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    Actively engage students in the classroom with Turning Technologies Student Response Systems. Students submit answers using our advanced clicker technology. Stay up to date with whats new and exciting at Turning Technologies. Be sure to check out our latest Newsletter and any you may have missed.
Marjorie Shepard

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.474.318&rep=rep1&type=pdf - 0 views

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    The purpose of this experiment was to compare the effects of anonymous and identifiable electronic peer (e-peer) review on college student writing performance and the extent of critical peer feedback. Participants were 92 undergraduate freshmen in four English composition classes enrolled in the fall semesters of 2003 and 2004. The same instructor taught all four classes, and in each semester, one class was assigned to the anonymous e-peer review group and the other to the identifiable e-peer review group. All other elements-course content, assignments, demands, and classroom instruction- were held constant. The results from both semesters showed that students participating in anonymous e-peer review performed better on the writing performance task and provided more critical feedback to their peers than did students participating in the identifiable e-peer review. 
Jim Aird

College papers: Students hate writing them. Professors hate grading them. Let's stop as... - 1 views

  • fter reading your article, I feel sorry for the author.  I do not know the identity of the alleged plagiarizing, font-adjusting, slackers are, but they certainly did not attend any four-year university I, or my family has attended.  I agree with Hannah Dodd that you show nothing but "complete contempt and loathing for" your students as well as for her career.  This author's experience sounds like high school, but the truth is that universities require most papers be submitted through programs that scan essays and compare the writing with hundreds of thousands of sources to expose plagiarism.  This article is extremely insulting to every student, including me, who ever wrote a college essay.   Essays written for the history department of CSU Long Beach had to pass the plagiarism test, as well show that the student can think critically and relate that critical thinking to a PhD-holding professor.   Those few who do not pass muster will eventually find themselves outside the halls of the college, as California universities do not tolerate plagiarism or patterns of poor grades.  How dare this woman belittle the hard work of tens of thousands of hard-working, INTELLIGENT students and professors.
Jim Aird

Teaching Online & Face-to-Face Classes Require Different Skills - 1 views

  • teachers must encourage students to express themselves in writing as much as possible so teachers can sense whether everyone is on the same page.
  • Students can create screencasts, record their voices, and share the videos with the teacher and the other students.
  • Teachers, who used technology, claimed  that it facilitated the teaching and learning process for their students, but it was time consuming.
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  • I have created many online courses for teachers to engage them, firstly, as learners and secondly, as teachers, so they can practice both roles.
Marjorie Shepard

7 Assessment Challenges of Moving Your Course Online (Plus Solutions) - 2 views

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    Representative submissions. Using a multimedia tool such as Jing or VoiceThread to dissect, just as you would in the classroom, a few representative submissions (such as a research paper containing an ineffective conclusion and one that cites sources incorrectly) lets you address the most common problems efficiently, saving your remaining grading time for more personalized, in-depth student-to-student communications.
Ann Steckel

Blackboard Adds Testing to Mobile Learning App -- Campus Technology - 0 views

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    "Blackboard Adds Testing to Mobile Learning App By Dian Schaffhauser 05/21/12 Blackboard has updated its mobile app to accommodate test taking and to deliver alerts to students when changes happen to their courses without the learning management system (LMS) app being opened. Version 3.0 of Blackboard Mobile Learn allows students to take tests through their devices. That includes a feature that enables the user to start a mobile-based test by "cutting" a red ribbon on a traditional exam blue book. He or she can flag a question for later review by tapping a corner of the screen to create a "dog ear" and eliminate multiple choice answer options from the list by swiping them. The new features of the latest release are currently available only for Apple iOS and Google Android devices. The company said the previous version of the app will continue being supported on Blackberry and WebOS and it will "continue to evaluate viable platforms for future development based on usage and popularity.""
Ann Steckel

quizsocket - 0 views

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    Quiz Socket is a new tool developed for the purpose of enabling teachers to quickly gather feedback from students. Quiz Socket enables students to respond to questions through their cell phones, tablets, and laptops.
Peter DiFalco

The Tempered Radical: Using Student Responders Responsibly - 0 views

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    Clickers for critical thinking and student engagement
Laura Sederberg

Enhance Students Productivity with These Web Tools ~ Educational Technology and Mobile ... - 2 views

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    August 26, 2014 There is a growing number of tools for students offering benefits from organizing assignments to creating study groups to taking notes. Here are some notable options for your students to consider. ClassOwl was founded by a group of Stanford sophomores wanting to improve the hectic academic experience.
csharrio

Drop Thought Free for Education - 1 views

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    Check out "DropThought Instant Feedback for Higher Education" on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/104590433 DropThought's instant student feedback platform is free! It's a private, anonymous feedback channel between instructor and student that works in the LMS and on a mobile device. Students reflect on their learning experience, and DropThought, free to instructors, captures those reflections, making them explicit and actionable. Learn how to harness the power of the anonymous student voice.
Marjorie Shepard

First Day of Class Activity: The Interest Inventory - 1 views

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    Another valuable question is "What else do you want me to know about you?" Many times the answers will require that you take some kind of action. Some students might tell you that they have Attention Deficit Disorder or a different learning disability, that they need to see written notes to understand material, or that they need extra time during exams. You will have to determine how to respond to the answers they provide, but it often is far more useful to have the information at the start of class so that you can work with each student appropriately.
Marjorie Shepard

Problem-Based Learning: Six Steps to Design, Implement, and Assess - 0 views

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    h an embedded problem that will emerge through student brainstorming. Think of a real, complex issue related to your course content. It's seldom difficult to identify lots of problems in our fields; the key is writing a scenario for our students that will elicit the types of thinking, discussion, research, and learning that need to take place to meet the learning outcomes. Scenario
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