From DSC:
I was reading about a Ph.D. who was currently doing some research into the science of learning. This person had been teaching in a School of Education for years, but just (relatively) recently embarked on a Ph.D. During this person’s research, they came across a lot more information regarding the science of learning.

If this was true with someone who had been in education for years (and I can relate to that as well), it made me wonder:

  • How can we better get the word out to our learners re: how they can maximize their Return On Investment (ROI) from their studying time and efforts…?

Then I thought, why couldn’t we put these tips directly into our banners on our CMS’s and LMS’s and/or link our banners to some other web pages/resources that provide such best practices and tips for our learners!?!  This could occur within the corporate training world as well.

Examples:

Let's put best practices on studying directly within our LMSs banners!

Or we could link to resources regarding best practices in studying!

Along these lines, we should have 11×17 (or larger) posters like this plastered in every hallway of every learning space out there:

 

We should plaster these types of posters throughout our learning spaces!!!

 
 

Here’s an example of what an engaging and exciting online course might [look like]. 

You start with a short video that introduces the subject. It focuses on the course’s main ideas, and how they relate to one another, getting your learners interested in the topic and making them eager to learn more.

 

AI+ alumni + real-world practitioners + accreditation agencies = outcomes for next year -- by Daniel S. Christian

 

AI+ alumni + real-world practitioners + accreditation agencies = outcomes for next year -- by Daniel S. Christian

 

Learning from the living class room

 

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

Days Calculator -- calculating days between two dates

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

 

Recording of “The Future of Education Collaborative for Higher Education” on 8/12/21 — this event was sponsored by Instructure and AWS

From DSC:
One of the most interesting items for me in this was to hear how one university is allowing students to drive the Request For Proposal (RFP) process – giving students much more VOICE. Staff and faculty are consultants but students have the final say! Wow! 

Also, I agree with the idea that the market will drive changes within higher education. But for that to occur more significantly:

  • Employers need to hire more people from a variety of backgrounds and that come into their interviews with a greater variety of credentials.
  • The accrediting agencies involved with higher ed are going to need to become more innovative and flexible.
  • And the elephant in the room for me is that faculty members are going to have to come to the realization that those organizations/courses of the future that will thrive and have the most impact will be much more team-based and will be based upon what the market needs (i.e., better alignment is needed between the corporate/business world and the world of higher education). For far too long, the faculty member has been the sole person at the table….the person holding the steering wheel…the person in control of everything that gets presented and how it gets presented….the person who decides what they want to teach (vs. what the market actually needs) and how they want to teach it.

Finally, I bet AWS and Zoom could have said a LOT more than they actually said.

#learningfromthelivingclassroom

 
 

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.

 

 

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.

 

Instructure Is Back on the Stock Market, But Not Much Change Expected For Canvas Users — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young

Excerpt:

Instructure is officially a publicly-traded company—again.

Officials from the company, which makes the Canvas learning-management system used at many colleges and schools, rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange today, marking its IPO.

 

OPM + MOOC = OPX. 244 University Partnerships in the first half of 2021 — from HolonIQ

OPX has well and truly arrived. 2U’s acquisition of EdX. Coursera’s IPO. SEEK’s 50% stake in FutureLearn and their ownership of OES. UpGrad’s rumored $4B valuation. Shorelight Live. Minerva’s OPM pivot. The list goes on, and meanwhile 244 University Partnerships were forged in the first half 2021.

 

 

Optimizing High-Quality Digital Learning Experiences A Playbook for Faculty — from onlinelearningconsortium.org

 

Optimizing High-Quality Digital Learning Experiences A Playbook for Faculty

Excerpts:

This playbook is a collaboration between the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and the Every Learner Everywhere Digital Learning Network. This playbook is designed to serve as a concise guide to address faculty needs for online course design, teaching, and continuous improvement.

One strategy that can enhance teaching presence in an online course is to provide audio and video content that can be developed with relative ease using multimedia applications. Creating micro-lectures along with other multimedia is a great option for designing online course content.

Creating your own closed-caption video content, along with video transcripts, is a practical option for communicating course concepts to students. You might also consider providing supplementary written materials or curating content from other sources to help students master course concepts.

 

Teaching: Why an Active-Learning Evangelist Is Sold on Online Teaching — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Excerpts:

Now, says Mazur, the results are in and he’s convinced: online teaching is better. Not in all circumstances, to be sure. But in his applied-physics courses, students showed larger learning gains and felt more supported than students had in in-person classes. In fact, they appear to have learned so much more effectively in this new format that he wonders if it’s “almost unethical,” to return to the classroom this fall.

“I have never been able to offer a course of the quality that I’m offering now,” he says. “I am convinced that there is no way I could do anything close to what I’m doing in person. Online teaching is better than in person.”

One benefit of this setup, says Mazur, is that students go at their own pace. He has thought a lot about how classroom-based work, even when it is student-led, is hostage to the clock and the instructor. Not every group works at the same pace, yet everyone has to wait until others are ready, or rush ahead when they fall behind. When groups set their own pace, it gives them the space to work through problems or get help as needed. The value of self-paced learning is also evident outside of class, says Mazur, who built more asynchronous work into his online course.

“I have never seen students work this hard for my course,” he says. “Never. And so consistently.”

Also see:

A snapshot of Eric Mazur's physics class from Canvas.

But he’s so convinced of how valuable this model is that he asked Harvard to allow him to keep teaching online this fall. 

Also relevant/see:

 

Instructure: Building an Effective Learning Ecosystem — a recorded webinar from instructure.com from 3-4-21 (NOTE: You will need to provide some basic contact information to view it.)

Excerpt:

Hear from an expert panel of district leaders as they share their experiences with creating a learning ecosystem that includes integrating their learning management and assessment systems with quality benchmark and formative assessments. You will learn how a learning ecosystem has been an integral part of transforming teaching and learning during a challenging year.

Webinar from Instructure -- on 3-4-2021 -- Building an effective learning ecosystem

 
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