Dan Barrett’s piece over the weekend in The Chronicle, “The Next Great Hope for Measuring Learning,” deserves a close read. He describes in some detail a ground up effort by faculty and administrators across several institutions to define and measure what it is that students are learning and why it’s important. In doing so, these […]
The Chronicle of Higher Education
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 […]
We Need a More Robust Learning Sciences Research Community
My latest Chronicle column is on how inherently difficult it is to evaluate learning science claims, particularly when they get boiled down to marketing claims about product efficacy, and how deep academic distrust of vendors makes this already incredibly difficult challenge nearly impossible. Here’s where I stand on vendor participation in ed tech and learning science research: […]
The Odd Couple: How Ed Tech Must Support Vastly Different Types of Professors
An edited version of this post was first published at The Chronicle of Higher Education Let’s admit it, there can be some real tension when a college is faced with choosing a new learning-management system, or any software used by more than one department. Since the decision involves the administrators who will support the system […]
UNC Learning Technology Commons: Easing the procurement problem with NGDLE
I was planning to write a descriptive post about the new UNC Learning Technology Commons, but there is already some excellent coverage. UNC’s Matthew Rascoff wrote a blog post on Medium that captures the basics quite well: A compelling recent report from EDUCAUSE proposes that the “Next Generation Digital Learning Environment” will be based on a “‘Lego’ approach,” […]
Empowering Students in Open Research
Phil and I will be writing a twice-monthly column for the Chronicle’s new Re:Learning section. In my inaugural column, “Muy Loco Parentis,” I write about how schools make data privacy decisions on behalf of the students that the students wouldn’t make for themselves, and that may even be net harmful for the students. In contrast […]
Student Course Evaluations and Impact on Active Learning
The Chronicle has an article out today, “Can the Student Course Evaluation Be Redeemed?”, that rightly points out how student course evaluations are often counter-productive to improving teaching and learning. The article refers to a Stanford professor’s call for an instructor completed “inventory of the research-based teaching practices they use”, but most of the article centers […]