liberal arts

ChatGPT as a teaching tool, not a cheating tool [Rose]

On 03/14/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, IT in HE, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, teaching & learning, tools, UK, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

ChatGPT as a teaching tool, not a cheating tool — from timeshighereducation.com by Jennifer Rose
How to use ChatGPT as a tool to spur students’ inner feedback and thus aid their learning and skills development

Excerpt:

Use ChatGPT to spur student’s inner feedback
One way that ChatGPT answers can be used in class is by asking students to compare what they have written with a ChatGPT answer. This draws on David Nicol’s work on making inner feedback explicit and using comparative judgement. His work demonstrates that in writing down answers to comparative questions students can produce high-quality feedback for themselves which is instant and actionable. Applying this to a ChatGPT answer, the following questions could be used:

Which is better, the ChatGPT response or yours? Why?
What two points can you learn from the ChatGPT response that will help you improve your work?
What can you add from your answer to improve the ChatGPT answer?
How could the assignment question set be improved to allow the student to demonstrate higher-order skills such as critical thinking?
How can you use what you have learned to stay ahead of AI and produce higher-quality work than ChatGPT?

What would higher ed (or even K-12) look like if you could completely scrap it and start over? [Carty]

On 03/11/2023, in business side of he, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Design Thinking, higher education, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, reinvent, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, vocational / trades, writing, by Daniel Christian

Transfers From Community College Continue to Fall — from insidehighered.com by Sara Weissman
Despite the decline in transfers, a new report also says six-year college completion rates among transfer students improved.

Excerpt:

Transfers between community colleges and four-year institutions continued to drop last fall, an ongoing trend since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. But the report also contains some good news, including that six-year college completion rates among transfer students improved, despite the disruptive nature of the pandemic.
…
“Upward transfer has continued to decline pretty steadily at this point in every year since the pandemic,” Shapiro said during a media briefing Wednesday. “This suggests that baccalaureate attainment is beginning to appear increasingly out of reach for community college students,” particularly for students enrolled in urban and suburban community colleges, which saw steeper declines in transfers to universities than community colleges in towns or rural areas.

Teaching in an Age of ‘Militant Apathy’ — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie
Immersive education offers a way to reach students. But can it ever become the norm?

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

But as many students continue to exhibit debilitating levels of anxiety, hopelessness, and disconnection — what one professor termed “militant apathy” — colleges are struggling to come up with a response beyond short-term solutions. The standard curricula in higher ed — and the way it’s discussed as primarily a path to economic success — can exacerbate those feelings. Students are told the main point of college is to move up the economic ladder, so no wonder it feels transactional. And the threat of failure must seem paralyzing given the high cost of a degree.
…
Colleges try to counter that by telling students that critical-thinking and communication skills are important as well. “But that’s a pretty vague argument that isn’t obvious for students to internalize and motivate their behavior. So what you see then is widespread disengagement from the curriculum,” says Arum. “For educators like me, what’s missing is what education is about. It’s about psychological well-being and flourishing and growth and human development and encouraging a set of dispositions, attitudes and behaviors that lead to fulfilling lives.”

“In every context, the student needs to feel like they are driving, they are the ones managing their own learning,” says Immordino-Yang. Instead, students have come to expect “‘you tell me what to do and I’ll do it,’” she says. “We need to take that away. That is a crutch. That is not real learning. That is compliance.”

From DSC:
The liberal arts are so important. But at what cost? What are people willing to pay for a more rounded education? The market is speaking — and the liberal arts are dying. I think that less expensive forms of online-based learning may turn out to be the best chance of the liberal arts surviving in the 21st century. The price must come waaaay down.

And speaking of the cost of getting a degree, this item is relevant as well:

Colleges Fear Cost of Doing Business Will Become Much Costlier — from chronicle.com by Lee Gardner
Inflation, enrollment woes, and increasing intolerance of tuition increases have made this budget season especially difficult.

Excerpts:

In decades past, colleges might have mitigated precarious budgets by raising tuition, but that’s a hard row to hoe in 2023.
…
The public colleges most feeling the financial squeeze from lowered enrollments are regional universities and community colleges, which typically receive less state support per student than public flagship universities.
…
Inflation remains high, at around 6 percent, and the biggest worry that it presents for college leaders comes from upward pressure on wages, says Staisloff.

While the sky may not be falling for higher education, Staisloff says “the cloud ceiling keeps dropping and dropping and dropping and dropping, and that’s getting harder to ignore.”

Speaking of the cost of getting a degree as well as higher education’s need to reinvent itself, also see:

College Doesn’t Need to Take Four Years — an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal by Scott L. Wyatt and Allen C. Guelzo
For many students, the standard bachelor’s degree program has become a costly straitjacket.

AI starter tools for video content creation — from techthatmatters.beehiiv.com by Harsh Makadia

Excerpt:

One of the most exciting applications of AI is in the realm of content creation. What if I told you there are tools to generate videos in mins?

Try these tools today:

Supercreator AI: Create short form videos 10x faster
Lumen5: Automatically turn blog posts into videos
InVideo: Idea to YouTube video
Synthesia: Create videos from plain text in minutes
Narakeet: Get a professionally sounding audio or video in minutes
Movio: Create engaging video content

Why Faculty Must Learn to Swim in Other Waters — from insidehighered.com by Rachel Toor, professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University in Spokane.

Excerpts:

Academics, even with the best intentions, and especially if we’ve never left school, don’t realize that we’re all swimming in our own little pond.

Most faculty members continue to teach how they were taught. We focus on our disciplines. We indoctrinate students into academic conventions and genres. We sling jargon like short-order cooks. We ask students to write 20-page research papers—the likes of which few professions would ever require.

But how often do faculty members require students to create final projects that will help them get a job?

How many professors are adept at writing a one-page job cover letter? Or a one-page résumé?

From DSC:
I appreciate these great thoughts here from Rachel Toor. Besides helping students learn about networking (and actually putting those skills into practice), applying their research skills to finding good job/organization fits, write effective cover letters, etc., I think such real-world skill development needs to be integrated into the very core of what they are teaching. It needs to be integrated into the curriculum.

ChatGPT for Spanish Classrooms [Biscotti] + other tools-related postings

On 02/14/2023, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, education technology, internet, K-12 related, languages and translation, liberal arts, podcasting, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, Uncategorized, vendors, writing, by Daniel Christian

ChatGPT for Spanish Classrooms — from rdene915.com by Nicole Biscotti, M. Ed.

Excerpt:

ChatGPT is just what the busy Spanish teacher necesita – no wasted time searching for the perfect “lectura” (text). Effective language instruction is coupled with learning about culture and now I’m able to generate texts in seconds AND I can even center them around a Latin American country, cultural point of interest, holiday, grammatical structure, etc. Differentiation and personalized learning, those lofty teaching ideals that can feel a bit heavy when you mean well but have 35 kids in your room, have become that much easier to attain with ChatGPT. It’s possible to generate texts about diverse aspects of culture in seconds and make adjustments for interests, length, rigor, etc. (Kuo & Lai, 2006) (Salaberry, 1999; Rost, 2002).

CURATING YOUR CLASSROOM WITH 9 MUST-HAVE TOOLS FOR RESOURCE COLLECTION – EASY EDTECH PODCAST 202 — from classtechtips.com by Monica Burns

Description:

How do you share resources with students? In this episode, we’ll focus on what happens after you find the very best resources to share with students. You’ll also hear about nine digital tools to help educators build a resource collection for students. So whether you have ten great resources on endangered species to share with your fourth graders or a dozen tutorial videos to share with your eleventh graders, this episode is for you!

50+ Useful AI Writing Tools to Know (2023) — from hongkiat.com

Excerpt:

AI writing tools generate content based on the keywords or prompt provided by users. You can then improve upon the output and make it suitable according to your own requirements.

There are different types of AI writing tools and in this post we are featuring some of the best ones. From content generators and editors to translators and typing assistants, there’s a whole gamut of AI-powered writing tools in the list. Take a look and see if one (or more) catches your interest.

How to Use Minecraft as a Teaching Tool — from intelligenthq.com

Excerpt:

Kids today have grown up with Minecraft, so it’s easy to get them enthusiastic about lessons using it. They can build anything they like, and use Minecraft skins to make the characters they create uniquely their own, getting them especially enthusiastic and involved in their lessons.

Teachers who learn how to use Minecraft as a teaching tool have found that it noticeably improves problem solving, creativity, and the ability to work together. It teaches both 21st century skills and timeless lessons.

On a somewhat related note, also see:

Master The Art Of The Internet With These 10 Tips — from lawtechnologytoday.org
.

Introducing: ChatGPT Edu-Mega-Prompts [Hardman] + several other items re: AI

On 02/06/2023, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, bots, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, education, education technology, emerging technologies, faculty, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, journalism, K-12 related, languages and translation, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, liberal arts, memory, Natural Language Processing (NLP), open courseware and systems, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, psychology, skills, streams of content, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

Introducing: ChatGPT Edu-Mega-Prompts — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman; with thanks to Ray Schroeder out on LinkedIn for this resource
How to combine the power of AI + learning science to improve your efficiency & effectiveness as an educator

From DSC:
Before relaying some excerpts, I want to say that I get the gist of what Dr. Hardman is saying re: quizzes. But I’m surprised to hear she had so many pedagogical concerns with quizzes. I, too, would like to see quizzes used as an instrument of learning and to practice recall — and not just for assessment. But I would give quizzes a higher thumbs up than what she did. I think she was also trying to say that quizzes don’t always identify misconceptions or inaccurate foundational information.

Excerpts:

The Bad News: Most AI technologies that have been built specifically for educators in the last few years and months imitate and threaten to spread the use of broken instructional practices (i.e. content + quiz).

The Good News: Armed with prompts which are carefully crafted to ask the right thing in the right way, educators can use AI like GPT3 to improve the effectiveness of their instructional practices.

As is always the case, ChatGPT is your assistant. If you’re not happy with the result, you can edit and refine it using your expertise, either alone or through further conversation with ChatGPT.

For example, once the first response is generated, you can ask ChatGPT to make the activity more or less complex, to change the scenario and/or suggest more or different resources – the options are endless.

Philippa recommended checking out Rob Lennon’s streams of content. Here’s an example from his Twitter account:

Everyone’s using ChatGPT.

But almost everyone’s STUCK in beginner mode.

10 techniques to get massively ahead with AI:

(cut-and-paste these prompts?)

— Rob Lennon ? | Audience Growth (@thatroblennon) January 3, 2023

Also relevant/see:

3 Trends That May Unlock AI’s Potential for L&D in 2023 — from learningguild.com by Juan Naranjo

Excerpts:

AI-assisted design and development work
This is the trend most likely to have a dramatic evolution this year.
…
Solutions like large language models, speech generators, content generators, image generators, translation tools, transcription tools, and video generators, among many others, will transform the way IDs create the learning experiences our organizations use. Two examples are:

1. IDs will be doing more curation and less creation:

Many IDs will start pulling raw material from content generators (built using natural language processing platforms like Open AI’s GPT-3, Microsoft’s LUIS, IBM’s Watson, Google’s BERT, etc.) to obtain ideas and drafts that they can then clean up and add to the assets they are assembling. As technology advances, the output from these platforms will be more suitable to become final drafts, and the curation and clean-up tasks will be faster and easier.
Then, the designer can leverage a solution like DALL-E 2 (or a product developed based on it) to obtain visuals that can (or not) be modified with programs like Illustrator or Photoshop (see image below for Dall-E’s “Cubist interpretation of AI and brain science.”

2. IDs will spend less, and in some cases no time at all, creating learning pathways

AI engines contained in LXPs and other platforms will select the right courses for employees and guide these learners from their current level of knowledge and skill to their goal state with substantially less human intervention.

The Creator of ChatGPT Thinks AI Should Be Regulated — from time.com by John Simons

Excerpts:

Somehow, Mira Murati can forthrightly discuss the dangers of AI while making you feel like it’s all going to be OK.
…
A growing number of leaders in the field are warning of the dangers of AI. Do you have any misgivings about the technology?

This is a unique moment in time where we do have agency in how it shapes society. And it goes both ways: the technology shapes us and we shape it. There are a lot of hard problems to figure out. How do you get the model to do the thing that you want it to do, and how you make sure it’s aligned with human intention and ultimately in service of humanity? There are also a ton of questions around societal impact, and there are a lot of ethical and philosophical questions that we need to consider. And it’s important that we bring in different voices, like philosophers, social scientists, artists, and people from the humanities.

Whispers of A.I.’s Modular Future — from newyorker.com by James Somers; via Sam DeBrule

Excerpts:

Gerganov adapted it from a program called Whisper, released in September by OpenAI, the same organization behind ChatGPTand dall-e. Whisper transcribes speech in more than ninety languages. In some of them, the software is capable of superhuman performance—that is, it can actually parse what somebody’s saying better than a human can.
…
Until recently, world-beating A.I.s like Whisper were the exclusive province of the big tech firms that developed them.

Ever since I’ve had tape to type up—lectures to transcribe, interviews to write down—I’ve dreamed of a program that would do it for me. The transcription process took so long, requiring so many small rewindings, that my hands and back would cramp. As a journalist, knowing what awaited me probably warped my reporting: instead of meeting someone in person with a tape recorder, it often seemed easier just to talk on the phone, typing up the good parts in the moment.

From DSC:
Journalism majors — and even seasoned journalists — should keep an eye on this type of application, as it will save them a significant amount of time and/or money.

Microsoft Teams Premium: Cut costs and add AI-powered productivity — from microsoft.com by Nicole Herskowitz

Excerpt:

Built on the familiar, all-in-one collaborative experience of Microsoft Teams, Teams Premium brings the latest technologies, including Large Language Models powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, to make meetings more intelligent, personalized, and protected—whether it’s one-on-one, large meetings, virtual appointments, or webinars.

What is college for? Gov. Shapiro raises the question. Higher ed leaders are listening. — from The Philadelphia Inquirer by Will Bunch; with thanks to Ray Schroeder out on LinkedIn for the resource
Pa.’s new governor Josh Shapiro’s first move was to question the need of a college diploma as a job credential. U.S. universities, pay attention.

Excerpt:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — What is college actually for?

No one expected this to be the initial question raised by Pennsylvania’s new governor, Josh Shapiro, in his first full day on the job. While he may not have stated it explicitly, this was the essence of the Democrat’s very first executive order, which opened up some 92% of job listings in state government — about 65,000 in all — to applicants who don’t have a four-year college degree.

In branding degree requirements for many jobs as “arbitrary” and declaring “there are many different pathways to success,” the Keystone State’s new chief executive was tugging at the shaky Jenga block that has undergirded the appalling rise of a $1.75 trillion student debt bomb in the U.S. and led, arguably, to a college/non-college divide driving our nation’s bitter politics. The notion is this: You can’t make it in 21st-century America without that most expensive piece of sheepskin: the college diploma.

So the $64,000 question (OK, $80,000 … for one year on some elite private campuses) is this: If you don’t need the credential, do you actually need college?

Something is clearly gained by giving America’s young people more career options that won’t contribute to that $1.75 trillion college debt bomb. But are we talking enough about what could be lost in a new system that not only devalues the university but also seems to ratify a dubious idea — that higher education is almost solely about careerism, and not the wider knowledge and critical-thinking skills that come from liberal arts learning?

From DSC:
To me — and to many other parents and families — it all boils down to the price tag of obtaining a liberal arts education. It’s one thing to get a liberal arts education at $5K per year. It’s another thing when the pricetag runs at $40K and above (per year)! Most people ARE FORCED to question the ROI of a liberal arts education. They simply have to.

On a relevant tangent here…many inside the academy have traditionally looked with disdain at the corporate world. The thinking went something like this:

Business! Ha! We are not a business! Students are not customers. Don’t ever compare us to the corporate world.

Having spent half of my career in the corporate world, I do not subscribe to that perspective. In fact, I’d like to ask those who still hold this point of view:

Where else can you pay tens of thousands of dollars for something and not be treated as a customer?! Don’t you typically expect value on your own purchases and positive returns on your investments?
How will you collaborate with the corporate world if you look upon them with disdain?!

But now that colleges and universities enrollments are not doing so well, perhaps there will be more openness to change and towards developing more impactful collaborations.

Let’s develop a nationwide, direct-to-learner campaign: “Learn how to learn.” [Christian]

On 01/23/2023, in 24x7x365 access, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, career development, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, education, faculty, future, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, hybrid learning, Hyflex learning, ideas, informal learning, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning theories, legislatures / government / legal, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, love of learning, metacognition / metacognitive skills, microlearning, mobile learning, online learning, online media, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, psychology, skills, society, sociology, strategy, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Let’s put together a nationwide campaign that would provide a website — or a series of websites if an agreement can’t be reached amongst the individual states — about learning how to learn. In business, there’s a “direct-to-consumer” approach. Well, we could provide a “direct-to-learner” approach — from cradle to grave. Seeing as how everyone is now required to be a lifelong learner, such a campaign would have enormous benefits to all of the United States. This campaign would be located in airports, subway stations, train stations, on billboards along major highways, in libraries, and in many more locations.

We could focus on things such as:

Quizzing yourself / retrieval practice
Spaced retrieval
Interleaving
Elaboration
Chunking
Cognitive load
Learning by doing (active learning)
Journaling
The growth mindset
Metacognition (thinking about one’s thinking)
Highlighting doesn’t equal learning
There is deeper learning in the struggle
…and more.

A learn how to learn campaign covering airports, billboards, subways, train stations, highways, and more

NOTE:
The URL I’m using above doesn’t exist, at least not at the time of this posting.
But I’m proposing that it should exist.

A group of institutions, organizations, and individuals could contribute to this. For example The Learning Scientists, Daniel Willingham, Donald Clark, James Lang, Derek Bruff, The Learning Agency Lab, Robert Talbert, Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain, Eva Keffenheim, Benedict Carey, Ken Bain, and many others.

Perhaps there could be:

discussion forums to provide for social interaction/learning
scheduled/upcoming webinars
how to apply the latest evidence-based research in the classroom
link(s) to learning-related platforms and/or resources

“Hard Truths That Higher Education Has Evaded for Too Long” [Mintz] + several other HE-related items

On 01/17/2023, in adjunct faculty, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), business side of he, career development, colleges, community colleges, credentialing, health, higher education, leadership, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, online learning, skills, strategy, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Hard Truths That Higher Education Has Evaded for Too Long — from insidehighered.com by Steven Mintz
The brutal truths that institutions don’t want to acknowledge.

If we want to make higher education truly equitable and produce the learning outcomes that we claim to seek, then we must confront painful truths no matter how uncomfortable they make us.

Preaching to, and Challenging, the Liberal Arts Choir — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman
In a conversation with presidents of small private colleges, tech company executives praise graduates’ leadership and critical thinking ability but say they need to develop skills for a first job, too.

Excerpt:

In that more competitive landscape, Ferrick and others said, colleges should think in terms of “both-and”—delivering a four-year degree grounded in the liberal arts that remains the best preparation for a lifetime career, yes, but also building into their curricula more practical digital and other skills that can help graduates compete for a first job.

The Edge: Momentum Builds for ‘Credential as You Go’ — from chronicle.com by Goldie Blumenstyk

Excerpt:

A higher-ed credential system that’s ‘not all about degrees.’
Holly Zanville has a clear goal for the Credential as You Go initiative she co-leads: Shift the entire “degree-centric” model of postsecondary education to make it easier for people to develop skills and knowledge in shorter chunks while recognizing “meaningful learning along the way.”

Whatever you think of its prospects, you can hardly fault the effort for a lack of ambition.

Ideally, students will layer incremental credentials over a lifetime of learning.

Goldie Blumenstyk

Issue #11: Navigating the credential maze — from theview.substack.com by Gordon Macrae
Running to stand still.

Excerpt:

The credentials market for degree and non-degree programs is… complex.

A recent report from the non-profit Credential Engine identified 1,076,358 different credentials – from specialized certificates to bachelor’s degrees to PhDs.

Credential Engine started producing these reports in 2018. Back then there were “just” 334,114 credentials. In the last four years, the number of certifications has more than trebled. And from 2021 to 2022, there’s been a 38% increase in providers issuing certificates.

.

When you eyeball the largest higher ed institutions by enrollment comparing 2012 to today, it’s pretty clear that online degrees have driven – essentially – ALL of the growth.

Brandon Busteed commenting on Phil Hill’s posting (also listed below)

.

Fall 2021 Largest Institutions by Total Enrollment and DE Type — from philonedtech.com by Phil Hill

Excerpt:

Based on reader request after yesterday’s post, I’d like to share another view of largest US higher education institutions, this one ranked by total enrollment with color coding of distance education (DE) type. This chart combines undergrad and grad student enrollments.

Mental Health Is the Top Student Stressor — from insidehighered.com by Johanna Alonso

Excerpt:

Fifty percent of college students cited their own mental health struggles as their top stressor going into 2023, according to a survey of 1,200 students nationwide conducted by the virtual health services provider TimelyMD. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they were most concerned about their personal finances, and 37 percent named academics, while mass shootings and inflation were each cited by 35 percent.

14 Technology Predictions for Higher Education in 2023 [Kelly]

On 01/17/2023, in accessibility / UDL, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, blended learning, career development, change, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, credentialing, data related items, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, future, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, innovation, instructional design, IT in HE, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, liberal arts, lifelong learning, online learning, personalized/customized learning, skills, teaching & learning, technology (general), tools, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

14 Technology Predictions for Higher Education in 2023 — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
How will technologies and practices like artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, digital transformation, and change management impact colleges and universities this year? Here’s what the experts told us.

Excerpt:

In an open call on LinkedIn, we asked higher education and ed tech industry leaders to forecast the most important trends to watch in the coming year. Their responses reflect both the challenges on the horizon — persistent cyber attacks, the disruptive force of emerging technologies, failures in project management — as well as the opportunities that technology brings to better serve students and support the institutional mission. Here are 14 predictions to help steer your technology efforts in 2023.

Reflections on “What factors help active learning classrooms succeed?” [Talbert]

On 01/16/2023, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, culture, Daniel S. Christian, design, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, distance education, education technology, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, faculty, higher education, instructional design, interactivity, IT in HE, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, liberal arts, participation, pedagogy, research, social learning / networks, social media, strategy, student-related, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, user experience (UX), using teams, videoconferencing, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

What factors help active learning classrooms succeed? — from rtalbert.org Robert Talbert

Excerpt:

The idea that the space in which you do something, affects the thing you do is the basic premise behind active learning classrooms (ALCs).
…
The biggest message I get from this study is that in order to have success with active learning classrooms, you can’t just build them — they have to be introduced as part of an ecosystem that touches almost all parts of the daily function of a university: faculty teaching, faculty development and support, facilities, and the Registrar’s Office to name a few. Without that ecosystem before you build an ALC, it seems hard to have success with students after it’s built. You’re more likely to have an expensive showcase that looks good but ultimately does not fulfill its main purpose: Promoting and amplifying active learning, and moving the culture of a campus toward active engagement in the classroom.

From DSC:
Thank you Robert for your article/posting here! And thank you for being one of the few faculty members who:

Regularly share information out on LinkedIn, Twitter, and your blog (something that is all too rare for faculty members throughout higher education)
Took a sabbatical to go work at a company that designs and develops numerous options for implementing active learning setups throughout the worlds of higher education, K12 education, and the corporate world as well. You are taking your skills to help contribute to the corporate world, while learning things out in the corporate world, and then taking these learnings back into the world of higher education.

This presupposes something controversial: That the institution will take a stand on the issue that there is a preferred way to teach, namely active learning, and that the institution will be moving toward making active learning the default pedagogy at the institution. Putting this stake in the ground, and then investing not only in facilities but in professional development and faculty incentives to make it happen, again calls for vigorous, sustained leadership — at the top, and especially by the teaching/learning center director.

Robert Talbert

Best webcams as well as wireless keyboards/mice for teachers and students [Edwards

On 11/17/2022, in A/V -- audio/visual, adjunct faculty, Apple, colleges, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, distance education, education, education technology, faculty, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), Hyflex learning, instructional design, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, liberal arts, Microsoft, multimedia, new media literacies, online learning, parents/guardians, platforms, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, remote teaching and learning, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, usability, vendors, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Best Webcams for Teachers and Students — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards
Get the best webcams for teachers and students to help with hybrid learning and more

The Logitech C922 Pro Stream was selected as the best overall webcam for educators by techlearning dot com

Best Wireless Keyboard and Mouse for Teachers 2022 — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards
The best wireless keyboard and mouse for teachers keep you connected to devices while staying mobile

Teaching: Flipping a Class Helps — but Not for the Reason You’d Think — from the Teaching newsletter out at The Chronicle of Higher Education by Beckie Supiano

Excerpt:

The authors propose a different model of flipping that gives their paper its title, “Fail, Flip, Fix, and Feed — Rethinking Flipped Learning: A Review of Meta-Analyses and a Subsequent Meta-Analysis.”

Their model:

Fail: Give students a chance to try solving problems. They won’t have all the information needed to arrive at the solution, but the attempt activates their prior learning and primes them for the coming content.
Flip: Deliver the content ahead of class, perhaps in a video lecture.
Fix: During class time, a traditional lecture can deepen understanding and correct misperceptions.
Feed: Formative assessment lets students check their level of understanding.

I find this paper interesting for a number of reasons. It ties into a challenge I’d like to dig into in the future: the gap that can exist between a teaching approach as described in research literature and as applied in the classroom.

From DSC:
Though I haven’t read this analysis (please accept my apology here), I would hope that it would also mention one of the key benefits of the flipped classroom approach — giving students more control over the pacing of the content. Students can stop, fast-forward, rewind, and pause the content as necessary. This is very helpful for all students, but especially for students who don’t have English as their primary language.

I like this approach because if students fail to solve the problem at first, they will likely be listening more/very carefully as to how to solve it:

Drawing on related research, we proposed a more specific model for flipping, “Fail, Flip, Fix, and Feed” whereby students are asked to first engage in generating solutions to novel problems even if they fail to generate the correct solutions, before receiving instructions.

Plus, students will begin to recall/activate their prior knowledge on a subject in order to try to solve the problem. That retrieval practice in and of itself can be helpful.

2023 Top 10 IT Issues: Foundation Models — from educause.edu

Excerpt:

Recent times have brought about a Great Rethink that is upending previous models of management and working. Higher education is no exception. In 2023, institutional and technology leaders are ready for a new approach.

The EDUCAUSE 2023 Top 10 IT Issues help describe the foundation models that colleges and universities will develop next year and beyond, acting on what was learned in the pandemic and framed by the three building blocks of leadership, data, and work and learning.

See where things are headed in 2023 and beyond.
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From DSC:
At this point in time, I’d find your visionary, innovative, tech-savvy leaders out there — and not just for IT-related positions but for Presidents, Provosts, CFO’s, Heads of HR, and similar levels of positions (and ideally on the Boards as well.) Such people need to be at the table when strategies are hammered out.

For example, if your institution didn’t get seriously into online learning long before Covid19 hit, I’d clear house and go back to the drawing board on your leadership.

Also, data won’t save higher ed. New directions/pathways might. But I’m doubtful that new sources of data will — no matter how they are sliced and diced. That sort of thing is too much at the fringe of things — and not at the heart of what’s being offered. The marketplace will eventually dictate to higher ed which directions institutions of traditional higher education need to go in. Or perhaps I should say that this is already starting to occur.

If alternatives to institutions of traditional higher education continue to grow in acceptance and usage — and don’t involve current institutions of higher ed — those sorts of institutions may already be too late. If more corporations fully develop their own training programs, pathways, and credentials, there may be even fewer students to go around.

A final thought: Cheaper forms of online-based learning for the liberal arts may be what actually saves the liberal arts in the long run.

Also relevant/see:

Teaching and Learning Perspectives on the EDUCAUSE 2023 Top 10 IT Issues — from er.educause.edu
by Kim Arnold, Christopher Francique, Crystal Gasell, Allan Gyorke, Phil Ventimiglia and Kathe Pelletier
CIO and Senior Technology Leaders’ Perspectives on the EDUCAUSE 2023 Top 10 IT Issues — from er.educause.edu by Jennifer Burns, John Dunning, Jane Livingston, Jackie Malcolm, Dave Robinson and Betsy Reinitz

Learning Ecosystems

Reflections on “What is college for? Gov. Shapiro raises the question. Higher ed leaders are listening.” [Bunch]

“Hard Truths That Higher Education Has Evaded for Too Long” [Mintz] + several other HE-related items

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