I'm at the Access Conference in Montreal this week starting today, so I'm a bit behind on the readings for the Current/Future State of Higher Education MOOC I'm participating in. I'm hoping a nice long relaxing train ride will give me the opportunity to catch up.
Anyways, Week 1 was a great introduction to the issues facing higher ed and here in Week 2
Week 2: Net Pedagogies: New models for teaching and learning
Readings and Resources
Blended Learning Models
- The Blended Learning Toolkit: Improving Student Performance and Retention, Educause Quarterly, Volume 34, Number 4, December 15, 2011. A key component of an NGLC Wave I project by the University of Central Florida and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, this resource guide was used for an open online course and to guide the development of blended courses in 20 AASCU institutions during the 2011-12 academic year.
- Veronica Diaz and Malcolm Brown,Blended Learning: A Report on the ELI Focus Session, ELI Paper 2, 2010, November 2010.
- Katie Amaral and John Schank, “Enhancing Student Learning and Retention with Blended Learning Class Guides,” EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Volume 22, Number 4, 2010.
Online Learning
- Thomas Cavanagh, The Postmodality Era: How “Online Learning” Is Becoming “Learning,” Chapter 16 in Game Changers (Diana Oblinger, ed.), EDUCAUSE Publications, May 2012.
- Scott Jaschik, “The Evidence on Online Education,” Inside Higher Ed, June 2009. Summary of the meta-analysis released by the Department of Higher Education at this date, with its often-cited finding that students taking all or part of their courses online outperform those in face-to-face settings and those in blended courses do best of all.
- Carol Twigg, “New Models for Online Learning,” EDUCAUSE Review, September/October 2003.
- Jeremy Knox, Sian Bayne, Hamish MacLeod, Jen Ross and Christine Sinclair, “MOOC pedagogy: the challenges of developing for Coursera,” Association for Learning Technology Online Newsletter, August 8, 2012.
And this week we do have some interesting learning activities to get ourselves thinking.
Learning Activities: Week Two
- Map what you are hearing to your institutional context. What parts are relevant to your institution?
- What might be your role in moving your school to a new model?
- Write a dialog/argument you would make to sell the administration on the idea of moving to a new model
The learning activities I'm basically just doing in my head rather than writing them down anywhere. And that's partly because my institution is both a little behind on these types of things but is also definitely aiming much higher and hoping to make some progress. As our Provost Patrick Monahan's TEDxYorkU talk ably demonstrated, there is the desire and the will at the very top.
At the same time, I'm also quite aware that the learning activities do make an important assumption that is perhaps not completely justified -- that the correct and only path is finding a new technology-centric model and advocating for moving to that model. Which is I guess not surprising for a MOOC on basically that very topic. But still, I think an equally valid outcome for this course might be rejecting any idea of the inevitability/desirability of such a new model and coming up with an argument for that position.
Open inquiry is open inquiry, right?
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