The lecturers: Instructor (A), a successful lecturer (who had won a teacher of the year award, and had good student evaluations) and a post-doc tutored by Weiman.
Both teachers gave it their best shot

Instructor A and L.D. had agreed to make this a learning competition

ASIDE: this in itself is an astounding opportunity: an instructor (A) with a history of good evaluations etc etc agreeing to this. I reckon his/her name and identity will emerge in due course hopefully NOT on a sleazy talk show, and we’ll learn some more about this project.

The course: traditionally, a physics course is divided into topics, with some building on each other.  The first part of the course was taught traditionally.  In the study the final topic (and the subject of the study) is a complete unit, Electro-magnetism.

L.D. and instructor A agreed beforehand what topics and learning objectives would be covered

The teaching: no formal lecturing at all in the experimental section. Instead:

The instructional approach used in the experimental section included elements promoted by CWSEI and its partner initiative at the University of Colorado: preclass reading assignments, preclass reading quizzes, in-class clicker questions with student-student discussion (CQ), small-group active learning tasks (GT), and targeted in-class instructor feedback (IF). Before each of the three 50-min classes, students were assigned a three- or four-page reading, and they completed a short true false online quiz on the reading

No new gadgets were used. Clickers has been used the whole course.
Pre-reading: the only change in the control section was the requirement to read the text in advance.

The populations (267, 271): using various statistical measures these were essentially identical eg same mean (+/- 1%) in mid term exam.

What is significant here

The value of pre-reading.  Other studies show this has an effect on learning.  We could say “this is obvious” but traditionally it has been hard to convince students of the value of actually doing it – and now we have ways to encourage this to be more of a regular habit.  The online testing with self marking helps.

The Australasian Horizon Report

The Horizon report was interesting. The report is based around six types of emerging technology/applications that these guys (a panel of 45 on the advisory board) believe will impact higher education in Australia and New Zealand:

One year or less:

* Virtual Worlds & Other Immersive Digital Environments
* Cloud Based Applications

Two-three years:

* Geolocation
* Alternative Input Devices

Four-Five years

* Deep Tagging
* Next-generation Mobile

POV technologies.

Hmm.  Had to Google this. I read the post by Alex Hayes in the TALO group. I think I get the idea.

But there is NO clear definition of POV technologies that I can find.  Mayb like this:

Technologies (maybe head mounted video camera) that enables sharing the point of view of a person, where an intimate sense of what they are doing can be seen.  Like an apprentice fixing a timing chain.

Random Links:Wikieducator | Flier for Leigh’s Trip to Aussie where he will talk on this (March 24th 2009) | EDUPOV a company supporting POV technolgies in Education | Sony product.  One at random.

Deep Tagging is one of the Horizon trends.  This will benefit any POVTECH activity.

Moodle

Got a lot to say here.  There is not much on the pedagogy out there yet.  On the affordances that Moodle offers.  If you are interested in some online workshops in experieincing Moodle, feel free to contact me.

Reflective practice

Presenting eight sessions on this over the next little while.

What is it? “Reflective practice is a concept used in education studies and pedagogy. It was introduced by Donald Schön in his book The Reflective Practitioner in 1983″ (from you know where)

The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. (p68)

In other words: a special kind of reflective thinking to assist us to learn and develop.

Why Bother? http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/RefPractice.htm

Misc refs: A defininition with more from Schon | On reflection, from the wonderful INFED site | A Higher Education Point of view

I’ll get my stuff on Wikieducator this week.

The course – Connectivism and Connective Knowledge – (the wiki is here) will be delivered fully online with a combination of synchronous and asynchronous interaction. Participants who have enrolled in the course will receive feedback on assignments and course work and will receive credit for their work. We are in the planning stages of what will become a Certificate in Emerging Learning Technologies (slated for delivery in January, 2009). Connectivism and Connective Knowledge will count as credit in that program. http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/connectivism/?p=15

Read the post: they are taking on some of the critical issues around learning for learning’s sake and learning for credit.

In summary:

• If learning materials are freely available, what are learners paying for when they take courses? Are they paying for credit?
• What is the nature of large scale learning experiences? What is the value created?
• What kinds of technologies should we use? To what degree are we fully distributed?
• How can we involve participants before and after the course?

This is cool.

I had tea yesterday with a friend who has a wife studying at an institution I have had a lot to do with.  My friend has described a litany of loose ends and sad experieinces with learning over the months, and his wife has in his words “figured out what she needs to do to pass and is engaged in doing it”. Sad.

I’m signed up for this course.  If we can call it that.  I expect to have a challenging and stimulating time, and sort out a few of my ideas further, and have some fun.  If anyone is interested in a New Zealand – or a Christchurch Learning Cell around this course – please contact me.  I’ve also advertised on the DEANZ blog.

More later . . .

Today, a link crossed my monitor that mentioned

Russ Edgerton’s white paper on Pedagogies of Engagement?  The commonly referred to link appears to be inactive ( www.pewundergradforum.org/wp1.html)

I checked out the phrase and discovered several interesting pages.

1. http://www.ce.umn.edu/~smith/docs/Smith-Pedagogies_of_Engagement.pdf

Prior to Edgerton’s paper, the widely distributed and influential publication called The Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education [2] stressed pedagogies of engagement in concept. Three of the principles speak directly to pedagogies of engagement, namely, that good practice encourages student-faculty contact, cooperation among students, and active learning.

2. http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/publications/sub.asp?key=452&subkey=612&printable=true

One of Russ’s arguments focused on something he called “pedagogies of engagement” — approaches that have within them the capacity to engage students actively with learning in new ways. He wasn’t talking only about service-learning, though service learning was an example; he was talking about an array of approaches, from problem-based and project-based learning to varieties of collaborative work and field-based instruction. Russ used the rubric “pedagogies of engagement” to describe them all.

3. http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/Civil_War/CWlearnercentered.htm

“Engagement,” framed within the theoretical concerns of social and cognitive development, seems to be largely about a student’s “maturity.” So, a student is engaged when s/he shows or self-reports gains in:

• “personal development, academic achievement, civic responsibility, [and] career exploration” (Billig and Eyler)
• personal development such as sense of personal efficacy, personal identity, spiritual growth and moral development (Vanderbilt review 2000)
• interpersonal development and the ability to work well with others, leadership and communication skills (Vanderbilt review 2000)

To put it bluntly, where’s the fun in that? (Emphasis and italics added by me)

Just a taster really. How do you know someone is engaged? Does it REALLY affect learning?

I should have been posting on this last week as I read Bains superb book “What the Best College Teachers Do“. Here is something adapted from what I wrote for last week’s UCTL news sheet (FLAB):

‘What the Best College Teachers Do’ (Ken Bain)

Mike has found this quite a remarkable book, and loaned me a copy.

• http://www.montclair.edu/center/Bain.html

The book is a report on a fifteen-year study of a hundred or so college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities.  It comes to the conclusion that it is not what teachers do, it’s what they understand.

Techniques and stuff (like lesson plans) matter less than the special way teachers view their subject and value human learning (or not!!). The best teachers, according to the study, know their subjects well, and also know how to “engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses”.

From the book:

Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn.

It highlights the research that got me launched in thinking about teaching and learning in the early 1990′s: a bunch of physicists involved in the area of educational research.  These guys introduced me to Vygotsky.  It’s been an interesting mix actually: the kind of talk given by a physics lecturer on educational theory is quite different to other talks.  Google “PER physics” (PER=Physics Education Research).  They also have a different set of mental models, and some interesting (odd??) juxtapositions of ideas.

It is a short, well constructed, evidence based (is that the right term??) inspiring little book.  I’ve wondered about a reading group around this book – or something.  My first thought was something international through the POD group.  Maybe.  Watch this space.

I was wandering along Willis street last week during my prowl around the MoE in Wellington when I first saw the sign, wandered in the open door that turned out to be a fire escape left open. No adults around, just a bunch of kids all gainfully employed.  At 4.30pm mind you.

A superb environment, and a lot of fun and learning going on. Seems some people work in town and drop the kids off, picking them up on the way home. Funny really – in such a people centred place (met two marvellous teachers, AKA guides) – I came back three times on three different days and never managed to met the principal.  He was always in a meeting.