Group items tagged

A critical look at the development of MOOCs and their place in the current educational society; including a discussion about future potential.

A possible learning design support tool to use with module developers? "We are working with practising teachers to research, and co-construct, an interactive Learning Design Support Environment (the Learning Designer) to scaffold teachers' decision-making from basic planning to creative TEL design. Through this iterative research-design process we hope to address the above issues and build the means by which the teaching community can collaborate further on how best to deploy TEL."

Some interesting tools to start the process of developing automated feedback. This is an area of interest for UoD Academics that completed the POF survey

If we are going to move into the arena of peer- marked complex text assessments, we will need a rubric that captures things such as readability

This is useful as we start to think about the group behaviour and dynamics that lead to metacognition.

A review of Tuckman, I think the model has some merit in understanding groups online

Anecdotal accounts from teachers have long suggested the possibility that virtual teaching experiences have a positive impact on face-to-face teaching practices, a so-called "reverse impact" phenomenon. Survey and focus group data collected as part of a statewide evaluation of a virtual school offered an opportunity to explore this impact. Findings from a study of teacher perceptions indicate that three quarters of teachers who teach in both virtual and traditional environments felt that virtual experiences improved their practice in face-to-face classrooms. The authors discuss three types of impact reflected in teacher comments and discuss tentative implications for teacher preparation programs and for bolstering the rationale for using technology in education. (

he present study builds on earlier work by Meyer and Land (2003) which introduced the generative notion of threshold concepts within (and across) disciplines, in the sense of transforming the internal view of subject matter or part thereof. In this earlier work such concepts were further linked to forms of knowledge that are 'troublesome', after the work of Perkins (1999). It was argued that these twinned sets of ideas may define critical moments of irreversible conceptual transformation in the educational experiences of learners, and their teachers. The present study aims (a) to examine the extent to which such phenomena can be located within personal understandings of discipline-specific epistemological discourses, (b) to develop more extensively notions of liminality within learning that were raised in the first paper, and (c) to propose a conceptual framework within which teachers may advance their own reflective practice.

We offer a review of recent research and opinions. We include more formal research-based and "grey" literature around transformation in education - at a watershed moment of challenge, change and turmoil - for the UK Higher Education sector and its relationship with Europe. Juxtaposed on the changes in the UK and European political and educational ecologies, is the turbulence of the morphing of Open and Distance Learning into the much higher profile Online and Digital Education, and its place and contribution to achieving preferred and viable futures in the world. We explore the wicked problem of defence and stasis in the university sector despite the huge drivers for change. We explore ways in which learning with and from the future can be encouraged. We anticipate opportunities for universities to reimagine and adopt their roles in changing environments and to make challenging, developing and disruptive contributions to the online world and to offer advantage, benefit and foresight to their students and staff.

learning scientists have found that they must develop technological tools, curriculum, and especially theories that help them systematically understand and predict how learning occurs. Such design research offers several benefits: research results that consider the role of social context and have better potential for influencing educational practice, tangible products, and programs that can be adopted elsewhere; and research results that are validated through the consequences of their use, providing consequential evidence or validity (Messick, 1992).