This November update is split into 3 SEGMENTS: First, the UPCOMING EVENTS, which I hope you will find of interest and have the time to attend. You will have the chance to ask your peers on their teaching practice relating to personal websites, blended classroom approaches and online learning design. The second part of this newsletter compiles MATERIALS, which I hope well allow you to explore effective uses of digital resources and strategies. The third portion is dedicated to PUBLICATIONS that inspire the reflection on teaching approaches in face-to-face environments as well as online. Feel free to browse at your heart's content. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line through the feedback box at the end of the update.
This webpage is read by scrolling down the page.
PART 1: CONNECT
Upcoming Events
Peer Session 2: Shadow a peer as he restructures an online course
Shadow Dr. Mark Zieber as he revamps his online HLSC course for the Spring 2019 term.
Date and Time TBA ( after Reading Week). If you want to join, please complete this Doodle poll by Tuesday November 13, 2018. Virtual participation will be possible too.
Peer Session 3: Personal Websites for Teaching
This is your opportunity to learn from your peers why and how they use personal websites for teaching. The hosts will be happy to use their websites as examples to answer any of the questions below or the ones you want answers to:
- Why and how do we use websites for teaching?
- What did it take to set it up?
- How do I maintain it?
- What are the investments in terms of time and cost?
- Do I organize and conduct assessment through my website?
WHEN and WHERE: November 27 from noon to 1 pm in the Teaching Centre RSVP here
Come in person or use this link to join us virtually https://zoom.us/j/144878205
Peer Session 4
This is your opportunity to ask our campus educators what their approaches and motivations for blended classrooms are. You will get answers to the following questions (as well as many more):
- What is flipped/ blended learning? What's the purpose of it and how do you facilitate it?
- What work/ technology is involved to create video/ audio lectures?
- How do you get your students to prepare before class?
- How do you structure class time?
- How do I get buy in from the students to work in teams?
WHEN and WHERE: December Dec 11 from 1-2 pm in the Teaching Centre
Join us in person or virtually by using this link https://zoom.us/j/725264266
Peer Session 5: Design an Engaging Online Learning Environment
This workshop will be your opportunity to experience online environments from both - the student and the instructor perspective to reflect on the design of activities, assessment and interaction as well as on the use of technology that matches your teaching goals.
- with Diana Letts and Joerdis Weilandt on December 12 from noon – 2.30pm
- RSVP here http://teachingcentre.anyvite.com/jyggic4tld
- Join us in person or virtually by using this link https://zoom.us/j/149500667
Did you miss the Peer Session 1?
The conversation with Romany Craig (Information Literacy Instruction Coordinator) and Rob Horlacher (Instructional Design Specialist) revolved around the current library initiative relating to Technological Fluency. The Project Sandbox, the public face of the initiative, was explored as an example to help our learners become more fluent in their use of digital technology for their learning in academic and professional settings. Catch up with the details in this video here.
PART 2: EXPLORE
Interview with U of L Faculty
ARTICLE
ABSTRACT: The article Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education is the result of a study that intends to dissect what it takes to practice openness in Higher Education? In the course of this exploration, the author identifies the open sharing of digital and pedagogical strategies as a way to grow professional competencies and skills relating to “balancing privacy and openness, developing digital literacy, valuing social learning, and challenging traditional teaching role expectations.” In Cronin’s definition of Open Educational Practices, “The use of OEP by educators is complex, personal, and contextual; it is also continually negotiated. These findings suggest that research-informed policies and collaborative and critical approaches to openness are required to support staff, students, and learning in an increasingly complex higher education environment.”
ABSTRACT: This article proposes a continuum of ‘Visitors’ and ‘Residents’ as a replacement for Prensky’s much‐criticised Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Challenging the basic premises upon which Prensky constructed his typology, Visitors and Residents fulfil a similar purpose in mapping individuals’ engagement with the Web. We argue that the metaphors of ‘place’ and ‘tool’ most appropriately represent the use of technology in contemporary society, especially given the advent of social media. The Visitors and Residents continuum accounts for people behaving in different ways when using technology, depending on their motivation and context, without categorising them according to age or background. A wider and more accurate representation of online behaviour is therefore established.
Tools and Resources for Educators and Students
Tools for Collaborative Image, Text, and Audio Annotation
Video Teaching Technology Tutorials
PART 3: REFLECT
ESSAY: The sociologist Linda B. Nielsen wrote the essay (2018) One Thing for All Learners. To Improve the Academy to outline how research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience “shows how to learn on one's own, paves the way for student success, and fosters inclusive teaching.” The author provides details on principles of learning that “have implications for concrete classroom and online instructional practices that are easy for both faculty and students to implement. Because students have to attend to and process their learning experiences, faculty must motivate them to do so. Psychology offers us some useful, albeit limited, tools, and more research on ways we can help students set goals can reduce the limits.”
The book Humanizing Online Teaching and LearningStories from the participants of the #HumanMOOC is a collection of chapters written by the participants of a free open course on the Canvas Open Network entitled Humanizing Online Instruction. In the course a variety of methods for increasing presence in online courses were shared in this multi-institutional, international, online professional learning opportunity.
ABSTRACT: Digital technologies are now an integral aspect of the university student experience. As such, academic research has understandably focused on the potential of various digital technologies to enable, extend and even ‘enhance’ student learning.
This paper offers an alternate perspective on these issues by exploring students’ actual experiences of digital technology during their academic studies – highlighting the aspects of digital technology use that students themselves see as particularly helpful and/or useful.
Drawing on a survey of 1658 undergraduate students, the paper identifies 11 distinct digital ‘benefits' – ranging from flexibilities of time and place, ease of organizing and managing study tasks through to the ability to replay and revisit teaching materials, and learn in more visual forms.
While these data confirm digital technologies as central to the ways in which students experience their studies, they also suggest that digital technologies are not ‘transforming’ the nature of university teaching and learning. As such, university educators perhaps need to temper enthusiasms for what might be achieved through technology-enabled learning and develop better understandings of the realities of students’ encounters with digital technology.