Ideas are powerful, especially when they have become beliefs and have been unquestioned for generations. Three in particular may be standing in the way of more faculty using our new learning tools in enlightened ways.
Assuming learning is about acquiring content is a distortion of reality. Learning is about learning how to learn. It is a social process: For young people the social process must be tangible, present, and immediate; for more advanced learners, the social context is internalized but still indispensable.
1. Student Learning and Creativity
2. Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
4. Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
5. Professional Growth and Leadership
Assessment and accreditation portfolios tend to include quantitative measures of student performance gauged against a set of learning outcomes that have been identified by an instructor, program, department or institution. By using reports that aggregate and analyze data surrounding student learning in relation to a predefined set of educational outcomes, these types of portfolios provide a rich source of information about the actual results of the teaching and learning process and can therefore help institutions align their institutional practice with their stated institutional mission or goals.
Teaching and learning in the classroom using the Drupal CMS
* Use Drupal in the classroom to enhance teaching and engage students with a range of learning activities
* Create blogs, online discussions, groups, and a community website using Drupal.
* Clear step-by-step instructions throughout the book
* No need for code! A teacher-friendly, comprehensive guide
The Open Source Portfolio (OSP) software for eportfolio learning and assessment has seen widespread adoption over the last five years. This article surveys the current state of OSP development and use and shares results of research on its effectiveness, conducted through the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research.
One of the strategic initiatives approved last fall by the Strategic Planning Council, the Academy has goals that include enhancing professional development for faculty, assisting in the formation of graduate students as scholar-teachers and promoting the scholarship of teaching and learning through new areas of research.
One qualitative study, which surely won't be welcomed by manufacturers of basic word processing software, found that students who create and edit documents using Web-based collaboration tools include more complex visual media in their assignments - and come away with a better understanding in the process. Another ongoing experiment finds, with statistical significance, that instructors can be more effective in grading students' work if they record their comments directly into documents as audio.
Dartmouth faculty in diverse departments including Government, Art History, Arabic, Writing, Native American Studies and Women Studies were excited to assign video projects and wanted to give students a more active and engaged learning experience. However, the faculty did not have a clear understanding of the processes involved to support such a project or how to integrate this type of assignment into the curriculum. To insure success, we needed to develop a more ambitious, comprehensive and seamless support services between curricular computing, the library's media center, and the peer-tutoring center. This session will illustrate how we've "de-silotized" the pedagogical and technical support and share students' feedback about their experiences.
In the recent past, I wrote about not really getting Twitter. Since then, I have to say that it has grown on me. I am not and never will be an addict. But it does add a nice social dimension to my day, particularly given that I work alone from my home office a lot of the time. It lets me feel a little more connected with friends and colleagues, and does so without taking up unacceptable amounts of time. So, for my former fellow Twitter skeptics, I have a few suggestions for how to get the most out of it:
The University of Delaware's 2009 Winter Faculty Institute--"The Ecosystem of Learning at the University of Delaware"--will be held Tuesday, Jan. 6, in the Rodney Room of the Perkins Student Center.
Assessing the learner's progress is important. How else can we provide the best feedback or certify that the learner's met a certain level of understanding? That's why we need to ask the right questions. Avoid the following mistakes and you'll create a more effective learning experience.
Sir Ken Robinson's remarks were recorded on April 10, 2008, at the Apple Education Leadership Summit, a gathering in San Francisco of more than one hundred school superintendents from around the world. Robinson is the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative.
The educational possibilities through Second Life allow teachers and employers to reach out to students beyond their traditional classrooms and school districts, expose young children to global issues and new friends around the world, design their own avatars and environments for highly customized training sessions and interactive discussions, practice real-world skills and manage real-life situations in a safe environment, and most of all keep students engaged in a technologically-driven society.