In my own experience in teaching and designing
classic online courses, creating small groups has been essential to
success. Here, Stanford University is sharing their method of taking
tens of thousands of students from all over the world and creating small
groups. This is a best-practice in online teaching and I'm sure it can
be improved upon here in this enormous course (I personally think it
would be difficult to know what group to pick if you have the entire
world to choose from (!)), but this is much better than the previous
MOOCs I've seen so far (that have no way to create small groups at all).
In my own case, I put students into groups randomly. I thought they
had too many things to worry about at the beginning to be organizing
groups. This seemed to work well because, of course, what all the
students share is the desire to learn the subject at hand. (Only if for
some reason they wanted to switch groups, did they have to worry about
which group to join.) (May 2013) ~Meg
If
you or a colleague teaches a college course, it’s well worth a look.
Besides content, there are also instructional design elements included,
such as activities, prompts, assignment ideas, etc. ~Meg
[From their website]The best in educational technology.
Traditional Online Classes - http://cis471.blogspot.com/2013/02/columbia-university-study-slams.html [From their website]Columbia University slams "traditional online classes"--we need to move beyond traditional.
[From their website]Stanford
University ratcheted up interest in online education when a pair of
celebrity professors attracted more than 150,000 students from around
the world to a noncredit, open enrollment course on artificial
intelligence. This development, though, says very little about what role
online courses could have as part of standard college instruction.
[From their website]Content Strategy.
What is it? What books and blogs should people read to learn about it?
What conferences should folks attend and who are the experts in the
field?
[From their website]Understanding
where curiosity comes from is the holy grail of education. Education,
of course, is different than learning. Education implies a formal,
systematic, and strategic intent to cause learning.
"A very serious error in
understanding has occurred in the nature of scaling with regard to
education. Massive Open Online Courses are content. Just as the
Internet is (mostly) content. One could reasonably say that we are all
in a MOOC right now."
(Must be a member of Google+ to access.) By Meg Tufano!
[From their website]Professor
Diana Laurillard currently holds the Chair of Learning with Digital
Technologies in the Faculty of Culture and Pedagogy. For more on
learning design tools please see use the link above for downloading the
Learning Designer.
[From their website]Fast Company’s annual guide to
the state of innovation in our economy, featuring the businesses whose
innovations are having the greatest impacts across their industries and our
culture as a whole.
[From their website]For
creating a customized course-management and student-services system to keep
track of at-risk students on its Arizona campus and online. It’s the
fastest-growing community college in the nation, with 70,000
students in Arizona and online nationwide--mostly poor, Hispanic, and
first-generation.
http://gettingsmart.com/cms/news/npr-fails-the-online-learning-test/ [From their website]NPR ran a misleading story about online learning. Blake Farmer, a Nashville reporter, has been beating this drum and today invited disreputable and uninformed critics of a new statewide online school to pile on.
[From their website]My
favorite part of doing my anthropological fieldwork was developing new
relationships, especially with one particular family. I treasure the
details my students give me about themselves, too, as a way to get to
know them, albeit virtually.
[From the article] "Undergraduate education
is undoubtedly central to what a university is, but it is generally a
low-margin activity, when it isn’t being explicitly subsidized by endowments
and other sources of income, and often makes up a relatively modest proportion
of turnover compared with postgraduate education, research, and other sources
of income."
[From the blog.] "And there is a historical
irony about all this, too. Perhaps elite universities will end up going back to
the future. Until recently, at elite English universities like Oxford and
Cambridge, lectures were always optional. They were often thought to be
incidental to an education based around the tutorial and self-directed reading.
Examinations were based on students’ ability to read, and tutors would often
say, “If you can read, there is no need to go to lectures.” ~Nigel Thrift
[From their website]Creative Learning Course: Streamed live on Feb 11, 2013
The Introduction to Learning
Creative Learning starts at 16:03. The part before covers some of the
logistics of the online component of the course. (These guys have no idea what they are doing IMHO. ~Meg)
[From their website]Mitchel
Resnick (2007). All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned
(By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten. ACM Creativity &
Cognition conference.
[From their website]We
make it easy to find research-based practices. Our mission is to
translate research-based practices into practical tools to improve
classroom instruction.
Reading and Learning Strategies - http://ncde.appstate.edu/sites/ncde.appstate.edu/files/Reading%20and%20Learning%20Strategies.pdf
[From their website]Finding
practical ideas about college reading and learning strategy programs
that have been drawn from theory and research is difficult for most
veteran instructors, but is even more difficult for those instructors
new to the field. Over a decade ago the authors reviewed the literature
and generated a list of their own “best ideas” as a way of facilitating
professional development. Given the promising research trends and best
practices that have emerged since then, the authors deemed it important
to update these ideas or recommendations. In addition, the authors
have purposely cited many scholarly sources in order to provide an
extensive bibliography for colleagues new to the field.
New Bloom's Taxonomy - http://www.natefacs.org/JFCSE/v25no1/v25no1Pickard.pdf?goback=%2Eanh_1171287
[From their website]Educators
today struggle with the design and implementation of standards
based curriculums, authentic assessments, and accountability programs.
Since publication of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in 1956,
numerous changes have occurred in our culture that influence how we
think about and practice education. New knowledge of how students learn
as well as how teachers plan lessons, teach learners, and assess
learning has been incorporated into a revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of
Education Objectives. This revision is being incorporated into Career
and Technical Education as well as K-12 education in several states. The
Family and Consumer Sciences literature provides little published
information about the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (RBT) and its use. Family
and Consumer Sciences professionals should become familiar with the
new model used for designing, teaching, and assessing education to
determine its application for their work. For over fifty years, Family
and Consumer Sciences professionals should become familiar with the
new model used for designing, teaching, and assessing education to
determine its application for their work.
[From their website]CRLA
is a group of student-oriented professionals active in the fields of
reading, learning assistance, developmental education, tutoring,
and mentoring at the college/adult level.
[From their website]Welcome
to the Educators' Guide to Innovation.This professional network is for
those interested in innovative practices happening in education. We hope
that you find this an interesting and supportive community. (This looks as though it is an Australian group; and there are very few members.~Meg)
