Data Is the Key to Successful Course Redesign

By LindsayH

For years, it has been no secret that many students who start post-secondary education programs drop out early. To address this issue, many schools and institutions decide to redesign their courses with the hope that students might gain a greater feeling of success, continue with their chosen program and graduate.

When considering courses for redesign, many questions are asked but the most important is this: “What data should be considered to ensure our course redesign efforts are successful?” Data metrics like grades, attendance or participation rates are obvious considerations. These can be reliable metrics in driving decision-making. However, I recommend also considering student feedback, faculty load, student experience, and assessment performance as additional data points which can better inform decisions that directly impact the course redesign process.

Let’s look at each of these to see their value as data metrics in the course redesign process.

Student Feedback

Student feedback can be a rich source of data to take into consideration before investing in a course redesign project. Most course surveys ask about the instructor’s performance, however, student feedback should not be targeted or limited to the course in question. It should encompass the entire student learning experience. It is important to understand where the students stop learning and where they fail to make connections with the content. The typical approach to improving the student learning experience has been simply creating add-ons to the existing course. However the effectiveness of add-ons without thoughtful integration is questionable. We must avoid the philosophy of ‘do something, do anything’ and focus redesign efforts on activities that are both sound and rational.

When reviewing student feedback we should focus our analysis through three lenses: the content lens, the assessment lens and the learning activity or practice lens. While course redesign focuses on the sum of the parts, each of these three lenses give curriculum developers a comprehensive picture on how students put their knowledge into practice, if at all.

Here are a few suggested data points to explore when considering student feedback:

• What learning activities did students find to be the most engaging?

• What learning activities helped students connect to the content directly?

• What did the students expect to learn prior to the start of the course?

Faculty Load

Educators are continually asked to do more with less. Frequently that extends to requiring faculty to teach more students with no additional resources. Faculty load can have an influence on student success. Students may not receive adequate or authentic feedback from instructors with a heavy student load because those instructors have fewer touch points with their students. By knowing the number of enrollments to an individual faculty member, course redesign experts can make additional recommendations for support services. Additionally, faculty load may influence a different approach to content presentations, activities, assessments, and other student services.

Here are a few suggestions to explore when considering faculty load:

• How often throughout a high enrollment course is a faculty member able to offer individualized attention to students?

• When a faculty member offers individualized attention, is it to clarify a student’s understanding of the content, provide intervention, or offer genuine feedback on activities and assessments?

• What are the student’s perceptions of the faculty member’s presence within a course?

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It’s Important To Take Risks While Learning

By Katie Lepi on April 8, 2014

Sometimes the process of learning something in order to be able to do it seems daunting. You know you want to get from point A to point B so that you can do C, but you really just want to be able to do C without a long wait. As teachers, you want your students to get there quickly and efficiently, too. While patience is a virtue, sometimes patience will get you nowhere fast. 

The handy infographic below looks at the idea of how to learn fast. It uses the idea of travel time to support the concept of learning by doing – arguably one of the quickest methods of learning something. Instead of taking the time to stop at every learning opportunity, do background research, and file yourself through all of the traditional methods, sometimes just jumping in will help you learn faster. How can you apply these concepts in your classroom or in your own professional development? Get involved in the conversation by leaving a note in the comments!

How Fast Can You Learn?

• The graphic below compares the speed of learning to speed of travel from San Francisco, CA to London, UK.
• Learning by reading: 3mph – Chances of getting there: low
• Learning through school: 15mph - Chances of getting there: low
• Learning with a mentor:  65mph - Chances of getting there: 50/50
• Learning by doing: 500mph - Chances of getting there: high
• Learning by taking big risks: 10,000mph  - Chances of getting there: high

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/take-risks-while-learning/

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What Does Learning Look Like? A Look At Physical And Digital Spaces

By Tom Daccord

I would like you to concentrate on the first image that comes to mind. Ready? Here is the question:What does learning look like?

Did you picture a classroom? Was there a teacher? What were students doing? Were they working quietly and individually? Or were they noisily collaborating? Were they sitting passively and listening? Or were they actively constructing something?

When I pose this question to groups of educators, I’m struck by the diversity of learning visions. For some, there is no teacher with the students, and the students are learning entirely on their own. For others, there is not even a classroom and students are helping students. In a world of ubiquitous mobile devices, where we can connect with information and people anywhere and any time, limiting student learning to a traditional classroom environment seems increasingly shortsighted.

Visit to the “Future School”

In the winter of 2012, I spent time at the Jarong “Future School” in Singapore. One of only sixFuture Schools in this city-state of 5 million people, the school’s mission is to lead in the integration of technology into the curriculum and pursue a “novel” problem-based approach to school design. More specifically, it aims to help students with critical problem-solving skills, often by taking them out of the classroom, to conduct first-hand observation, research and analyses. As for technology, the school features computer design labs, desktop and mobile devices, and even a video production lab. Standing in a classroom devoid of technology, however, the school’s IT Director articulated the school’s mission and the role of technology in one word: collaboration.

The Director and other administrators at the school had a vision of what learning should look like. In that vision, students would be working with each other, interacting and collaborating in small groups. Together, they would solve problems. To facilitate collaboration, administrators bought mobile, pie-shaped classroom desks that form a circle when pushed together. Tilted vertically, the desks are easily pushed to the side and out of the way. In other words, administrators designed a physical space that made it easy for students to interact with each other so that they could collaborate.

Similarly, curriculum specialists designed collaborative digital spaces. Students and teachers were brought together on platforms such as Google Drive that facilitate both live and asynchronous collaboration. The school technology leader had not simply concentrated on a device or a technology. Together, with other admins, he created integrated learning environments that could be modified in order to realize a vision of collaborative learning.

Experimental Schools – Using The “Writing On The Wall”

Not every school can afford mobile desks, but every school can develop a vision for learning. Recently, I was at a fledgling, experimental school outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. It is a small, public school with very little technology – some desktop computers and a handful of mobile devices. In the morning, students follow a traditional curriculum, but in the afternoon, they’re developing a presentation based on something they’ve written on a wall.

On that wall lies topics that interest each student. Every afternoon, for a period of two-three weeks, a teacher-mentor works individually with a student to craft an essential question about their topic and then answer it. The teacher helps the student research the topic, and consults the student on formulating a presentation about his or her research. David Truss, the principal, succinctly articulated the goal of this school: help students find and pursue their passions.

David reconstructed the curriculum and a physical space to nurture this vision, and as students worked online – both at school and at home – they were developing the critical-thinking and digital skills necessary to tackle their hand-written ideas. The mobility of the physical classrooms in the Singaporean Future School complemented the digital learning activities and reinforced a holistic vision of collaborative learning. The school in Vancouver created a physical “idea wall,” and then brought students online to flush out their ideas.

In answering “What does learning look like?” we need comprehensive and integrated learning spaces. We need to think about how the physical and digital spaces compliment and reinforce each other. If we can align physical and digital activities around learning goals, we can ultimately progress towards our learning vision.

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/learning-look-like-look-physical-digital-spaces/

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Teaching About Sustainable Technology

Having a “greener” lifestyle is becoming more and more mainstream these days.  Recycling, minimizing things like single use plastics, and simply using less are on many more people’s radar than they used to be. Not too long ago, we shared some ideas on how to have a greener classroom (inspired by our friend Jon over at Green Lifestyle Changes).

There’s also lots of green technology out there. That is, technology devoted to alternative resource use, or items being designed to use as little energy and physical pieces as possible. But what about the materials that go into our beloved technology? And what about recycling them? Technology changes so rapidly these days. Our need and desire for the latest model sometimes cause us to quickly discard our once trusted devices for the next best thing or the newer model, leaving outdated gadgets with a shelf life in some cases of a matter of months.

The handy infographic below takes a look at how our love of technology is affecting our environment and why is it important we alter our recycling habits.

Sustainable Technology

Rare Earth Elements

• Rare earth elements are key to maintaining our current lifestyle and technology
• There are 17 rare earth elements
• While more abundant than other minerals, they are not concentrated enough to make them easily exploitable economically
• The US was once self-reliant on REEs, but now imports 100%, mostly from China – due to labor cost issues
• China is facing a number of issues with its supply of REEs. 2/3 have been mined already, and the remaining are of lower quality that will be more expensive to extract

How Do We Use Rare Earth Elements?

So why do REEs matter? They are used for so many pieces of technology, such as:

• Vibration functions in mobile devices
• Amplification
• GPS
• Color display
• Rechargeable batteries
• Making items smaller and lighter
• NFC
• Hard drives
• Camera lenses
• Spindle motors
• Cinematic projections
• Magneto-optic recording
• Hybrid cars
• Hydro energy
• Water treatment
• Fuel cells
• CFL bulbs
• Catalytic converters
• Solar energy
• Wind turbines
• Fuel cells
• A huge host of military defense technologies
• Satellite communications
• Fiber optic cables
• MRI
• XRay
• Lasers
• Neutron radiotherapy
• Drug therapies

Recycling

Companies in Japan are leading the way with REE recycling programs – Honda and Hitachi are just two

• Recycling REEs poses several problems:
• It is expensive
• Very little REEs are harvested from each product
• It is difficult to retrieve the REEs from products

Despite these issues it is still hugely important to recycle your electronics, due to the very low volume of new REEs around the globe.

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/sustainable-technology/

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4 Global Education Questions Being Answered At #GESF

                         

4 Global Education Questions Being Answered At #GESF

By Jeff Dunn

It’ll take a global effort to create any lasting or substantial change in the world of education. As we all know all too well, change in education comes slowly, if at all. It typically happens in a bottom-up manner where the largest group of people identify a trend, try it out, incorporate it into the classroom, and then tell their colleagues about it. Thanks to professional learning networks and social media (Twitter hashtags like #edchat, for example), this process has become faster and more efficient. Trends are discovered, tested, and either adopted or forgotten.

So that’s how education trends work in a very short nutshell. Got it?

What happens when global education leaders get together and leverage the power of social media, digital discussion, and in-person forums? Hopefully some positive and effective change that helps the millions of people who would benefit from all the new trends and tools being used in many countries.

The Global Education and Skills Forum

That’s what I’m going to check out first-hand at theGlobal Education and Skills Forum (GESF aka the ‘Davos of Education’) in Dubai this weekend. In the interest of full disclosure, my flight and hotel is paid for so I can attend this event. I wasn’t paid in any other way, though. I’ll be spending my timemoderating a panel, meeting with teachers (likeVicki @coolcatteacher Davis!) and other global education leaders. We’ll be looking at education technology trends, what’s happening in non-Western markets, and who should be making the decisions about where education should go in the coming years. Big questions. Big names. Hopefully some big changes can get underway.

Global Education Questions I’ll Be Asking

Here are some of the key global education trends that will likely be discussed and evolve at GESF. I’d definitely welcome your input on what other trends you think should be discussed. I’ll be able to ask any question you may have to any of the invited guests and speakers so feel free to leave your questions down in the comments of this post or by mentioning @edudemic on Twitter.

1) What is the role of private companies in education? Is the onus on private or public (or both) organizations to enact real and lasting change?

2) How can governments nurture an effective educational change without overstepping?

3) How do we bring education to ALL countries? Is online education the answer or just a tool for the more ‘connected’ countries?

4) What role should education technology play in the modern classroom? How can it most effectively be used? How do teachers not familiar with edtech leverage it?

How To Hear About The Answers

Those are just a few of my questions I have come up with for both my panel and the conference in general. I’ll report back on the answers I get and also be sharing some thoughts / insight / observations on the Edudemic social media accounts. Be sure to follow @edudemic on Twitter, like Edudemic on Facebook, and introduce yourself if you’re going to be attending GESF! I’ll be the dorky guy wandering the hallways looking to make new friends. All opinions expressed are my own – while I had my flight and hotel paid for, I can of course say whatever I want about my findings and experience.

Post Source: http://www.edudemic.com/gesf-global-education-questions/

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