unbc_ctlt

"Traditional educators, classrooms, and brick-and-mortar schools are no longer necessary to access information. Instead, things like blogs and wikis, as well as remote collaborations and an emphasis on 'critical thinking' skills are the coins of the realm in this new kingdom. Yet the national dialogue on education reform focuses on using technology to update the traditional education model, failing to reassess the fundamental design on which it is built. In 'Why School?,' educator, author, parent and blogger Will Richardson challenges traditional thinking about education - questioning whether it still holds value in its current form. How can schools adjust to this new age? Or students? Or parents? In this provocative read, Richardson provides an in-depth look at how connected educators are beginning to change their classroom practice. Ultimately, 'Why School?' serves as a starting point for the important conversations around real school reforms that must ensue, offering a bold plan for rethinking how we teach our kids, and the consequences if we don't."

Class2Go is Stanford's internal platform for on-line courses. Class2Go is intended to be an open platform for learning and research. Professors will have direct access to the data for their classes to learn how their students learn. We will facilitate experiments. This could be A/B/N testing of how different things affect student learning, or even bespoke code to try out interesting new features.

Allen G. Sens (Ph.D, Queen's) specializes in international relations, with a research and teaching focus on international security. He has a particular interest in armed conflict and conflict management, and maintains research agendas on peace operations, peacebuilding, European security, and Canadian foreign and defence policy. Dr. Sens is currently Chair of the Faculty of Arts Curriculum Committee. He is also currently serving as a Special Advisor to the Provost and Vice President Students. Allen Sens is also co-coordinator of the Terry Project, and is a co-teacher of ASIC 200, an integrated Arts/Science course in global issues. He is a graduate of the UBC Certificate Program in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In 2003, Dr. Sens was a recipient of the UBC Killam Teaching Prize.

Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.

Study finds "blended" or "hybrid" learning is at least as effective-possibly more effective-than traditional university courses with three hours weekly of face-time with professors.

A Learning Management System Built on Wordpress

This post will review existing literature on Open Educational Resources, introducing five critiques: 1.) An under-theorisation of 'openness', in which the concepts of positive and negative liberty will be used to suggest a neglect of coherent theorisation concerning the practice of self-directed learning. 2.) The simultaneous privileging and rejection of institutional authority, where OER literature will be shown to endorse the reputations of established institutions while claiming liberation from them. 3.) The diminishing of the role of pedagogy, in which OER will be aligned with an untheorised learner-centred model of education. 4.) Humanistic assumptions of unproblematic self-direction and autonomy, and 5.) an alignment with the needs of capital, in which a Foucauldian interpretation of subjectivity will offer alternative perspectives on the notions of power and emancipation in OER discourse. It is suggested that these critiques may provide a framework for OER to develop a theoretically rigorous area of scholarship.

This paper is based on research to identify common factors that contribute to the effective strategic leadership of teaching and learning centers.

How does copyright regulate the movement of ideas in universities today? How much do we pay for acquiring knowledge, and to whom? What are alternatives to the coursepack, the traditional means of giving students course materials? This series of five comics explore these questions and more.

Mark McGuire, Applied Sciences, U of Otago Blog: http://markmcguire.net Twitter: @mark_mcguire

YouPD is about making our problems and solutions explicit to one another in the name of accelerating and deepening our professional learning.

A refereed e-journal to advance research, theory, and practice in open and distance learning worldwide.

By: Terry Anderson

AU Press is the centre of scholarly publishing expertise for Athabasca University, Canada's Open University. It is the first scholarly press to be established by a Canadian university in the twenty-first century. We are dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge and research through open access digital journals and monographs, as well as through new electronic media.

This user guide is for educational organisations interested in developing open education practices using popular social media. It is based on an analysis of the Otago Polytechnic experience 2006-2009, where a small group of teachers used social media to develop open education practices. 

Faculty Cyber Connections - Online Module Design Workbook

Guide on How to Start & Run Your Very Own EdCamp

To remain fresh and relevant, online courses need to be continually revised and improved. Considerations of relevant laws and institutional policies should be a core focus of every curriculum redesign. Redesigning an online curriculum presents rich opportunities to integrate the latest thinking in given disciplines and to incorporate new methodologies for teaching and learning. New, emerging, and evolving technologies can greatly enhance work to update the curriculum of an online course.

Creating a brand new class or setting out to transform an existing curriculum can be a daunting task for new, as well as experienced, instructors. Although courses may vary in size, subject matter and level, a systematic process will help you plan and structure your course so as to effectively reach desired instructional goals.