— originally from Kirsten Winkler’s
You can now charge for Courses on Udemy and more
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On 11/05/2010,
in adjunct faculty, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, faculty, future of higher education, game-changing environment, online learning, organizational change, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, universities,
by Daniel Christian
The Rise of the ‘Edupunk’ — from InsideHigherEd.com by Jack Stripling
NEW YORK — The “Edupunks” will inherit the Earth … or at least some attention.
Those in higher education who continue hand-wringing over the relative merits of online learning and other technology-driven platforms will soon find themselves left in the dust of an up-and-coming generation of students who are seeking knowledge outside academe. Such was an emerging consensus view here Monday, as college leaders gathered for the TIAA-CREF Institute’s 2010 Higher Education Leadership Conference.
“We’re still trying to fit the Web into our educational paradigm.… I just don’t think that’s going to work,” said Mary Spilde, president of Lane Community College, in Eugene, Ore.
Today’s students are “pretty bored with what we do,” she added.
In a notable acknowledgment of the tail wagging the dog, several panelists alluded here to the possibility that if colleges don’t change the way they do business, then students will change the way colleges do business.
College leaders don’t yet know how to credential the knowledge students are gaining on their own, but they may soon have to, said Mark David Milliron, deputy director for postsecondary improvement at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We are not far from the day when a student, finding unsatisfactory reviews of a faculty member on ratemyprofessors.com, will choose to take a class through open courseware online and then ask his home institution to assess him, Milliron said. Colleges need to prepare for that reality, he said.
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These 12 unique blogs are written by professors — from theelearningcoach.com
Fortunately for us, blogging is an excellent channel professors can leverage without going through the rigors of formal publishing. So if you’d like to see what professors of instructional design/technology, education, media and business technology are writing about, here are some you’re bound to find interesting. And for multilingual readers, there’s a bonus Spanish eLearning blog at the end.
On 10/11/2010,
in adjunct faculty, digital video, education, education reform, faculty, pedagogy, psychology, publishing, research, sociology, teaching & learning,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
First of all, I got this item from:
One Facet of the Future of Educational Publishing — by Jeff Frank
I really enjoyed watching the Strage Prize video, and it led me to think more about the relationship between online video and the publication of educational research. In my role as Managing Editor of the Teachers College Record, I read a very large number of qualitative and ethnographic studies. While the best of these papers give the reader a strong sense of the subjects and the study location (and the author/researcher), after watching the 2010 Strage Prize video, I was fascinating by how much this video added to my understanding and appreciation of Lalitha’s paper.
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I think having the two together–the written work and the video/podcast–adds something of unique value. I hope more educational researchers and publishers experiment with these kinds of paired works, because I think they offer readers a wonderful educative experience.
Side note from DSC:
Think interactive, multimedia on an iPad sort of device.
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Which led me to:
Strage Prize 2010 — by Gary Natriello | October 8, 2010
This video features the work of Lalitha Vasudevan and her paper, “Performing New Geographies of Literacy Teaching and Learning.” The paper focuses on the literacies and digitally mediated lives of youth, and was published in the July 2009 issue of English Education.
The video’s production and publication is supported by the Strage Junior Faculty Prize. The Prize was established in 2009 by Teachers College alumna Alberta Strage and her husband Henry to recognize junior faculty achievement. Alberta also serves on both the President’s Advisory Council and the International Advisory Council for Teachers College. We appreciate both their generosity to Teachers College and support for the work of our junior faculty.
The Prize supports the production of a web video to highlight original and innovative work of a junior faculty member at Teachers College. All currently untenured members of the faculty in tenure-line appointments are eligible to compete for the prize by submitting an article, book chapter, paper, or other original product appearing during the previous year.
Congratulations Professor Vasudevan!
On 08/26/2010,
in adjunct faculty, digital audio, digital learning, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, digital video, disruption, e-books, e-readers, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, faculty, game-changing environment, graphics, higher education, media/film, mobile learning, multimedia, new media literacies, online learning, online media, teaching & learning, user experience (UX), user interface design, visualizing information,
by Daniel Christian
Leveraging digital media across the higher education campus
Phil Ice, Ed.D., Dir. of Course Design, R&D, American Public University System
Sebastian Diaz, Ph.D., J.D., Assoc.Professor, Technology, Learning and Culture, West Virginia University
Ellen Wagner, Ph.D., Executive Director, WCET
Note: This webinar from earlier today was sponsored by Adobe. This is the white paper from that webinar, which contains the below excerpts:
The Multimedia Landscape in Higher Education
In higher education, the effective integration of rich multimedia assets and platforms (and the requisite design and development skills demanded for their effective use) has become an expectation from schools of design, art, and communications. Engineering and journalism programs have recognized that as technology transforms industries, students with design and development proficiencies are in high demand. The obvious value of improving analytical and digital communications for teachers is now being addressed through initiatives such as the i3 Fund. Relatively less attention has typically been given to the integration and use of multimedia in other disciplines.
Emerging New Media Literacy in Academia
This paper has thus far explored the implications that collaborative, creative software solutions have on how we evaluate academic work. Just as importantly, one needs to consider the changing nature of how we communicate that work within the Academy. As the prices for video cameras continue to fall, the expectations for manifesting our work in new media formats will continue to rise. Given the availability of software such as Adobe Premiere Pro, we are finding that it is increasingly quite reasonable to expect that students possess the tools and skills necessary to produce representations of their work in dynamic visual formats, as is evidenced by www.YouTube.com. Although for a while it was believed that YouTube was an online version of America’s Favorite Home Videos, it is dangerous to assume that this phenomenon is merely a fad among the younger generation. Today’s YouTube is a marketing machine used by commercial and nonprofit entities alike, an online school and a news portal as well. YouTube serves as an accurate indicator of how newer generations will express themselves personally, artistically, and academically through what is commonly referred to as new media literacy.
Conclusion
Members of the Academy should anticipate that in the future conventionally printed papers will be replaced by much more dynamic multimedia representations of academic work. This applies not only to student assignments, examinations, and theses; it also applies to faculty work. Even as we begin to struggle with the fundamental shift from paper-based publication of work to electronic formats on the Internet, we also need to anticipate that in the near future, this research will take on new media formats. To help our faculty prepare for these changes, academic institutions must develop formal and informal faculty development initiatives to address the changes. In anticipation of these changes, it is imperative that academic departments and colleges begin to embrace technologies like Adobe Creative Suite such that we continue to develop our own intellectual capital as well as that of our respective institutions and the Academy.
From DSC:
I appreciated this well-done webinar. I also appreciate the work Adobe has done in the past and is currently doing.
I must say though, I struggle with how much we can load onto 1 person’s plate — i.e. the faculty member. We need a more team-oriented approach I think…as the bar continues to get higher and higher…and 1 person just can’t do it all anymore.
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On 08/17/2010,
in adjunct faculty, business side of he, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, education reform, faculty, higher education, leadership, liberal arts,
by Daniel Christian
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Two professors examine the American higher education system and explain how students and parents can get the most for their money.
Andrew Hacker
Professor of Political Science at Queens College, New York, and co-author of “Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids – And What We Can Do About It”
Mark Taylor
Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University, professor of philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary, and professor emeritus of humanities at Williams College. His latest book is titled, “Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities.”
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On 08/12/2010,
in adjunct faculty, faculty, pedagogy, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online,
by Daniel Christian
Good Teaching: The Top 10 Requirements — from Faculty Focus by Richard W. Leblanc
On 08/06/2010,
in adjunct faculty, digital storytelling, education technology, educational games / serious games, faculty, mobile learning, mobile technologies,
by Daniel Christian
Discussions on four current topics in academic technologies — from Ruben Puentedura
The slides from [Ruben Puentedura’s] recent presentations at Swarthmore College are now online:
- Rethinking data visualization: From dynamic illustration to analytic narrative
- Learning with games, learning from games
- Mobile devices in education: An alternative approach
- Building faculty communities of practice in a networked age
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Example slide from “Learning with games, learning from games”:
On 07/30/2010,
in adjunct faculty, faculty, research, web design and production,
by Daniel Christian
Harvard U. institute unveils software that helps build academic sites — from The Chronicle by Sophia Li
Last week, a team at Harvard University rolled out the latest release of a program that helps researchers create their own Web sites. The open-source software, OpenScholar, seeks to make building and customizing Web sites simple and straightforward, even for academics who aren’t tech-savvy.
There are currently two versions of the software: one for scholars to create a personal Web site and one for researchers to build a project Web site.
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On 07/30/2010,
in adjunct faculty, copyright/ownership/NFTs, faculty, legislatures / government / legal, UK,
by Daniel Christian
On 07/30/2010,
in adjunct faculty, blogs / blogging / vlogging, faculty, productivity / tips and tricks, teaching & learning,
by Daniel Christian
Organizing your teaching materials — from The Chronicle’s ProfHacker blog
On 07/30/2010,
in A/V -- audio/visual, adjunct faculty, copyright/ownership/NFTs, digital video, faculty, IT in HE, library / librarians, media/film,
by Daniel Christian
On 07/29/2010,
in adjunct faculty, engagement / engaging students, faculty, innovation, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
Reaching the last technology holdouts at the front of the classroom — from the Chronicle by Jeff Young
Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard U., helped write the Department of Education’s new National Educational Technology Plan, which challenges educators to leverage modern technology to create engaging learning experiences for students.
Every semester a lot of professors’ lectures are essentially reruns because many instructors are too busy to upgrade their classroom methods.
That frustrates Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University, who argues that clinging to outdated teaching practices amounts to educational malpractice.
“If you were going to see a doctor and the doctor said, ‘I’ve been really busy since I got out of medical school, and so I’m going to treat you with the techniques I learned back then,’ you’d be rightly incensed,” he told me recently. “Yet there are a lot of faculty who say with a straight face, ‘I don’t need to change my teaching,’ as if nothing has been learned about teaching since they had been prepared to do it—if they’ve ever been prepared to.”
And poor teaching can have serious consequences, he says, when students fall behind or drop out because of sleep-inducing lectures. Colleges have tried several approaches over the years to spur teaching innovation. But among instructors across the nation, holdouts clearly remain.
From DSC:
A major part of me agrees wholeheartedly with this. If a group of people are in control at an institution, those persons are responsible for the performance of the institution. So if faculty have the control at an institution, they are responsible for the results of that institution.They must take the steps to keep innovating, adapting, and must never be content w/ the status quo. (And actually, this is the case whether they are in control or not.)
Yet…another part of me struggles with loading everything on the faculty member. While I agree that we all need to keep growing, innovating, and updating our courses, I think that we are asking faculty to do too much here. They can’t keep up and neither can the instructional technologists. Few, if any, people have all the required skills nowadays. The bar has risen too high.
We need TEAMS of specialists…and that’s why the for-profit, online universities are kicking the tails of everyone else. They utilize teams to build and deliver their content.
(Michael Jordan, as good as he was, wasn’t able to beat a solid team of players. It wasn’t until he got support from other members of his own team that the Bulls went on to win multiple championships.)
On 07/01/2010,
in adjunct faculty, engagement / engaging students, faculty, presentations, teachers,
by Daniel Christian
Prezi: A better way of doing presentations — from Faculty Focus by: John Orlando, PhD
Everyone seems to assume that a presentation must be accompanied by a PowerPoint. Conferences even require presenters to submit their PowerPoints as a condition of being accepted. But we’ve all seen terrible PowerPoints that detract from the presentation, and many people just don’t use PowerPoints well, hence the term “PowerPoint-induced sleep.”
But maybe it’s time to (gasp) question the use of PowerPoint itself (stick with me here)! Why do we assume that we must put up an outline of our points to help the audience understand them? The best presentations on TED are not accompanied by a PowerPoint of bulleted lists, but rather photos or other imagery that illustrate a point or make an effect. A speaker might flash the simple word “why” on the screen to prepare the audience for questioning a common belief. A single photo could be used to elicit a laugh or set the tone of the discussion.
One alternative to boring PowerPoint slides is to use Prezi. This web-based tool allows the user to create a single canvas of text, images, videos, etc. online. The presenter flies from location to location on the canvas, sometimes turning elements upside down, sometimes zooming in or out, to explore the relationship between ideas. Like a painter, the canvas draws the developer to choose visual imagery to create the presentation, in contrast to the text-heavy, outline-based methodology of PowerPoint.
