Group items tagged

"In other words, the key is to define indifference, rather than non-attendance, as the problem.  Attack the indifference -- preferably by having trusted colleagues show or discuss the cool new thing they've found -- and the non-attendance will take care of itself."

"I truly believe that most of my full-time, tenure-track colleagues would rather quit their jobs than teach an online course. And that's a shame, since they are exactly the people who should be helping to set standards for meaningful online education."

To find out if it's worth it for you, you'll need to try it yourself. And with the way things are going in many higher-education institutions, chances are if you don't choose this route, you'll be dragged into it anyway. Better to go willingly and get ahead of the curve, instead of kicking and screaming with the masses.

"Put another way, in ten or fifteen years' time, students may expect to find educational nuggets on demand whenever they need them. Some will have had many years' experience of creating and sharing content, perhaps quite complex, perhaps to do with education. Will they be happy to accept timetabled classes and sit through lectures?"

Dr. Rankin, professor of History at UT Dallas, wanted to know how to reach more students and involve more people in class discussions both in and out of the classroom. She had heard of Twitter... She collaborated with the UT Dallas, Arts and Technology - Emerging Media and Communications (EMAC) http://www.emac.utdallas.edu faculty and as a Graduate student in EMAC I assisted her in her experiment.

the re­sults of­fer ev­i­dence that des­ig­nat­ing full-time fac­ul­ty members to fo­cus chief­ly on teach­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly at research-in­ten­sive uni­ver­si­ties like Northwestern, may not be the cause for alarm that many see. It may even improve students' learning. "Per­haps," they wrote, "the grow­ing prac­tice of hir­ing a com­bi­na­tion of re­search-in­ten­sive ten­ure-track fac­ul­ty mem­bers and teach­ing-in­ten­sive lec­tur­ers may be an ef­fi­cient and edu­ca­tion­al­ly pos­i­tive so­lu­tion to a re­search uni­ver­si­ty's mul­titask­ing prob­lem."

Don't have the Tweetstream running live on a projection screen. I've tried it both ways-having the Tweetstream run on a screen that everyone can see, versus on students' devices. The former is ultimately distracting for participants, who tend to focus more on the screen than the in-person discussions. Having the backchannel show up on personal devices, on the other hand, adds to the effect of creating another outlet for discussion that does not overpower the face to face setting.

The Online School for Girls is both the first single-gender online school and the first independent online school in the world.

It is hard to imagine holding a university-level class today in which students do not engage with the web or social media in one form or another, whether by using Google search, bookmarking or sharing an article, taking an online survey, posting or commenting on a blog, or using e-mail or text messaging. So, what rules should we, as instructors, follow to ensure no legal or Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) issues arise?

"Working 24/7 is not the only way to achieve success in academia. There, I've said it. A recent article described the working week of people across academia. This included the science professor who "compensates for the time he spends with his young children in the evening and at weekends by getting up before they do", and the early career researcher who "tries to take at least a half-day off a week". While many colleagues have similar working patterns and are happy (or at least not unhappy) working in this way, I am meeting increasing numbers of promising academics who reject it."

In addition to the benefits of using "clickers" (AKA student response systems) in a classroom to foster a more engaged environment (click here for a quick intro), clickers also offer the opportunity to measure how students are understanding and processing information in real time. "Keeping the poll open" and asking students questions while they are listening/watching is a very useful way to find out how they are able to apply theoretical ideas. Although the examples in this essay focus on music, keeping the poll open could be applied to other time-based arts, or even in other disciplines when a teacher wants to observe how students are processing information as it changes.

"The big shift: far fewer in-class lectures. Students will watch the lectures on Coursera beginning Monday. "Class will become a time for activities and also teamwork," said Sinnott-Armstrong. He's devised exercises to help on-campus students engage with the concepts in the class, including a college bowl-like competition, a murder mystery night and a scavenger hunt, all to help students develop a deeper understanding of the material presented in the lectures."

Yes, students are distracted by media, especially their mobile technologies. As I wrote in a previous ProfHacker post, the answer to this problem, however, is not to ban or ignore these technologies. The answer is to incorporate them.

"I am particularly excited by the plans we have for what we're calling "MOOC-supported learning communities," in which local groups of MOOC participants benefit from and contribute to the overall MOOC experience, as well as our plans to share the materials we develop for the MOOC (videos, assignments, other resources) in an open-source fashion."

Whatever knowledge the students have consists of "small disconnected islets" in a vast sea of ignorance. Those scattered bits don't add up to much: "It was obvious that whatever they knew they had learned in an entirely mechanical manner, and they could only gape in a sort of dull bewilderment when asked to think for themselves."

The authors lay out four "pillars" of practice, conveniently chosen to form FLIP as an acronym: Flexible environment (Students are allowed a variety of modes of learning and means of assessment) Learning culture (Student-centered communities of inquiry rather than instructor-centered lecture) Intentional content (Basically this means placing content in the most appropriate context - direct instruction prior to class for individual use, video that's accessible to all students, etc.) Professional educator (Being a reflective, accessible instructor who collaborates with other educators and takes responsibility for perfecting one's craft)

"The eTexts: Adopt, Remix, Create program supports instructors who want to find better textbook options for their students. This initiative is being piloted by DoIT Academic Technology and the UW Libraries to encourage a transition away from high cost commercial textbooks and to explore new paradigms for course readings. We encourage instructors to think broadly and creatively about what might make their course materials better."

""we present specific approaches for adapting effective tutoring strategies and applying them to large biology lecture classes." (p. 3) Using a set of effective tutor characteristics identified by Lepper and Wolverton (a reference to their research is in the article), Wood and Tanner explore how these seven characteristics can be adapted and used in large lecture courses (and what they propose isn't applicable just in biology courses). Here are some of the suggestions offered for each tutor characteristic."

"teaching a course using someone else's instructional media is out of alignment with the occupational model. Taken to its extreme, it  reduces the academic to the status of a "mere teacher"; no longer an "expert", and nothing grander than a K12 teacher. This is not a status or identity to which most traditional academics aspire."

As a follow-up to "Come see me at EDUCAUSE," I wanted to share out some resources from my presentations as well as some resources that I gathered at the conference.