Writing Across the Curriculum

Imagine a Google Maps of scholarship, a set of tools sophisticated enough to help researchers locate hot research, spot hidden connections to other fields, and even identify new disciplines as they emerge in the sprawling terrain of scholarly communication.

This study reports the findings of an investigation of the factors influencing the use and usefulness of wikis in an introductory, undergraduate information systems course. Informed by the media choice, technology acceptance model from information systems research, and group collaborative learning research from the education literature, a survey instrument was developed and administered across the entire course. The study found that wiki use was influenced by the student's prior expertise with wikis, with their perceived usefulness of wikis being strongly influenced by their teachers' attitudes towards the technology, and the ease of access to the wikis. The students' overall attitude towards wikis was largely influenced by the extent to which they saw wikis as helping with their assignment work, and their intention to use wikis in the future was driven by their perception of wiki's usefulness. The paper concludes with an outline of the lessons learned from the study and recommendations for instructors who are thinking of using wikis in their teaching.

So, I say we need, and can build, a new CV, or whatever you want to call it. But what does this new CV look like? Here are at least some of the criteria a new vision for the professional identity document should meet

I've been tweaking the content of the syllabus for a couple of years now, but was looking for a way to arrange or present it that was less linear, less text-y, more visually engaging, more like a magazine or a website.

A wonderful approach to writing the common syllabus.

Special issue on Connectivism from IRRODL

Current practices of our educational institutions-and workplaces-are a mismatch between the age we live in and the institutions we have built over the last 100-plus years. The 20th century taught us that completing one task before starting another one was the route to success. Everything about 20th-century education, like the 20th-century workplace, has been designed to reinforce our attention to regular, systematic tasks that we take to completion. Attention to task is at the heart of industrial labor management, from the assembly line to the modern office, and of educational philosophy, from grade school to graduate school.

While the next online model remains unclear, Southern New Hampshire's president, Paul J. LeBlanc, has sketched out one possible blueprint. … The vision is that students could sign up for self-paced online programs with no conventional instructors. They could work at their own speeds through engaging online content that offers built-in assessments, allowing them to determine when they are ready to move on. They could get help through networks of peers who are working on the same courses; online discussions could be monitored by subject experts. When they're ready, students could complete a proctored assessment, perhaps at a local high school, or perhaps online. The university's staff could then grade the assessment and assign credit. … The whole model hinges on excellent assessment.

Starting the notion of spaces, rather than community, [Paul Gee] argues, can give us an analytical lens with which to examine classrooms and the activities that occur within them without the baggage that community of practice brings with it.

New research suggests that even before 2-year-olds speak in full sentences, they are able to understand grammatical construction and use it to make sense of what they hear.

My work on blogs, articles, handbooks, and so on is an invitation to engage in conversation, not a proclamation of what I absolutely know.

the ""thin portfolio" concept (borrowing from the prior "personal information aggregation and distribution service" concept) represents the idea that you don't need that portfolio information in one server; but that it is very helpful to have one place where one can access all "your" information, and set permissions for others to view it. This concept is only beginning to be implemented."

An overview of 5,000 years of educational theory, and thoughts about how educational technology is bridging the gap and flattening the learning of many.

This paper therefore proposes a research framework for connectivism that integrates approaches commonly used in online learning environments. The paper integrates the theories of online communities of practice, design-based research, and activity theory to construct a research framework that is characterised by a synergistic relationship between them.

There are resources that feature royalty free stock photos that are in the public domain.

when we attempt to select a font, we do quite a lot of comparing between the different fonts available to us. Here are seven tools which might help you to pick the right font for your work.