Two months ago Mike Caulfield lamented the inability for many people in online education, especially massive online initiatives, to honestly learn from the past. In the post Mike referred to the failed AllLearn initiative and the seminal post-mortem written up in University Business. How does that relate? A paragraph from the 2006 post-mortem of AllLearn […]
Links to External Articles and Interviews
Last week I was off the grid (not just lack of Internet but also lack of electricity), but thanks to publishing cycles I managed to stay artificially productive: two blog posts and one interview for an article. Post at 20MM on Textbook Preference Report: It’s Difficult to Prefer What You Can’t Access Last week brought […]
Head in the Oven, Feet in the Freezer
Some days, the internet gods are kind. On April 9th, I wrote, We want talking about educational efficacy to be like talking about the efficacy of Advil for treating arthritis. But it’s closer to talking about the efficacy of various chemotherapy drugs for treating a particular cancer. And we’re really really bad at talking about […]
AAC&U GEMs: Exemplar Practice
A while back, I wrote about my early experiences as a member of the Digital Working Group for the AAC&U General Education Maps and Markers (GEMs) initiative and promised that I would do my homework for the group in public. Today I will make good on that promise. The homework is to write-up an exemplar […]
Disclosure Update
We are disclosing the end of our grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Efficacy, Adaptive Learning, and the Flipped Classroom, Part II
In my last post, I described positive but mixed results of an effort by MSU’s psychology department to flip and blend their classroom: On the 30-item comprehensive exam, students in the redesigned sections performed significantly better (84% improvement) compared to the traditional comparison group (54% improvement). Students in the redesigned course demonstrated significantly more improvement […]
AAC&U GEMS Exemplar Practice Update
A few weeks ago, I gave my example of the homework assignment for the AAC&U GEMS digital working group and invited you all to submit your own. Carrie Saarinen has written up her example of using blogging for essay writing—it happened to be medical students in her study, but it could just as easily have […]