Group items tagged

A group of renowned disability studies scholars are seeking to clarify what makes a book accessible with a set of guidelines that authors can use to help publishers make their books readable by anyone.

The guidelines, a one-page template letter, read a little like an ultimatum. The letter opens by asking a would-be publisher to confirm in writing that print books and accessible formats will be made available simultaneously, then launches into an explanation of how publishers should handle everything from digital rights management to authoring software.

Lennard J. Davis, professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the letter is meant less to threaten a boycott and more as a public service announcement. Some authors may not budge from the demands in the letter, he said, but others are likely to use it as a way to spread awareness about accessibility.

"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

"The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is an effort to create the first large-scale online database of university course syllabi as a platform for the development of new research, teaching, and administrative tools. "

"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."

Site has its problems but the simple frame is interesting: imagine, design, create, deliver, evaluate.

I like the concept- maybe inspiration, creation, evaluation.

"the WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) award to colleges, universities and organizations who are implementing exceptionally creative, technology-based solutions to contemporary challenges in higher education."

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.

the NAD laments that much of the universities' online media is published on platforms like YouTube, whose auto-captioning function is woefully insufficient for the hard of hearing. Food for thought.

60 second adventures in thought from The Open University.

"How much reading do we expect university students to do?"

"People are caught up in a focus on STEM"-science, technology, engineering and math-"but the piece they don't understand is that all of those fields rely on clear, good writing, and we're not getting that," says Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, executive director of the National Writing Project, a nonprofit think tank at the University of California, Berkeley.

So here's an idea for a fresh meme: #GoodWritingIsSexy.

"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. "

"When Daniel Joseph, a York University doctoral student studying labor and technology, found out about Coca-Cola's GIF the Feeling promotion, he knew exactly what he wanted to make with it: a Coke-branded critique of capitalism."

Little p-value What are you trying to say Of significance? — Stephen Ziliak, Roosevelt University economics professor How many statisticians does it take to ensure at least a 50 percent chanc…

"Teaching at the university level is not a practice of communicating or transferring information but awakening in students a desire to think by revealing to them the questionability of things."

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