whether available technology tools will enhance or detract from the learning experience.
Each student learns differently, technology tools will definitely enhance or detract student learning experiences, but it is impossible to say which or to utilize technology in a way that only enhances learning. I think that it is about giving students a chance to find a medium that can be used by all of them.
Faculty development.
Physical spaces for technology-based learning do not have to be student-only spaces, and actually giving faculty the choice to use these spaces as well may keep the curriculum fresh, the faculty updated on what works best for the students and students interested and feeling like their learning needs and styles are being met.
it also required elusive buy-in from administrators and a new approach to thinking about the classroom experience.
There are benefits and drawbacks to such modern learning spaces. On one hand, the space(s) being used for technological advancement need to be designated, built/remodeled and shown to be used regularly by students, this process takes a long time and a lot of funding to perfect, which is what administration do not want to hear. Such spaces do not have to be used only for online courses and studying, which is a point made later in this article, it can be versatile and useful for all students if designed right. As technology improves, educators with more training in technology are becoming more widespread and students utilize online resources and technology more, the necessity of having these spaces increases.
active learning and technology engagement.
Tracking Distance Education in the United States
growth in online learning continues
Project Based Learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge.
This is a great overview/definition of PBL.
So there is that danger in the language of learning. In part of my work I go even further because I think that learning in itself is also a very particular way in which we engage with the world, for example.
Two options here then: Critique the word "learning" and stop using it (Biesta) or reframe and redefine it (perhaps what Britzman or Kress have done?)
. And learning can mean different things so I often give a couple of examples where the word learning is used like learning to ride a bike or learning that 2 and 2 equals 4 but also learning to be patient or learning that you’re not good at something.
I like the examples here. And the anxiety and frustration that goes with learning that you are not good at something (Britzman)
personalized learning is not a one-size-fits-all method.
Right. Isn't this what "personalized" means?
to edtech skeptics that fear computers will replace teachers
I think the criticisms are a bit more nuanced than this F.U.D.
nteraction analysis can be partly automated.
verbal interactions are the key!
how technology can fulfil collaborative functionalitiesthat are not available in face-to-face situations
technique #1 to promote colloboration
climate protection
https://www.nextgenscience.org/pe/hs-ls2-7-ecosystems-interactions-energy-and-dynamics
HS-LS2-7 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
This paper investigates a means to optimize carbon storage potential through knowledge of biodiversity mechanics and the idea of sinking carbon into plant life in order to lower atmospheric CO2.
https://www.nextgenscience.org/pe/ms-ls1-7-molecules-organisms-structures-and-processes
MS-LS1-7 From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
It is important to understand the nature of the carbon cycle, and how carbon is utilized within organisms as biomass.
Teacher's Resource:
The removal of atmospheric CO2 reduces pollution, but it comes at the cost of creating plant conservation sites to store the carbon from CO2.
This paper focuses upon the utilization of biodiversity in order to to increase carbon storage for economic purposes. By increasing the amount of carbon that can be stored in a hectacre of grassland, it will become much cheaper to reduce pollution via carbon sinks.
Hungate et. al performed their investigations through past experiments that compared the carbon uptakes of grasslands of varying biodiversity over a period of 50 years.
Findings support a positive correlation between biodiversity and carbon uptake levels. Therefore, increasing biodiversity in carbon sinks will increase efficiency and will make carbon sequestration more affordable as a result.
While this paper shows a 'soft cap' (decreasing marginal effects) on these carbon uptake gains from biodiversity, this effect might be proven to have synergy with other efforts to improve carbon sequestration in the future.
Discussion Questions:
Why does adding to the biodiversity not linearly add to the carbon uptake rates?
Is the resource competition (resulting from biodiversity) limiting or benefiting the flora in carbon sequestration?
What is the 'sweet spot' of biodiversity that optimizes highest carbon storage per dollar spent?
Do the results of this study have qualities that could be generalized to a other grasslands or possibly even other types of habitat? SC
Find courseware to meet your teaching and learning needs
Most of the recent advances in AI depend on deep learning, which is the use of backpropagation to train neural nets with multiple layers ("deep" neural nets).
Neural nets consist of layers of nodes, with edges from each node to the nodes in the next layer. The first and last layers are input and output. The output layer might only have two nodes, representing true or false. Each node holds a value representing how excited it is. Each edge has a value representing strength of connection, which determines how much of the excitement passes through.
The edges in an untrained neural net start with random values. The training data consists of a series of samples that are already labeled. If the output is wrong, the edges are adjusted according to how much they contributed to the error. It's called backpropagation because it starts with the output nodes and works toward the input nodes.
Deep neural nets can be effective, but only for single specific tasks. And they need huge sets of training data. They can also be tricked rather easily. Worse, someone who has access to the net can discover ways of adding noise to images that will make the net "see" things that obviously aren't there.
This means developing a flexible learning environment in which information is presented in multiple ways, students engage in learning in a variety of ways, and students are provided options when demonstrating their learning.
These are also best practices in teaching and learning, which says something about human cognition and motivation generally and how we think about people who need "accommodations." In other words, maybe we all need "accommodations" that serve our need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
The aim is to demonstrate the distance travelled on their journey in the form of tangible, trackable learning outcomes and applications.
Rather than framing everything at the course level, we should be deploying these technologies for the individual.26
Obvious question: what about groups, communities, networks, and other supra-individual entities apart from the course/cohort model?
In the accompanying article "Innovation Reclaimed," we share some projects that are working toward the vision of educational institutions reclaiming innovative learning on the web.
Speaking of “counting them”.
an environment unlike anything they will encounter outside of school
Hm? Aren’t they likely to encounter Content Management Systems, Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Intranets, etc.? Granted, these aren’t precisely the same think as LMS. But there’s quite a bit of continuity between Drupal, Oracle, Moodle, Sharepoint, and Salesforce.
mandate the use of "learning management systems."
Therein lies the rub. Mandated systems are a radically different thing from “systems which are available for use”. This quote from the aforelinked IHE piece is quite telling:
“I want somebody to fight!” Crouch said. “These things are not cheap -- 300 grand or something like that? ... I want people to want it! When you’re trying to buy something, you want them to work at it!”
In the end, it’s about “procurement”, which is quite different from “adoption” which is itself quite different from “appropriation”.
institutional demands for enterprise services such as e-mail, student information systems, and the branded website become mission-critical
In context, these other dimensions of “online presence” in Higher Education take a special meaning. Reminds me of WPcampus. One might have thought that it was about using WordPress to enhance learning. While there are some presentations on leveraging WP as a kind of “Learning Management System”, much of it is about Higher Education as a sector for webwork (-development, -design, etc.).
Five Arguments against the Learning Management System
“I want somebody to fight!” Crouch said. “These things are not cheap -- 300 grand or something like that? ... I want people to want it! When you’re trying to buy something, you want them to work at it! [Instructure] just didn’t.”
two quarters of pilot courses on Instructure’s Canvas platform
To the surprise of those behind the initiative, about two-thirds of faculty members said they were satisfied with the Blackboard system, deployed on campus in 1999.
the terrible, horrible, no-good university administrators are trying to build a panopticon in which they can oppress the faculty
If you recall your LMS patent infringement history, then you'll remember that roles and permissions were exactly the thing that Blackboard sued D2L over.
(At the time, Stephen Downes mocked me for thinking that this was an important aspect of LMS design to consider.)
An interesting case where Stephen’s tone might have drowned a useful discussion. FWIW, flexible roles and permissions are among the key things in my own personal “spec list” for a tool to use with learners, but it’s rarely possible to have that flexibility without also getting a very messy administration. This is actually one of the reasons people like WordPress.
Do you know what the feature set was that had faculty from Albany to Anaheim falling to their knees, tears of joy streaming down their faces, and proclaiming with cracking, emotion-laden voices, "Finally, an LMS company that understands me!"?
While this whole bit is over-the-top, à la @mfeldstein67, must admit that my initial reaction was close to that. For a very similar reason. Still haven’t had an opportunity to use Canvas with learners, but the overall workflow for this type of feature really does make a big difference. The openness aspect is very close to gravy. After all, there are ways to do a lot of work in the open without relying on any LMS. But the LMS does make a huge difference in terms of such features as quickly grading learners’ work.
Why, they would build an LMS. They did build an LMS. Blackboard started as a system designed by a professor and a TA at Cornell University. Desire2Learn (a.k.a. Brightspace) was designed by a student at the University of Waterloo. Moodle was the project of a graduate student at Curtin University in Australia. Sakai was built by a consortium of universities. WebCT was started at the University of British Columbia. ANGEL at Indiana University.
Let's imagine a world in which universities, not vendors, designed and built our online learning environments.
the backbone of for a distributed network of personal learning environments
the tools shouldn’t dictate the choice
If there’s one standout global trend pertaining to today’s young people, it is an embrace of entrepreneurship as both a career path and a way a life.
The H5P format is open and the tools for creating H5P content are open source. This guarantees that creatives own their own content and are not locked into the fate and licensing regime of a specific tool. Read more about how H5P ensures that the content remains yours in our blog.
JavaScript widgets create simple graphs to quickly and concisely display activity by exhibit and by student
Wonder if these were custom-made or if they relate to other initiatives.
The data is sent to a LearnShare LRS for storage.
Was wondering which LRS they used.
xAPI and Next Generation Learning Get the right data about the learning experience and its impact on performance. We’re among the early adopters and leaders in the Experience API (xAPI) and its application in performance & analytics. As winners of the xAPI Hyperdrive, eLearning Guild Demofest and Brandon Hall Awards with our xAPI-based solutions, we’re inspiring others with fresh thinking. As hosts of the xAPI Learning Cohort we’re supporting hundreds of pioneers and experimenters in learning and working with the xAPI.
compare where their engagement levels stand against the rest of the class.
self-regulating effect
Any questionable or surprise patterns might deserve an extra look or perhaps a redesign in how that material is presented.
Currently, Canvas and Sakai are the only LMSs reviewed which has somesupport for xAPI (emphasis on some). Blackboard, D2L, Sakai and Canvas all have support for IMS Caliper, a more edu specific format.
distributed constructs like Learning Record Stores and xAPI fitting easily within their mental models
ecosystem mindset to delivering course experiences
give a student an individually-controlled space for reflection and growth
Mount St. Mary’s use of predictive analytics to encourage at-risk students to drop out to elevate the retention rate reveals how analytics can be abused without student knowledge and consent
Wow. Not that we need such an extreme case to shed light on the perverse incentives at stake in Learning Analytics, but this surely made readers react. On the other hand, there’s a lot more to be said about retention policies. People often act as though they were essential to learning. Retention is important to the institution but are we treating drop-outs as escapees? One learner in my class (whose major is criminology) was describing the similarities between schools and prisons. It can be hard to dissipate this notion when leaving an institution is perceived as a big failure of that institution. (Plus, Learning Analytics can really feel like the Panopticon.) Some comments about drop-outs make it sound like they got no learning done. Meanwhile, some entrepreneurs are encouraging students to leave institutions or to not enroll in the first place. Going back to that important question by @sarahfr: why do people go to university?
An institution has implemented a learning management system (LMS). The LMS contains a learning object repository (LOR) that in some aspects is populated by all users across the world who use the same LMS. Each user is able to align his/her learning objects to the academic standards appropriate to that jurisdiction. Using CASE 1.0, the LMS is able to present the same learning objects to users in other jurisdictions while displaying the academic standards alignment for the other jurisdictions (associations).
Sounds like part of the problem Vitrine technologie-éducation has been tackling with Ceres, a Learning Object Repository with a Semantic core.
Articulate Storyline for rapid, bite-size content development
SMEs to read and respond to comments and conversation within the Social Learning framework.
Often our solutions must co-exist with existing systems. That’s why we also invest time and money in emerging standards, like xAPI or Open Badges, to help connect our platforms together into a single ecosystem for personal, social and data-driven learning.
Interesting list of clients.
Next Generation Learning Materials
Learning Management,
Enhanced learning experience Graduate students now receive upgraded iPads, and all students access course materials with Canvas, a new learning management software. The School of Aeronautics is now the College of Aeronautics; and the College of Business and Management is hosting a business symposium Nov. 15.
This from a university which had dropped Blackboard for iTunes U.
This site is run by Instructure.
And, in general, to observe with intelligence & faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.
I think this passage highlights everything we still learn today as students not just in the classroom, but outside of it. As students we not only learn from our professors, but from each other, and we do that through our social interactions and relations. In collaborating with other students wether it be in the lab, working on a group project, or just engaging in conversation with a group of friends, we are learning new ideas and skills, which is an important skill we must take with us into the real world that we'll enter after college. -Emily McClung
Feldstein's Law: Any educational app that is actively developed for long enough and has a large enough user base will become indistinguishable from a badly designed LMS.
Download Dr. Brad Wheeler leads university-wide IT services for IU's eight campuses. He has co-founded and led many multi-institutional collaborations with his current work focused on the Unizin Consortium, Kuali, and IU’s mass Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative.
Moodle Pty—more widely known within the Moodle community as Moodle HQ—does most of the development of the core Moodle code and maintains tight control over which code submitted by third parties gets accepted into the code base
Information from this will be used to develop learning analytics software features, which will have these functions: Description of learning engagement and progress, Diagnosis of learning engagement and progress, Prediction of learning progress, and Prescription (recommendations) for improvement of learning progress.
As good a summary of Learning Analytics as any.
Better yet, tangerines and oranges.
Is that about the colours favoured by both platforms? Does sound like it weakens the point (going from comparing fruits to comparing one citrus with another). The point, eventually, is that Canvas and Moodle occupy a similar space: course-based “learning” management systems.
full Caliper Analytics compliance
Oh? Not xAPI?
At the very least, the tool should allow for robust formative assessment, and should be capable of giving timely, helpful feedback to learners.
The “at the very least” part makes it sound as though this were the easy part.
LRSs will typically only have minor data analysis built in as it's specific to the type of information you are trying to track.
UML automatically finds these hidden patterns to link seemingly unrelated accounts and customers. These links can be one of thousands of data fields that the UML model ingests.
Why does this have to be done in a different system?
Add xAPI -> https://h5p.org/documentation/x-api Tiki should become a Learning Record Store or a FLOSS solution picked for WikiSuite.
MCC
Matthews correlation coefficient
but the occupation reported as having the largest number of former master’s students was kindergarten–Grade 12 (K–12) teacher. These results demonstrate that master’s degree graduates in learning sciences have the potential to influence practice in a diverse range of applied settings.
Considering that 31% of master graduates are in the K-12 teachers or educational leaders and administrators, it would be interesting to see what would happen if they implement the learning theories into their classrooms and schools.
COMPETENCY-BASED LEARNING
Close reading is basically standardized in Common Core--it's referenced in the first ELA anchor standard for reading. Hypothesis is a means to assess competency in that standard by recording, measuring, and allowing feedback on
Students working in waysthat best leverage their individual learning styles
In annotation, each student bringing their style, expertise, experience to the text with the class as a group sharing a more wholistic view of the related issues.
“What did you do? What did you observe? What did you revise as a result? How did you test your revision? What did you learn?”
Students annotating their own revisions as self-review.
electronic journals as a way to reflect on their learning and “make their thinking visible.”
This could be accomplished in annotation if Hypothesis had the concept of a 1:1 note.
Motivation and persistence. Because learning is more relevant and relationship-based, students are motivated to complete tasks and learn
Collaborative annotation can be used to scaffold self-directed learning, providing a means for a student to explore their own interests and provide evidence of that activity, and enabling teachers to monitor and interact with these knowledge pathways.
students “own” their learning
Student ownership and agency through annotation as an intellectual practice with a record.
Students encouraging and supporting eachother to work through di icult challenges
via annotation made explicit in prompt for assignment
Students constructivelycritiquing eachother’s work
via annotation
Assessment feedback focused on what students can do to improve
Hypothesis needs a 1:1 channel internal to the client. For now, the LMS app allows for this type of feedback.
no single “right answer”?
Social reading is discussion not test-driven knowledge production.
Are students required to defend and revise their work, creating multiple drafts?
The natural thinking processes of a threaded conversation in annotation with comment replies, replies to replies, etc.
Teachers talking less, students talking more
Social reading is active reading. Texts filled with student voices.
Are students constantly revising and improving their work? How often? How explicit and central is this expectation?
Annotation as final product but also as pre-writing, harvested for summative assignments.
Are students regularly asked to present, explain, and defend their ideas orally and in writing?
This is the basic work of a critical annotation.
And outside the classroom, meetings with public o icials, nonprofits, and other community members, where students are given a chance to present their findings and recommendations on an issue they’ve researched
Public annotation of government documents/websites, newspaper articles, etc.
Communications skills being explicitly taught
Again, social annotation/reading provide an opportunity for this kind of instruction: teacher has a view into how students are interacting with each other (and text).
Multimedia portfolios of student work
Profile pages of annotation are a kind of this portfolio or a contribution.
Listening
A big part of social reading: listening to the text and to other readers.
review and critique each other’s work.
This is the process of replying to annotations. But annotation can also be leveraged for peer review of student writing.
Public presentations of their work. Students routinely have to describe and defend their thinking with peers, teachers, and the community. Students say that such public presentations reinforce their sense of accountability and make them be more careful with their work.
Moving annotation from a private practice with little accountability to something shared with the immediate social group of the classroom and finally to the larger public of the annotated web with students making interventions as digital citizens.
learning how to conduct their own research, often on the Internet.
Collaborative annotation and independent inquiry: students reading what they're interested and annotating; teachers following along in the process through activity pages.
more engaging
Because social and interactive, collaborative annotation can make reading more engaging.
peer-to-peer conversations about big issues that defy yes/no answers and ask students to think more analytically
Pretty good definition of social reading in fact!
embedding communications skills into everything they do in all of their courses: speaking, listening, reading, and writing?
Again, socializing reading (and writing) to an extent, makes those skills more real, necessary, part of a relationship, a community, rather than an individual task.
working with members of the community
Public annotation.
holding themselves accountable
Can annotation portfolios/profile be leveraged to this end? Students have an activity page that represents their engagement with reading and with each other. Maybe ask students to reflect on their contributions.
build relationships through mechanisms
Annotation as one such mechanism: learning, reading in community.
egularly working on teams
Social reading makes reading a team sport!
constructive feedback
Via annotation. As a measurable skill.
Lots of talking and listening; a constant exchange of ideas
Live and asynchronously using collaborative annotation.
Inter- and intra-personal skills. Character and culture are important values that are emphasized as much as academic subjects
A student's "social reading" profile provides a window not only into how they interact with text (comprehensively, critically?) but also into how they interact with their classmates (respectfully? discursively?).
listen well—to be a good “critical friend.”
Read classmate's annotations, respond appropriately: respectful, challenging...
learn as much from their peers as from their teachers or a textbook
Or combing all three in a single conversation...
EVIDENCE OF THINKING, NOT JUST GROUP WORK
Students working collaboratively through the meaning of a text in annotation, asking questions, answering others, building off each other's comments and knowledge.
key skills they then can apply to other situations beyond this specific course or assessment
Collaborative annotation as a way to assess skills rather than content mastery. Or in addition to.
Teachers stepping into conversations or stopping work from time to time for “teachable moments” to supplement knowledge
Via annotation in the case of readings/reading discussion.
reading original sources
Primary sources, reading of, key.
providing teachers and students with real-time, actionable feedback.
Via annotation?
go beyond basic math and English skills.
Not content based, but skills based?
a system of evaluation called the Learning Record (LR). This system asks students to make an argument for their grade (at the mid-term and at the end of the course) that is based upon the evidence they have compiled throughout the semester.
If I teach again, I'm going to use this.
By giving student data to the students themselves, and encouraging active reflection on the relationship between behavior and outcomes, colleges and universities can encourage students to take active responsibility for their education in a way that not only affects their chances of academic success, but also cultivates the kind of mindset that will increase their chances of success in life and career after graduation.
If students do not complete the courses they need to graduate, they can’t progress.
The #retention perspective in Learning Analytics: learners succeed by completing courses. Can we think of learning success in other ways? Maybe through other forms of recognition than passing grades?
Ethics and privacy in learning analytics
The flexibility and social nature of how technology infuses other aspects of our lives is not captured by the model of Personalized Instruction, which focuses on the isolated individual’s personal path to a fixed end-point. To truly harness the power of modern technology, we need a new vision for educational technology (Enyedy, 2014: 16).
recent studies show little evidence for the effectiveness of this model of integrating technology into the learning process.
As an outcome of this Delphi Panel exercise, this study hasrevised Jane Knight’s commonlyaccepted working definition for internationalisation as'theintentionalprocess ofintegrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functionsand delivery of post-secondary education,in order to enhance the quality of educationand research for all students and staff, and to make a meaningful contribution tosociety'.This definition reflects the increased awareness that internationalisation has to becomemore inclusive and less elitistby not focusing predominantly on mobility but more on thecurriculum and learning outcomes. The ‘abroad’ component (mobility) needs to become anintegral part of the internationalised curriculum to ensure internationalisation for all, notonly the mobile minority. It re-emphasises that internationalisation is not a goal in itself,but a means to enhance quality, and that it should not focus solely on economic rationales.Most national strategies, including in Europe, are still predominantly focused on mobility,short-term and/or long-term economic gains, recruitment and/or training of talentedstudents and scholars, and international reputation and visibility. This implies that fargreater efforts are still needed to incorporate these approaches into more comprehensivestrategies, in which internationalisation of the curriculum and learning outcomes, as ameans to enhance the quality of education and research, receive more attention. Theinclusion of ‘internationalisation at home’ as a third pillar in the internationalisation strategyof the European Commission,European Higher Education in the World, as well as in severalnational strategies, is a good starting point, but it will require more concrete actions at theEuropean, national and,in particular, the institutional level for it to becomereality
Using inclusive approaches to ensure all students have access to quality teaching and learning and why it shouldn't be limited to the mobile few. I find it interesting since a lot of research focuses on the gain for international students only.
Back in 2012, Zeynep Tufecki pointed out that election campaigns driven by big-data and social media could be bad for democracy.
Overall, across the ALMAP trials, adding adaptivity to developmental and gateway courses had no effect on course completion rates after controlling for students’ initial achievement levels under any of the three possible use cases.
It’s precisely to meet these demands that Cegid recently launched a Learning Management System (LMS) specifically dedicated to Healthcare, a sector that is converting more and more to cloud-based systems.
Norman's Law of eLearning Tool Convergence
Any eLearning tool, no matter how openly designed, will eventually become indistinguishable from a Learning Management System once a threshold of supported use-cases has been reached.
“The notion that adaptive technology is the reason why one school should choose one company’s content over OER (open educational resources) or other options” has become a staple of many publisher’s marketing claims, says Trace Urdan, an education market analyst.
tailored to their needs
Đầu tiên mình nghĩ bạn cần nắm về machine learning và algorithm, bạn có thể bắt đầu bằng các khóa học trên mạng. Mình recommend khóa học Machine Learning của Andrew Ng, khóa học này được coi là kinh thánh cho data scientist. Sau đó bạn có thể bắt đầu với Python hoặc R và tham gia challenge trên Kaggle. Kaggle là một platform để Data Scientist tham gia, kiếm tiền thưởng và cạnh tranh thứ hạng với nhau. Nhiều người cũng nói với mình Kaggle là con đường tốt nhất và ngắn nhất để đến với Data Science.
Học cơ bản
Analyze, interpret, and evaluate a variety of texts for the ethical and logical uses of evidence
This could be a series of tags determined by prof.
Based on this experiment, the evidence suggests adaptive learning did not improve grades or rates of course completion. The tech is still too new to make a definitive judgment.
Interesting, the evidence for efficacy is still not there (yet).
Textbook maker Pearson is also getting in on the action by developing adaptive learning software and launching virtual tutors for students as they “read” through digital textbook resources.
Ok, here I'm getting a bit more worried. It's not that I don't think this is helpful. But I do think it's skipping some possible better, more human solutions.
One concern: the premise here is that comprehension struggles are mostly questions requiring answers rather than discursive situations requiring more interaction. A second related concern: is the ultimate goal of "learning" to get the answer or to acquire facility with that discursive process? (Answer: the latter.)
I think simple social annotation, perhaps backed by some AI, could go a long way here. Allow students to ask questions, answer each others questions, and surface those questions and answers in a useful way to teachers...
An overwhelming number of companies (64%) indicated that their number one reason for implementing social tools is to support a culture of learning. The next two main motivations are to encourage collaboration and innovation (54%) and connect employees to organization experts (42%).
Main motivation for adoption of workplace social learning tools.
Developing Effective Courses Using Adaptive Learning Begins with Proper Alignment
In Canvas, the goal is clearly to stop anyone from having fun because everything is supposed to look exactly the same in every course everywhere all the time.
Learning paths allow you to assemble two or more courses into a path that students must complete to trigger completion actions.
I think a lot of faculty are still at the point where they need a stack of papers and red pen.
Emphasis on “still”. Direction of change?
Could different co-teaching and collaborative course approaches or more modern pedagogical practices move the needle more than the latest LMS features?
LMSs limit the visibility of copyrighted course content to only course participants for the duration that they need it. (Of course, this would become a moot point if using openly licensed OERs.)
Over the course of many years, every school has refined and perfected the connections LMSs have into a wide variety of other campus systems including authentication systems, identity management systems, student information systems, assessment-related learning tools, library systems, digital textbook systems, and other content repositories. APIs and standards have decreased the complexity of supporting these connections, and over time it has become easier and more common to connect LMSs to – in some cases – several dozen or more other systems. This level of integration gives LMSs much more utility than they have out of the box – and also more “stickiness” that causes them to become harder to move away from. For LMS alternatives, achieving this same level of connectedness, particularly considering how brittle these connections can sometimes become over time, is a very difficult thing to achieve.
Assessment tends to be where courses differ the most
adaptive paths available for different learner profiles
the level of effort required to completely reinvent a single online course to be adaptive
out of 878 potentially relevant studies published between 1992 and 2017, only 36 directly compared reading in digital and in print and measured learning in a reliable way. (Many of the other studies zoomed in on aspects of e-reading, such as eye movements or the merits of different kinds of screens.)
This is a very easy paper to follow, but it looks like their methodology is a simple way to improve performance on limited data. I'm curious how well this is reproduced elsewhere.
The embedding of maker culture in K–12 education has made students active contributors to the knowledge ecosystem rather than merely participants and consumers of knowledge.
How does this get balanced with privacy concerns? I have yet to see an argument or practice that successfully navigates this tension?
financial inclusion startup
This has much in common with a customer relationship management system and facilitates the workflow around interventions as well as various visualisations. It’s unclear how the at risk metric is calculated but a more sophisticated predictive analytics engine might help in this regard.
Have yet to notice much discussion of the relationships between SIS (Student Information Systems), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and LMS (Learning Management Systems).
“Programming is like thinking about thinking. And debugging is a close approximation of learning about learning.” When you program, you translate your thoughts into executable form. Debugging your program is close to debugging your thoughts.
This suggests that programming is a form of metacognition. Others have had similar ideas:
The thrill of programming, for me, is found more in the exploration of ideas than in the joy of controlling machines.
This is something that I can relate to. I tend to program as I learn a subject that I eventually want to write real programs for, as an aide to understanding. It helps me grok how things work in the new domain. It also helps me retain the new information.
ONLINE COLLEGE STUDENTS 2017
Project-based learning typically is grounded in the following elements: Role-playing Real-world scenarios Blended writing genres Multiple reading genres Authentic assessments Authentic audiences Real-world expertise brought into the classroom Units that assess multiple skills Units that require research and comprehension of multiple subjects Student choice Collaboration Multiple methods of communication (writing, oral speaking, visual presentations, publishing, etc.)
A good overview of the elements of PBL.
Inside Digital Learning asked four authors of books about online education for their expert advice on how instructors and their institutions can excel in virtual course instruction. The authors agreed that the online classroom is different enough from the traditional one that faculty members and adjuncts need to create courses for digital delivery that are substantially different from those they teach on campus. And they said teaching online requires an even keener focus on student engagement than the face-to-face model does.
The article outlines 7 basic tips for instructors teaching online: make it a group effort, focus on active learning, chunk the lessons, keep group sizes small, be present, parse your time and embrace multimedia assignments.
Excellent overview. I found the papers a little hard to grasp, and this cleared a lot of that up.
What Matters to You in Counting Distance Education Activities?
Modalities of Meaning
The different modes are extremely important in language learning.
Dysfunctional relationships at work are as damaging to goal achievement as challenging children in the classroom.
Social-emotiobal learning is more important than any other subejct taught in class
it can realize an open connection with the outside world
Knowledge online, not behind a paywall. Available to all if you know where and how to look for it. Opens doors and clarifies paths. Robert Schuwer.
Connected learning is when someone is pursuing a personal interest with the support of peers, mentors and caring adults, and in ways that open up opportunities for them
Support is essential
The “connected” in connected learning is about human connection as well as tapping the power of connected technologies.
I found this very true for languages learners, specially foreign languages. The purpose of language is comunication, for a foreign language classroom, conections to real people gives meaning to the class and those connections would not be possible without the use of technology.
Connected learning isn’t a burden that one organization shoulders on its own, and is about building connections across different sites of learning
This is where the community partnerships come in
Traditional education is failing to engage many students as they enter their middle school, high school, and college years.
Online vs. F2F costs
A very accessible explanation of the bias-variance trade-off in ML.
great examples and interactive viz
In math, four times a year, each student is given a set of values or codes to substitute in the equations so that even though the students are working together, they have to focus on the mathematical process and not just the “right answer.” In English, the discussions are open-ended, allowing for multiple right answers.
Yes! This is how I plan to teach science. I will give them questions but they have to find the answers.
Connected learning posits that by connecting and translating between in-school and out-of-school learning, we can guide more young people to engaging, resilient, and useful learning that will help them become effective contributors and participants in adult society. We also believe that networked and digital technologies have an important role to play in building these sites of connection and translation
onnected learning is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement.
Essentially, this is conecting personal interests to content learning to real world applications.
participants spent almost 40 minutes out of every 100-minute class period using the internet for nonacademic purposes
There'll be times when I explicitly say, pull out your laptops if you have them, and we use them in class. And other times I explicitly say, close your screens. Either way, this stat here is well worth sharing with students at the start of the semester.
Email does not afford synchronous communication in the way that a phone call, a face-to-face conversation, or instant messaging does. Nor does email afford the conveyance of subtleties of tone, intent, or mood possible with face-to-face communication.
extremely important when "negocioation of meaning" is at play
Language, to me, is a mystery because I haven’t studied it but, I know there’s loads of literature out there, and we know in general that kids learn language differently from adults and that people can learn a language by immersion rather than by any direct instruction in grammar or anything. It’s interesting that the term literacies is used with reference to language acquisition, and we use it in digital literacies. One common aspect of literacies which also came up in earlier conversations with Sally, was my belief that digital literacies could only be (really) learned socially, as with language.
Cognitive skills vs Physical skills when learning languages
My responses all focus on exploring and celebrating your child’s interests.
Add a note.
Reciprocity now becomes a matter of at once mutually preserving the other’s distinctness while interdependently fashioning a bigger context in which these separate identities interpenetrate…are co-regulated, and to which persons invest an affection supervening their separate identities. Reciprocity now becomes a matter of both holding and being held, a mutual protection of each partner’s opportunity to experience and exercise both sides of life’s fundamental tension.”
Lv5 reciprocity: Maintaining individual's distinctness while together create a bigger context so that these separate identities interpenetrate.
As the institutional balance breaks, the person becomes more available to and interested in a kind of sharing and intimacy with others. But intimacy in the next balance is the self’s aim, rather than its source. It involves a self that travels between systems, or exists in the dynamism between them, not in the dynamism between individuals.
The self exists in the dynamism between systems, not between individuals
Postmodernism (or “poststructuralism”), in its denial of the possibility of judgement and rejection of all “metanarratives” (grounded systems), corresponds to the stage 4.5 nihilistic gap.
Post-modernism: stage 4.5 nihilistic gaps aka the "sadness" after seeing the truth in Plan B by Charles Inouye
All ideologies are relativized as tools rather than truths. Fluidity treats rationality as a valuable tool that is not always applicable; non-rational ambiguity and paradox become non-problematic. Stage 5 can, therefore, conjure with systems, as animated characters in a magical shadow-play drama.
All ideologies are relativized as tools rather than truths. "Conjuring" with systems, shadow-play drama.
To stage 3, that sounds cold and distant, but for stage 4, it means seeing the other person for who they really are. Emotions are just something people have, from time to time. Those need to be dealt with, but should not be taken too seriously. Relating to the other person’s principles, projects, and commitments means supporting what they most care about in the longer run. A romantic relationship between systematic people not only tolerates, but respects, and actively supports, their differing values and projects. That is what it means (for stage 4) to be actually in a relationship with another person, rather than losing both your selves in a warm bath of shared feelings.
Being in relationship for Stage 4: dealing with but not taking emotions seriously. Must support differing values & projects.
Legitimate peripheral participation is a more powerful motivation for accurate feedback than money. If a student’s labor contributes to the success or failure of your project, you want to be sure they are doing it right—and so you will scrutinize their work carefully, and give detailed corrective advice.
Why does boss care about giving feedback in Legitimate Peripheral Participation? Coz it's success or failure! (FAIL = For All I Learn)
Study: Many Online Students Now Decide Between Multiple Programs
The average DeVry student takes two-thirds of her courses online.
The University of Michigan Teach-Out Series offers an opportunity for learners around the world to come together with our campus community in conversation on topics of widespread interest.
Short, 1-week, open courses offered on edX that explore timely topics
Thisstudyexaminesthecomponentsofaself-pacedonlinecoursespecificallydesignedtoincorporateweb-basedpedagogytocreateanengaginganddynamiclearningenvironment.Itcomparesstudentperformanceinaself-pacedonlinecourse,aconventionalonlinecourseandatraditionalin-classcourseandrevealsthepotentialforstudentstothriveinawidevarietyofonlinecourseformats
This study compares performance in a face to face, online and strategically designed self-paced online course. The results showed small performance improvements for the self-paced students compared with the face to face students and larger improvements when compared to the instructor paced online course. The researchers speculate that the increased flexibility allows learners to achieve maximum performance, but this result could also be attributed to the design improvements. They discuss the design improvements made to the self-paced course, but do not share any information about the design of the face to face or instructor paced online courses. It would be interesting to see if design improvements in those formats that provided the same opportunities for interaction and feedback would change the results.
It used rich media and a mix of traditional and emerging asynchronous computer-mediated communication tools to determine what forms of interaction learners in a self-paced online course value most and what impact they perceive interaction to have on their overall learning experience. This study demonstrated that depending on the specific circumstance, not all forms of interaction may be either equally valued by learners or effective.
The results show that students most highly value interactions with the instructor and content.
If it can be established that student self motivation has a direct effect on remediation, it stands to reason that by finding a way to increase a student’s self motivation, the remediation process can be improved to increase the likelihood of success for a student who requires the use of remedial courses in the specialized classroom setting. Attempting to understand the factors that create a learning environment of poor motivation is an arduous task, but attempting to improve those factors that increase motivation is imperative.
This study involves a self-paced developmental mathematics course (N=86). The results showed that the students' perceived intrinsic value of the learning was a significant predictor of success in the course. Motivation had a greater impact on students' ability to succeed than prior knowledge (based on ACT math scores).
ne critical element in the effectiveness of these networks is “working in the open.” This includes a number of simple practices commonly associated with open source software: making curriculum and tools easy for others to discover; publishing using an editable format that allows others to freely use and adapt them; using an open license like Creative Commons. It also includes a set of work practices that make it easy for people to collaborate across organizations and locations: collaborative writing in shared online documents; shared public plans on wiki or other editable documents; progress reports and insights shared in real time and posted on blogs. These simple practices are the grease that lubricates the network, allowing ideas to flow and innovations to spread. More importantly, they make it possible for people to genuinely build things together—and learn along the way. This point cannot be emphasized strongly enough: when people build things together they tend to own them emotionally and want to roll them out after they are created. If the people building together are from different institutions, then the innovations spread more quickly to more institutions.
These are all important aspects of open pedagogy, imo. Transparent, network practices that connect, but also create space and opportunities for particiaption by those on the edges. Working in the open is an invitation to particiaption to others.
Rather than selecting a single organization to lead the network, consider a spoke-and-hub or constellation model that empowers teams of organizations to act as “network hubs” for different sectors of the network. The best candidates for these hubs are intermediary organizations that act in the best interests of the network, allowing other network members to focus on their core mission and programmatic activities. Hub organizations play several roles. As conveners, they bring people together and build the field. As catalysts, they invest money and resources to get new ideas off the ground or help exciting projects to develop. As communicators, hub organizations enhance networks members’ ability to tell their story effectively and efficiently, internally and externally. As champions, hubs lift up the accomplishments of network actors, regionally, nationally, and internationally. And, as coordinators, hub organizations connect the dots, recommend priorities for the network, and connect those priorities to national resources.
This could describe BCcampus - a hub organization that connects networks
TPS Reflective Exercises
TPS as metacognition - worth trying out. Would have to budget time for it. Could we combine it with something to capture data? connect to qualtrics or google forms
Detection of fake news in social media based on who liked it.
we show that Facebook posts can be classified with high accuracy as hoaxes or non-hoaxes on the basis of the users who "liked" them. We present two classification techniques, one based on logistic regression, the other on a novel adaptation of boolean crowdsourcing algorithms. On a dataset consisting of 15,500 Facebook posts and 909,236 users, we obtain classification accuracies exceeding 99% even when the training set contains less than 1% of the posts.
Online Protection to Promote Open Collaboration
Needs to focus on practice not policy - Perhaps consider adding in Social learning ? Julian Stodd's work around social leadership? https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/10-things-a-social-leader-does/
Obviously, in this situation whoever controls the algorithms has great power. Decisions like what is promoted to the top of a news feed can swing elections. Small changes in UI can drive big changes in user behavior. There are no democratic checks or controls on this power, and the people who exercise it are trying to pretend it doesn’t exist
On Facebook, social dynamics and the algorithms’ taste for drama reinforce each other. Facebook selects from stories that your friends have shared to find the links you’re most likely to click on. This is a potent mix, because what you read and post on Facebook is not just an expression of your interests, but part of a performative group identity.
So without explicitly coding for this behavior, we already have a dynamic where people are pulled to the extremes. Things get worse when third parties are allowed to use these algorithms to target a specific audience.