Group items tagged

"Writing learning outcomes is very difficult for faculty who were never trained to think about their teaching in such terms.  We are great at describing what content our course will cover; we are pretty good at knowing that we expect our students to master a certain amount of content or skill set by the end of the semester.  We are terrible at framing our expectations for student learning in terms of learning outcomes, with all of our learning activities in the course aligned to those learning outcomes.  We are even worse at measuring learning outcomes.  We conflate grades with learning outcomes on the regular."

"An exciting path forward in achieving the NGDLE vision is a next generation learning system designed to create great learning experiences that improve learning outcomes. This learning system will understand learning outcomes, learner assessment, the learner record, and how to launch the right learning moments for each student."

So, in summary, the absence of specific learning objectives and outcomes has earned the "criticism" for constructivism as "inefficient and ineffective". This may equally be a challenge for Connectivism to be adopted as a mainstream pedagogy. Unless the specific learning objectives and outcomes (based on competency-based learning) are adequately addressed and resolved, it seems both Constructivism and Connectivism would still be operating in a hand-in-hand "networked" informal learning "paradigm" waiting to be absorbed as new and emergent pedagogy.

"As edtech expert, Tony Vincent, would say, "Date the tool, but marry the ability." There will always be multiple edtech tools, programs, and products that provide similar principle functions to support student engagement. However, to achieve engagement that exceeds the element of surprise or novelty, which is often necessary as an instructional "hooking" tool, it is imperative that we place the brunt of our instructional design efforts towards building thinking skills and cognitive growth within students."

"Special Issue: Outcomes of Openness: Empirical Reports on the Implementation of OER"

"Although not specifically designed to optimise learning, claims have been made that MOOCs are based on sound pedagogical foundations that are at the very least comparable with courses offered by universities in face-to-face mode. To validate this, we examined the literature for empirical evidence substantiating such claims. Although empirical evidence directly related to MOOCs was difficult to find, the evidence suggests that there is no reason to believe that MOOCs are any less effective a learning experience than their face-to-face counterparts. Indeed, in some aspects, they may actually improve learning outcomes."

Of course the current big buzz in the LMS arena is analytics: over the past few years each and all of the LMS providers, on their own or in partnership with other firms, have announced an analytics strategy and analytic applications that allow faculty, departments, and institutions to leverage student transactional data extracted from the LMS for analytic purposes intended to aid student academic performance, course completion, student retention, and learning outcomes.

A graphical display of this information might be helpful. Below is a graphic that depicts the student learning outcomes for a course I taught last year, a course for preservice teachers and the teaching of writing in K-12 schools.

This is right on target for what I am trying to pull together for my major project for my program. Mat, when you designed your Fall 13 course - did Canvas have advantages over SAKAI when it came to the mechanics of assessing your students' work?

"Quality in online learning can be defined in many ways: quality of content, quality of design, quality of instructional delivery, and, ultimately, quality of outcomes. On the face of it, the organizing principles of MOOCs are at odds with widely observed best practices in online education, including those advocated by my organization, the Quality Matters Program. "

"Game-based learning is still little understood and underutilized within the Scottish Educational system. Minecraft is a sandbox game similar to Lego that allows the user to create a world using blocks. Minecraft is being used in America and around the world to enhance pupils learning[i]. This study will aim to show that Minecraft corresponds to many of the learning outcomes within the Scottish national performance framework Curriculum for Excellence"

"This table is based on the "COUP" framework explained by the Open Education Group (with whom I have an OER Research Fellowship at the moment): Cost, Outcomes, Use, and Perceptions. See here for an explanation of each element of this framework as it relates to research on open textbooks and other Open Educational Resources."

"This Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Framework) grows out of a belief that information literacy as an educational reform movement will realize its potential only through a richer, more complex set of core ideas. During the fifteen years since the publication of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,1 academic librarians and their partners in higher education associations have developed learning outcomes, tools, and resources that some institutions have deployed to infuse information literacy concepts and skills into their curricula. However, the rapidly changing higher education environment, along with the dynamic and often uncertain information ecosystem in which all of us work and live, require new attention to be focused on foundational ideas about that ecosystem. Students have a greater role and responsibility in creating new knowledge, in understanding the contours and the changing dynamics of the world of information, and in using information, data, and scholarship ethically. Teaching faculty have a greater responsibility in designing curricula and assignments that foster enhanced engagement with the core ideas about information and scholarship within their disciplines. Librarians have a greater responsibility in identifying core ideas within their own knowledge domain that can extend learning for students, in creating a new cohesive curriculum for information literacy, and in collaborating more extensively with faculty."

"The key to unlocking a brighter future for students lies within the understanding and application of learning science. As a data scientist and edtech developer, I believe our job is not about inventing the next shiny digital device; it's about improving education outcomes for students, and doing so demonstrably and empirically with research. And the starting point for that is looking at what we already know from the science of learning."

"We are using the data from our initial offering of MOOCs to investigate the nuances of course persistence and completion, experiment with ways to measure learning outcomes such as peer-to-peer assessment, and discover and design new low-cost delivery models."

MOOCs are too new for there to be compelling evidence of their value, cost, and risks. The potential benefits and threats to academic quality, student outcomes, institutional integrity, and administrative processes are not yet known. However, the emerging features of MOOCs that have made them distinctive from the other types of OER are the services integrated with the content. The MOOC platforms for organizing and delivering the multimedia content, integrated with the social media tools for engaging individuals, and the assessment and analytic tools for providing feedback on learning and teaching are critical services that manage the content delivery within a design for learning. These services available through the open enrollment of MOOCs are the additional benefits that have been recognized as valuable by some learners, teachers, and institutions.

"Technological platforms are creating unprecedented global access to new educational opportunities. But we do not know the extent to which students using these systems are learning. As educators and researchers, we must partner to ensure that these platforms not only deliver information, but also include useful metrics, standards and methods that maximize learning outcomes."

This session will address online course design using the How People Learn framework for high level learning outcomes that involve collaboration, reflection, and problem solving.

Intellectually rigorous work lives, thrives, and teems proudly outside conventional notions of academic rigor. Although institutions of higher education only recognize rigor when it mimics mastery of content, when it creates a hierarchy of expertise, when it maps clearly to pre-determined outcomes, there are works of exception - multimodal, collaborative, and playful - that push the boundaries of disciplinary allegiances, and don't always wear their brains on their sleeves, so to speak.

"This presentation will outline the topic of digital citizenship, footprint, and identity for adult basic/upgrading educators. This topic is especially important in better understanding the common use of youth and adults with social media and both negative and positive outcomes that results from technological illiteracy or misuse. The presentation focuses on a positive, empowered view of technology rather than one of restricting and banning use."

"Of the seven groups identified, two polar opposites were the "disengaged" and the "maximizers." The average disengaged student scored well below the mean on all engagement measures, while the typical maximizer was well above average across the board. As a result, disengaged students showed significantly lower gains than maximizers on the four WNSLAE outcomes examined and had lower first-year GPAs, perceived learning gains, and persistence to the second year than their most-engaged peers."