Splicing information and social relations to suite the needs of different situations is increasingly important. The fields of learning and development have not yet been transformed to the online environment. The combination of learning/knowledge analytics, data visualization, and activity streams provide, I think, a sufficient basis for educators to begin planning for a post-course view of education.
SNAPP is a software tool that allows users to visualize the network of interactions resulting from discussion forum posts and replies. The network visualisations of forum interactions provide an opportunity for teachers to rapidly identify patterns of user behaviour – at any stage of course progression. SNAPP has been developed to extract all user interactions from various commercial and open source learning management systems (LMS) such as BlackBoard (including the former WebCT), and Moodle. SNAPP is compatible for both Mac and PC users and operates in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
The University of Leicester’s Student Support and Development Service are currently running at graduate internship scheme called TULIP. We are encouraging the students to record their experiences by creating an ePortfolio on wordpress. Here is the beginners guide for the the students.
British Universities have world-class reputations and they are vital to our social and economic future. But they are in a tight spot. The huge public investment that sustained much of the sector is in jeopardy and the current way of working is not sustainable. Some are predicting the end of the university as we have known it. The Edgeless University argues that this can be a moment of rebirth for universities. Technology is changing universities as they become just one source among many for ideas, knowledge and innovation. But online tools and open access also offer the means for their survival. Their expertise and value is needed more than ever to validate and support learning and research.
Wikipedia is ubiquitous. It’s handy. And it works. However, wouldn’t it be a great resource for the lay community and an important learning opportunity if these students were actually editing and adding to Wikipedia instead of making it their primary source for new clinical information? It wouldn’t take many medical schools requiring a “Web 2.0 Medical Resources” course focusing on available information, credibility, and online research to drastically increase the utility of Wikipedia and its ilk for both the medical community and patients.
EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine, Volume 32, Number 1, 2009 By Elizabeth J. Aspden and Louise P. Thorpe Learning environment development has been a key part of the Academic Innovation Team’s remit for a number of years at Sheffield Hallam University (see About Us). Beginning with our research into the impact of e-learning on the student experience in 2002 — and recognizing the way e-learning influenced students’ views of physical spaces — we started to look more closely at the ways in which our students and faculty use on-campus spaces, and at ways in which our environments needed to evolve. A recurring theme that emerged was the importance of serendipitous meetings and the ad hoc use of those "in between" times: in between taught sessions, in between focused study, in between study and home.
Doug Clow’s notes from Researcher 2.0 event - sponsored by the Technology Enhanced Learning research cluster at the Open University, and the OLnet project.
A serialized feed is one in which posts are arranged in a linear order and where subscribers always begin with the first post, no matter when they subscribe to the feed. This contrasts with an ordinary RSS feed, in which a subscriber will begin with today's post, no matter when the feed started.
I'm interested that when Michael Wesch or Howard Rheingold undertake this sort of social/distributed teaching, they rely quite heavily on RAs to pick u the slack and fill in the gaps. Perhaps that where I'm going wrong, expecting the students to achieve this sort of outcome with insufficient scaffolding.
Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education BMC Medical Education 2006, 6:41
Computers & Education 52, January 2009, 141-146 This paper reports on a failed experiment to use Wiki technology to support student engagement with the subject matter of a third year undergraduate module. Using qualitative data, the findings reveal that in an educational context, social technologies such as Wiki’s, are perceived differently compared with ordinary personal use and this discourages student adoption. A series of insights are then offered which help HE teachers understand the pitfalls of integrating social technologies in educational contexts.
Investigating how eportfolios can support assessment for learning in the primary classroom. Based on research conducted by Nick Rate, a New Zealand Ministry of Education eFellow, in 2008.
This site aims to provide a community resource for those interested in ePortfolios and Personal Development Planning (PDP). This site was first set up to document an FDTL4 project in which we built a configurable ePortfolio.
Feedback on academic performance is of critical importance to students’ learning, and in their perception of the quality of instruction they receive. Here we report the outcomes of a study comparing the views and expectations of first year biological science undergraduate students and academic staff regarding feedback provision and utilisation. The results indicate that while students and staff are generally satisfied with the feedback process, there are some tensions generated by perceived differences in desired academic outcomes. In particular, these tensions focus on perceptions of inconsistency in the feedback processes and in the use made of feedback to inform future practice.
The Social Media Classroom is a new project started by Howard Rheingold which offers an open-source Drupal-based web service to teachers and students for the purpose of introducing social media into the classroom. The service includes tools like forums, blogs, wikis, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets, video conferencing, and more.
A. Rovai. The Internet and Higher Education, 10 (1):
77 - 88(2007)Special Section of the AERA Education and World Wide Web special Interest Group (EdWeb/SIG).