e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: UC Davis

  • UC Davis: A look inside attempts to make large lecture classes active and personal

    In my recent keynote for the Online Teaching Conference, the core argument was as follows:

    While there will be (significant) unbundling around the edges, the bigger potential impact [of ed innovation] is how existing colleges and universities allow technology-enabled change to enter the mainstream of the academic mission.

    Let’s look at one example. Back in December the New York Times published an article highlighting work done at the University of California at Davis to transform large lecture classes into active learning formats.

    Hundreds of students fill the seats, but the lecture hall stays quiet enough for everyone to hear each cough and crumpling piece of paper. The instructor speaks from a podium for nearly the entire 80 minutes. Most students take notes. Some scan the Internet. A few doze.

    In a nearby hall, an instructor, Catherine Uvarov, peppers students with questions and presses them to explain and expand on their answers. Every few minutes, she has them solve problems in small groups. Running up and down the aisles, she sticks a microphone in front of a startled face, looking for an answer. Students dare not nod off or show up without doing the reading. (more…)

  • Release of University of California at Davis Case Study on e-Literate TV

    Today we are thrilled to release the fifth and final case study 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. We plan to cap off this series with two analysis episodes looking at themes across the case studies.

    We are adding three episodes from the University of California at Davis (UC Davis), a large research university that has a strong emphasis in science, technology, engineering, and math or STEM fields. The school has determined that the biggest opportunity to improve STEM education is to improve the success rates in introductory sciences classes – the ones typically taught in large lecture format at universities of their size. Can you personalize this most impersonal of academic experiences? What opportunities and barriers do institutions face when they try to extend personalized learning approaches?

    You can see all the case studies (either 2 or 3 per case study) at the series link, and you can access individual episodes below. (more…)

  • How Student and Faculty Interviews Were Chosen For e-Literate TV Series

    As part of our e-Literate TV set of case studies on personalized learning, Michael and I were fully aware that Arizona State University (ASU) was likely to generate the most controversy due to ASU’s aggressive changes to the concept of a modern research university. As we described in this introductory blog post:

    Which is one reason why we’re pretty excited about the release of the first two case studies in our new e-Literate TV series on the trend of so-called “personalized learning.” We see the series as primarily an exercise in journalism. We tried not to hold onto any hypothesis too tightly going in, and we committed to reporting on whatever we found, good or bad. We did look for schools that were being thoughtful about what they were trying to do and worked with them cooperatively, so it was not the kind of journalism that was likely to result in an exposé. We went in search of the current state of the art as practiced in real classrooms, whatever that turned out to be and however well it is working.

    As part of the back-and-forth discussions with the ASU case study release, John Warner brought up a good point in response to my description that our goal was “Basically to expose, let you form own opinions”. (more…)

  • Adaptive Learning Market Acceleration Program (ALMAP) Summer Meeting Notes

    I recently attended the ALMAP Summer Meeting. ALMAP is a program funded by the Gates Foundation, with the goals described in this RFP webinar presentation from March 2013:

    We believe that well implemented personalized & adaptive learning has the potential to dramatically improve student outcomes

    Our strategy to accelerate the adoption of Adaptive Learning in higher education is to invest in market change drivers… …resulting in strong, healthy market growth

    As the program is in its mid stage (without real results to speak of yet), I’ll summarize Tony Bates style with summary of program and some notes at the end. Consider this my more-than-140-character response to Glenda Morgan:

    Originally planned for 10 institutions, the Gates Foundation funded 14 separate grantees at a level of ~$100,000 each. The courses must run for 3 sequential semesters with greater than 500 students total (per school), and the program will take 24 months total (starting June 2013). The awards were given to the following schools:

    (more…)