Group items tagged

Creating content is an involved process. You can’t simply take a textbook, perhaps in digital form, and load it into a learning management system, bit by bit. The material needs to be organized by degree of difficulty and learning objectives. It has to be grouped into modules and tagged to identify the information that is intended for experts, the material students are expected to learn, and the material that is primarily meant to provoke thought.

Students need to be able to rate content and view others’ ratings and reviews.

he system might determine early on that a given student will find it difficult to pass a test. It could then offer materials to enhance that student’s understanding.

Harvard reportedly spends $75,000-$150,000 building each new MOOC, most of which goes towards video production costs.

resourceful teachers and nonprofits like Khan Academy are still creating low-budget screencasts.

et, until we get the learning design right, these questions about production values are premature

According to a new study from the Brookings Institution, students who are the least well prepared for traditional college also fare the worst in online courses. F

Thus, while online courses may have the potential to differentiate course work to meet the needs of students with weaker incoming skills, current online courses, in fact, do an even worse job of meeting the needs of these students than do traditional in-person courses,”

limited in scope

Conrad Tucker, an assistant professor of engineering at Pennsylvania State University, has received funding to build a virtual engineering lab where students hold, rotate and fit together virtual parts as they would with their real hands

One question his project aims to answer is whether students learn as well in VR as they do in real classrooms, or whether without being physically present with their classmates, they miss out on developing intangible skills such as teamwork

The same year saw the University of British Columbia experiment with a full lecture in VR. Five students were given an earlier version of the Oculus Rift headset and sat in a virtual classroom where they watched a gaming lawyer deliver a lecture

hat comes through in the video, imperfect as it surely is, is a sense of authenticity.

watching a clip repeatedly isn’t a bad thing when it comes to learning.

He had been worried about making his lecture videos perfect — thinking that he had to give a command performance every time the camera was rolling, as if he were in a Hollywood production

growing recognition that design is not simply about making products attractive

easier to use, fit better into the flow of people’s lives, suit the needs of a broader range of end-users, increase productivity, and even influence emotions (which in turn can influence cognition).

digital higher education – both its software and content – has managed to remain untouched by good design.

The Department took those suggestions, and will be providing institutions with greater regulatory flexibility to design and test new approaches to student financial aid designed to meet the need of these students through several new experiments that will: Enable students to earn federal student aid based on how much they learn, rather than the amount of time they spend in class by providing federal aid to students enrolled in self-paced competency-based education programs. Provide flexibility for an institution to provide a mix of direct assessment coursework and credit hour coursework in the same program. Allow the use of federal student aid to pay for prior learning assessments, which can allow students—including returning adults or veterans—to decrease their time to get a degree.

Institutions that apply for and are granted these limited waivers would be able to have more flexibility over a portion of their federal student aid in order to implement experiments suggested by colleges, universities and the higher education community. Applications for the new experiments will be due in late September

Department is also announcing today that it will collaborate with the Department of Labor to develop a $25 million grant competition for an Online Skills Academy to support the development of a platform to enable high-quality, free or low-cost pathways to degrees, certificates, or other employer-recognized credentials

REIMAGINE EDUCATION The global awards for innovative higher education pedagogies enhancing learning and employability

Despite years of discussion about the need to reform higher education most programs, whether academic or private enterprise, still rely on traditional pedagogical approaches that center on "teaching" (not learning) and often remain isolated from the demands of employers.

The Wharton-QS Stars Awards 2014: Reimagine Education took place on December 9th in Philadelphia.

TodaysMeet is the premier backchannel chat platform for classroom teachers and learners. Designed for teachers, TodaysMeet takes great care to respect the needs and privacy of students while giving educators the tools for success. Students join fast, easy to start rooms with no registration, and can immediately start powerful conversations that augment the traditional classroom.

odaysMeet helps harness the backchannel and turn it into a platform that can enable new activities and discussions, extend conversations beyond the classroom, and give all students a voice. Embracing the backchannel can turn it from distraction to engagement. Participants can learn from each other and share their insights, improving participation and deepening learning. TodaysMeet enables instant formative assessment, feedback, and much more.

Many of the 600 or so colleges that are trying to add competency-based degrees are focused on adult, nontraditional students who want a leg up in the job market

in collaboration with specific industry partners, where an employer’s endorsement of the credential can lead to a graduate employee getting a promotion.

ther colleges' forays into competency-based education have been in disciplines with professional licensing and a heavy dose of task-based learning, which seems like an easier fit with academic programs based on mastery rather than time in a classroom.

Cengage predicts that the use of OER -- free, adaptable educational course materials -- could triple over the next five years

eady to “embrace the movement” -- adding their own services and technology to create “value-added digital solutions that help institutions use OER to its best advantage.”

aking OER materials freely available online from sites such as OpenStax, Cengage has added its own assessments, content and technology to the materials, which will be delivered through an “intuitive, outcomes-based” platform that can be integrated into students’ learning management systems