On Monday Robert Talbert, associate professor at Grand Valley State University and author of the Casting Out Nines blog, wrote a provocative and important post titled “Active learning as an ethical issue”. Robert noted: The recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study stands out among these recent studies. It is a meta-study of 225 prior studies […]
e-Literate TV
Release of Analysis Episode for e-Literate TV Series on Personalized Learning
Today we are thrilled to release the the final episode in our new e-Literate TV series on “personalized learning”. In this series, we examine how that term, which is heavily marketed but poorly defined, is implemented on the ground at a variety of colleges and universities. While today’s episode is the final one released due to its analysis of what […]
Personalized Learning is Hard
As Phil and I have been saying all along—most recently in my last post, which mentioned ECC’s use of adaptive learning—the software is, at best, an enabler. It’s the work that the students and teachers do around the software that makes the difference. Or not. In ECC’s case, they are trying to implement a pretty radical change in pedagogy with an at-risk population. It’s worth digging into the details.
The Fraught Interaction Design of Personalized Learning Products
David Wiley has a really interesting post up about Lumen Learning’s new personalized learning platform. Here’s an excerpt: A typical high-level approach to personalization might include: building up an internal model of what a student knows and can do, algorithmically interrogating that model, and providing the learner with a unique set of learning experiences based […]
Challenge Of Student Transition Between Active And Passive Learning Models
Last week the Hechinger Report profiled an innovative charter school in San Diego called High Tech High (insert surfer jokes here) that follows an active, project based learning (PBL) model. The school doesn’t use textbooks, and they don’t base the curriculum on testing. The question they ask is whether this approach prepares students for college. […]
ED and CBE: Example of higher ed “structural barrier to change” that is out of institutions’ control
There has been a great conversation going on in the comments to my recent post “Universities As Innovators That Have Difficulty Adopting Their Own Changes” on too many relevant issues to summarize (really, go read the ongoing comment thread). They mostly center on the institution and faculty reward system, yet those are not the only sources of […]
Universities As Innovators That Have Difficulty Adopting Their Own Changes
George Siemens made an excellent point in his recent blog post after his White House meeting. I’m getting exceptionally irritated with the narrative of higher education is broken and universities haven’t changed. This is one of the most inaccurate pieces of @#%$ floating around in the “disrupt and transform” learning crowd. Universities are exceptional at innovating […]