Group items tagged

"Robots may replace me as a journalist, but English teachers can rest assured that machines have a long way to go to before being able to offer quality feedback. "

"At the college where I serve as president, we do evaluate student work; we just use a higher-quality method. Our students receive written evaluations not only on every assignment, but also for every course and learning activity. These evaluations are designed to be formative teaching tools."

""In sum, plaintiffs were deceived into spending tens of thousands on tuition alone for a program that functionally required them to teach themselves the material," the complaint reads. "They paid more than their peers who completed the same degree in a classroom, and yet received far less.""

"For example, Jaclyn is the underlying reason that I've had something of a change of heart about online classes. While I've been making a substantial contribution to my daughter's tuition and living expenses, Jaclyn decided in her sophomore year to get a job so that she could afford to move off campus and live a little better than she would if she stayed in the dorms. In the process, she took some online classes that fit her work schedule better than the traditional courses. Before my daughter started college, I couldn't see much reason for students at a bricks-and-mortar college to take online classes. Now I realize why those courses make so much sense for students who work - either out of necessity or by choice. It was Jaclyn who made it very clear to me that some online courses are much better than others. Good online classes have taught her much more than bad survey courses in the traditional format with 400 students in them. Her experiences were what inspired me to create what I hope will be a quality online class of my own."

" The Open Learning Initiative offers online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Our aim is to combine open, high-quality courses, continuous feedback, and research to improve learning and transform higher education.Learn More "

The primary audience for this book is college faculty and graduate students interested in quality teaching in blended learning environments. The secondary audience is education technology professionals, instructional designers, teaching and learning developers, and instructional aides - all those involved in the design and development of the media and materials for blended learning.

"When we say students are customers I hope you know that we mean we have a responsibility to them not because they pay us but because they trust us with something they come to us not even quite knowing how to define but knowing they need. And as all of you have been witness to over the time we have been here our endeavors here are most certainly not simply about revenue. Nor is success simply defined by whether a student got a good grade.  Everything, the emphasis on academic quality and outcomes, the funds dedicated to making sure you have the resources you need, your personal and professional development, contradicts the naysayers."

"When I suggest sketching as a visual thinking tool, I often I hear "I'm not an artist" or "I can't draw." While I understand the hesitation, I'm here to tell you that the artistic quality of your sketches is not the point. The real goal of sketching is functional. It's about generating ideas, solving problems, and communicating ideas more effectively with others. "

Author states "this has been a long, rambling article....My basic thesis is that IoT technology can be a tool for behaviour change for social and environmental benefit, through involving people in making systems which address problems that are meaningful for them, and which improve understanding of the wider systems they're engaging with. "We're heading into a world of increasingly complex engineered systems in everyday life... "Yet there is a disconnect between the potential quality of life benefits for society, and people's understanding of these - often invisible - systems around us." Worth a read to inspire several thoughts and arguments.

There is in his syllabus no compromise with expediency, no taking for granted of power structures, nothing but rigorous honesty and tireless interrogation; there is some feeling or hope that if you could put every single thing under the sun into words you can head off sorrow, frustration, resentment, missed communication, thwarted ambition. Wallace refuses the habitual patterns and usual fictions that govern a classroom. His syllabus warns: "If you are used to whipping off papers the night before they're due, running them quickly through the computer's Spellchecker, handing them in full of high-school errors and sentences that make no sense and having the professor accept them 'because the ideas are good' or something, please be informed that I draw no distinction between the quality of one's ideas and the quality of those ideas' verbal expression, and I will not accept sloppy, rough-draftish, or semiliterate college writing. Again, I am absolutely not kidding."

The purpose of this study was to examine instructor performance, which might reflect the quality of instruction in regards to online class size. Instructor performance was measured through peer reviews of online faculty in the areas of: fostering critical thinking, providing instructive feedback, maintaining high expectations, establishing relationships, and exemplifying instructor expertise. Class size was defined as the number of students still enrolled at the end of the course

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.

Some useful image repositories

No citation but worth looking at . . . "Claims about the success of brainstorming rest on easily tested assumptions. One assumption is that groups produce more ideas than individuals. Researchers in Minnesota tested this with scientists and advertising executives from the 3M Company. Half the subjects worked in groups of four. The other half worked alone, and then their results were randomly combined as if they had worked in a group, with duplicate ideas counted only once. In every case, four people working individually generated between 30 to 40 percent more ideas than four people working in a group. Their results were of a higher quality, too: independent judges assessed the work and found that the individuals produced better ideas than the groups. "

""Academic innovation is where creativity, comprehensive excellence and our aspirations for societal impact all come together at the University of Michigan," Schlissel said. "Our new initiative will formally help us consider how we can leverage networked access to information, new modes of communication and data analytics to strengthen the quality of a Michigan education, tailor it to the needs of each individual student, and enhance our impact on society.""

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