Group items tagged

"With the report, Educause has launched the Next Generation Digital Learning Environments Initiative, a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-supported effort to examine why colleges and universities are using "antiquated" technology -- and how to replace it. The average institution's learning management system, according to Educause's data, is eight years old."

"Get the free ebook The Theory and Practice of Online Teaching and Learning: A Guide for Academic Professionals, brought to you by Routledge Education and featuring hand-picked content from some of our leading titles."

"Online learning platforms are increasingly big business in Africa, as innovators look to tackle the lack of access to and poor quality of education on the continent. Governments and large corporates are getting involved in the space, but there are a number of startups across the continent coming up with exciting ideas and getting funded to bring them to scale. Here are five of the best."

"Speaking of companies. Interestingly, language learning companies like Rosetta Stone, Alliance Française and Lingo Live are among the first adopters. So is MOOC behemoth Coursera offering a mix of free and paid tutoring sessions for its Machine Learning course. Notably there is a big group of language tutoring both from companies and private tutors in the Education & Career category, showing that this is still the easiest subject to bring online. Prices range from free over $5 to up to $25 per 30 minute session. Nevertheless other popular subjects like math are also widely offered. As Google Helpouts are built upon Google Hangouts features like screen sharing and document sharing, they also enable tutors to also teach topics that need more interaction or visual support."

"Use of in-class concept questions with clickers can transform an instructor-centered "transmissionist" environment to a more learner-centered constructivist classroom. To compare the effectiveness of three different approaches using clickers, pairs of similar questions were used to monitor student understanding in majors' and nonmajors' genetics courses. After answering the first question individually, students participated in peer discussion only, listened to an instructor explanation only, or engaged in peer discussion followed by instructor explanation, before answering a second question individually. Our results show that the combination of peer discussion followed by instructor explanation improved average student performance substantially when compared with either alone. When gains in learning were analyzed for three ability groups of students (weak, medium, and strong, based on overall clicker performance), all groups benefited most from the combination approach, suggesting that peer discussion and instructor explanation are synergistic in helping students. However, this analysis also revealed that, for the nonmajors, the gains of weak performers using the combination approach were only slightly better than their gains using instructor explanation alone. In contrast, the strong performers in both courses were not helped by the instructor-only approach, emphasizing the importance of peer discussion, even among top-performing students."

"The learning spaces an institution plans will inevitably be in a network of other spaces.  Being not just aware of those connections, but actually leveraging that awareness, making the spaces explicitly connected to one another, raising the visibility of the spaces to teachers and learners alike, can have an impact. "

"we have decided to use a blogging platform (Edublogs)  for student portfolios, as it can be used both as a "learning portfolio" (here is what I am learning right now) and a "showcase portfolio" (here is my best stuff).  Through my own experience both blogging, and using my blog as a portfolio, I have seen some powerful benefits of blogging that would directly benefit our students."

"Opportunities abound for software designers and developers to create impactful tools for teachers, school leaders, students, and their families. This guide for developers, startups and entrepreneurs addresses key questions about the education ecosystem and highlights critical needs and opportunities to develop digital tools and apps for learning. Crowd-sourced from knowledgeable educators, developers, and researchers who were willing to share what they have learned, this guide is designed to help entrepreneurs apply technology in smart ways to solve persistent problems in education. "

"Instead of being an unstoppable force disrupting the faculty profession, MOOCs can be an opportunity to empower faculty to explore, create, and express themselves in new ways through open and digital education. To do this requires establishing the proper institutional context, one that allows for experimentation and grassroots, faculty-led initiatives to flourish. We have argued in this article that a focus on soft infrastructure - the resources, values, and affirmations that support faculty agency in experimenting with digital learning - has helped us create this context at Stanford. Our research suggests that this approach has given faculty the opportunity and autonomy to manifest their desires to share intellectual work more broadly, experiment and take pedagogical risks, express their unique teaching philosophies in new ways, and thoughtfully engage in the MOOC phenomenon on their own terms. As a result, a great number and variety of open and digital learning approaches have flourished at our institution."

"Did you ever wanted to learn how to draw? Me to! But probably there's only one problem - you can't draw... Don't worry. You can learn!"

If you think of riding a bike in terms of pedagogy, training wheels are what learning experts call scaffolding.

"Open educational resources，O.E.R are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or creative common area and are freely available to anyone over the Web. They are an important element of an infrastructure for learning and range from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks and games. There are more resources about Open Source Multimedia and Open Content Curricula."

"Online learning has been hailed as a faster, cheaper way to provide education -- but it doesn't do half of what administrators think it will.      With the help of a few experts, we've compiled a list of major myths that administrators believe, how they match up against reality and why administrators believe them. "

""It seems that, if you just present the correct information, five things happen," he said. "One, students think they know it. Two, they don't pay their utmost attention. Three, they don't recognize that what was presented differs from what they were already thinking. Four, they don't learn a thing. And five, perhaps most troublingly, they get more confident in the ideas they were thinking before.""

This concept follows along a PBL or case method ideology, but diverges when it comes to presenting information. Thought provoking information....will lecturers try it?

"A few weeks ago, I'd had it. It seemed like social media was bringing me more guilt and frustration than happiness. So I decided to go on a fast, starting immediately. Here's what I've learned:"

"The Learning Innovation and Networked Knowledge (LINK) Lab at UT Arlington has been chosen to lead a $1.6 million initiative to connect and support researchers across the country as they examine digital learning's effect on higher education today and in the future."

"The report, Innovating Pedagogy 2014, is the third annual report concerning technological trends that could revolutionize education.  It suggests that the next step in the world of MOOCs is to introduce massive open social learning."

"They perceived they had overcome most obstacles, but that others at their institutions had not.   They did not believe that others were teaching courses that were on par with face-to-face classes in terms of quality. This is because of findings 2 and 3. The second finding was that the overwhelming majority did not feel support from their institutions when transitioning to online modalities, rather they indicated that experiential learning in the form of mentorship, learning by doing, and dialog with peers were most critical when overcoming the challenges. The third finding was that the majority of participants indicated the time required for preparation and intrusion of time on an ongoing basis during the course of an online class were significantly greater than time requirements of a face-to-face course."

" SOLUTIONS FOR EDUCATION AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (LMS) The Biomids Biometric solutions address needs in online education and other forms of corporate training and professional development, often facilitated through Learning Management Systems (LMS). They confirm the identity of participants (Authentication) and deter and detect cheating on remotely administered tests and assessments (Proctoring) through the use of advanced biometric technologies. The Biomids Authenticator and Proctor - Is a fully automated Authentication and Proctoring system, available in both web-based and download versions, that provides highly effective, convenient and cost-effective means of ensuring testing validity. Authenticates participants at the beginning and throughout the test/assessment (Persistent Authentication). Validates test results confirming that the participant has completed the assessment without unauthorized assistance through the use of video capture and website monitoring (Proctoring). Try a free 30-day trial download demo: The following video explains how the Biomids Authenticator and Proctor works in the case of test proctoring in online education. The Biomids Authenticator and Proctor is one of the most effective, convenient and economical proctoring systems available in the market today: * Low fixed cost - Allows frequent use for both Authentication and Proctoring. * Assured authentication - Utilizes powerful advanced facial recognition technology. * High integrity - Persistent Authentication throughout the test/assessment period. * Convenience - No need to schedule a human proctor - test taking anytime, anywhere. * Dashboard - Concise results uploaded to instructor or designated staff."

"I've noticed a some common perspectives and patterns that can, if one is not careful, turn into pitfalls. With that in mind, here are five common myths about online learning practices."