Group items tagged

"For all these reasons, I've concluded that it would be sound pedagogy for me to give my students notice about some of the challenging material we'll be covering in class - material relating to racial and sexual oppression, for instance, and to ethnic and religious conflict - as well as some information about their rights and responsibilities in responding to it. Starting with the summer semester, as a result, I'll be discussing these issues during the first class meeting and including a notice about them in the syllabus."

I remain astounded that anyone with a fully functioning neocortex talking seriously about MOOCs being some model of saving educational costs when the word is each course rings up a tab of $250k (edx) or even more. What does an institution get for dropping a quarter of a million per course? I can tell you what you do not get- an ongoing open sharing of the processes, of what worked, what did not work. Not a Udellian narrating of the process. It's more like another loaf of pre-packaged Wonderbread off the racks.

"This post is part of a series of 11 posts in which we're sharing the syllabi for all 11 courses in the Instructional Technology and Digital Media Literacy (IT&DML) program. Please keep in mind the materials we're sharing here are the documents and specifics as approved when we initially launched the program. The "real" implementation of these courses is a bit different as we embrace new digital texts and tools."

Ms. Wirth had tried to use Google Docs to help the course's 40,000 enrolled students to organize themselves into groups. But that method soon became derailed when various authors began editing the documents. Things continued downhill from there; some students also had problems downloading certain course materials that had been added to the syllabus at the last minute. When the confusion continued, Georgia Tech decided to call a timeout.

This is an interesting article about the potential pitfalls, but no where did I see anything about the spirit of experimentation. When moving forward there are bound to be hiccups.

I really liked Ms Wirth - I was enjoying the lectures. The other students were so enthusiastic and eager to get started in the discussion groups. I guess it needed a different format? Maybe we need a course on how to design a MOOC. When the number of students start getting in the tens of thousands...small discussion groups are a little more complicated...It will be interesting to see how this moves forward.

"After the student presentation, which should cover structure and theme but will seldom rise above rote plot summary, I will provide whatever historical and biographical context is both critical to our understanding of the book and available on Wikipedia. But I will sound so authoritative and well-versed that you'd never know this, even if you had the book's Wikipedia page open on the laptop you're pretending to take notes on, rather than your Facebook newsfeed."

This is a unique transition course designed to facilitate students' integration into the learning community of the University. The course enhances student's skills for academic success, develops understanding of university culture, increases understanding of self, and fosters educational engagement.

Several institutions have redesigned  traditional learning spaces to better  realize the potential of active,  experiential learning. We compare  student performance in traditional  and active learning classrooms  in a large, introductory biology  course using the same syllabus,  course goals, exams, and instructor

"as I set up the WordPress blog (which was there for the syllabus, widgets, static material), I realized that there was no need for two systems. After consulting with my colleagues Jim (our blog meister), Laura (our commenter and organizer), and Todd (our captain of synchronicity), I shifted the whole thing to a Google Site. There was no need for the Community, since I had some old gadget that could do discussion."

"For those of you gearing up for the Fall Semester, I want to make sure that you know that (1) Canvas upgraded the math editor recently and there is a lot of new functionality available and (2) there are print-friendly guides for using the Canvas Equation Editor. You can include these in your syllabus or as handouts if you are planning to do some intensive Canvas stuff with equations in the fall."

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?

"Pacansky-Brock"