Keeping up with the latest developments in learning, teaching, and technology
EDUCAUSE is a gathering of educators who use technology. This yearly conference just happened last week (October 15-18, 2013) and several of the poster presenters put their materials online. One presenter, Perry Samson of the University of Michigan, uses SpashTop and LectureTools to gather realtime feedback from his class as he’s walking around the room …
Continue reading “Mobile lecturing and class feedback – engaged teaching/learning”
A colleague shared this video a while back. I think it hints at the reasoning behind why instructional design is important. I’ve been working on a degree in Instructional Design and while I don’t always think about how people could learn more effectively, I do occasionally think about how I would design an instruction (class, video, …
Arizona State has jumped on adaptive learning to try to combat increasing enrollment and lower funding. Scientific American reports: Any accurate evaluation of adaptive-learning technology would have to isolate and account for all variables: increases or decreases in a class size; whether the classroom was “flipped” meaning homework was done in class and lectures were …
Continue reading “Further study is necessary to test the variables in adaptive learning”
One of the reasons it’s nice to have a live teacher in front of the class is the teacher’s ability to make adjustments for the students on the fly. While possible with computer-based instruction, it would be quite difficult to account for all potential problems, situations and characteristics of all likely learners. One unique new …
Continue reading “Free OpenSource Dyslexia Font | OpenDyslexic”
I know I like shiny things. If it’s new or has neat features, I like to look at it and see what it can do. I also like testing things out and comparing them, though, which is why I enjoyed doing literary analyses. What Kim suggested, in reaction to an article on academic technology activism, …
The research comes out as the idea of a "flipped classroom," in which students first watch videos or read texts and then do projects in the classroom, has been growing in popularity at colleges and graduate schools. The study’s conclusion suggests that the current model of the flipped classroom should itself be flipped upside down. …
Of course, by virtual labs, they don’t mean virtual computer labs, but virtual science labs. Dissections on a computer screen and that kind of thing to make it so classes which require physical skills are no longer a bottleneck due to physical equipment limitations. The nice thing about virtual labs is that they can be …
James M. Lang reports on a book about dishonesty in the first part of a three articles on cheating on the Chronicle of Higher Ed. The article and book discuss findings on cheating. An earlier article in the Chronicle discussed a MOOC that teaches students how to cheat. Of course, this is done so that participants …
Continue reading “Cheating Lessons, Part 1 – The Chronicle of Higher Education”
In what I think is an interesting first, one of CSU’s campuses will grant students credit for participating in, and passing a test on, the Introduction to Computer Science course offered through Udacity, as reported in the New York Times. In another turn of events more recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported that …
Continue reading “Credit for taking free, massive open online courses”
Distance education has been around for quite a while (remember hearing about correspondence courses? one started in 1728), then radio and television-based education entered the scene and now we have online education, with MOOCs, Khan Academy and the rest. I think online education as we now know it is still in its infancy and I’m …
