Six ways to get your online students participating in the course — from facultyfocus.com by Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti

Excerpt:

Have you ever worried about the level of participation in your online courses? Perhaps you have difficulty encouraging students to interact with one another, or maybe you find student responses to be perfunctory. Surely there must be a way to encourage the kinds of participation that really supports learning.

During a recent online seminar titled Improve Participation to Enhance Learning in Online Courses, Joan Thormann, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Technology in Education at Lesley University and author of The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Designing and Teaching Online Courses, shared six techniques for encouraging interactions that boost learning in an online class.

Special Education 101 Infographic

Excerpt:

…we would like to present the following infographic as an introduction to this rapidly growing field. It provides an overview of what special education is, how students are referred for special education services and definitions of acronyms common to the field, like “IEP” (or “Individualized Education Program”), along with much more.

Although special education began in the 1950s as a movement to win individuals with disabilities a free and quality education, it has today come to embrace the ideal of inclusion, with many students with disabilities being taught in general classrooms alongside their non-disabled peers. Thus, as fully inclusive classrooms become more of a reality, all prospective teachers can benefit from a better understanding of the basics of special education. The number of students receiving special education services is also steadily on the rise, so now is certainly the time to start learning more about the field.

When working with gifted students, build on their strengths with inductive learning -- from Ian Byrd

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Blogs: vastly underused teaching and learning tool — from Donald Clarke

Excerpt:

Blogs are a potent and vastly underused teaching and learning tool. The habit of regular writing as a method of reflection, synthesis, argument and reinforcement is suited to the learning process. Blogs encourage bolder, independent, critical thinking, as opposed to mere note taking. For teachers they crystallise and amplify what you have to teach. For learners, they force you to really learn.

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Three trends in higher education that defy the status quo — from onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com by Debbie Morrison

Excerpt:

Leading educators shared their insights and innovative programs – three dominant themes emerged, 1) competency based learning, 2) personalized student learning and 3) the changing role of the instructor. Each presenter shared extensive research in an area of his or her expertise and details of an innovative educational program; programs that provide a non-traditional education that defy the status quo. The summary of the trends follow, with a ‘takeaway’ for each designed to provide readers with practical ideas for application to their own area of study or work.

Understanding the Flipped Classroom: Part 1 — from FacultyFocus.com by Pamela Kachka
Understanding the Flipped Classroom: Part 2 — from FacultyFocus.com by Pamela Kachka

Part 1 looks at the history of the flipped classroom. Part 2 looks at what it takes for someone to teach effectively in a flipped classroom.

Flipped classroom: The full picture for higher education — from usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com by Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D.

Excerpt:

The Flipped Classroom, as most know, has become quite the buzz in education.  Its use in higher education has been given a lot of press recently.  The purpose of this post is to:

  1. Provide background for this model of learning with a focus on its use in higher education.
  2. Identify some problems with its use and implementation that if not addressed, could become just a fading fad.
  3. Propose a model for implementation based on an experiential cycle of learning model.

 

From DSC:
The above posting includes a great video by Penn State TLT:

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Also see:

My notes from Thursday, 10/11/12 Sloan-C presentation by Hayley Lake & Patrick Lordan from Eastern Washington University, US
The discussion board audit: How will I know what I think until I see what I say

Discussion boards / forums are great for:

  • Reading and using research to support viewpoints/perspectives
  • Writing
  • Deeper reflections
  • Communications
    • Need to get point across succinctly
    • Decide what’s important
    • Tailor language to audience
    • Be professional
  • Critical thinking
  • Student-to-student interactions – students can generate their own online community
  • Time management and study skills
  • Can be relevant to real world and draw upon students’ experiences
  • Bringing out the wall-flowers – they can come alive and really contribute in this manner
  • Thinking more meta-cognitively and growing in self-awareness

(Bearing in mind a class size of 24-30 students per class)
Except for first two weeks, did not answer each posting; instead, typically the professor looked for themes and provided a weekly recap. Straightened out any wrong understandings.

Characteristics of reflective learners

  • Curious
  • Open to criticism and different approaches
  • Honest
  • Motivated to improve

Used the idea of a Discussion board audit

  • For closure
  • For summative assessment
  • For deeper learning/reflection; richness, depth, self-evaluation
  • Based off Mark Samples’ (George Mason University) blog audit
  • Re-read all DB postings, mark them up, analyze own work; look for themes and ideas worth revisiting, assess own learning
  • Really helped students see how they had learned, changed, grown

 

 

 

Another discussion board related presentation was:
Cleaning Out the Crickets: Enhancing Faculty Presence in Online Instruction
John J. Oprandy, Ph.D., South University, College of Nursing and Public Health, Health Sciences Program Online; Savannah, GA, US

  • John presented an alternative approach to discussion board questions and assignments aimed at helping students think critically
  • Discussed the merits of this approach and how to execute it
  • DB’s targeted as one of the most important ways to teach a student online
  • In their model:
    • Professor:
      • Sets expectations up front on when going to respond and how going to respond – i.e. NOT going to respond to each person’s every posting
      • Responds to each student’s main post; students respond to 2 other students
      • Use open ended, carefully crafted questions; questions need to be more complex in nature
      • Offers substantive responses, leads/guides discussion, models good writing, offers timely responses
      • Summarizes info and adds something new
      • Asks probing follow up questions to guide the conversations/learning – “It’s like putting pieces of a puzzle together.”
      • Provides final wrap up
  • What NOT to do:
    • Provide short/trite responses, give away the answer, give feedback that better belongs in the gradebook
  • This approach requires daily interaction and participation
  • Rubrics important and must align with approach
  • Works best with smaller groups
  • Faculty liked it because they often had to think on their feet

Showcase: Examples of mobile technology used for teaching and learning — from AcademicImpressions.com by Daniel Fusch

Excerpt:

With more students bringing smartphones and tablets to campus — and expecting to access information and course content via mobile devices — it continues to be urgent for faculty developers and instructional technologists to explore the affordances of these devices and the opportunities for using them to enhance teaching and learning. In our past article, “Piloting Mobile Learning,” we offered a review of how to pursue a pilot project effectively.

Today’s article offers a brief summary of the most critical affordances of mobile devices and a showcase of examples from Boise State University’s mLearning Scholars program. The program is part of the university’s Mobile Learning Initiative, “a multi-year project to identify and support key uses of mobile technology that will impact the ways we teach and learn,” and mLearning Scholars supports two cohorts of faculty in exploring these questions. One cohort consists of faculty making their first forays into mobile learning; the second cohort consists of faculty with some degree of fluency in mobile technologies, who are now addressing very targeted research questions.

We turned to Dale Pike, director of academic technologies at Boise State University and a lead thinker on the adoption of mobile technologies in the classroom. We asked Pike about the affordances he most wanted to direct attention to. He also offered several key examples from the mLearning Scholars program.

Best practices: 30 tips for creating quiz questions — from Moodlerooms.com by Rebecca DeSantis, MSIT, Moodlerooms Instructional Designer

Excerpt:

Assessments are critical because they allow teachers to evaluate how well students are doing in a course, and they help identify key areas in a course where improvements are needed. However, creating assessments in your courses isn’t always an easy task. In Moodle, teachers often use the Quiz and Assignment activities for assessing knowledge. They may also use Forum, Glossary, Database, Lesson, and Workshop activities. In today’s post, I’m providing 30 tips for writing Quiz questions.

Other ways to tell a student they’re wrong without using the word “wrong” — from future.teacherleaders.org by Jose Vilson

Excerpt:

  • “How did you get that?”
  • “Let’s try a different approach.”
  • “You’re getting there.”
  • “This needs work.”

From DSC:
Nice work Jose. I like these. If a teacher told me these things, I would be encouraged…not discouraged. School would become a source of strength and hope, not pain.

 

 

Students think they can multitask. Here’s proof they can’t. — from Faculty Focus by Maryellen Weimer

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Excerpt:

With easy access to all sorts of technology, students multitask. So do lots of us for that matter. But students are way too convinced that multitasking is a great way to work. They think they can do two or three tasks simultaneously and not compromise the quality of what they produce. Research says that about 5% of us multitask effectively. Proof of the negative effects of multitasking in learning environments is now coming from a variety of studies.

The question is, how do we get students to stop? We can tell them they shouldn’t. We can include policies that aim to prevent it and devote time and energy trying to implement them. I wonder if it isn’t smarter to confront students with the facts. Not admonitions, but concrete evidence that multitasking compromises their efforts to learn. The specifics are persuasive and here are some examples to share with students.

 

From DSC:
If you can’t beat ’em, join em! 🙂   I vote for having students use such devices in achieving the same learning outcomes/objectives that you normally would like the students to cover.  That is, to integrate the technologies that they are so engaged with — if possible.  But I like Maryellen’s thought about just confronting them with the facts — that if they choose to “multitask,” they will significantly reduce their ROI that they’re making in their education.

 

 

How students can create their own e-textbooks on an iPad — from edudemic.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

In July, Greg Kulowiec and I taught a workshop on Creating Digital Course Content. One of our participants, a high school math teacher, initially set out to create his own textbook. However, as we started exploring BookCreator, he realized that the real value may be in the students creating their own collection of books over the course of the year.

From DSC:
I like this idea of giving students more tools to create their own content.

When talking to an ed tech contact from Ohio at this summer’s Moodlemoot, he mentioned that in his 20 districts, there’s a new paradigm now — students are creating the content.

Perhaps this is the answer to the oft-asked question, “WHO will create and maintain the content?”

  • Publishers?
  • Teams of specialists within a school district, college, or university?
  • Teachers and faculty members? 
  • Or will it be the students themselves, guided by their teachers and faculty members?

A 40-minute crash course in design thinking  — from fastcodesign.com by Kyle VanHemert
Let this short film on designer and teacher Inge Druckrey open your eyes to the design details all around you.

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