Group items tagged

The external auditor's report told Paire that Temple was on par with other institutions that hadn't really addressed this issue, and the university needed to address gaps in learning spaces, labs, instructional materials and the Web. Some institutions focus mainly on Web accessibility, Paire noted. "But when we looked at what happened at Penn State, it was obvious we couldn't just focus on the Web. We needed to address the institution as a whole. We needed a much broader scope."

"The 2015 Institute on Inclusive Teaching, organized by the Inclusive Institute Planning Committee in partnership with the Division for Inclusive Excellence, the Division for Academic Success, and the Service-Learning Office in the Division of Community Engagement, will be held from Monday, May 18, 2015 through Friday, May 22, 2015 in the VCU Globe (Room 1030J 830 West Grace Street, Richmond, VA 23284) on the Monroe Park Campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. "

Digital Pedagogy Lab is host of a five-day practical institute that explores the role and application of digital technology in teaching. The institute has three tracks, providing hands-on practice with and discussion of networked learning, digital identity, new media, and critical digital pedagogy.

This Institute is almost full (and a tad pricy) in August in lovely Madison, WI. Interesting stuff.

Assessment: What are students really learning?

"We build software that shapes our cities. More specifically, (1) we create micro-institutions in physical space, (2) we design social processes that allow others to replicate and evolve those micro-institutions, and (3) we write software that enables those social processes. We use this process to create more robust, decentralized, human-scale systems in our cities. We are particularly focused on reinventing our current systems for learning, agriculture, and transportation."

"How many colleges and universities are integrating MOOC content into new and/or existing credit-bearing courses in academic programs? If so, what is the impact on the course, program and institution?"

"Although massive open online courses (MOOCs) are seen to be, and are in fact designed to be, stand-alone online courses, their introduction to the higher education landscape has expanded the space of possibilities for blended course designs (those that combine online and face-to-face learning experiences). Instead of replacing courses at higher education institutions, could MOOCs enhance those courses? This paper reports one such exploration, in which a Stanford University Machine Learning MOOC was integrated into a graduate course in machine learning at Vanderbilt University during the Fall 2012 semester. The blended course design, which leveraged a MOOC course and platform for lecturing, grading, and discussion, enabled the Vanderbilt instructor to lead an overload course in a topic much desired by students. The study shows that while students regarded some elements of the course positively, they had concerns about the coupling of online and in-class components of this particular blended course design. Analysis of student and instructor reflections on the course suggests dimensions for characterizing blended course designs that incorporate MOOCs, either in whole or in part. Given the reported challenges in this case study of integrating a MOOC in its entirety in an on-campus course, the paper advocates for more complex forms of blended learning in which course materials are drawn from multiple MOOCs, as well as from other online sources."

"The most widely read paper of Jeffrey Hancock's career was not conceived in a university laboratory. The data were collected by machines. The subjects were unwitting. The methods were not approved by an institutional review board."

"The emerging digital media ecology is opening/will open indeterminate capacities for thought and action that will shift (again, in a non-determining way) practices of rhetoric/communication, social institutions, the production of knowledge, and our sense of what it means to be human." PONDER THAT FOR A MOMENT...

"The Formation by Design Project is a learner-centered and evidence-centered approach to reinventing our institutions around whole person development and doing so in ways that are thoroughly responsive to the emerging learning ecosystem that characterizes this moment in history-the increasingly data-rich environment that, while enabling personalization and customization of learning, at the same time risks de-centering and dis-empowering learners. The Project engages internal and external stakeholders in a process of defining, designing, and measuring formation of the individual within the context of higher education." h/t Shelly Fowler

Using a design-based research approach, this paper develops an alternate theoretical framework (the BAD framework) for institutional e-learning and uses that framework to analyse the development, evolution, and very different applications of the Moodle Activity Viewer (MAV) at two separate universities. Based on this experience it is argued that the reality/rhetoric chasm is more likely to be bridged by interweaving the BAD framework into existing practice.

This is a collection of courses, students posts etc. (some VCU specific, some from other institutions) that might be useful.

"Praxis Network programs are allied but differently-inflected humanities education initiatives, mainly focused on graduate training, and all engaged in rethinking pedagogy and campus partnerships in relation to the digital. Among other elements, the initiatives emphasize new models of methodological training and collaborative research. Each program exists within a particular ecosystem of disciplinary expectations, institutional needs, available resources, leadership styles, and specific challenges."

GREAT examples of the participatory culture of the Web as applied to a serious institution, the #SCOTUS

The most obvious factor that learners Spectrum-wide see as valuable is academic quality. That almost goes without saying, but it needs to be kept at the top of the list even though it is what we assume from all our institutions.

Beyond that, though, I would say there are three things: responsiveness, credibility and context.

"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."

"Instructional design is, or should be, nothing less than pedagogy intelligent about the medium within which learning happens. If you teach in an LMS, you are an instructional designer. If you teach in a room, you are an instructional designer. At our institutions, instructional designers or engineers or technologists should be as filled in about pedagogy as teachers are. They should not content themselves to be carriers of content from one format to the next. They should be experts in digital delivery, and consultants to collaborate with."

From another institution-- scorecard breaking down popular instructional design metrics (e.g. Quality Matters) with SACSCOC online/blended best practices for compliance.