ALT Lab

"I had been invited out by a group of students to climb buildings-a risky endeavor in which you have to dodge campus security while doing a series of parkour moves up fire escapes, railings, ladders, and ledges to make your way to the top of campus buildings. I was amazed at how passionate and intensively these students were pursuing this goal. And I realized that if we could somehow nurture that same kind of passion in the classroom, grades would be irrelevant. The students were, in fact, testing themselves. They were testing their courage, their skill, and their determination. And they will continue to test themselves-over and over again. If we could somehow create learning outcomes worth pursuing, we might get the same kind of engagement."

"But we also need to think and question and explore and understand, so that we can take up our particular responsibilities as educators as well as our general responsibilities as human beings. I might be wrong in my thinking, but I'm not going to stop thinking and putting it out there because that too, is an act of resistance."

"The findings also show faculty members are creating new opportunities with technology. Through experimentation with online education, for example, faculty members say they are able to serve a more diverse set of students and think more critically about how to engage students with course content, and with free and open course materials, they say they are increasing access to education."

"We can do better by our students. The number one thing would be to inculcate the idea of the university *as* a workplace, and all of us as professionals in it. And of course, many professors (me!) need a lot more training in the mechanics of the workplace than we ever get. The next, and much easier thing, would be to offer opportunities to acquire basic workplace technical skills: using software, running meetings, emailing like a grownup, navigating the org chart."

"the "active" in "active use of technology" we are referring to is what is happening in the mind of the child. Active use for young children occurs when they use technologies in generative ways, that is, when they are generating insights, associations between new and existing knowledge, or creating their own content. This encourages more active cognitive processing that leads to deeper, longer lasting learning."

"Of course, I am little disappointed that the students aren't all actually reading Plato. But I'm also impressed with their ability to find and use the content they need, just when they need it. It is still pretty early in the semester so they haven't yet realized that spewing facts does nothing to improve their overall grade. Soon, they will be confused to discover that I don't assess according to one's ability to retain information. It will take them a while to adjust, most have over a decade of schooling that has systematically conditioned them to believe in the value of isolated proofs."

""In terms of trying to assess authentic student learning," he says, "it's the most ambitious effort ever.""

"But that will not happen unless countries and states make very large investments in their teachers. Not, I might add, to teach them how to use technology.  That will get us nowhere. Their lack of knowledge about how to use technology has never been the problem. It is their lack of deep knowledge about the doors that the technology can open that is the problem."

""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.""

"His overall charter is to create the digitally enabled university. That encompasses many areas, including flipping the classroom, tapping into learning analytics, and embedding digital literacy into the core curriculum."

"This paper describes the challenges of designing and implementing online group work. "

"So if we know that there are methods superior to lecturing, why are we lecturing at all?"

Answer: not much