Sunday’s post highlighted two segments of students describing their experiences with re-designed courses, but we also need to hear directly from faculty. Too often the public discussion of technology-enabled initiatives focus on the technology itself, often assuming that the faculty involved are bystanders or technophiles.
Academics and Academia
The "Academics and Academia" category covers topics related the ways in which colleges and universities function that are relevant to technology-supported education. One key aspect covered here is pedagogy—how people teach—and how technology impacts teaching and learning.
But this category also includes more institutional aspects that are relevant to technology-supported education, such as how campus leadership supports (or doesn't support) new initiatives, politics and bureaucracy that impact these efforts, and so on.
Finally, "Academics and Academia" covers commercial and non-profit services that provide support for technology-supported education initiatives, such as Online Program Management (OPM) companies.
Blueprint for a Post-LMS, Part 5
In parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this series, I laid out a model for a learning platform that is designed to support discussion-centric courses. I emphasized how learning design and platform design have to co-evolve, which means, in part, that a new platform isn’t going to change much if it is not accompanied […]
Pearson, Efficacy, and Research
A while back, I mentioned that MindWires, the consulting company that Phil and I run, had been hired by Pearson in response to a post I wrote a while back expressing concerns about the possibility of the company trying to define “efficacy” in education for educators (or to them) rather than with them. The heart […]
Why Big Data (Mostly) Can’t Help Improve Teaching
Here’s a nifty video summary of a doctoral dissertation by Derek Muller that a client pointed out to me: The basic gist is that students have pre-conceived notions that are wrong, and it is very hard to dislodge those mistaken notions. If you show them a video with an accurate explanation, the students will say […]
Where xMOOCs and Adaptive Analytics Both Fail (For Now)
No, this isn’t just an attempt to cram as many sexy keywords into one post title as possible. xMOOCs and adaptive analytics share an ambition: They both are at least partially motivated by a desire to teach at scale. With MOOCs, the goal is obvious. With adaptive analytics, less so, partly because there are multiple […]
Open Secret: Pittsburgh’s Ed Tech Revolution
Generally when we talk about goals for educational technology, we talk about one of two things: improving access or improving effectiveness. Rarely do we get an opportunity to talk credibly about an innovation that can move both of those needles at the same time. And yet, I saw just such innovation in Pittsburgh this week […]
Going Meta on Khan
The wonderful Dan Meyers points to this delightful Mystery Science Theater 3000 homage by John Golden and David Coffey as they critique one of Sal Khan’s math videos. Here’s the video: Everybody enjoys a good snarkfest, and these guys are particularly good at it. But those who are taking delight in seeing Sal Khan get […]