Group items tagged

"Student feedback about the use of Twitter was uniformly positive. Only one student suggested an improvement and requested more frequent study tweets. Examples of student evaluation comments included: "I LOVED the Twitter questions! It was something that kept me studying all semester." "I really liked the Twitter 'snack learning.' I only wish there were more 'tweets' covering more topics. It was a nice review to go over to prepare for comps. . . . Twitter is a good way to reach students during the day to give us something to think about.""

How's this for a course site?

Interesting, nuanced take on "virtual reality" and journalism.

The accumulation of multiple, seemingly redundant, bacterial quorum-sensing systems is promoted by facultative cheating behavior; the strain with multiple systems cheats its single quorum-sensing system ancestor as a minority but returns to cooperation when in the majority.

Interesting to see how journalists are sometimes leading in presenting serious information in original, creative, engaging ways.

"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."

If you haven't seen this, you should take a look. This is a bit old but worth seeing if you like webdesign/journalsim/media http://t.co/yJm4BdPzYH #ds106 - Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) December 4, 2013

If you haven't seen this, you should take a look. This is a bit old but worth seeing if you like webdesign/journalsim/media http://t.co/yJm4BdPzYH #ds106 - Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) December 4, 2013

1. For complex written assignments that require synthesis of material from the entire semester, divide the assignment into phases and have students submit interim deliverables for feedback. 2. Use rubrics to guide student activity on the discussion board as well as in written assignments. 3. For courses that teach dense, technical material, self-check quizzes can be very effective to oblige students to complete the required reading and help them (and instructors) gauge their understanding of the material. 4. Make use of synchronous technologies, where appropriate. Many of the challenges instructors face when teaching online are the result of the distant, asynchronous nature of most online learning. Web conferencing and telephone conferencing can help "close the gap" that asynchronous communication introduces. 5. Explore the use of peer-assessment strategies to foster community development and give students chances to learn through analyzing and critiquing the work of others. Rubrics are a must for this kind of activity. 6. Look for appropriate opportunities to address the entire class so as to reduce the time spent giving the same feedback to multiple students. After a big assignment, post an announcement summarizing some of the trends in the submissions, along with recommendations for next steps. Maintain a "Q&A" discussion board to which students can post questions for everyone to see. Monitor the board regularly, but also urge students to assist one another when appropriate.

"If Freire Made a MOOC: Open Education as Resistance"

A nice breakdown of Twitter search methodology we might parallel in other contexts. "You probably skipped right over the most important word used by the five sources above. It's everyone's favorite word, and one you should add to any Twitter search that's seeking personal experiences: Me. (And its close cousin "my.") Most people relating a personal experience - aka, good sources - will use it. Most people observing from afar - aka, useless sources - won't. Let's look again at those five sources, and this time pay attention to the words they used that enabled us to find them. There's another word variation they all have in common."

"Muller concluded that those "clear," "concise" and "easy to understand" expository videos that abound in science education do not appear to be particularly effective in teaching science. By contrast, videos with dialogue that address the underlying misconceptions students bring to science seem to be more educationally effective."

"News sites with modular, image-heavy designs receive more pageviews and have stronger user engagement than sites with more staid, newspaper-inspired designs, according to a report"

Really need to think about how to do more with this internally for some of the routine support stuff. "It's no secret that newsrooms are increasingly using bots to cut down on busy work. Software now routinely churns out quarterly earnings stories for The Associated Press and earthquake alerts for Los Angeles Times, freeing reporters to pursue more in-depth projects. And while no bot can write 3,000-word investigative stories, it can assist reporters by alerting them to new data and filtering the information for them."

"The following is a letter to my first- and second-year music theory and aural skills students at The University of Colorado-Boulder. This is my second semester at CU, and the music students and I are still getting to know each other. For some, this will be their first semester with me; others are still getting used to my pedagogical quirks. To help frame the semester, I will have them read and discuss this open letter."