e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: GWU

  • A Moment of Clarity on the Role of Technology in Teaching

    This following excerpt is based on a post first published at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

    With all of the discussion around the role of online education for traditional colleges and universities, over the past month we have seen reminders that key concerns are about people and pedagogy, not technology. And we can thank two elite universities that don’t have large online populations — MIT and George Washington University — for this clarity.

    On April 1, the MIT Online Education Policy Initiative released its report,“Online Education: A Catalyst for Higher Education Reforms.” The Carnegie Corporation-funded group was created in mid-2014, immediately after an earlier initiative looked at the future of online education at MIT. The group’s charter emphasized a broader policy perspective, however, exploring “teaching pedagogy and efficacy, institutional business models, and global educational engagement strategies.”

    While it would be easy to lament that this report comes from a university with few online students and yet dives into how online learning fits in higher education, it would be a mistake to dismiss the report itself. This lack of “in the trenches” experience with for-credit online education helps explain the report’s overemphasis on MOOCs and its underemphasis on access and nontraditional learner support. Still, the MIT group did an excellent job of getting to some critical questions that higher-education institutions need to address. Chief among them is the opportunity to use online tools and approaches to instrument and enable enhanced teaching approaches that aren’t usually possible in traditional classrooms. (more…)

  • First-hand experience moving to team-based course design

    As Michael mentioned, we have posted the last episode in the pilot e-Literate TV series with the topic of moving to a team-based course design for a flipped classroom usage. This episode provides an excellent opportunity to hear the first-hand experience of a faculty member going through this transition for the first time. Vanessa Perry of GWU had no real expectations or understanding of what this transition would encompass.

    The adoption of team-based course design presents a cultural barrier for traditional institutions, as shown by a wall in the graphic that was the basis for a 2012 EDUCAUSE Review article.

    The Wall

    Vanessa describes what this barrier, or wall, feels like as you attempt to cross it, as seen in this snippet from the interview (full transcript and video and graphics available at the full episode on e-Literate TV).

    (more…)