Group items tagged

"Taking first steps in the Twitterverse can be a nerve-wrecking experience with new users unsure what thoughts to tweet to the world. Here, Paul André, Michael Bernstein and Kurt Luther attempt to fill the void and give some insights into what makes interesting and valuable microblog content." Actually doesn't give any real insights about 'academic' content - the first comment makes that point well. Perhaps the full paper is better.

Very interesting article on the use of Twitter to organise in the classroom and the insights to power and hierarchy that this event reveal.

Another insightful post from Jim Groom on moocs and personal agency in a digital world.

"Evidence shows that engaged students perform better academically than disinterested students. Measurement of engagement with education is difficult and imprecise, especially in large student cohorts. Traditional measurements such as summary statistics derived from assessment are crude secondary measures of engagement at best and do not provide much support for educators to work with students and curate engagement during teaching periods. We have used academic-related student contributions to a public social network as a proxy for engagement. Statistical summaries and novel data visualisation tools provide subtle and powerful insights into online student peer networks. Analysis of data collected shows that network visualisation can be an important curation tool for educators interested in cultivating student engagement."

Article wondering about the negative side of Moocs. No great insights though.

"The internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work "open access": digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. In this talk, Peter Suber - Director of the Harvard Open Access Project - shares insights from his new concise introduction to open access - what open access is and isn't, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. This event includes questions and responses from Stuart Shieber (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), Robert Darnton (Harvard University Library), June Casey (Harvard Law School Library), David Weinberger (Berkman Center / Harvard Library Innovation Lab) and more."

"The student digital experience tracker, a pilot scheme to provide first-hand insight into learners' expectations and views on technology in an education setting, showed that 72% of HE and 70% of FE and skills learners believe that when technology is used effectively by teaching staff it enhances their learning experience - giving credence to the argument that practitioners need to develop their own digital skills to deliver learning and teaching."

Some thoughts on how Coursera might make money - and some insights into how they currently organise e.g. more than $1m per staff member in venture capital available.

Brian Lamb with another insightful and inciting post on the poverty of critical thinking in Higher Education regarding the future of that self same education. If they don't pull their fingers out their fundaments we are all doomed is the message. And by the way, the 'they' is us.

A post arising from a session about privilege in education at #educon. There is an amazing amount of love and insight in the comments.

"As learning technologies are now integral to most higher education student learning experiences, universities need to make strategic choices about what technologies to adopt and how to best support and develop the use of these technologies, particularly in a climate of limited resources. Information from students is therefore a valuable contribution when determining institutional goals, building infrastructure and improving the quality of student learning. This paper draws on a survey of student experiences and expectations of technology across three Australian universities. Analysis of text responses from 7,000 students provides insight into ways that institutional learning technologies and academic-led technologies are influencing the student experience. This paper also discusses how the three universities have used this information to develop strategic initiatives, and identifies a need for new strategies to support academic-led use of the available tools."

The (non) importance of academic experience to getting a job at Google.

"Digital technologies can be used as tools that facilitate the research process, the organization, collection and distribution of information, communication and collaboration among others. TechLunch wants to provide insight into these purposes by presenting use case scenarios specific to the needs of students, teachers and researchers." Includes a set of recordings and resources on various tools e.g. Zotero, Cmap, Opinion Polling, etc.

Steve Wheeler post on facets of digital literacy. Includes some insightful comments.

Insightful post on the trends in the LMS market. It doesn't really address the potential for the demise of the LMS alongside the rise of the independent and open services that education is exploring, e.g. YouTube, WordPress, etc.

FOE vs EDC moocs - a learning approach comparison.

FOE Mooc analysis

"During the fall of 1999,  two colleagues and I taught an unusual class, 'The American Experience in Vietnam.'   Neither the subject nor the approach of team-teaching were new; instead what we developed was a pedagogy using a variety of information technologies to organize one class simultaneously across three campuses and disciplines."