St. George’s University MOOC Has 60% Completion Rate

Posted on October 3, 2017 by JimS

Completion rates for MOOCs are notoriously poor, with a median rate of 12.6%. But there are exceptions. Dr. Satesh Bidaisee’s MOOC, One Health, One Medicine, had a 60% completion rate. Bidaisee is a professor at St. George’s University, Grenada, West Indies. The following is a transcript of our interview from Aug. 7 through Oct. 3, 2017.

ETC: What made you decide to offer this course as a MOOC?

Dr. Satesh Bidaisee

Bidaisee: Chancellor Charles Modica’s vision is to provide access to an SGU education to as many students as possible. Chancellor Modica is the founder of St. George’s University and has spent his life working towards educating a global community of students and alumni. The advent of online technology provides another avenue for SGU to provide educational access to a wider audience.

I am also passionate towards education. A background as a survivor of a motor vehicle accident, a ruptured aneurysm, and testicular cancer have provided sufficient experience to motivate me to contribute to the learning development of others as a purpose in life.

Chancellor Charles R. Modica, JD

ETC: One of your course objectives is “To demonstrate effective oral skills for communicating with different audiences in the context of human, animal and environmental health.” How do students “demonstrate oral skills”?

Bidaisee: Through live seminar sessions, recorded presentations.

ETC: Can you give us an example?

Bidaisee: Students prepared, presented and recorded oral presentations, which were shared with the course community and peer assessed by colleagues. Diseases such as Lyme Diseases, West Nile Virus, Ebola, etc. were discussed in the context of having applications for human health, animal health and environmental considerations. Continue reading →

Filed under: Higher Education, MOOC, Online Learning, Professional Development, Retention, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

TCC 2017 Worldwide Online Conference April 18-20

Posted on March 30, 2017 by JimS

By Bert Kimura
Co-coordinator: Annual TCC Worldwide Online Conference

Join us for the TCC 2017 Worldwide Online Conference, April 18-20: Changing to Learn, Learning to Change

L-R, Malcolm Brown, Veronica Diaz, Hannah Gerber, Kumiko Aoki, Peter Leong, Mikhail Fominykh

Enjoy keynote and special regional sessions by:

Drs. Malcolm Brown & Veronica Diaz, Educause Learning Initiative, USA
Dr. Hannah Gerber, Sam Houston State University, Texas, USA
Dr. Kumiko Aoki, Open University of Japan, Tokyo
Dr. Peter Leong, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA
Dr. Mikhail Fominykh, Molde University College, Norway

TCC is a three-day, entirely online conference for post-secondary faculty and staff worldwide with over 100 sessions that cover a wide-range of topics related to distance learning and emerging technologies for teaching and learning.

To register:

http://2017.tcconlineconference.org/registration/

Individuals participate in real-time sessions from the comfort of their workplace or home using a web browser to connect to individual sessions. All sessions are recorded for on-demand viewing.

For the current schedule of presentations and descriptions, see:

http://2017.tcconlineconference.org/program/

University of Hawaii faculty and staff: Special reduced rates are available. Contact Sharon Fowler <fowlers@hawaii.edu>.

We look forward to seeing you at TCC 2017.

Filed under: Higher Education, Online Conference, Professional Development, Teacher Training, Technology, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Should Online Classes Be Fun?

Posted on March 14, 2017 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

There’s fun as comic relief, then there’s fun as passion.

The first is temporary and a diversion. In the classroom, it’s the seventh-inning stretch in a long lecture. The piano stairs (see the video below) falls into this category, a diversion from the dreary commute from one point to another in a big city. The jokes in an otherwise long and boring speech, too, are diversionary, sugar coating for a bland or bitter pill. The assumption is that the speaker has a captive audience that requires some form of relief.

The fun that makes the most sense for education is passion. Think of our personal interests, joys, hobbies. These aren’t haha funny. They’re aha fun. And the interesting thing is, we don’t need comic relief in these pursuits because they’re inherently engaging, absorbing. We lose ourselves in them. In a word, this type of fun is what Dewey calls “educative.”

When we have passion for something, we have an insatiable hunger for all there is to know about it. My son, growing up, wasn’t the best student, but I never worried because I knew he was bright. Even in grade school, he knew all the NBA teams and players and was an expert on MJ and the Bulls and, later, Kobe and his Lakers.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Higher Education, Online Learning, Professional Development, Teaching Composition, Writing | 2 Comments »

OLC Innovate 2017 – April 5-7 New Orleans, Louisiana

Posted on February 24, 2017 by JimS

In April 2017, the Online Learning Consortium will host its second OLC Innovate conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. This conference was designed with attendees in mind, working to address the diverse professional development needs of the higher education community. As professional development needs vary from individual to individual, a variety of components were designed to take place within and beside the general conference and are intended to enhance and expand the traditional conference learning experience in meaningful, intentional, and networked ways. A few to explore:

The HBCU Affordable Learning Summit provides a forum for discussion and collaboration around making higher education more affordable for students. Attendees will work collaboratively to develop plans that they can take back and implement at their home institutions.
The Community College Summit is a half-day program facilitating discussion and sharing among faculty and practitioners in the community college space. A shared, iterative document will be created, allowing participants to reflect and create new knowledge.
The Solution Design Summit brings together teams from a variety of institutions to work together with conference attendees on creating interdisciplinary solutions to institutional challenges.
The Innovation Lab offers a hands-on, open space for pedagogical experimentation, design thinking, and experimentation. Demos, reflection exercises, and the inaugural “Whose Design Is It Anyway” competition all offer a fun break for the engaged and often overwhelmed conference mind.
Defining Innovation – An Interactive Installation is an experimental innovation space, aiming to re-think how we share and leverage information in higher educational contexts.

As engagement chair of the OLC Innovate conference, I invite you to reach out to me and share what your favorite conference experience has been. Are you planning to attend OLC Innovate, and are you looking to get involved, volunteer? Or do you need assistance and recommendations? Email me at jlknott@gmail.com

For more information about OLC Innovate 2017, visit https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/innovate/.

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TCC Online Conference: Proposal Call Deadline 5 Jan. 2017

Posted on December 23, 2016 by JimS

By Bert Kimura
Co-coordinator: Annual TCC Worldwide Online Conference

Happy Holidays!

We have extended the deadline for TCC 2017 (April 18-20) proposal submissions to January 5, 2017.

Registration details to be announced in February. Stay tuned!

Full details available at: http://tcchawaii.org/call-for-proposals-2017/

For updates about TCC 2017: http://tcchawaii.org/

Best wishes for the New Year from the TCC conference team!

Aloha,
– Bert Kimura for the TCC conference team

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, Online Conference, Professional Development, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

A Successful Public Health MOOC: Interview with Dr. Satesh Bidaisee

Posted on August 24, 2016 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

One Health, One Medicine: An Ecosystem Approach was a five-week public health MOOC offered by Dr. Satesh Bidaisee¹ at St. George’s University, Grenada, in summer 2016. The course attracted 582 students from all over the world and was especially popular with students from the Caribbean, United States, and even Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe.

Among the 582 who enrolled, participants, or “students who took at least one graded activity in the course,” numbered 98, which is 17% of the total enrolled. Of the 98 participants, 52 completed the course. Completion is defined as achieving “at least a 50% in the course, which required them to get full participation and quiz credit and at least one additional exercise (case or presentation).”

Calculated in this way, the completion rate among participants was 53%, four times the rate in previous years. Of the 50 students who completed the survey, 98% rated their overall experience in the course as good or excellent. To the question “Would you be interested in pursuing a degree from St. Goerge’s University?”, 82% answered yes. Of this number, 30% preferred online courses, 16% preferred on-campus classes, and the remaining 36% had no preference either way.

Dr. Satesh Bidaisee, St. George’s University, Grenada.

ETC: How would you explain the high rate of completion for your MOOC?
Bidaisee: The key factors were: (1) A user-friendly online course management system, SGUx, which is built on the EdX platform. (2) Accessible course team. (3) Interactions with students through live seminars, live office hours, discussion blogs, Twitter communication. (3) Case study reviews, peer-review evaluation of student-produced seminars. (4) Focused course topic and content on One Health, One Medicine. Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, Interview, MOOC, Multimedia, Online Learning, Professional Development, Social Media, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

80 Percent of K-12 Schools Now Using Digital Content

Posted on April 1, 2016 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

A study by ASCD and Overdrive, Inc.,¹ is being released today (1 April 2016). Digital Content Goes to School: Trends in K–12 Classroom E-Learning is available for download here. Here are some of the highlights:

1. More than 80 percent of K-12 schools and districts are now using some form of digital content — including eBooks, audiobooks and digital textbooks — in the classroom.

2. Of the 80 percent of respondents who report using digital content in their schools or districts, four out of 10 are using it as part of their curriculum.

3. Devices used for digital content: laptops (75 percent), tablets (62 percent), personal computers (49 percent), and smartphones (17 percent).

4. Contributors to this growth include recognized benefits such as the ability to deliver individualized instruction, allowing students to practice independently, and greater student attention/engagement.

5. As digital content continues to transform the classroom, the concept of a personalized, individualized model of schooling becomes more feasible, according to the report.

6. “Devices bring more knowledge to students’ fingertips than the teacher can give, so the traditional lecture model is no longer applicable. We want content that will engage students and the ability to introduce flipped classrooms with content that students can access at any time, at any place” (Kahle Charles, executive director of curriculum, St. Vrain Valley Schools, Longmont, Colorado).

7. The two issues cited most often were equity concerns about lack of Internet access at home and the fear of teachers not wanting to go digital, including teachers not comfortable or effective with digital learning.

8. Across the board, teachers most desire English/Language Arts (ELA) content in digital format (74 percent), followed by science (62 percent), math (61 percent) and social studies (56 percent).

9. Survey respondents report that digital content currently occupies about one-third of the instructional materials budget and the use of digital content continues to grow.

10. This report is based on a survey of more than 2,000 administrators at the school or district level in the U.S.

__________
¹ Overdrive, Inc., is a provider of eBook and audiobook platforms for schools.

Filed under: Ed Tech, K-12 Schools, Online Learning, Professional Development, Teacher Training, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

Unpack CBE: TCC 2016 Free Pre-conference Webinar March 16 at 2pm HST

Posted on March 8, 2016 by JimS

Bert Kimura

Aloha,

TCC 2016 cordially invites you to join a FREE special pre-conference webinar on competency-based education (CBE).

Unpack CBE

Diane Singer and Susan Manning.

During this session, Diane Singer, from Brandman University, and Susan Manning, from the University of Wisconsin at Stout, will discuss the meaning and processes behind CBE with an eye to how the assessment and recognition of competencies benefit various stakeholders, including business and industry.

Date & time:
March 16, 2:00 PM Hawaii; 6:00 PM Mountain; 8:00 PM Eastern
March 17, 9:00 AM Tokyo & Seoul; 11:00 AM Sydney

Other timezones: http://bit.ly/tcc16precon2-unpackCBE

Full information: http://2016.tcconlineconference.org/unpacking-cbe/

RSVP for this FREE session: If you wish to participate, please RSVP. A reminder will be sent a few days prior along with instructions to sign-in: http://bit.ly/tcc2016precon2-rsvp

REGISTER for the main event!
TCC 2016 Online Conference, 21st edition
April 19-21, 2016
http://2016.tcconlineconference.org/

– Bert Kimura, Curtis Ho & Sharon Fowler
TCC 2016 Online Conference coordinators

Filed under: Higher Education, Online Conference, Professional Development, Webinar | Leave a comment »

Creating Community: Part 2 – Hard Conversations in an Online Classroom – ‘Othello’

Posted on February 23, 2016 by JimS

By Judith McDaniel with Tim Fraser-Bumatay, Daniel Herrera, and Ryan Kelly¹

The four of us are all teachers in face-to-face classrooms, and we have all needed to have difficult conversations about race with our students in those classes. Some teachers would maintain that it is “better” to have these conversations in person in order to monitor how the students are doing and ease them over the rough spots.

All of us have also been part of an online classroom in which we needed to have those conversations about race and ethnicity as we discussed Shakespeare’s Othello and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Is one format — online or in-person — better than the other? While our response won’t be definitive, we can say that our online discussion did succeed in creating an “immediate and vital community of learning” as we insisted in Part 1 of this series. And for each of us, the learning in this class carried over to the face-to-face classes we teach.

Daniel Herrera, Ryan Kelly, Tim Fraser-Bumatay, and Judith McDaniel.

Thinking about Othello

In addition to reading Shakespeare’s play, I assigned several critical articles that discussed race in the play. Kim Hall’s “Beauty and the Beast of Whiteness” and James Aubrey’s “Race and the Spectacle of the Monstrous in ‘Othello’” seemed to be the most provocative.

The issue of beauty, virtue, and monstrosity

The discussion prompt for the question about Othello asked whether Hall’s portrait of “beauty and the beast of whiteness” gave the reader a path into considering Othello as an Elizabethan might have seen him. Tim’s immediate response was “[Yes,] an in-depth look at style would tread upon the contextual setting of the play’s conception, for if one were to question why Shakespeare chooses words such as ‘beast,’ ‘horse,’ and ‘ram’ to describe Othello, it would inevitably lead to 17th century cultural opinions of Africans.”

Alongside that view of course is the parallel portrait of Othello as the most noble and honorable man in the Duke’s court. When Shakespeare introduces the “Moor” himself, he presents “an intriguing character who breaks from the stigma; he is calm, courteous, and even noble.” Continue reading →

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TCC 2016 : Special Pre-conference Interactive Webinar Feb. 25

Posted on February 16, 2016 by JimS

Bert Kimura

Aloha,

Ahead of this year’s main conference, TCC 2016 is hosting a FREE special interactive webinar featuring Dr. Cynthia Calongne (aka LyrLobo).

Make the Future!

~ Create a virtual makerspace ~

During this session, Dr. Calongne explains and discusses makerspaces and how to leverage the maker movement in online education. Share your ideas and creations by sharing your links, favorite tools, and wonderful stories.

Date & time:
February 25, 2:00 PM Hawaii; 5:00 PM Mountain; 7:00 PM Eastern
February 26, 9:00 AM Tokyo & Seoul; 11:00 AM Melbourne, Feb. 26

Other timezones:
http://bit.ly/tcc16precon-makerspaces

Full information:
http://go.hawaii.edu/L1

Register now for this FREE session!
If you wish to participate, please RSVP. Access information will be sent to you a few days prior to this event.

http://go.hawaii.edu/p1

SAVE this date for the main event!
TCC 2016 Online Conference, 21st edition
April 19-21, 2016
Registration and additional information soon will be available!

– Bert Kimura, Curtis Ho & Sharon Fowler
TCC 2016 Online Conference coordinators

To join our mailing list — http://tcchawaii.org/tccohana-l/

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, Online Conference, Professional Development, Trends & Issues, Webinar | Leave a comment »

Creating Community in an Online Classroom: Part 1 – Getting to Know You

Posted on February 9, 2016 by JimS

By Judith McDaniel with Tim Fraser-Bumatay, Daniel Herrera, and Ryan Kelly¹

Is it possible to get a “real education” from an online class? Several years ago a professor from the University of Virginia published an opinion piece about online education in the New York Times and insisted that it was impossible. “You can get knowledge,” he continued, “from an Internet course if you’re highly motivated to learn. But in real courses the students and teachers come together and create an immediate and vital community of learning.”²

I teach literature in a fully online Master’s program. My students enroll from all over the United States and from overseas. Our asynchronous discussion forums give students an opportunity to interact, to be thoughtful in their responses to my discussion prompts and to one another. I find the online classroom to be stimulating, diverse, and creative. It is different from a face-to-face class experience, but it can be different in ways that enhance student learning through the creation of an online community.

Daniel Herrera, Ryan Kelly, and Tim Fraser-Bumatay

I am joined in writing this article by three of the students who have just completed their Masters degree in Literature and Writing in this online program. We have created an article that has two parts. In the first we talk about building community and how that happens, how students from very different backgrounds begin to interact, enjoy one another, challenge one another. In the second part of the article, we recreate some of the conversations we had about difficult subjects and difficult texts. We talked about race extensively when we read Othello and Heart of Darkness. Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, Online Learning, Professional Development, Teacher Training, Theory, Trends & Issues | 8 Comments »

Respondus and Sakai: The Answer to Online Quizzes

Posted on November 24, 2015 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

You’ve been using a course management system (CMS) for your courses, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re completely online, completely onground, or somewhere in between. The CMS has some advantages, and you’re making use of them. If you’re like me, then you’ve also toyed with the idea of putting quizzes online.

It makes sense. It frees you from the drudgery and loss of class time associated with paper ‘n’ pencil tests. Students can take the quizzes on their own time, 24/7, as long as they complete them by a specified date. You can set it up for mastery learning so they can take it as many times as they need to before the deadline, with only the highest score being recorded.

Scoring is done automatically, instantly, and the scores are recorded in the gradebook automatically, too. Students can log in to check their scores. You can log in, too, to look at their scores. Sounds great – until you actually tried to set up a simple quiz and found the klutziest interface in the world. So you remained with paper ‘n’ pencil or did away with quizzes altogether and replaced them with discussion forums geared to readings.

But the problem of students refusing to complete required readings unless there’s a quiz attached to them persists. The top third of the class will do the readings, but the rest will wing it. It hurts their performance, but they can’t or won’t make the connection. For these students, reading is a means to avoid the pain of flunked tests, not a means to learn, to improve performance.

So I returned to the testing function built into our Sakai CMS. It’d been a few years since I last tried it. Maybe it’d gotten better. But after a few minutes of poking around in it, I found it was just as klunky as ever. After rooting around for a bit in our university’s IT help files looking for a miracle, I found something called Respondus.

Respondus is an app. Our university system provides it free to all faculty. Yours probably does, too. The IT help page provides a click-here trail that leads to the site, followed by a download and set up on your computer’s desktop. Click the new icon, and, voilà, your test and quiz creation woes are over.

Respondus is a relatively simple to use test development app. It allowed me to create a ten-question multiple-choice quiz quickly and, dare I say it, naturally. This is done outside the CMS — which at once explains the ease of use and highlights the shortcomings of CMS environments.

After you’re done, the next step is to get the test into the CMS so your students can take it. The process is logical. You need to convert the quiz into a format (QTI) that Sakai can understand. Respondus does this for you when you click on the button to “Preview & Publish.” It walks you through a few steps and creates a folder where you want it. I chose the desktop. In the folder is the quiz file in the required QTI format. Continue reading →

Filed under: Online Learning, Professional Development, Reading, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

CFE 2015 Faculty Showcase at UNC: ‘Teaching Less in More Depth’

Posted on November 22, 2015 by JimS

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 5^th annual Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) Faculty Showcase at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This event is indispensible for those who want to gain a concise overview of emerging trends, proven approaches, best practices and innovative experiments in Carolina. CFE organizes the gathering to offer faculty an opportunity to learn more about specific instructional techniques or technology from their peers. For many attendees, showcase talks are the spark that ignites interest in considering changes for courses they teach. It also serves as a reminder for faculty to make use of the many instructional design and pedagogical consulting services the campus has to offer.

The day provided a chance to hear firsthand about the capabilities of the University’s Makerspaces, how teachers use Google Earth’s Liquid Galaxy display and Lightboard, which is currently being built on campus. What makes the showcase an exceptional learning opportunity for instructional designers is the mix of cutting edge technological innovation and low- or no-tech tips and tricks – be it gender neutral language, better writing assignments, role-play or reflective teaching practices and course evaluation. The showcase event closed with a presentation format I particularly enjoyed: Five-minute-long introductions to a variety of topics and projects with the explicit invitation, “Steal my idea!”

The keynote speaker, Mary Taylor Huber, consultant at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, characterized the CFE event as the “greatest illustration possible” for the theme of her talk, “Building an Academic Commons Through SoTL.” Huber stated that the relationship between teaching and the institutional environment has changed noticeably over the past decade. Teaching is increasingly recognized as a valued academic activity in both general public debates and in the scientific communities. “Teaching is on a fast train,” explained Huber, and pointed out several catalysts for change: diversity, technology, new pedagogies (i.e., undergraduate research, service learning), authentic participation and educational research. Throughout the day, many examples of exceptional teaching brought these concepts to life. Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Games, Higher Education, Professional Development, Reading, Technology, Trends & Issues, Writing | Leave a comment »

Virginia Leads Way to Online High School Diplomas

Posted on June 30, 2015 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Virginia leads the way to completely online public high school diplomas.¹ “Virtual Virginia, the commonwealth’s online high school program, is poised to recruit as many as 100 students to pilot the state’s first full-time online diploma program.” The really good news is that the state is jumping into the virtual with eyes wide open. They’re “set to operate within the program’s existing $4.6 million budget.” They’re also aware that, at this point in time, “the online format suits some students more than others.” They’ve done the homework and learned that “those most likely to succeed in an online school tend to be self-motivated, self-directed students, and their learning style is suited to an environment that involves discussion through posts on message boards.”

It’ll be interesting to watch Virtual Virginia develop in the coming months and years. They’re opening a massive door that remains locked for most school systems in the country. The qualities for success online — self-motivation, self-direction, and active engagement in discussions — are perfectly aligned with those for success in MOOCs and the growing number of affordable online college offerings, which means an open door to college courses and the possibility of earning college credits while still in high school.

The possibilities for learning online are endless, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the last vestiges of classroom walls are eventually removed, allowing students to earn high school and college credits via widely available open learning resources such as MOOCs.

The potential for online resource sharing with high school systems in other states (and other countries) is also real, providing an infinitely richer array of courses, interactive opportunities, and experiences. In other words, geographical isolation will become less an issue, and in the early going, it may be a blessing in disguise, hastening the migration to online options. The challenge for administrators and teachers will be to maintain an open attitude toward schooling. Continue reading →

Filed under: High School, MOOC, Professional Development | 2 Comments »

‘Peer Reviewing in Political Science’ – April 2015 Issue of PS

Posted on April 2, 2015 by JimS

In The Profession section of its April 2015 (v48, 02) issue, PS: Political Science & Politics (PS)¹ scrutinizes the peer review system, a core value in the research community. Some question whether or not peer review is sustainable given the increased and unequal burdens placed on reviewers. In “Peer Reviewing in Political Science: New Survey Results”, Paul Djupe of Denison University argues that the common perception that reviewers are overburdened with requests has never been tested through reliable data collection. He finds, contrary to the conventional wisdom, that most scholars appreciate peer review, and that most peer review requests by journals are accepted. The only common complaint is that peer review is not considered as part of the tenure and promotion process.

Also in The Profession, the right time for associate professors to go for promotion is considered by Kurt Weyland of the University of Texas in “The Logic of the Promotion Decision: In Dubio Pro Patientia”. Weyland argues that it is in the associate professor’s own interest to establish a convincing case before they bid for the rank of full professor and efforts to ‘force’ a promotion prematurely can leave a bad impression and damage the career. Accumulating a strong record in research and publication is the best way to assure a smooth path to tenure.

In the Profession Symposium, see the articles on “Reinventing the Scholarly Conference: Reflections from the Field.”

In The Teacher , Matthew Woessner of Penn State shows how computer games like SimCity can be used to engage young people to think about politics, governance, and the challenges of managing cities in the real world. Continue reading →

Filed under: Games, Higher Education, Professional Development | Leave a comment »

MOOC Sightings 006: Universities Are ‘Middle-men Selling a Product That Is Past Its Sell-by Date’

Posted on March 23, 2015 by JimS

MOOC numbers from Seb Murray¹ that are hard to ignore:

“About 50% [of] Coursera’s 12 million users are utilizing its courses to advance their careers, says Julia [Stiglitz, head of business development at Coursera]. ‘Helping people accelerate their career[s] by learning new skills is a major way that we hope to impact the lives of our learners.’”

“A recent survey of 400 US employers by Duke University and research group RTI International found that 57% said they could see their organization using Moocs for recruitment. And three-quarters said job applicants taking relevant Moocs would be perceived positively in hiring decisions.”

“In a poll of 1,000 UK employers last year by distance learning specialist the Open University[,] nearly half said additional education is the number-one reason they would offer salary increase or promotion – and gaining education with free online courses was the third most common thing the employers looked for.”

“Recent research by the Career Advisory Board found that 87% of 500 US hiring managers are likely to consider non-traditional ‘micro-credentials’, or specialized certificates awarded by reputable educational institutions, as proof of skill mastery.”

“Close to 95% of edX courses offer a verified certificate, [Nancy Moss, director of communications at edX] says, with many of its users looking for new jobs. ”

“While universities have faced the ignominy of budget cuts, tech groups have harvested massive war chests to expand. EdX last year had been funded with $90 million; Coursera has raised a total of $85 million; Udacity has raised $58 million.”

“Alison’s [Mike Feerick, CEO and founder of the Ireland-based Mooc provider,] offered a view that is widely shared in the education community: ‘…[Universities] are the necessary middle-men selling a product that is past its sell-by date.’”

__________
¹ “Mooc Makers Disrupt Business Education With Careers Focus,” BusinessBecause, 22 Mar. 2015.

Filed under: Higher Education, MOOC, Professional Development, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

MOOC Sightings 005: Wharton School and Universiti Teknikal Malaysia

Posted on March 11, 2015 by JimS

Rapid change is the norm, and for professional development in business, MOOCs are the answer. “Wharton School recently teamed up with Coursera . . . and tech start-ups Snapdeal and Shazam to launch $595 online courses with certificates.” This unbundled or certificate model underscores the MOOC’s disruptive force. “‘For adults who have limited resources – whether that’s time or money,'” says Rick Levin, Coursera chief executive, “‘the Specialization [industry project] model works well.'”¹

As change approaches warp speed, the shelf life of knowledge decreases and the need for constantly accessible modules of new knowledge increases. The watchword here is accessible, and this is the MOOC’s domain.

This fact is becoming increasingly obvious in the world of business where you’re either on the leading edge or out of the picture, and the critical factor is time. You can’t pause or stop to learn. Learning has to be on the go, and this means anytime-anywhere.

Will this disruption creep into our college campuses? Will traditional students take to learning in MOOC modules to keep pace with the latest developments in their field? How will this impact courses in the more traditional semester mold?

Most expect professors to gradually blend modules into their curricula, but this is an institutional perspective. My guess is that students will self-modularize and independently flow toward MOOCs that give them the edge, regardless of what professors and colleges decide to do.

In fact, this is already happening, but this disruption doesn’t show up on the campus-richter scale because, from all appearances, the students are on campus and sitting in lecture halls.

On college campuses in other parts of the world, the disruptive power of MOOCs is being embraced. Shahrin Sahib, vice-chancellor of Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), sees MOOCs as a window for “‘students to work collaboratively and closely with colleagues around the world and to have access not only to course instructors, but to textbook authors and experts from other institutions.'”²

For Sahib, the playing field is no longer just the university campus or Malaysia but the globe. He says, “‘If students are to fully assume positions of leadership and responsibility in specific organizations and in society as a whole, then they must be prepared to deal with the global environment.'” For college students, regardless of location, MOOCs are an interactive and accessible portal to that environment.
__________
¹ Seb Murray, “Technology Expands Business Education As Students Opt for Digital Route,” BusinessBecause, 10 Mar. 2015.
² Kelly Koh, “MOOC Can Help Create Global-ready Graduates,” New Straits Times, 10 Mar. 2015.

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Free Webinar on Student Engagement 3/19/15 at 11am ET

Posted on March 10, 2015 by JimS

5 Secrets to Spectacular Student Engagement

Thursday, March 19, 2015 at 11 AM EDT (US)
Not time-zone friendly? Register to receive the archive.

Dr. Colin Montpetit, Assistant Professor of Science Education at the University of Ottawa

Register for this complimentary webinar to learn how Dr. Colin Montpetit, Assistant Professor of Science Education at the University of Ottawa, increased class participation to 99%. Hear how he transformed his classroom into an “active learning zone” with the use of a student engagement solution.

Get the full story behind Dr. Montpetit’s stunning findings – how student participation rates grew in his classes, grades improved and failure rates decreased. Register today!

Who Should Attend: All are welcome. Those in Academic Technology or Teaching and Learning Centers are highly encouraged to attend.

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Ed Week Free Livestream 3/18/15 at 8am ET: Delisle & Fullan

Posted on March 10, 2015 by JimS

Meet This Year’s Most Innovative Education Leaders
Brought to you LIVE on Wednesday, March 18, 2015,
from 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM (ET), from Washington, D.C.

Deborah S. Delisle, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, and Michael Fullan, Adviser to the Premier and Minister of Education in Ontario, Canada.

Learn the secrets. Repeat the results. Register today for FREE live access to this exclusive event, featuring keynoters Deborah S. Delisle, Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education and Michael Fullan, Adviser to the Premier and Minister of Education in Ontario, Canada.

Join us live from Washington, D.C., as the Leaders for 2015 reveal the keys to their successes through engaging presentations, discussions, and Q&A.

As a virtual attendee you’ll view the action live from your computer and takeaway all of the insights on what it takes to make huge impacts in school systems from San Francisco to rural Georgia.

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Livestream, Professional Development | Leave a comment »

TCC Online Conference 20th Anniversary – Final Call for Registration

Posted on March 6, 2015 by JimS

Final Call for Registration
Register now to save your spot!

TCC, Technology, Colleges and Community, is a worldwide online conference attended by university and college personnel including faculty, academic support staff, counselors, student services personnel, students, and administrators.

Join our special 20th Edition of this annual event to share your expertise, experiences, and knowledge relevant to the use of information technology in learning, teaching, innovation, and academic services.

Seats are still available to participate online or onsite (this year only).

This event is very helpful and novice friendly by providing a strong foundation about learning with technology. For more information, visit:

http://2015.tcconlineconference.org/

TCCHawaii • LTEC (University of Hawaii) • LearningTimes

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To unsubscribe to this mailing list

Send a message from this email address to listserv@hawaii.edu. In the BODY of the message,
type: SIGNOFF TCCOHANA-L. For assistance, contact Bert Kimura <bert@hawaii.edu>.

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To join our mailing list

See: http://tcchawaii.org/tccohana-l/

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MOOC Sightings 001: UNC and Cornell

Posted on February 20, 2015 by JimS

Despite wholesale announcements by powerful academic leaders throughout the U.S. that MOOCs are dead, sightings continue to pour in from around the country and the rest of the world. For skeptics, the problem is physical evidence. People can offer them and take them, but no one seems to know what a MOOC looks like. Some point to Coursera and edX, but in the opinion of most MOOC experts, who are primarily from Canada and the UK, these are hoaxes.

So, in the interest of determining once and for all whether MOOCs are fo’ real, I’ll be opening Project White Book to publish promising sightings and photos of MOOCs. In this inaugural post, I’m sharing the photo, below, of what appears to be one person’s conception of a MOOC. I recently found it in the ETC spam queue. It was posted anonymously with the header “Da MOOC!” I’ll post photos as I receive them, so if you have one, email it to me (jamess@hawaii.edu) and I’ll publish the most interesting.

Is this a MOOC, a hoax, or just another weather-related phenomenon?

I’m also sharing promising sightings by Sarah Kaylan Butler, “50,000 Enroll in UNC Online Course” (Daily Tarheel, 2/19/15), and Blaine Friedlander, “Cornell Sinks Teeth into Four New MOOCs” (Cornell Chronicle, 2/19/15).

Butler reports that “almost 50,000 students have enrolled in a massive open online course on positive psychology taught by UNC professor Barbara Fredrickson.” Evidence that this Coursera-based course might be a real MOOC is very strong. It’s six weeks long, a departure from the usual quarter or semester time frame. It’s comfortably aimed at interest rather than college credit. According to Fredrickson, “Most people that are enrolled — 95 percent of them — say that they’re interested out of their own curiosity.” And the professor is on firm MOOC footing, looking for pedagogical guidance from the future rather than the past. She says, “I’ve written a couple of books for general audience and one of the things that’s clear about our changing audience is that people don’t necessarily want to read books, but they like ideas.”

Another promising sighting is from Cornell. Friedlander reports that “Cornell will offer four new [MOOCs] in 2016: shark biodiversity and conservation, the science and politics of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), an introduction to engineering simulations, and how deals get done – mergers and acquisitions principles.” They’re still in the planning stages, so I’ll keep an eye out for more details as they become available.

Are MOOCs fo’ real? In this series, I’ll be looking at the evidence through a lens that’s forged from constructivist and disruptive theory as well as a dash of whimsy. In this process, I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please share them in the discussion below. If you’re logging in from an address that has been previously approved, your reply will be posted automatically. If not, your first reply will be published within 24-48 hours. Subsequent replies from your address will be published immediately.

Filed under: Higher Education, MOOC, Multimedia, Professional Development, Science, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

Free Webinar: ‘Using Technology to Engage Students’ 2/23/15 3pm EST

Posted on February 17, 2015 by JimS

From Macmillan Higher Education 2/17/15:

Join us on Monday, February 23rd at 3pm EST for a complimentary webinar on “Using Technology to Engage Students” with Solina Lindahl of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo!

The 21st century classroom is getting larger, more tech-laden and full of students weaned on digital devices. How should our teaching change (or NOT change) in light of this? This talk is aimed at showing how iPads, iClickers and more can engage the face-to-face large class. Included are a brief discussion of some of the more innovative (and easy) visual presentation apps, as well as a look at using iPads to do the most old-fashioned of practices: worked problems.

To learn more about all of our EdTech Week sessions and our presenters, please visit our EdTech Week website. You can also join our event on Facebook for the latest updates and information! We hope to see you there!

Filed under: Higher Education, Mobile Technology, Multimedia, Professional Development, Tablet, Teacher Training, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Register for TCC 2015 – The Future Is Now

Posted on January 15, 2015 by JimS

By Bert Kimura

Aloha,

http://tcconlineconference.org/

Enjoy KEYNOTE sessions by:

Dr. Howard Rheingold, Author, Critic, Journalist & Educator
Alan Levine, Pedagogical Technologist, Architect of Open & Connected Learning
Dr. Stella Perez, Sr. VP Communications and Advancement, American Association of Community Colleges

This year, our 20th conference features an ONSITE option to participate in-person at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa campus. There is also an option to participate virtually ONLINE as in previous years.

For further information (including low-cost housing and an optional educational tour), see:

http://2015.tcconlineconference.org/register/

Site licenses for unlimited participation from a campus or system are available. Special rates apply to University of Hawai’i faculty and staff. For more info, contact Sharon Fowler <fowlers@hawaii.edu>.

We look forward to seeing you at TCC 2015.

Warm regards,
Bert Kimura
For the TCC Conference Team

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Practical Reasoning – Challenges for Teaching and Assessment

Posted on January 15, 2015 by JimS

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

In a faculty brown bag lunch, Molly Sutphen, Associate Director of the UNC Center for Faculty Excellence and author of the seminal book Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation, delivered a talk on Practical Reasoning at the School of Government. The talk was a nice follow-up to the Teaching Palooza that our faculty organized last summer. Since the School’s focus is on teaching adult learners, enhancing practical reasoning skills is an important objective of my instructional design work.

Molly Sutphen, Associate Director and Teaching and Learning Coordinator, UNC Center for Faculty Excellence

Characteristics of Effective Practical Reasoning

To be able to draw on knowledge from different areas, courses, or types of knowledge and use it
To develop a sense of salience about a situation
To realize the stakes of a situation
To put boundaries around a problem or question
To be able to envision different outcomes
To be able to construct a narrative forward and backward

Assessment and Practical Reasoning

With the pressure of constantly demonstrating impact, assessing the short term learning outcomes of practical reasoning is problematic. “Practitioners may learn, but we don’t know it – what you teach, someone will perhaps not use for another five months – or ten years,” said Dr. Sutphen. She recommends taking “a long view” instead.

Instructional Strategy: Unfolding Cases

Dr. Sutphen introduced unfolding cases as an instructional strategy to teach practical reasoning skills. Unfolding cases are underdetermined (no obvious plan or resolution), scaffolded (controlled amount of information), and orchestrated (prompting specific, relevant questioning). In a plenary exercise, she presented a list of questions to help teachers construct unfolding cases.

What is this a case of?
Where do you want to start and end?
How underdetermined do you want the case to be?
Who are the actors? At which point will they be revealed?
What is the arc of the narrative?
What information will you provide or conceal?
Will you give boundaries or expect them to be discovered?

Further Reading

Benner, P., Sutphen, M., Leonard, V., & Day, L. (2009). Educating nurses: A call for radical transformation (Vol. 15). John Wiley & Sons.

Colby, A., Ehrlich, T., Sullivan, W. M., & Dolle, J. R. (2011). Rethinking undergraduate business education: Liberal learning for the profession (Vol. 20). John Wiley & Sons.

Schwartz, B., & Sharpe, K. (2010). Practical wisdom: The right way to do the right thing. Penguin.

Gherardi, S. (2012). “Docta ignorantia”: Professional Knowing at the Core and at the Margins of a Practice. Journal of Education and Work, 25(1), 15-38.

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Who Dat? It’s E-Learn 2014! Come, Learn, Share, Connect

Posted on November 14, 2014 by JimS

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

The 19th annual international conference AACE E-Learn took place from October 27-30 in the sunny, warm and welcoming climate of the city of New Orleans. The conference attracted 670 participants from 60 different countries who enjoyed four days of workshops, keynotes, presentations, symposia, SIG meetings, posters, and, last but not least, informal discussions and networking opportunities during the session breaks.

Conference infographic by Stefanie Panke.

AACE E-Learn Conference

What sets AACE conferences apart from other events in the educational technology community is the rigorous peer review process in the selection of presentations. Instead of simply submitting an abstract, AACE requires a full manuscript of 6-10 pages. While writing skills do not always and certainly not necessarily translate into great presentations, the quality off contributions is generally high. This also makes the conference proceedings (available in the AACE digital library EditLib) a really great resource for an up-to-date overview of the current state-of-the-art in educational technology. While access to the proceedings is generally restricted to conference participants and subscribers, several papers that were honored with an outstanding paper award are openly accessible:

Video Game Genres and What Is Learned from Them
Faculty’s Perception Towards the Relationship Between Pedagogical Use of Emerging Technologies and Classroom Technology Infusion
Using a Design Pattern Framework to Structure Online Course Content: Two Design Cases
Perceptions of School Children of Using Social Media
Convergence and Divergence: Accomodating Oline Cross-Culture Communication Styles
Lessons Learned from a Two Year Implementation Project: Sustaining Student Gains with Online On-Demand Professional Development
Students’ Learning Outcomes and Self-Efficacy Perception in a Flipped Classroom
Adapting Teaching/Learning Strategies for the Multigenerational Classroom

The best paper awards mirror the diverse spectrum of the conference. E-Learn is a place where educational technology researchers, developers, and practitioners from higher education, K-12, nonprofit and industry sectors meet – brought together by a joint focus on leveraging technology for achieving instructional goals.

My Conference Experience

This conference report is my personal eclectic account of E-Learn 2014. My schedule was packed this year: Not only did I, in a hyperactive mood, choose to deliver three talks, but I also had a symposium and a special interest group meeting to moderate and an executive committee meeting to attend. Luckily, the overall conference atmosphere, the great discussions during the special interest group meeting, and the thoughtful feedback, ideas, encouragement and contributions by numerous conference participants made all of this fun. Continue reading →

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Technology Is a Partial Answer to Improving Teacher Quality

Posted on October 30, 2014 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

On October 29, the New York Times published an op-ed by Frank Bruni¹ that is based on a new book by Joel Klein (past chancellor of New York City Public Schools) and that has plenty of advice for educators. According to Bruni, Klein tells us that the primary issue in education is teacher quality.

Bruni’s analysis of Klein’s writing is good enough that everyone should read it and read between the lines too. Bruni also had the opportunity to interview Klein and asked some penetrating questions. Here are some bullet points that I have excerpted from the article:

• Stiffen the admission requirements for schools of education.
• Fix education school curricula, including ensuring teachers master their subjects.
• Create a rational incentive system for compensating teachers, a huge problem today.

You can read the article for the details. What does all of this have to do with technology? A great deal, actually, and in two important areas. The first area is teacher training. We can do much in this area, both with simulating teacher classroom experiences and with mastering subject matter. We currently train pilots with simulators before putting them in airplanes. The same thing could be done for teachers to help them more rapidly reach competency with student interaction, discipline, and engagement.

I am only intimately familiar with science education and can say that we have some great tools to advance science teacher understanding of their subjects. Too many science teachers enter classrooms unprepared to teach science for the simple reason that they do not understand the nature of science. It’s sort of like teaching chess without knowing how the pieces move. We can fix that. Continue reading →

Filed under: Professional Development, Teacher Training | 1 Comment »

Reading, Vocabulary, Glogster, Funding, ESL Teachers, VoiceThread

Posted on September 2, 2014 by JimS

Cutting to the Common Core: The Positive Side of the Digital Divide by J. Zorfass and T. Gray in Language Magazine: The authors make the case for using digital texts to support the reading process for all learners.

Computer games give boost to English. The University of Gothenburg in Science Daily: Success in the world of computer games and a good English vocabulary go hand in hand. A recent study has shown that players who are good at computer games increase their English vocabulary. The study also showed a difference between the genders. Boys spend about twice as much time a week playing computer games as girls. However, girls spend about twice as much time a week on Facebook and other language-related activities.

Tools for achieving oral fluency by Marsha Appling-Nunez in Language Magazine: The author makes suggestions for helping English language learners with their speaking and presentation skills. Glogster is a graphical blog that students can use when doing oral books reports, or other presentations. She also recommends PechaKucha Prezi, which is a method of presenting information using pictures only which requires the speaker to focus on good pronunciation, filler reduction, and vocabulary.

For Public Schools, the Long and Bumpy Road to Going Digital by Kathy Baron in Mindshift: Equipment, software licensing, training. Funding – or lack of it – is the number one issue facing school districts as they convert to the digital learning world.

Preparing Teacher Candidates to Work with English Language Learners in an Online Course Environment by Stephanie Dewing in TEIS News: The author reports on a study she did on the efficacy of an online course for ESL teachers. She found minimal evidence of transformative learning experiences. She proposes several changes in course design to try to produce a context more conducive for transformational learning.

Using Web 2.0 Tools, Such as Voicethread™, to Enhance ELL Instructor and Student Learning by Kelly Torres In TEIS News: Torres advocates using tools such as VoiceThread™, a multimedia tool that can provide a slide show with pictures, documents, and videos to engage students in online course materials by allowing them to see and hear their peers.

Filed under: Games, Professional Development, Teacher Training | 1 Comment »

Geography? T3G…ESRI in Education

Posted on June 30, 2014 by JimS

By Vic Sutton

While at a recent workshop at the Redlands, CA, headquarters of the Environmental Science Research Institute (ESRI), I heard the most concise definition of geography yet: “What where? Why there? Why care?”

My wife, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, had been accepted for a week-long workshop in ESRI’s T3G Institute. I traveled with her, thinking I was heading for a holiday in Southern California – maybe visit the beach and chill out in wine country.

No such luck. As soon as he saw me, Charlie Fitzpatrick said, “I’ll get you a badge.”

Charlie Fitzpatrick is the K-12 education manager at ESRI. Before joining ESRI in 1992, Charlie taught social studies in grades 7-12 for 15 years.

“T3G” is ESRI’s acronym for “teachers teaching teachers GIS.” So the goal of the workshop was to give a group of some 90 educators the knowledge and hands-on skills to be able to teach other colleagues how to use geographic information system information in their work. Continue reading →

Filed under: Mobile Technology, Professional Development, Science, STEM | 1 Comment »

What Does Cyberlearning Mean to You? Cyberlearning Summit 2014

Posted on June 30, 2014 by JimS

By Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Associate Editor

(Note: See Vic Sutton’s report on this conference. -Editor)

Teachers working in classrooms need ideas and frameworks and support for initiatives beyond the ideas that have been classified as regular education. Sometimes funding is a problem. Powerful partners get you permission to do wonderful things in the classroom.

My first involvement with a network of powerful people, learning ideas and new technologies was with Cilt. You can tell that it was some time ago. We called STEM, SMET. Here is a look at what we started with:

We investigated, learned, shared and promoted ideas. Concord has wonderful free resources to share, and here is a summary:

The Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) was founded in October 1997 with a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to stimulate the development and study of important, technology-enabled solutions to critical problems in K-14 science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) learning. Four “theme teams” focused the efforts in areas of highest promise. CILT events, often workshops organized by theme, provided a collaborative forum in which people in the learning science community met to assess the progress of the field, define research agendas, and initiate new collaborations. Many of these collaborations form seed grants funded by CILT. In addition to these successful CILT programs, CILT has generated many resources for the learning science community, including tools, publications, and NetCourses.

In this day and time, people sometimes do not think that meeting people and sharing in conferences is necessary. But the leaders of Cyberinfrastructure have better ideas. They do a conference and put the ideas online. You have a choice. There are pieces of brilliant ideas, presentations and demonstrations, and even poster sessions for you online. Continue reading →

Filed under: Professional Development, Social Networking, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

Social Media Tips for Virtual Conference Attendance

Posted on May 4, 2014 by JimS

By Melissa A. Venable

[Note: Jessica Knott, ETCJ’s Twitter/Facebook editor, has coordinated the publication of this article. -Editor]

Last month The Sloan Consortium’s 7th Emerging Technologies for Online Learning took place in Dallas, Texas. According to the latest Sloan-C View newsletter, there were “more than 700 onsite and 1,000 virtual attendees representing 47 states including DC and 23 countries.”

Saint Leo University provided virtual access to a limited number of instructors, including adjuncts like myself. In my formal request to attend, I made a commitment to “be active on multiple social media platforms and use the symposium hashtag – #et4online – to further engage in live sessions and network with other attendees.” I was fortunate to be selected to attend, and it was this social media commitment that made all the difference in my experience.

Recorded sessions are helpful but don’t provide the energy and interaction of real-time attendance. And there is a lot to be gained from following the social media backchannel of a conference, but formal registration allows for a different level of access to the sessions and other attendees. This article includes a few of my lessons learned as a virtual conference participant.

Prepare to Participate

Are your social media accounts up-to-date? This may be the best place to start. Take a look at the platforms that are being encouraged by the conference organizers and review your profiles before the event starts. If it has been a while since you logged in to an account, it could take some time to review and refresh the information you are providing about yourself. Keep in mind that these profiles serve as your business card in an online networking sense.

Follow the conference itself and the sponsoring organization. In addition to the conference hashtag, this Sloan Consortium event was also active with social media accounts focused specifically on this conference, including Twitter and Facebook. These accounts provided a constant stream of reminders, letting participants know about upcoming sessions, highlighting participants and presenters, and announcing schedule changes.

Set Realistic Expectations

The Sloan symposium offered fewer streamed sessions than onsite sessions, but there were multiple presentation options for each time slot. The streamed sessions took place in Dallas with a live audience and allowed virtual attendees to watch both the presenter and his or her slide presentation simultaneously. Members of the online group were able to interact with each other via text chat and ask questions of the presenter through an online session chairperson who relayed them in real-time. We also connected and exchanged thoughts and resources through our social media accounts.

Take a look at your schedule for the week and identify, in advance, the sessions you would like to attend. Add these sessions to your calendar. I was tripped up when logging into my first session (an hour early), before I realized I needed to calculate time zone differences. The website mentioned this, of course, but sometimes you have to learn on your own, and I instantly connected with other virtual attendees on Twitter who made the same mistake. Continue reading →

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SoTL Commons 2014 in Savannah: ‘Teaching Without Learning Is Just Talking’

Posted on April 3, 2014 by JimS

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

The 7^th SoTL commons conference at Savannah, Georgia, was held from March 26-28, 2014. The annual event is organized by Georgia Southern University. SoTL commons is a small conference; the 2014 edition attracted around 180 participants. The majority of the participants came from small colleges and universities in the southern United States, though the event also had national reach with people from Wisconsin, Louisiana, and the Midwest, as well as a few international attendees from Colombia, South Africa, Sweden, Portugal and Nigeria.

My personal conference highlight was the keynote by Peter Felten, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at Elon University. Peter used an amusing and powerful analogy to clarify the question that seems to be a crucial, non-negotiable ingredient of every SoTL gathering: What do we mean by Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?

Peter Felten: “Which mutt is the cutest?” Can you give criteria for cuteness? How about criteria for excellence in SoTL?

He characterized SoTL as a mutt discipline — in contrast to the “best in show approach” of disciplinary research. Just as a show dog will be only appreciated by few experts in the breeding trade, disciplinary research often resides in the ivory tower. SoTL has the advantage of being widely accessible to a broader audience. However, it has to define its boundaries to be (accepted as) a scholarly discipline.
To this end, Peter presented five principles, which offer a heuristic framework to characterize any SoTL project:

The inquiry is focused on student learning.
The research is grounded in context — both scholarly discourse and local, organizational environment.
The approach is methodologically sound.
The project is conducted in partnership with students.
The results are appropriately public.

These principles allow for common ground among SoTL inquiries, can help clarify and demystify SoTL to others and ultimately enhance the influence of SoTL. (For more details, see “Principles of Good Practice in SoTL.”)

The talk spurred a debate among the audience, in particular the absence of “teaching” as a perspective in the first principle. What if you are working with faculty to improve their teaching? Peter argued that ultimately every SoTL project aims at improving student learning and referred to Angelo and Cross (1993), who stated that “learning can — and often does occur without teaching but teaching cannot occur without learning; teaching without learning is just talking” (p.3 — see full text at ERIC).

Nancy Chick

Peter’s thoughts were taken up by Nancy Chick’s keynote address on the following day. She focused on the question “What is methodologically sound research in SoTL?” As editor of Teaching & Learning Inquiry, the new ISSOTL journal launched in spring 2013, Nancy was in a perfect position to highlight methodological aspects. What sets SoTL apart from disciplinary research is the variety of data sources scholars use to trace learning. Although SoTL projects comprise a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives, it is crucial to find a good fit between research question and data sources. Continue reading →

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Can America’s Wasted Talent Be Harnessed Through the Power of Internet Based Learning?

Posted on November 14, 2013 by JimS

By Jim Riggs
Professor, Advanced Studies in Education
College of Education
CSU Stanislaus
President Emeritus, Columbia College (1997-2007)

For nearly 150 years, the American dream of a better life of economic success and advancement has been found largely through the narrow path of higher education. However, access to traditional higher education has always been limited to the top one-third of the adult population and by all indications will continue to be rationed at this level or less into the foreseeable future. Peter Smith, in his 2010 book, Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning, points out that while traditional higher education will continue to serve this segment of the population, educational leaders must find alternative ways that will effectively meet the postsecondary education needs of a much larger segment of the adult population.

Smith is not alone in this thinking. There have been numerous reports in recent years that have also called for greater access, flexibility, credit portability and increasing degree completion for a much larger percentage of the adult population. In addition, many of these reports place a special emphasis on closing the growing achievement gap, which is increasingly leaving Latinos and African-Americans behind other groups when it comes to earning college degrees. Why is this important? There is a strong and growing consensus among policy makers, educators, economists and scholars that, if this country is to remain an economic superpower, a much larger and more diverse segment of the adult population must be better educated.

America’s current workforce is aging and retiring, and 85% of all new jobs now require some college education. A real crisis is rapidly developing — America is finding itself with an escalating gap between the increasingly sophisticated workforce skill demands of the new economy and what the average American worker has to offer. In a 2011 report, The Undereducated American, Georgetown University professors Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose provide a strong argument that America will need a dramatic increase in the number of individuals with college degrees within the next decade. This increase in college graduates, according to Carnevale and Rose, is not only needed to help sustain the nation’s economic growth but will also help reverse the 30 year trend of growth in income inequity.

However, with the downturn in the economy over the past six years, we are once again reminded that a college degree alone is not a complete guarantee against economic challenges or underemployment. Economic growth and viability cannot solely depend on education. Nonetheless, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the greatest predictor of personal income and employability for Americans still is, and will continue to be, their level of educational attainment. Continue reading →

Filed under: MOOC, Professional Development, Teacher Training, Theory, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Twitter for Professional Use – Part 4: Participating in a Live Event

Posted on November 10, 2012 by JimS

By Melissa A. Venable

[Note: ETCJ’s Twitter editor, Jessica Knott, has been working with Melissa to develop this series. See Part 1: Getting Started, Part 2: Channeling the Streams, and Part 3: Curating the Chaos. -Editor]

This final installment in this series offers guidance on using your Twitter account to join live conversations and monitor ongoing professional events. After setting up and learning to manage your account, a good next step is to join active groups and discussions that use hashtags to set their conversations apart from the rest.

What Is a Hashtag?

Adding the “#” symbol to series of letters and numbers creates what is known as a hashtag. These are searchable in the Twitter system and can function as filters to create a list of tweets that include the hashtag. By inserting a hashtag into a tweet, you add your message to the conversation, joining all the others who have chosen to add that same hashtag as well.

Anyone can create a hashtag and start a conversation. Like tags and keywords, they help you sort through the seemingly endless flow of information to identify related topics of interest. Use Twitter search to find recent tweets related to #edtech, #highered, or #election2012 as examples. Notice that searching by keyword (highered) or hashtag (#highered) allows you to see all of the messages with the hashtag, including those from accounts you don’t follow.

Join a Live Conversation

Twitter chats are real-time text chat conversations in which participants tweet their questions and responses. Chats go beyond just using the hashtag to participating at scheduled times. Anyone can join in by simply adding the chat’s specific hashtag to tweets during the session. There are several established chats focusing on education topics, such as #lrnchat and #edchat. Continue reading →

Filed under: Professional Development, Social Media | 1 Comment »

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