adjunct faculty

Feynman – Don’t lecture and Feynman Technique [Clark]

On 09/28/2021, in active learning, adjunct faculty, education, Europe, faculty/staff, higher education, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, memory, pedagogy, physics, teachers, teaching & learning, UK, by Daniel Christian

Feynman – Don’t lecture and Feynman Technique — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

Excerpt from the Feynman Technique section

Write down everything you think you know about the topic from the top of your head
Teach it to someone much younger
Identify the gaps and fill them out
Simplify, clarify and use analogies

Learning this way is iterative, as you must go back to sources to fill in any gaps uncovered by your attempts to recall what you think you know. The act of writing, teaching, simplification and analogising, is a form of retrieval practice that increases understanding and retention.

Also see:

The Feynman Technique Can Help You Remember Everything You Read — from medium.com by Eva Keiffenheim
How to use this simple principle for you.

Excerpts:

Social climber Dale Carnegie used to say knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied. And to apply what you read, you must first remember what you learned.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was an expert for remembering what he learned.

Most people confuse consumption with learning. They think reading, watching, or hearing information will make the information stick with them.

Unless you’ve got a photographic memory, no idea could be further from the truth.
…
Teaching is the most effective way to embed information in your mind. Plus, it’s an easy way to check whether you’ve remembered what you read. Because before you teach, you have to take several steps: filter relevant information, organize this information, and articulate them using your own vocabulary.

Surviving Among the Giants [Carlson]

On 09/24/2021, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, consortiums, content development, aggregation, repositories, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, education technology, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, IT in HE, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, liberal arts, lifelong learning, Michigan, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, organizational change, platforms, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Surviving Among the Giants — from chronicle.com by Scott Carlson
As growth has become higher ed’s mantra, some colleges seek to stay small.

Excerpts:

The pressures on the higher-education business model are changing those attitudes. The Council of Independent Colleges’ fastest-growing initiative is the Online Course Sharing Consortium, which allows small colleges to offer certain courses to students at other institutions. Currently, there are 2,200 enrollments among almost 6,000 courses on the platform.

“The higher-ed business model is broken,” says Jeffrey R. Docking, who has been president of Adrian College for 16 years. “But where it’s most broken — and the first ones that are going to walk the plank — are the small private institutions. The numbers just don’t work.” Combining some backroom functions or arranging consortial purchases is just “dabbling around the edges” — and won’t get close to driving down the cost of tuition by 30 to 40 percent over the next several years, which is what Docking believes is necessary.

From DSC:
Docking’s last (highlighted) sentence above reminds me of what I predicted back in 2008 when I was working for Calvin College. The vision I relayed in 2008 continues to come to fruition — albeit I’ve since changed the name of the vision.

Back in 2008 I predicted that we would see the days of tuition being cut by 50% or more

From DSC (cont’d):
I was trying to bring down the cost of higher education — which we did with Calvin Online for 4-5 years…before the administration, faculty members, and even the leadership within our IT and HR Departments let Calvin Online die on the vine. This was a costly mistake for Calvin, as they later became a university — thus requiring that they get into more online-based learning in order to address the adult learner. Had they supported getting the online-based learning plane off the runway, they could have dovetailed nicely into becoming a university. But instead, they dissed the biggest thing to happen within education in the last 500 years (since the invention of the printing press).

Which brings me to one last excerpted quote here:

“For so many years,” Docking says, “all of these really smart people in Silicon Valley, at the University of Phoenix, at for-profits were saying, We’re going to do it better” — and they came around with their “solutions” in the form of MOOCs, or massive open online courses, and other scaling plans. Small colleges didn’t want to hear it, and, Docking says, maybe it was to their peril.

Check out “The Learning Scientists Podcast”

On 09/15/2021, in accessibility / UDL, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, assessment, blended learning, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, elearning, face-to-face, faculty/staff, flipping -- inverted learning, formal learning, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, hybrid learning, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, learning theories, library / librarians, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, online learning, pedagogy, podcasting, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Active Learning: 5 Tips for Implementing the Approach — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Active learning provides ways to get your students engaged without needing to revamp how you teach.

Excerpts:

However, neither listening to a lecture or reading a textbook is the most efficient way to learn or what active learning is truly about. “What exactly do we mean by active learning?” Deslauriers says. “We mean that first, you have to be engaged. Obviously, that’s number one. Number two, you have to be engaged productively. And number three, the productivity has to be toward a goal that is deemed worthwhile*.”

— Louis Deslauriers, Director of Science Teaching and Learning
in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University

From DSC:
I appreciated seeing/reading this solid article. Just a couple of reflections and highlights here…

* But worthwhile for whom? For the faculty members? The teachers? The trainers? Or for the learners, the students, or the employees? Where is agency here? Where does more choice and control come into play here? Where’s the motivation for me to learn something if someone keeps telling me what’s important to THEM? What’s relevant to THEM? Why should I care about this topic? How is it relevant? How will it help me get a job and/or make a positive difference in this world? Can I choose how deep I want to dive in?

Later…Deslauriers goes on to make a great point when urging a pause for students to practice some metacognition:

Does this make sense to me?
How is this relevant? <– DSC: There it is.
Does it connect with something I already know? And if so, how do I integrate with what I already know?
What sort of questions do I have right now?
Can I repeat what the instructor just did? Or is it going to require a lot of practice?

“There’s no way you can undergo these mental processes when someone keeps talking,” Deslauriers says. But if educators pause during their lectures and encourage this type of focus, they can help their students learn more efficiently.

Instructors can hand out electronic clickers, use web-based tools such as Google forms, or even go completely low-tech by giving color-coded cards to students that correspond to different answers.

Also see:

Why Traditional Lectures Won’t End Anytime Soon in Higher Ed Despite Better Approaches Being Available — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
For years, research has shown that students learn more through active learning than from passive traditional lecture, but the old habit is hard to break.

The Story is in the Structure: A Multi-Case Study of Instructional Design Teams — from the Online Learning Consortium by Jason Drysdale (other articles here)

Excerpt:

Given the results of this study, it is recommended that institutions that are restructuring or building new instructional design teams implement centralized structures with academic reporting lines for their teams. The benefits of both centralization and academic reporting lines are clear: better advocacy and empowerment, better alignment with the pedagogical work of both designers and faculty, and less role misperception for instructional designers. Structuring these teams toward empowerment and better definitions of their roles as pedagogy experts may help them sustain their leadership on the initiatives they led, to great effect, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also revealed the importance of three additional structural elements: appropriate instructional design staffing for the size and scale of the institution, leadership experience with instructional design, and positional parity with faculty.

Also see:

A Practitioner’s Guide to Instructional Design in Higher Education — from by Jill E. Stefaniak, Sheri Conklin, Beth Oyarzun, & Rebecca M. Reese

Top 300 Tools for Learning 2021 [Hart]

On 09/03/2021, in 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, Adobe, adult learning, analytics, animation, Apple, art, blogs / blogging / vlogging, business, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, design, digital audio, digital learning, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, e-books, e-publishing related items (EPUB and more), e-readers, education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, faculty/staff, flipping -- inverted learning, Google, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, innovation, instructional design, interactivity, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, online learning, online media, open courseware and systems, platforms, podcasting, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, programming, reading, remote teaching and learning, RSS, social learning / networks, social media, STEAM-related, storytelling, streams of content, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, webinars, workplace, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

Top 300 Tools for Learning 2021 — from toptools4learning.com by Jane Hart

Excerpt:

2021 was the YEAR OF DISRUPTION! There were a substantial number of new tools nominated this year so the main list has now been extended to 300 tools to accommodate them, and each of the 3 sub-lists has been increased to 150 tools. Although the top of this year’s list is relatively stable, there is quite bit of movement of tools on the rest of the list, and the effect of the new tools has been to push other established tools down – if not off the list altogether. Further analysis of the list appears in the right-hand column of the table below.

This table shows the overall rankings as well as the rankings on the 3 sub-lists: Top 150 Tools for Personal Learning (PL150), the Top 150 Tools for Workplace Learning (WL150) and the Top 150 Tools for Education (ED150). NEW tools are shaded YELLOW, tools coming BACK on the list are shaded GREEN. The most popular context in which each tool is used is also highlighted in BLUE. Click on a tool name to find out more about it.

Zoom for Education: 5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of It — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Many educators are still only using the basic Zoom features despite new upgrades to the video conferencing software.

As mentioned in Erik’s article, also see:

Russell Stannard’s Zoom tutorials — from teachertrainingvideos.com

Zoom how-to-video tutorials

10 Ways You Can Use Podcasts in Your Course to Engage Students [Honeycutt]

On 08/25/2021, in 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, creativity, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, education technology, engagement / engaging students, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, lifelong learning, multimedia, online learning, online media, participation, podcasting, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, remote teaching and learning, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, tools, youth, by Daniel Christian

10 Ways You Can Use Podcasts in Your Course to Engage Students — from barbihoneycutt.com by Barbi Honeycutt, Ph.D.

Excerpt:

Have you used podcasts in your courses yet? If not, you might want to consider it! Podcasts can be an excellent tool to add to your lesson to enhance a message, present more in-depth perspectives, and offer a different medium for students to engage with the course content.

And, podcasts are popular! There are more than 630,000 podcasts representing a variety of topics: current issues, education, writing, research, science, leadership, politics, management, business, skill development, hobbies, etc. The list just goes on and on.

I’m almost positive there is at least one episode in one podcast somewhere you could integrate into your course. And if there isn’t, then you and your students could create one!

Just released: The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Almanac for 2021-2022

On 08/19/2021, in adjunct faculty, business side of he, colleges, community colleges, data related items, higher education, leadership, student-related, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

For recalculating those due dates out there: timeanddate.com

On 08/17/2021, in adjunct faculty, Canvas - and other Instructure-related items, CMS/LMS, education technology, faculty/staff, instructional design, IT in HE, K-12 related, platforms, teachers, tools, by Daniel Christian

For recalculating those due dates out there: timeanddate.com — with thanks to Lisa Smith at the WMU-Cooley Law School for this resource; Lisa showed how this was used with Cidi Labs Multi-Tool to batch change dates and times within Canvas

From DSC:
Along the lines of time and tools for the classroom…I also find classroomscreen.com helpful in providing some solid timers.

classroomscreen.com

Thinking Full-Speed Ahead at Instructure’s Future of Education Collaborative — from campustechnology.com by Mary Grush
A Q&A with FIU Online’s Maikel Alendy

Excerpt:

Maikel Alendy: Our director of learning design and innovation at FIU Online, Gaby Alvarez, likes to use a word that I think was foundational to our strategy to navigate learning through the pandemic — that word is ecosystem.

Our approach, like many, was to leverage Canvas and Zoom, but we had a few processes in place that gave us really a big head start. First, we had piloted Zoom years before and had already rolled out Zoom Pro accounts for all FIU faculty and students. Of course, the initial adoption was nominal. Usage was fine for “BC” (Before COVID) instruction. Still, it was helpful, once in the pandemic, that we already had support materials and some awareness of the tools.

Traveling down the road as a metaphor for the terms “learning objectives” & “learning outcomes” [Christian]

On 08/09/2021, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, education, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learning, Learning Experience Design, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, universities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
As I was traveling down one of the local roads the other day, the thought reoccurred to me …that driving along a road is such an apt metaphor for this idea of using the terms “learning objectives” and “learning outcomes.”

I’m going down the same road.

I can look ahead to see where I want to go. But that doesn’t mean that I’m for sure going to get there. That’s where I’m heading and I hope that I will get there, but several things will need to go right.

OR…I can look in the rearview mirror of my car and see where I’ve already been….what’s already taken place. I’ve already passed such and such a point (or points).

I can see where I've been by looking in the rearview mirror -- or I can look ahead to see what I'm traveling towards

That is, I can’t talk about learning outcomes if I’m just getting on the road. At that point, I can talk about where I hope to go (i.e., my learning objectives), but I can’t talk about my learning outcomes until I’ve been traveling for a while.

Where this gets muddy/tricky is when we discuss entire programs. Then the term “learning outcomes” is often used. I get that — it makes sense at that level of things. But if we are talking about an individual course as seen in Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard Learn, etc…then it makes more sense to me to continue to use the phrase “Learning Objectives.”

Elaboration Strategies That Benefit Learning [Malamed]

On 08/06/2021, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, elearning, faculty/staff, learning, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, pedagogy, podcasting, student teaching/teacher education, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, by Daniel Christian

Elaboration Strategies That Benefit Learning — from theelearningcoach.com by Connie Malamed

Excerpt:

Although retrieval practice and spaced learning may be more well-known, elaboration is an instructional strategy worth our attention. Elaboration strategies refer to the many ways of connecting prior knowledge to what someone has newly learned. This has the potential to make the new material more memorable and meaningful.

We all know that new learning requires a foundation of prior knowledge. Elaboration techniques give people opportunities to make the connections stronger. In the book Make It Stick, the authors write, “The more you can explain about the way your new learning relates to your prior knowledge, the stronger your grasp of the new learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you remember it later.” (Listen to my conversation with one of the authors of Make It Stick.)

What Is Instructional Scaffolding? — from edtechreview.in by Saniya Khan

Excerpt:

Scaffolding is a bridge used to build on what the students already know to get to something they do not know. If the scaffold is properly administered, it will act as a facilitator, not an enabler” (Benson, 1997).

The process of Scaffolding is based on Lev Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning when they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance. Vygotsky said, “children who can perform their tasks at a particular cognitive level in cooperation and collaboration with others and with adults will be able to perform at a higher level. And this difference between the two levels is the child’s Zone of Proximal Development”. He defined scaffolding instruction as the “role of teachers and others in supporting the learner’s development and providing support structures to get to the next stage or level.”

IU researchers introduce ambitious new model for large-scale research on student learning — from news.iu.edu

Excerpt:

“The main conclusion of the study — to the great surprise of many teachers — is that there is no overall effect of feedback timing that spans all learning environments,” said Fyfe, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. “The findings should provide some comfort to teachers. If they take a few days to return feedback, there is no evidence that the delay will hamper their students’ progress, and in some cases, the delay might even be helpful.”

From DSC:
I must admit that I publish this with some hesitation, as I’m a big fan of personalized, customized feedback. I just hope that study doesn’t stop or reduce faculty members from providing such valuable feedback.

Also see:

The Science of Studying Student Learning at Scale — podcast and transcript — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly; with Emily Fyfe and Ben Motz at Indiana University

Excerpt:

MOTZ: So ManyClasses is really an attempt to try and expand the scope of research so that what we’re doing in asking a question of how people learn, is expanding beyond the boundaries of any single classroom, really aiming at developing inferences that could generalize beyond that narrow scope, but also that might be able to identify where a practice might have benefits.
…
FYFE: …I think when we are thinking of ManyClasses as a research team, we’re thinking of it as a new gold standard for how to conduct scientific research in classrooms
…
And so ManyClasses is a model for sort of combining the rigor of these randomized experiments within these authentic settings. And the goal is to sort of, as Ben said, to do this across many classes, so that we’re not just running one experiment, but we’re replicating it across all of these different authentic educational settings. And so really, at the heart of it, ManyClasses is a new model for conducting research in educational settings.

Learning Ecosystems

Feynman – Don’t lecture and Feynman Technique [Clark]

Surviving Among the Giants [Carlson]

The Story is in the Structure: A Multi-Case Study of Instructional Design Teams [Drysdale]

Elaboration Strategies That Benefit Learning [Malamed]

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