Effective eLearning

10 Tips For Effective eLearning

By Katie Lepi 

Teaching online involves all the difficulties of teaching in person, with a few extra wrenches thrown in. Navigating the path of online learning can sometimes be rough, so the makers of the handy infographic below put together ten ‘links’ that make the ‘chain of e-Learning’ to help guide you on the online teaching path.

These ten ‘links’ are basically some step by step tips to ensure that your teaching time is well-planned, dynamic, efficient, and effective. Many of these carry over to the physical classroom as well, so don’t skip over them just because you’re not teaching online (for now!).

10 Tips For Effective eLearning

• Start With A Bang: Good eLearning courses have great beginnings – say icebreaker questions, case studies, etc.
• Set Measurable Goals: State the learning objectives before the lessons begin. Your learning content should meet these objectives.
• Add Instructions: Help learners navigate the mechanics of the online course with clear, concise instructions.
• Keep The Content Conversational: Conversational style tends to improve learning. Use the first or second person to keep the content familiar.
• Use Assessments: Instead of just assessing their memorization skills, make sure to assess them in context, too.
• Minimize Distractions: Avoid eye candy and overuse of decorative graphics, fonts, etc.
• Interactive Isn’t Always Better: Not every page needs to be interactive – a good rule of thumb is every third page, maximum.
• Follow Usability Guidelines: The structure and flow of your course shouldn’t need to be different than in a physical classroom.
• Use Content ‘Chunks’: Organize related content together on one screen, keeping the learner’s attention focused on one topic at a time.

Katie was a teacher, graduate student, and is now the lady who makes sure Edudemic is as useful as possible. She oversees the editorial process and is basically a Swiss Army Knife of solutions.

Source: Edudemic

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3 Ways To Use Data In The Classroom

By Kate Lewis

The phrase “using data to drive instruction” is showing up everywhere in education circles lately. Particularly with the incorporation of the Common Core State Standards, and new standardized tests and teacher evaluation systems, the way that teachers use data is becoming more and more important. But what exactly does it look like in the classroom? And how can technology help make the process more manageable?

Using data in the classroom doesn’t have to be as intimidating as it sounds. My favorite way to use data in my eighth grade English Language Arts classroom is to use formative assessment data to drive instruction and for intervention. Here are three easy ways to start using data in the classroom:

Take a Poll

Online polling systems are an excellent resource for teachers. Recently, I used Poll Everywhere to ask my students what topic they would like to review. I certainly could have just listed the topics out loud and asked students to raise their hands. However, in my experience, the information a teacher gets using that method is not reliable. In general, students are much more open and honest when using technology than they would be in almost any other situation. When I take polls the old fashioned way with students raising their hands to indicate their preference, I can see them furtively looking around to see what their friends are doing. Particularly in middle school, students don’t want to stand out or be different. They may be less likely to be honest when they are raising their hands in front of everyone. But taking an anonymous poll on an iPad or another device takes that worry away, providing the teacher with reliable data. This was the result that came from the poll when I asked students what they needed more help with:

Clearly, my students wanted to review using topic and concluding sentences to connect ideas. I don’t think there would have been 11 hands up if I asked students to raise their hands. Most likely, they would have said they don’t need help with anything to avoid looking “stupid.” I was able to use this data to inform my lesson for the day. One of the great features about polling systems like Poll Everywhere is that they are so quick to use that teachers can create polls on the fly to address student needs. Based on this data, I quickly designed two poll questions and used them to review the concept during that very same class period. Here is an example of what that looked like:

I was able to project student responses and use them to help students see what effective topic and concluding sentences look like. Then, students spent the rest of the class using that knowledge to write their own body paragraphs. The data allowed me, as a teacher, to effectively respond to student needs.

Use a Quick Quiz to Drive Instruction

There are many digital tools that make quick formative assessments much easier and more effective. One of my favorite tools to use is Socrative. I frequently use Socrative for quick reading check-in quizzes at the beginning of class. There are several reasons why using digital tools for quick formative assessments is better than having the students take quizzes using paper and pencil. First of all, the teacher can set up the quiz to tell the students if they got an answer correct or incorrect, so the students are getting instant feedback rather than waiting for the teacher to correct the quiz and hand it back, possibly waiting until the next day or even longer. We all know that quick feedback is effective feedback, and technology can facilitate that process. Secondly, as soon as the students complete the quiz, the program sends a report to the teacher. This is the report from the last formative assessment I gave in my classroom:

Not only does the report save time because the teacher doesn’t have to correct and gather the data, it also allows the teacher to instantly respond to student needs. From this assessment data, I was able to tell that many students were struggling to understand how a key plot event impacted the development of a character in the novel they are reading. This led to an improvised lesson on indirect characterization. I was able to use the data instantly to inform my lesson to address comprehension issues, whereas before, I wouldn’t have even known it was an issue until much later. At that point, the lesson would not have been as effective.

Use Formative Assessment Data for Immediate Intervention

After using Socrative for quick formative assessments, I quickly discovered that I could use the data in more than one way. Not only could I use it to inform whole class instruction, but I could also use it to target individual students for intervention. There were instances where a student got incorrect answers on four or five questions out of five. Because I had the report in my hands right away and the students were sitting in my classroom, I was able to sit down with struggling students to create intervention plans. Using the data, I could see particularly what areas were causing a problem for the student. If a student was struggling with vocabulary in context, I was able to provide additional resources they could use as they read independently. If a student was struggling to remember important details from the text, I was able to recommend an alternate strategy for annotating as they read. Finally, if I saw that a student was simply falling behind with their work, I could sit with them and create a plan to help them get caught up. These interventions didn’t take long, just a few minutes with each student during class, but I could see immediate results. Using data for intervention prevented problems from snowballing out of control, and made a big difference with the students who were struggling.

Overall, there is not one “right” way to use data in the classroom. Using technology makes the process quicker and more effective, and allows teachers to adjust their instruction to meet student needs or provide interventions. Since I starting focusing on using data in the classroom, I have seen the positive impact it can have student learning. Clearly, there are many other ways to use data, but formative assessment is a good place to start.

English Language Arts teacher in Shrewsbury, MA. Runner, mom and wife extradordinaire. Love to learn and share what I know, excited about tech in the classroom!

Source: Edudemic.com

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A Very Quick Guide To Improving Student Writing

By Emily Lucas

As a teacher you have a great deal of power and influence over the student body, and you should use this to help improve the quality of student writing. Teaching the English language is not just the English department’s job, it is the job of all teachers, and it is important to take student writing seriously, from both a technical and creative point of view. This writing guide covers things you should know and effective teaching practices.

You should see the improvement of the writing of all of your students as your own personal responsibility, no matter what subject you teach in all good colleges. If you are not an English teacher, you do not need to address all the technical aspects of writing and you don’t need to teach how to write an essay formally. It is still important however to demonstrate the uses and values of good writing, the importance of self-expression through writing, and how to write an essay in your subject.

Good writing is crucial for all subjects, and you should make clear why good writing is important for your subject. In general, writing is a learning process and not a means to an end. It is always hard work to improve writing, and do not let the students think they can make improvements without hard work. Make sure you address all key areas; spelling, grammar, punctuation, word use, sentence structure, content style, referencing, indexing and so on. Know the importance of clarity and specificity in writing, and quality over quantity. Identify students who have difficulty with English, and recommend extra teaching and online tutoring as necessary.

The Process of Writing

Every writer needs to employ many different practices to avoid confusing and erroneous writing, and these practices need to be understood. These include idea development, focusing and contextualizing an idea, planning essay outlines and writing drafts, the main writing process, revision, reorganization and expansion and finally editing.

Classroom Writing Tasks

Free writing exercise – Pause the lesson for a 3-4 minute writing exercise where the students can write about anything they like. Don’t fuss over writing technicalities – the point is to help students develop critical thinking and ideas.

End of class summary – Have the students consolidate each lesson in points, and highlight what key themes and principles were covered.

Group Discussion – Have your students write freely about a small topic for that lesson for a couple of minutes, and then arrange the students into groups so they can discuss what they have written.

Questions and answers – Write down questions on the board at the start of class for the students to answer in writing. These questions could relate to the previous lesson.

Read-around activities – When you are handing back larger assignments, let the students read the work of others. They can then vote on which paper they think is written best and discuss why they think it is best.

Helping Students

All students are different, with skills in certain areas and deficiencies in others. Focus on developing writing strengths and alleviating writing difficulties. Students who find the technicalities of writing difficult should focus on using dictionaries and grammar/spelling exercises, and use online tutoring and other sources of help.

Emily Lucas is experienced freelance writer, college ranking expert and blogger. Her areas of interests are very wide, but mostly she writes for educational websites and blogs. Her aim is to share innovative ideas with young audience and provide useful tips for education and private life.

Source: Edudemic.com

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Online Learning Survey

The 2013 Survey Of Online Learning

Recently, the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson released the results of a survey about online learning. The report was based on responses from over 2,800 academic leaders and found that over 7.1 million higher ed students are learning online. The study aimed to a number of questions central to the nature and extent of online education:

• Is online learning strategic?
• Are learning outcomes comparable in online settings and face to face settings?
• How many students are learning online?
• How are MOOCs faring?
• Do students require more discipline to complete online courses?
• Is retention of students harder in online courses?
• What is the future of online learning?
• Who offers MOOCs?
• What are the objectives of MOOCs?
• What role do MOOCs play for higher education institutions?

The Findings

(note: Please click here for a PDF of the full findings of the report)

The report quantified many things that those involved in education already knew (or at least, suspected). Participation in online learning is increasing. Learning outcomes are largely positive. Interestingly, what this study does show is something that I hadn’t quite expected – that many of the numbers that had been continually rising over the past years were starting to show a slight decline. For example, the proportion of chief academic leaders that say online learning is critical to their long-term strategy dropped from 69.1 percent to 65.9 percent. Many believe that MOOCs are not a sustainable form of online learning for higher education institutions to pursue.

Online Enrollments are still growing

Fewer leaders think that online education is critical to their mission

• Over 7.1 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2012 term, an increase of 411,000 students over the previous year.
• The online enrollment growth rate of 6.1 percent is the lowest recorded for this report series.
• Thirty-three percent of higher education students now take at least one course online.
• The percent of academic leaders rating the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face grew from 57.2 in 2003 to 77.0 percent last year, but fell back to 74.1 percent this year.
• The proportion of chief academic leaders that say online learning is critical to their long-term strategy dropped from 69.1 percent to 65.9 percent.
• Ninety percent of academic leaders believe that it is likely or very likely that a majority of all higher education students will be taking at least one online course in five year’s time.
• Only 5.0 percent of higher education institutions currently offer a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), another 9.3 percent report MOOCs are in the planning stages.
• Less than one-quarter of academic leaders believe that MOOCs represent a sustainable method for offering online courses.

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        Source: edudemic.com

What To Know About ‘The End Of Education’

There should lay a problem to which a book or a writing is a solution for. No one can deny on the fact that as long as education is dealing with human beings there will be problems, in a way I sometimes define educators as problem solvers, as they are constantly dealing with problems within the bounds of school buildings. The End of Education by Neil Postman explores the ‘school problem’ that he sees exists in our modern education systems.

The End of Education might stand to answer some questions of the school problems as Postman sees them as two dimensional. One is the engineering side of it, that is the means by which young people acquire an education. The other one is the metaphysical that is the underlying purpose or mission or the end of education. Postman believes that primary focus is mostly on the engineering aspect of the education today, while very little attention is paid to the metaphysics of schooling. He says “without a transcendent and honorable purpose schooling must reach its finish, and the sooner we are done with it, the better.” (p – x-xi).

To give that meaning and reason to education is the answer to the why rather than the what and the how in the process, and that is because he thinks if the teachers, parents and the children do not have a purpose, if they do not believe in anything or they do not have a god to serve, then the schools become houses of detention rather that attention. So it is significant to have a shared or common narrative that we can live by, because “public education” Postman says “depends absolutely on the existence of shared narratives and the exclusion of narratives that lead to alienation and divisiveness” (p- 17) he continues to say “What makes public schools public, is not so much that the schools have common goals but that the students have common gods” as “public education does not serve a public. It create a public” and this is solely inspired by a reason, a shared narrative that all are in service to. I think this idea interests E.D Hirsch a lot as he too claims for a culturally literate community through having students focused on their own culture, yet that of Postman is not specified as he claims for an education with purpose, a purpose that is meaningful and future promising for the human being.

The End Of Education

The “End” could have two meanings according to the context of this book, one which literally leads to an end, a point of no return and the other is the purpose and the meaning for whatever we do in this worldly life, but for what Postman is talking about a purpose or a meaning for education. He says that either meaning could apply for the future of schooling. As he claims that education is absent and that is the reason for him to write the book, he states “I return to the subject [of education] now, not because the education world has suffered from my absence, but because I have [suffered from the absence of education]” (p – ix). For him education or more specifically schooling is about making a life not making a living.

Postman throughout the book describes some current gods that are being served as false gods. The god of economic utility, technology, consumerism, and multiculturalism, he says that these god are not capable of providing a well off education and maintaining a life worth living. The stories of those gods are pointless and the future with worshipping those is not promising. In serving those false gods the chance of a better life is scarce as the knowledge of life is imparted and the purposes are timely or in another word mortal. While the educators are master minds of it, they are not as those in past because he says “There was a time when educators became famous for providing reasons for learning; now they become famous for inventing a method” (p- 26) and this an attempt to impart knowledge or reason as the school can not resist without a reason for its being.

Alternatives To The Current Norm

As an alternative to those currently false gods being served in our education system, he presents some narratives that he thinks they could serve us better. “Spaceship Earth” (that humans are responsible for and stewards of the planet); “The American Experiment” (the story of America as a great experiment and as a center of continuous argument); “The Fallen Angel” (history and the advancement of knowledge as a series of making mistake and correction); “The Laws of Diversity” (difference contributes to increased vitality and excellence, and, ultimately, to a sense of unity); and “The Word Weavers/The World Makers” (the understanding that the world is created through language, through definitions, questions, and metaphors).

The overall intention of his in this is to stress on the promotion of the purpose for what we do in education instead of the engineering aspects of it like the assessment, evaluation, curriculum, management and all the other engineering issues, but rather to focus more on the metaphysical one. As for him the why question, the reason for what we live for makes it easier for us how to live. As Friedrich Nietzsche remarks “he who has a why can bear with almost any how”. What his means is, if we know for what we are schooling our kids, the methodology of how to do that will be much easier and the dimension get to change. teachers know why do they teach, principal realize their role in designing the school generation, parents are able to see what they are dreaming of and the kids themselves are better in understanding their role for society and the humanity in general.

This does not mean that teachers, parents, and kids should think of one think or believe in the same thing. In those school back there In the Western world, beginning in the thirteenth century and for five hundred years afterward, this why question, the reason, was sufficient justification for the founding of institutions of learning. Even today, there are some schools in the West, and most in the Islamic world, whose central purpose is to serve and celebrate the glory of God, to serve one purpose and this eliminates the school problems and crisis. There may be some disputes over what subjects best promote piety, obedience, and faith; there may be students who are skeptical, even teachers who are nonbelievers. But at the core of such schools, there is a transcendent, spiritual idea that gives purpose and clarity to learning. Even the skeptics and nonbelievers know why they are there, what they are supposed to be learning, and why they are resistant to it (p- 4).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GslzLHrve2M

This central purpose is not of worldly or insufficient one, but rather a purpose that elevates the centrality of why do we live? Where will we go? When those purposes and meanings may not be found by the students themselves, that is why we have teachers. This contrasts with some of the negative understandings of democracy in education today, for the reason that kids are able to control and determine their own future. This means that students are born with the answers to the mind-shaking questions of life and the world, while it is clear that it is not like that. If they know the answer then what is the philosophy of having education anyway? There is a school called The Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts claiming to have a democratic view of education where children are free to do or choose anything they want in the school period, there were students playing cards and some others playing music while the visits to the library and reading was very seldom. The reporter asked one of the students what are going to do today? The kid replied an I don’t know answer. All of this is because the twenty first century kids are capable of controlling their destiny and their future as one of the staff members stated. How a kid is able to choose his/her own destiny when he/she does not know what he/she will do or learn in the rest of the day at school? Now, this idea may be able to find a room in Postman’s book, as to him I find it, this one also is a false god to be served or in another word this is not a god to be served.

Finally, the implications of those narratives in the schools may be hard for the education system to digest but I am content that having a core value, or a central purpose to which all live by and strive to achieve it is indispensable. We all know that it is only education which is that starting and turning point of individuals in the face of this earth, but when this education is lead to triviality results in human’s self-distraction. The word education is always a positive word but when it comes to schooling, changes. That is I think is because of difference and diversity. So, when we embrace each other to live to a core end of our lives we shall not have a bad end, but a happy one.

References:

Postman, N. (1995). The End Of Education: Redefining the Value Of School. New York: Knopf.

Sudbury Valley School, YouTube video: taken from http://youtu.be/awOAmTaZ4XI

The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School by Neil Postman

A reading Response by: Pashew M. Nuri, http://pashewmajeed.blogspot.com/

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