Creating Significant Learning Environments
4 Start-Ups Are Offering Free Online Courses – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
When you start to read about groups of start-ups moving into the Free Online Course space you can we assured that the online course space is about to changed significantly. It looks like the disruptive world of online learning is being disrupted.
It is very interesting to see that faith based institutions are at the top of the list in all categories. Concordia has consistently been in the top 5 of Universities for several years.
Review the full survey results…
Temple U. Project Ditches Textbooks for Homemade Digital Alternatives – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
Temple University gave 11 faculty members $1,000 each to create a digital alternative to a traditional textbook. The goal of this pilot project was to demonstrate the learning benefits of working with primary sources and other relevant materials and to also help students save money on textbooks.
Kristina M. Baumli, a lecturer in Temple’s English department offered the following summary of the project’s pedagogical benefits:
By requiring students to grapple with primary sources and find their own journal articles, she said, she could teach in a way that emphasized process rather than memorization of facts in a book.
Read the full Wired Campus article…
Read the Temple U blog post about the pilot project…
MIT’s New Free Courses May Threaten (and Improve) the Traditional Model, Program’s Leader Says – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education-Wired Campus blogger Jeffery Young, Rafael Reif, MIT’s provost stated:
My point is that for a while I view this as augmenting the education you get on a residential model. And yes, it may threaten, and if it does the residential model has to get better. Our objective is to actually use MITx to even increase further what we do on campus, to make it stronger and to be able to resist and survive and do very well in this potential disruptive situation.
To those who are stuck in the delivery mode of educational content MITx and all other forms of online learning or mobile will be a threat. To those who view online and mobile learning technologies as tools that can be used enhance learning this will be an opportunity to learn from the best and radically improve the academy. Well positioned and implemented mobile and online technologies can shift the delivery of content to outside of class (where it belongs) allowing the instructors and students to use valuable class time to go deeper and explore the application and integration of that content in meaningful ways.
Helping students to assess high volumes of information that are available through many digital means and also helping them make the meaningful connections which are essential to learning are a fundamental part of the roles instructors must play in 21st century learning environments.
Mobile-Enhanced Inquiry-Based Learning: A Collaborative Study (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE via kwout
Abilene Christian University’s (ACU) mobile-enhanced inquiry-based learning (MEIBL) is a blended learning strategy which creates an active and engaging learning environment, producing increased student engagement, maintenance of academic performance and improvements in student persistence and course completion. MEIBL addresses the greatest barriers for inquiry-based learning, minimizing time requirements of providing differentiated instruction and providing the fundamental guidance necessary for the inquiry process. Time saved on information transfer through MEIBL strategies enable faculty to mentor learners to engage course content at a deeper level.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the MEIBL initiative is that it can be replicated or extended to almost any learning environment. While Delmar College (DMC) in the southern Texas, and California University (UCal) of Pennsylvania are the first two formal partners in the ACU MEIBL research project the program principles found on the MEIBL site can easily be extended to any other post secondary institutions.
