Group items tagged

"But there's a couple of problems with the disciplinary focus on teaching and learning. It reinforces the belief that teaching in a particular field is unique, and if you don't know the field you can't possibly know anything about how to teach it. Certainly the content-how knowledge of it advances, how it's organized, what counts as evidence, for example-has implications for how it's taught. Teaching problem solving and teaching themes from a novel are not the same. But there are many aspects of teaching and learning that transcend disciplinary boundaries-you wouldn't be reading this blog if you didn't believe that"

"Guidelines for designing teaching and learning for a digital age The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when everyone,and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching."

"Experts were realizing that disciplinary expertise and research prowess were no guarantee that a professor could teach. Some colleges were devising alternatives to rote learning, helping students integrate knowledge from different subjects, or challenging them with courses on contemporary problems. Teaching was finally going to matter."

"The bulk of scholarship on teaching and learning continues to be embedded in our disciplines. It ends up there because that's where it counts (if it does) and because there's a long-standing and still fairly widely held belief that the teaching needed for a particular kind of content is unique. Unless you know the content, you can't know how to teach it."

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.

" I am fortunate to be teaching a course this semester that I have successfully taught before and I have always loved to teach. I must admit that when it comes to my course rotation roster, I am always happy when it is time to teach this one. But, this semester, my new approach feels like I am hanging on a limb. I am uncertain. I feel vulnerable. I fear my experiment will fail. (Despite the fact that I know we really need to rethink this notion of failure.) So why do this? Because somewhere down in my gut I know that vulnerability is the heart of learning, and I know I need to learn too."

" five critical questions for teaching and learning for technology and media selection: Who are the learners? What are the desired learning outcomes from the teaching? What instructional strategies will be employed to facilitate the learning outcomes? What are the unique educational characteristics of each medium/technology, and how well do these match the learning and teaching requirements? What resources are available? "

"All of these companions have arrived in my life courtesy of the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, a free and fantastic resource for college and university faculty. Curated by Bonni Stachowiak, of Vanguard University, the podcast offers weekly episodes in which Bonni and her guests explore, in her words, "the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning." Some episodes also focus on personal productivity for academics."

Not in agreement with the 'taskmaster' element but I have similar concerns about teaching evaluations. "Michele Pellizzari, an economics professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, has a more serious claim: that course evaluations may in fact measure, and thus motivate, the opposite of good teaching. "

"the most excellent list of "Curated Readings" on open teaching and learning "

FYI, Coursera's "University Teaching 101" is just starting. Basic SOTL, best practices, know your students, developing instruction plan, working in small groups, teaching online.

"The findings of this study indicated that when teachers described their successful practices, they often linked them to their changing roles and new representation of their "selves" within an online environment. Their portrayal of the teacher self, both built on a plethora of previous experiences and reformed with the affordances and limitations of the online environment, went through a process whereby teachers were constantly challenged to make themselves heard, known, and felt by their students. This study showed that it was critical to listen to teachers' voices and give them a participatory role in the creation and use of their knowledge and experience in order to form their online teacher personas. As a result, programs that prepare faculty to teach online may need to encourage teachers to reflect on their past experiences, assumptions, and beliefs toward learning and teaching and transform their perspectives by engaging in pedagogical inquiry and problem solving."

This #ccourses post Why I teach in the wild is about someone who uses the web to #TeachTheWeb (and everything else): http://t.co/c8szkMmExP - Laura Hilliger (@epilepticrabbit) November 17, 2014

"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."

This could be a checklist for ALL professional development across education and, I suspect, other fields as well. Personalized, customized, sustained.

One professor's description of her learning to teach in a connected course.

Nice acknowledgement of the hurdles with teaching 'student centered, project-based investigations'. 'Rowdy' classrooms and undefined teaching rubrics are just a few.

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.

The Kress Foundation funded research to help clarify perceptions on digital scholarship and art history! I can only imagine the creative community being equally aghast and confused about earth art, conceptual art and performance art (among others). Wild to think about. We keep marching forward. "The findings reveal disagreements in the art history community about the value of digital research, teaching, and scholarship. Those who believe in the potential of digital art history feel it will open up new avenues of inquiry and scholarship, allow greater access to art historical information, provide broader dissemination of scholarly research, and enhance undergraduate and graduate teaching. Those who are skeptical doubt that new forms of art historical scholarship will emerge from the digital environment. They remain unconvinced that digital art history will offer new research opportunities or that it will allow them to conduct their research in new and different ways."

Merlot Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT)