Group items tagged

It's been two years since a New York Times article declared the "year of the MOOC" -short for "massive open online courses." Now, for the first time, researchers have carried out a detailed study that shows that these classes really can teach at least as effectively as traditional classroom courses - and they found that this is true regardless of how much preparation and knowledge students start out with.

"Nelson said often times students don't connect what they learn in school to what they do out of school. So he works with teachers during the previous semester to build a summer program reflective of what they learn in class. "When students come out to the park, they're referencing things they are doing in the classroom. Then when students go back to the classroom, they're referencing things they've done in the park," he said."

Lovely post by an ED PSY 607 student "We talked in class about the importance of connections or clues and how the more connections and clues a student can develop towards a new idea, the better that new idea or concept is understood and processed, or moved to long term memory. "

get beyond boring text only syllabus

"The best performing teacher in the whole system was a woman named Zenaida Tan. Up until that report, she was completely unheralded. The skills she possessed were invisible. Meanwhile, less important traits were measured on her evaluations (three times she was late to pick up students from recess). In part, Lemov is talking about the skill of herding cats. The master of cat herding senses when attention is about to wander, knows how fast to move a diverse group, senses the rhythm between lecturing and class participation, varies the emotional tone. This is a performance skill that surely is relevant beyond education. This raises an important point. As the economy changes, the skills required to thrive in it change, too, and it takes a while before these new skills are defined and acknowledged. For example, in today's loosely networked world, people with social courage have amazing value. Everyone goes to conferences and meets people, but some people invite six people to lunch afterward and follow up with four carefully tended friendships forevermore. Then they spend their lives connecting people across networks. People with social courage are extroverted in issuing invitations but introverted in conversation - willing to listen 70 percent of the time"

"He concluded that, other than the raw cognitive ability of the child herself, only one variable really counts: "What teachers do, know and care about." The evidence suggests that a child at a bad school taught by a good teacher is better off than one with a bad teacher at a good school. The benefits of having been in the class of a good teacher cascade down the years; the same is true of the penalty for having had a bad teacher."

An interesting look at assessment in an Econ course. h/t Laura G.

"Criteria for Grades This course will revolve around exploring a question which is very current and for which there is no settled answer yet.  Therefore, we can't determine grades based on obtaining "the right answer" or even learning "the content."  There will be content to be learned, but learning content is not the point of the class, just a means to the end."

Some of the literature technology projects developed through the course include:

A series of e-books pairing poems with accompanying audio tracks read by the poets;
Cureador, a tool for sharing book recommendations with friends and family;
ParallelLit, a tool for comparing literary translations side-by-side;
BookTracks, a forum for creating soundtracks to novels;
Think'der, a mobile encyclopedia of thinkers and theorists, inspired by Tinder, a popular dating app;
(RE)write project, an online collaborative reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, currently offering six alternative storylines; and
Kvizsterical, an online collection of engaging literary quizzes, with topics ranging from literary monsters to authors snubbed for the Nobel Prize.

Worth keeping mind . . . . "Originally, reading about the assignment for what we have to do for class on Wednesday I got kind of annoyed. I am not good at open ended assignments and they frankly frustrate me to no end."

"We already know what the college of the future will look like, because the non-traditional students are creating it now. It's a hybrid of online and in-person classes, centered on the student and not the institution, with credits accruing from multiple schools, and adding up to a degree in alternating periods of attendance and absence."

Nice concept for class exercise; could be adapted widely

"Alvin Malesky, an associate professor and head of the psychology department at Western Carolina U.: Online-cheating services can "do medicine or chemistry or English - it runs the gamut. All sides of the academic house are threatened by this.""

Come for the argument, stay for the Monty Python clip...

"Reacting to the Past (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. It seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills. Reacting to the Past was honored with the 2004 Theodore Hesburgh Award (TIAA-CREF) for outstanding innovation in higher education. "

""One thing I've been thinking about lately is that the way I present myself in the online course is pretty different from how I present myself in the face-to-face course. In the first iteration of the course, I presented myself in a way that I assumed would be most effective." She described emphasizing a scripted, polished presentation and a no-nonsense persona of clarity and precision. "Now I am concerned less with my authority as a teacher in an online environment. Before, I presented myself in a more authoritative matter, which was not as effective, because I had a certain feeling of a barrier between myself and the class." She explained how she was willing to risk "being more effusive, more warm in written communication, more bubbly for lack of a better term" than her initial impulses dictated. "

3d printing in higher ed math classes

"This represents perhaps the most foundational of all the connections that Stephen Lehmkuhle and his colleagues have been steadily knitting together in Rochester: that between facts and ideas. Traditional college instruction-epitomized by the lecture-is largely a process of orally transmitting facts from the brain of a teacher to a student. It's a tremendously inefficient method-even harmful. UMR chemistry professor Rajeev Muthyala points to research finding that undergraduates often finish lecture-based introductory science classes with less expertise than when they started. They get worse."