Take Your Words From Lecture to Page — from chronicle.com by Rachel Toor
What compelling lecturers do, and how their techniques can translate to good writing.
Excerpts:
Thing is, many of the moves that the best lecturers make on the stage can translate to the page and help you draw in readers. That is especially important in writing textbooks and other work for general readers. If you can bring the parts of yourself that work in the classroom to the prose, you will delight readers as much as you do your students.
Narrative can be key. Data and research aren’t enough in either the classroom or on the page. People like to be told stories. If you want to be persuasive in both realms, use narrative to make arguments. Don’t forget that much scholarly work is really a quest. What journey can you take a reader on?
…
It’s a performance on the page, too. A great lecture is a performance. So is great writing.
…
Raise real questions the reader will want answers to.
Virtual Exam Case Primes Privacy Fight Over College Room Scans — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Skye Witley
- Cleveland State case centers on remote proctoring software
- Fourth Amendment protections in question before Sixth Circuit
Excerpt:
A legal dispute over a university’s use of exam proctoring software that allegedly scanned students’ rooms is set to shape the scope of Fourth Amendment and privacy protections for online college tests.
Cleveland State University last week asked a federal appeals court in Cincinnati to review a district court finding that the “room scans” were unconstitutional searches. The case could influence how other students litigate their privacy rights and change how universities virtually monitor their students during exams, attorneys said.
Colleges consider overhauling grading system for freshmen to ease transition to higher learning — from mercurynews.com by Kate Hull
Supporters say ‘ungrading’ could result in less stress and a more level playing field for students from less rigorous high schools
Excerpt:
Dubbed “weed-out” or “gatekeeper” classes, they can be dream-crushing for many students — especially those hoping to enter the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. And a growing body of research says the courses can be particularly discriminatory toward historically excluded groups such as Latinos and Black and Indigenous people.
One possible remedy, some educators say, is “ungrading,” a style of teaching and assessment that seeks to evaluate students in other ways besides A-F letter grades — usually just in their freshman year.
“You’re trying to move the focus from a score to the learning,” said Robin Dunkin, who teaches biology and is the assistant faculty director at UCSC’s Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning. “For that reason, it’s immensely powerful.”
Also relevant see the #Ungrading hashtag on Twitter, from which the below item was taken:
Any educators out there who are #ungrading in a standards-based grading school district? I’ve been studying @Jessifer’s work for a bit & I’d love to go full-implementation next year.
If you have any experience, let me know. I’d love to pick your brain! https://t.co/ClnwZsBdl9
— Adrian Neibauer, EdD (@MrNeibauer) January 25, 2023
Excerpts from Jesse Stommel’s Ungrading: an Introduction presentation:
Also relevant/see Robert Talbert’s Grading for Growth.
The practical guide to using AI to do stuff — from oneusefulthing.substack.com by Ethan Mollick; with thanks to Sam DeBrule for this resource. Ethan Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he studies entrepreneurship & innovation, as well as how we can better learn and teach.
A resource for students in my classes (and other interested people).
Excerpts:
My classes now require AI (and if I didn’t require AI use, it wouldn’t matter, everyone is using AI anyway). But how can students use AI well? Here is a basic tutorial and guide I am providing my classes. It covers some of the many ways to use AI to be more productive, creative, and successful, using the technology available in early 2023, as well as some of the risks.
…
Come up with ideas
Open Source Option: Nothing very good
Best free (for now) option: ChatGPT (registration may require a phone number)
Best option if ChatGPT is down: OpenAI Playground
.
Also relevant/see:
It was nice talking to @lapiaenrose for the @WIRED article on #ChatGPT and #education. I shared how I use LLMs in class and suggested that banning them would not remove the need for redesigning both the learning goals and assessment methods. #AIEthics https://t.co/30tqFN1FSS
— Olya Kudina (@OlyaKudina) January 27, 2023
On a relevant note:
Gen Z says school is not equipping them with the skills they need to survive in a digital world — from fastcompany.com by Shalene Gupta; with thanks to Robert Gibson for this resource
According to a study from Dell Technologies, Gen Z-ers in 15 different countries feel their government could do better.
Excerpt:
They see an education and skills gap: Forty-four percent said that school only taught them very basic computing skills, while 37% said that school education (for children under age 16) didn’t prepare them with the technology skills they needed for their planned careers. Forty percent consider learning new digital skills essential to future career options.
It’s clear that Gen Z see technology as pivotal for their future prosperity. It is now up to us—leading technology providers, governments, and the public sector—to work together and set them up for success by improving the quality and access to digital learning. Forty-four percent of Gen Z feel educators and businesses should work together to bridge the digital skills gap, and with the speed at which technology continues to evolve, this will require constant collaboration.
Aongus Hegarty, president of international markets at Dell Technologies
AI raises floor, not ceiling.
Basic writers ?? Good writers
Basic designers ?? Good designers
Basic instructors ?? Good instructorsExperts see fewer benefits
AI ?? speed + ideation but better to be original + unique as expert. That’s ? AI
Experts know rules, then break them
— Scott David Meyer (@MrScottMeyer) January 27, 2023
Phoenix Goes Nonprofit? — from read.letterhead.email by Paul Fain
Excerpt:
“We’re seeing dramatically increased competitive intensity,” he said. “Being online is no longer a differentiator.”
Also from Paul Fain:
A true alternative to a four-year college? — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org
The Marcy Lab School in New York City aims to offer a traditional college experience in just one year. We talked with co-founder Reuben Ogbonna about experimentation, growth, and student choice in higher ed.
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
In our current landscape, jobs for young people that fall into this category are incredibly slim, but we see this as our opportunity to systematically remove the barriers, such as degree requirements, that shut out students like ours. Together with our partners, we are actively reframing what early talent success can look like.
Partners that “get it” are energized by the ability to co-create innovative new programs like apprenticeships with us directly. They are incredibly student-centric, and firmly believe in the power of growth for our students in professional environments that are fun, challenging, rewarding, and safe.
…
The success of our innovative model has been through intentional experimentation and thoughtful listening to what is working and not working, and then iterating on it.
6 Free Tools for Evaluating Web Accessibility — from boia.org
Excerpt:
Can you evaluate your website’s accessibility on your own?
Not necessarily. To ensure conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), you’ll need to test your content regularly by using both manual and automated tools. Ideally, manual tests should be performed by human testers who have disabilities.
However, as you learn about the concepts of WCAG, you can use free tools to test your website for common barriers. If you’re a web designer or developer, online tools can be a vital resource as you incorporate the best practices of inclusive design.
Below, we’ll discuss six free tools that can help you make better design decisions.
The academic career is broken — from chronicle.com by Hannah Leffingwell
Excerpt:
We are in the midst of a crisis in academe, to be sure, but it’s not an economic crisis. It’s a crisis of faith. The question is not just whether our institutions pay faculty fairly, but whether any wage is worth the subservience and sacrifice that modern higher ed requires. Too often, colleges perceive themselves as voluntary, meritocratic institutions dedicated to a “higher” moral purpose. Or, as one of the characters in Babel puts it: “The professors like to pretend that the tower is a refuge for pure knowledge, that it sits above the mundane concerns of business and commerce, but it does not.”
Have these strikes solved the central paradox of academe: a capitalist institution that claims it is above capitalism while exploiting students, faculty, and staff for financial gain? No, they have not.
It gives me no pleasure to say that the system I have dedicated my entire life to is broken — that it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Also related to careers and higher education, see:
36% of higher ed supervisors are looking for other work, study finds — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak
Excerpt:
Over a third of higher education supervisors, 36%, are likely to look for a new job in the next year, according to a new survey from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, CUPA-HR. And only 40% said they were interested in finding employment opportunities at their current institution.
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.
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