Active Learning Classrooms (ALC’s) at University of Minnesota — from Educause

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Active Learning Classrooms at the U of Minnesota

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Walker Figure 4

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Implications and Recommendations

  • Where local resources allow, administrators might consider refitting older learning spaces along the lines of the ALCs to improve student learning outcomes and increase student satisfaction.
  • Instructors teaching in an ALC-style classroom should be aware that the space’s de-centered nature can make traditional, expository teaching techniques difficult. They might wish to incorporate more active learning techniques and approaches into their repertoires.
  • The beneficial impact of aligning pedagogy with the learning space indicates that faculty development programs designed to support the redesign of courses being taught in ALC-type spaces deserve continued or increased institutional support.

Further research is needed into the connections among learning spaces, pedagogical approaches, and student learning outcomes. In particular, future research should investigate the mechanisms underlying the positive effects of space and aligned pedagogy that our studies have found. Furthermore, as ALC-type learning environments become more common, it will be possible to conduct longitudinal studies of the impact of taking multiple classes in new learning spaces on broad strategic outcomes such as student retention, persistence, and failure rates.


Matt makes his point on memory and attention in a very entertaining way
(…note the solid applause and genuine excitement at the end of the clip on math)


 

Very clever use of technology by Matthew Weathers -- October 2011

— from http://www.fractuslearning.com/2011/11/21/4-videos-from-matthew-weathers/

 

From DSC:
And, due to the date, check out the Symbols of Thanksgiving as well!  🙂

 

 

The principles of eLearning -- cognitive theory of multimedia design - by Allen Partridge

 


A list of Allen Partridge’s on-demand/online-based seminars (free, requires free ID at Adobe):


1: Making Effective Adobe Captivate eLearning Modules
… a foundation in multimedia design concepts for eLearning, and help you understand the reasons / rationale behind many of the eLearning strategies you see implemented today.

2: Balancing cognitive load in eLearning content with Adobe Captivate 5
…session focuses on the Multimedia eLearning Design Principle known as Personalization, which suggests that people learn more effectively when conversational styles and or learning agents are used to enhance the social aspects of the experience.

3: Applying Personalization to eLearning with Adobe Captivate 5
…session focuses on the Multimedia eLearning Design Principle known as Personalization, which suggests that people learn more effectively when conversational styles and or learning agents are used to enhance the social aspects of the experience.

4: Creating effective eLearning Multimedia with Adobe Captivate 5
…session will center on the Multimedia Principle (the importance of combining images & text) of eLearning Design.

5: Making Effective Adobe Captivate eLearning Modules Part 5: Contiguity
…the Contiguity Principle, which indicates that the spatial relationship (proximity) of symbols (like text) to analogous images (things that look like the subject of the learning) is significant, and plays a key role in how effectively we learn.

6: Making Effective Adobe Captivate eLearning Modules Part 6: Redundancy
…focuses on the Multimedia eLearning Design Principle known as Redundancy, which suggests that presenting symbols via both text and aural channels is less effective than presenting via only one.

7: Making Effective Adobe Captivate eLearning Modules Part 7 : Coherence
…focuses on the Multimedia eLearning Design Principle known as Coherence, which suggests that off topic ancillary material can distract from learning. This theory stands in opposition to arousal theory, providing research based evidence that when stimulating animation or any form of non-relevant information is provided, it can actually decrease the efficacy of the instruction.

8: Making Effective Adobe Captivate eLearning Modules Part 8: Segmenting
...the Multimedia eLearning Design Principle known as the Segmenting Principle, which suggests that authors of eLearning content should break content up into small pieces or chunks in order to help avoid cognitive overload for the learners.

9: Making Effective Adobe Captivate eLearning Modules Part 9: Pre-Training
The session focuses on the Multimedia eLearning Design Principle known as pre-training, which suggests that elearning content authors should first build up basic information about essential elements which are pre-requisites to understanding the larger concepts.

10: Making Effective Adobe Captivate eLearning Modules Part 10: Individual Differences
…the Individual Differences Principle, which suggests that design effects are stronger for low-knowledge learners than for high knowledge learners, and for high-spatial learners rather than for low-spatial learners.

More resources re: Adobe Captivate

Using Twitter? @AdobeElearning OR HASHTAG: #AdobeCaptivate
Using YouTube? http://www.youtube.com/adobeElearning/
On Adobe TV: http://tv.adobe.com/channel/e-learning/
Captivate Blog: http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/

 

Also see:

 

Also see:

  • The NMC Announces New Horizon Report Series of Regional Analyses
    Under the umbrella of the NMC Horizon Report, The NMC has launched the Technology Outlook, a new series of regional analyses aimed specifically at understanding both local and global differences in technology uptake, as well as the current and future state of education in different parts of the world. These publications are a product of collaborations between the NMC and innovative organizations across the world that seek to leverage the well-known medium of the NMC Horizon Report to bring important research, trends, and challenges in their regions to light. The Technology Outlook series furthers the NMC’s goal of driving innovation in every part of the world.

From Daniel Christian: Fasten your seatbelts! An accelerated ride through some ed-tech landscapes.


From DSC:
Immediately below is a presentation that I did for the Title II Conference at Calvin College back on August 11, 2011
It is aimed at K-12 audiences.


 

Daniel S. Christian presentation -- Fasten your seatbelts! An accelerated ride through some ed-tech landscapes (for a K-12 audience)

 


From DSC:
Immediately below is a presentation that I did today for the Calvin College Fall 2011 Conference.
It is aimed at higher education audiences.


 

 Daniel S. Christian presentation -- Fasten your seatbelts! An accelerated ride through some ed-tech landscapes (for a higher ed audience)

 


Note from DSC:

There is a great deal of overlap here, as many of the same technologies are (or will be) hitting the K-12 and higher ed spaces at the same time. However, there are some differences in the two presentations and what I stressed depended upon my audience.

Pending time, I may put some audio to accompany these presentations so that folks can hear a bit more about what I was trying to relay within these two presentations.


Tagged with:  

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) at a glance -- video

My thanks to Mrs. Krista Spahr, Calvin College, for this resource and the quote below:

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is meant to minimize barriers and to maximize learning.

 

Reflections from DSC:
Though I still have much to learn about Universal Design for Learning (UDL), my initial thought is that I really like this approach, as it moves us away from the one-size-fits-all approach and towards a teaching and learning environment that offers more choice, more selection, and more opportunities for customization and personalization. Plus, as companies such as Apple and Microsoft have seen, functionality that started out trying to address accessibility-related needs ended up helping everyone!

Along these lines, I created this graphic years ago — with the idea that students would have a choice on which media they might prefer to use to absorb the information:

 

Again, the idea being that we could provide the same content in 3-5 different ways and let the students select what works best for them. Plus, in the example above, we could even see how other students are describing/making meaning of something.

But it goes further than this as I’m understanding UDL. For example, the methods for achieving a learning outcome can be greatly varied, as the assignments for a particular outcome might be reaching via watching a video clip, or reading a book, or doing a project, or writing a story, or creating music, or ___(fill in the blank) ____.

Also see:

 

cast.org


Guidelines for UDL

Five common pitfalls of online course design — from Faculty Focus by Elizabeth St. Germain

A technology broadside against school leadership preparation programs — from BigThink.com by Scott McLeod

Excerpt:

If every other information-oriented societal sector is finding that transformative reinvention is the cost of survival in our current climate, schools and universities shouldn’t expect that they somehow will be immune from the same changes that are radically altering their institutional peers. We shouldn’t pretend that these revolutions aren’t going to affect us too, in compelling and often as yet unknown ways. And, yet, for some reason we do.

As long-existing barriers to learning, communicating, and collaborating disappear – and as what it means to be a productive learner, citizen, and employee shifts dramatically – it’s worth asking how we as educational leadership faculty and programs are responding. Are we doing what we should? To date the evidence is pretty clear that most of us are not.

Can we as educational leadership faculty do better? Given the scale and scope of the transformations occurring around us – and their power and potential for student learning – we MUST do better. It’s embarrassing to consider how little we’ve done to stay relevant. A learning revolution has occurred and – given the attention we’ve paid it – it’s as if many of us didn’t care.

 

From DSC — also see:

 

Frustrated Educators Aim to Build Grassroots Movement

 

The ID Litany — from cats-pyjamas.net by Joyce Seitzinger

Excerpt:

Working as an eLearning Advisor in higher education, a large part of my role is instructional design. In course design meetings with academic staff, I find myself asking the same questions over and over again. For each element of the course, I have the same questions. I thought I’d share it with you here, in an instructional design litany.

The ID Litany

What will your students do?
How will your students know what to do?
How will you know what they’re doing?
How will your students learn?
How will you know what they’re learning?
How will your students get support?
How will you support them?
How will they support each other?
How will you & your students communicate with each other?
How will your students communicate with each other?
How will your students learn from each other?
Why are you using this activity?
Why are you using this resource?
Why are you using this technology?
How does this activity/technology/resource relate to their current or future work, learning and life?

Is Higher Education Ready for “The Education Bubble”? — from CampusTechnology.com by Trent Batson

Excerpts:

American higher education–the jewel in the global crown of universal education, with nearly a quarter of the total number of higher education institutions in the world, and including graduate programs that are the envy of the world–is facing the prospect of being the next bubble to burst. Technology is both a culprit and a promising ally.

The spread of information technology, and its infusion into our culture, has opened the world to learning opportunities–raising expectations for college graduates and changing the terms of success.

Is American higher education ready to either prevent the bubble from bursting or to weather the storm when it does burst? And what is the bubble?

The bubble, as we can see by all the dimensions just described, is, in fact, a potential “perfect storm.”

But this effort must also result from a presidential-level decree: “The learning theory that fit so well in our culture and with the dominant technology pre-1995 (print-based and paper-based technologies), now is not working very well for any of us, so we have to change. Each of you on campus has sincerely and devotedly committed yourselves fully to learning, but now we know that our learning epistemology is less and less appropriate. This is not your fault; it is simply a time of incredible human growth; it is a time of rapid evolution in our culture; a time of re-shaping our economy. We must transform or become irrelevant.”

 

From DSC:
Good to see I have some company in these perspectives; thanks for the article Trent. Also see:

  • The Forthcoming Walmart of Education
  • The below graphics that I created a while back reflecting on whether there was a bubble building within higher ed (2/16/09) as well some of the elements of “The Perfect Storm in Higher Education” (9/10/10).
  • The point is we need a response to these trends — we don’t want to be broadsided.

 

The perfect storm in higher ed -- by Daniel S. Christian

Is higher ed the next bubble?

 

Daniel S. Christian: My concerns with just maintaining the status quo (from 2009).

From 5/21/09

Emantras releases Mobl21 HD for iPad

Emantras releases Mobl21 HD for iPad

Mobl21 is an award-winning, mobile learning application that supports a dynamic, unstructured way of learning. Using Mobl21, educators can develop content that learners can access from their mobile devices, allowing them to study at their own pace and therefore, perform better.

Mobl21 gives students instant access to valuable learning material, anywhere, anytime. As a result, students can now make use of those idle minutes between classes, or commuting, to glance through notes or review material before the next class.

Mobl21 also helps educators easily create learning material, and publish to multiple users or groups. Additional tool features enable educators to track and monitor content access and view test performances.

Also see:

Tagged with:  

3 keys to a flipped classroom — from pairadimes.davidtruss.com by David Truss

Excerpt:

First and foremost, this is just ONE teaching strategy. It’s a good one. It isn’t the only one. I don’t know any teachers that are both one trick ponies and also good teachers. Add this trick to your repertoire, don’t make it your repertoire. Secondly, consider how these points, and related questions, can help improve your flipped classroom.

I’m not saying ‘don’t use a flipped classroom’, I’m just saying, ‘be thoughtful about how you use it!’

 

© 2024 | Daniel Christian