Techfoot

NCAT: Learning MarketSpace April 2006

The latest newsletter from the National Center for Academic Transformation shares some key lessons learned from their ongoing program in course redesign. The Center has supported the redesign of 50 courses to increase learning while reducing organizational costs. (The Center is headed by distinguished William and Mary alumna Carol Twigg–another English major doing quite well in the field of Educational Technology.)

The lead article in the The Learning MarketSpace, April 2006 is entitled Freshmen Don’t Do Optional and confronts a common misunderstanding of courses redesigned by the center. While most of the redesigned courses have offer greater flexibility in times and learning methods than the courses they replaced, few are “self-paced”.

Each has discovered that students need structure (especially first-year students and especially in disciplines that may be required rather than chosen) and that most students simply will not make it in a totally self-paced environment.

Three key findings:

• Lesson 1. If you know that engaging in a particular learning activity will result in increased learning, you must require students to participate in it.
• Lesson 2. It’s not enough to require participation–you must give course points for doing so.
• Lesson 3: It’s not enough to require participation and to give points for doing so—you must also monitor whether students are engaged and be prepared to intervene if they are not.

This is one area where high-tech definitely can complement high-touch in courses in which content mastery can be measured fairly precisely. In traditional classes, it’s hard to tell how much time each student is spending and to find ways to encourage students who aren’t investing the time to be successful. Technology enhanced assignments can provide faculty members with much more information about how much time students are investing in their work and how well they are learning the content.

The entire article is worth reading to get the detail to support the bullets.

Link To: Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom

One of the themes I’ve been returning to often is that the K-12 teachers in the trenches are shaping the future for those of us in higher education to a far greater extent than most of us in the college and university arena realize. Here’s a partial program lineup from the Illinois Technology Conference, courtesy of Will Richardson.

* “No more excuses, it’s time to start blogging” full day workshop by Steve. (No seats left)
* “iPods in the Classroom” full day workshop with Karen Percak. (Full)
* “Read, Write and Blog” full day workshop with Susim Munshi. (Full)
* “Wikis and Weblogs as School Communication Tools” full day workshop with Tim Lauer. (No seats left.)
* “The New Read/Write Web: Transforming the Classroom” and “What’s Up with Wikis?” by, um…that would be me.
* “Blogging– Revolutionize Education” by Susim Munshi and Susan Switzer
* “Got Wikis?” by David Jakes
* “Web Based Communication Tools for Schools” by Tim Lauer
*Flickr in the Classroom” by David Jakes
* “Using iPods for Student Learning” by Karen Percak
* “Podcasting 101″ by Steve Dembo
* “Telling the New Story” by David Warlick
* “Radio For Kids, By Kids” by Tony Vincent”

Interesting implications….

Link to: Earn more, learn more | csmonitor.com

One of the initiatives we’re exploring at William and Mary is a student fellowship program where students will work closely with faculty on technology related projects. Our goal is to create opportunities for students to work closely with faculty in ways that are directly tied to teaching or scholarship. We see this program as providing substantial learning experiences for students, as well as sources of income for them.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, other institutions are seeing the value in helping to change the culture of student jobs to more meaningful work. One of the most aggressive of these has been at Rhodes College.

At the same time, conversations with older alumni revealed that many remembered campus jobs as essential learning experiences. Current students, on the other hand, often felt their talents were being wasted on menial tasks.

Meaningful jobs that require substantial amount of flexibility and learning can be an important factor in making our campuses more engaging for students. It’s worth taking at look at other places where we might be able to stretch students’ horizons by involving them in authentic work of the university.