I saw in my RSS feeds that the new issue of Innovate is out [requires free registration]. Hooray! There’s some good articles as always. One author’s name jumped out at me, Kay Wijekumar. I thought, “No, is that the same person who I saw in 2002 at educause?” And yes, it was! Now I just have to fix my Innovate login so I can read her article. Here’s their summaries of the articles I am looking forward to reading:
New technology tools and practices are exciting on their own, but making them work within Web-based course management systems is often a challenge. Kay Wijekumar outlines the best ways to design and conduct an online course with such constraints—and proposes software changes that would make CMSs more effective and user friendly.
Educators like those above spend significant time and energy on technology integration, yet their effort may not be recognized in tenure and promotion considerations. Expanding this matter to another area of faculty responsibility, Ellen Cohn and Bernard Hibbitts reexamine the traditional definition of public service. In particular, they question its division from teaching and research and argue that service can be just as valuable online as in person. Two exemplary Web sites that serve both an academic purpose and the public good illuminate their discussion.
Marc Prensky suggests how one common device could move us closer to that vision. Cell phones are portable, powerful, and already in the hands of millions of students. Rather than ban mobile technology from the classroom, Prensky contends, educators should embrace it as a flexible learning tool. Like cell phones, weblogs have obvious social uses and less appreciated educational applications. Drawing on pedagogical theory and personal practice, Stuart Glogoff documents the ways in which blogging can build community, enhance knowledge construction, and increase interactivity in both online and hybrid courses.
OK, pretty much every article is on my list to read.
The latest issue of the Sloan-C View has some initial results from their April workshop on blended learning. They defined some key elements of blended learning:
Courses integrate online with traditional face to face class activities in a planned, pedagogically valuable manner in which a portion (institutionally defined) of face to face time is replaced by online activity.
I am looking forward to some further publication of workshop results.
I just noticed that I started blogging just over 6 months ago with this post. I also looked at my November posts and saw one on M-learning… and I was just talking about it again. I hope I’m not just repeating myself here.
I stumbled upon this faculty development site that has many links of use to both new and seasoned faculty. Maybe I’ll check out some of the links. I clicked on ‘Constructivist Teaching’ and found even more links…. maybe later. Too much good stuff to read now.
My eyes lit up when I saw this article in the latest Educause Review. The title made me think back to a session I went to in 2003 – Authority of Consensus: Next-Generation Course Management System Features. I left that session thinking, “yeah, I wish CMSes did all of this.”
This article actually is a chapter in a new book, Course Management Systems for Learning: Beyond Accidental Pedagogy. It looks like it could be good. Weigel starts by noting how CMSes assumed that all the characteristics of a classroom needed to be replicated in a CMS. As our eteam report noted, do what works best face-to-face when you’re face-to-face, and do what works best online when online. From the outset CMSes were constrained pedagogically. So perhaps it’s not fair for me to be so critical of CMSes, moodle had the advantage of starting fresh and avoiding the pitfalls of standard CMS architectures. The major CMSes have grown so big they would need to be rewritten from scratch to break free of their constraints. Sure, they keep adding features to break away from the functional approach to design, but at their core the course is a collection of functions.
Weigel sets out 4 learner-centered capabilities and 4 capabilities that could be incorporated into new CMSes.
Hhhmmm, I’m seeing some moodle-like things here. Thankfully Weigel explains what these are in the article. What is knowledge management and a knowledge asset? Take a read of the article yourself to get clarification.
The 4 CMS features (second list) are pointing to moodle. Item 1 is clearly constructivist. Item 2 suggests a blurring of the concept of “a course” and opens up interdisciplinary connections. While moodle does still have “courses,” the modular nature of it allows for sharing of modules between courses. Item 3 calls out wikis and I could see glossaries as fulfilling this too. With item 4 synchronous tools are called out. While currently weak, moodle 1.5 has a strong IM component and offers easy gateways to traditional IM clients and Skype (noted in the article). I’m interested to see what our students do with the IM gateways as most of the incoming students IM constantly.
I hope Weigel has looked at moodle.