WATER COOLER TALK
When teachers tell me about some new strategy or approach they’ve
implemented, I usually ask how they found out about it and almost always
get the same response: “Oh, a colleague told me about it.” I continue
to be amazed by the amount of pedagogical knowledge that is shared
verbally (and electronically) between colleagues.
And I’m equally impressed by the spirit of sharing. Even if it’s an
idea I thought up myself, one I’ve spent time and energy developing that
I could ostensibly copyright or patent, if you want to use it—go right
ahead. It’s yours. There are no intellectual property rights on good
teaching ideas, and that’s a beautiful part of our culture. So writes Dr. Maryellen Weimer in a new post about pedagogy sharing. You can read the entire post here.
THE BLENDED WAY TO SUCCESS
Did you know that blended courses, that meet face-to-face and online throughout the week, have some of the highest completion rates and students report that they are very effective at helping them learn? Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti has an interesting post about blended courses and offers, "Think about what it takes to make a blended learning class successful.
Of course, you need a faculty member who is able to teach the course, a
robust set of learning objectives, a clear instructional design that
integrates both the online and face-to-face aspects, and the
instructional content required to successfully teach the course. But
you also need support of librarians who can help students with varied
types of assignments, academic advisors who can effectively counsel
students into the right kind of blended course for their learning style,
plus various student support services that can help students with
variable campus attendance requirements navigate registration, book
purchase, and payment. Indeed, the decision to offer a blended course
or program can influence the entire university." Read more here.
GROUP ASSIGNMENTS FOR ELEARNING CLASSES
Group assignments teach students far more than simply what they glean
from the research they conduct and the project they complete. Astute
students will also learn important lessons about communicating clearly, establishing plans and schedules, and collaborating in a proactive and positive manner. They may also hone their leadership skills along the way.Students taking online courses gain the additional benefit of learning to work with others in technology-mediated settings. To learn more about this topic, click here.
Showing posts with label group learning online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label group learning online. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
APPLYING NEW KNOWLEDGE
You will get a range of reactions when you bring up the subject of online group activities. As Gregory Wells notes, "The skills learned by participating in a group project are applicable to nearly any career that a student is currently interested in or will be interested in at a future date. It is rare in today’s global economy that an individual will work independently on a project. Therefore, it is important that opportunities are provided to students to not only learn content, but to apply that content in a practical, near real-world environment." So how can you improve the process to satisfy you and your students? Read more here.
THE PURPOSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Cathy Davidson has a really interesting post on the HASTAC website. She writes that if we cannot change higher education as rapidly as we would like, we can change our classrooms to reflect our values. At a recent workshop, she asked the participants to answer the following questions, "Maybe you cannot change the world but, for most of us teaching in classrooms, [what] are ways of making changes in one's own class that can make a difference--to one's students, to one's own role in replicating inequity, and as a model to our institutions seeking to "transform higher education?" She admits that "what we are advocating is almost the opposite of 'outcomes' thinking; it is structuring empowerment at the input level, designing a syllabus that acknowledges structural inequality by countering it." Read more here.
STOP CHEATING
Taylor Massey writes "Detecting plagiarism may be an endless battle for instructors, but avoiding it is sometimes easier said than done for students. For many college students, knowing when and how to cite correctly is the biggest challenge. With only so many hours in a semester, writing and citation instructions are not always able to be covered in-class. To give students an idea of where to begin, share these tips with them for easily avoiding plagiarism." Want to see tips offered to help prevent and catch plagiarism, click here.
You will get a range of reactions when you bring up the subject of online group activities. As Gregory Wells notes, "The skills learned by participating in a group project are applicable to nearly any career that a student is currently interested in or will be interested in at a future date. It is rare in today’s global economy that an individual will work independently on a project. Therefore, it is important that opportunities are provided to students to not only learn content, but to apply that content in a practical, near real-world environment." So how can you improve the process to satisfy you and your students? Read more here.
THE PURPOSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Cathy Davidson has a really interesting post on the HASTAC website. She writes that if we cannot change higher education as rapidly as we would like, we can change our classrooms to reflect our values. At a recent workshop, she asked the participants to answer the following questions, "Maybe you cannot change the world but, for most of us teaching in classrooms, [what] are ways of making changes in one's own class that can make a difference--to one's students, to one's own role in replicating inequity, and as a model to our institutions seeking to "transform higher education?" She admits that "what we are advocating is almost the opposite of 'outcomes' thinking; it is structuring empowerment at the input level, designing a syllabus that acknowledges structural inequality by countering it." Read more here.
STOP CHEATING
Taylor Massey writes "Detecting plagiarism may be an endless battle for instructors, but avoiding it is sometimes easier said than done for students. For many college students, knowing when and how to cite correctly is the biggest challenge. With only so many hours in a semester, writing and citation instructions are not always able to be covered in-class. To give students an idea of where to begin, share these tips with them for easily avoiding plagiarism." Want to see tips offered to help prevent and catch plagiarism, click here.
Friday, October 12, 2012
ANOTHER REASON TO TEST
While reviewing some material for an upcoming presentation on Millennials, I found a terrific one-pager from Mary A. Pyc and Katherine A. Rawson entitled Why Testing Improves Memory: Mediator effectiveness hypothesis first published in Science (vol. 330) in 2010 (Q1 .S35 V.330). They set out to disprove the assumption that learning can only occur during study. They also wanted to see if testing could be used for something other than evaluating the state of memory. What they found was intriguing and could be incorporated in your classes as a test-restudy intervention. They noted that testing improves memory. One of the more important ideas to remember when constructing tests is to focus on what is truly important. Take a look at the course learning outcomes and make sure that you are aligning your learning experiences and assessment with those outcomes. The other important connection that this empirical research confirms is that important concepts should be included on subsequent tests and a comprehensive final may be your best opportunity to help your students retain what they have learned in your course.
TEACHING ONLINE
If you are looking for strategies for group learning activities for the online environment, take a look at this blog post by Debbie Morrison. Stephen Downes writes that the PAD (Personal Access Device) will become the dominant tool for online education, combining the function of book, notebook, and pen.
CHARACTER MATTERS
Paul Tough believes that character development may be the most important thing we can teach our students. He writes about that and may other things including the effects of poverty in his book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. When asked how failure can help us succeed, he responds, "That’s an idea that I think was best expressed by Dominic Randolph, the head of the Riverdale Country School, where they’re now doing some interesting experiments with teaching character. Here’s how he put it: The idea of building grit and building self-control is that you get that through failure. And in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything. That idea resonated with a lot of readers. I don’t think it’s quite true that failure itself helps us succeed. In fact, repeated failures can be quite devastating to a child’s development. What I think is important on the road to success is learning to deal with failure, to manage adversity. That’s a skill that parents can certainly help their children develop--but so can teachers and coaches and mentors and neighbors and lots of other people." He elaborates in this podcast.
While reviewing some material for an upcoming presentation on Millennials, I found a terrific one-pager from Mary A. Pyc and Katherine A. Rawson entitled Why Testing Improves Memory: Mediator effectiveness hypothesis first published in Science (vol. 330) in 2010 (Q1 .S35 V.330). They set out to disprove the assumption that learning can only occur during study. They also wanted to see if testing could be used for something other than evaluating the state of memory. What they found was intriguing and could be incorporated in your classes as a test-restudy intervention. They noted that testing improves memory. One of the more important ideas to remember when constructing tests is to focus on what is truly important. Take a look at the course learning outcomes and make sure that you are aligning your learning experiences and assessment with those outcomes. The other important connection that this empirical research confirms is that important concepts should be included on subsequent tests and a comprehensive final may be your best opportunity to help your students retain what they have learned in your course.
TEACHING ONLINE
If you are looking for strategies for group learning activities for the online environment, take a look at this blog post by Debbie Morrison. Stephen Downes writes that the PAD (Personal Access Device) will become the dominant tool for online education, combining the function of book, notebook, and pen.
CHARACTER MATTERS
Paul Tough believes that character development may be the most important thing we can teach our students. He writes about that and may other things including the effects of poverty in his book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. When asked how failure can help us succeed, he responds, "That’s an idea that I think was best expressed by Dominic Randolph, the head of the Riverdale Country School, where they’re now doing some interesting experiments with teaching character. Here’s how he put it: The idea of building grit and building self-control is that you get that through failure. And in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything. That idea resonated with a lot of readers. I don’t think it’s quite true that failure itself helps us succeed. In fact, repeated failures can be quite devastating to a child’s development. What I think is important on the road to success is learning to deal with failure, to manage adversity. That’s a skill that parents can certainly help their children develop--but so can teachers and coaches and mentors and neighbors and lots of other people." He elaborates in this podcast.
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