EdTechatouille
Leveraging Quality Matters Certified Courses
Aug 6th
Short version: An institution that facilitates and supports Quality Matters (QM) centered reviews of online courses could leverage those courses by licensing a QM certified course from the faculty developer on a semester-to-semester basis and distribute that QM certified course to any faculty – including or perhaps especially adjuncts – teaching the course. For me, that would be a win-win-win solution for the institution, the faculty developer and all other faculty teaching the same course.
Long version and a few issues are described below. After I explain all of this, please comment and tell me what sort of things I don’t know about QM or licensing issues etc that preclude an institution from doing this ;-) More >
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Loading ...Assessing Online Discussions
Aug 4th
I recently re/developed the rubric I use to assess learner performance in the online discussion for my “Introduction to Computers” course; I wanted a more generic approach suitable for many of the discussions in the course – particularly with the course going through a Quality Matters review. I developed a holistic rubric with two primary criteria supported with a number of descriptors at each level of proficiency. More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Proving a Learner’s Plagiarism
Aug 3rd
A two-week old post on the Texas Community College Teachers Association blog caught my attention this morning: Charge of Plagiarism Upheld in Court. My initial reaction was that I do not understand how it’s “a good thing” that accusations of learner plagiarism not be supported by identification of a plagiarized document. Reading the court opinion, however, adds critical information not mentioned by the TCCTA blog; considering the additional information, the issue is a great deal more complex. More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Problems with Bloom’s Taxonomy?
Jul 31st
Last week or so, I came across an older article (December, 2002) from International Society for Performance Improvement that challenged the utility of Bloom’s Taxonomy on several levels. In short, Dr. Brenda Sugrue argues that Bloom’s Taxonomy is not valid, reliable or practical. Dr. Sugrue offers two alternatives which both suggest an emphasis on the application and use of knowledge. I believe there’s a great deal of truth in Dr. Sugrue’s argument, and I have a few additional thoughts. More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Searching for a new camera . . .
May 15th
After officially graduating yesterday, my days as a graduate student are O-V-E-R, thankfully. I now have more time on my hands and am looking forward to spending my time on a few hobbies. Photography will be one of them. Task #1? Identify and buy a new camera. Of course, I’m looking for any and all advice on which camera to purchase. If you have some, given my personal photography profile which I’ll describe below, I’d certainly appreciate the input via comments.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Conference Twitter Backchannel’s Almost Useless
May 7th
Over at EduGeek Journal, Matt Croslin posted several weeks ago about using Twitter as a conference backchannel. That stirred up a frustration I’ve had with the last several times I’ve tried to engage colleagues at a conference via Twitter. I posted a comment there that provides more explanation and context to my argument.
The long and short of it is that, for me, the twitter backchannel at conferences has become damn near useless. It’s not because Twitter’s useless or irrelevant, and it’s not because of the conference; it’s a matter of how people at conferences are using… well… not using the Twitter backchannel effectively, in my opinion. Rather than an engaging backchannel shared by colleagues and professionals engaging each other in meaningful discourse related to conference presentations, by and large, the Twitter conference backchannels have become nothing more than a “mindlessly-broadcast-whatever-the-speaker’s-saying-channel.” Your thoughts?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Self-Neutered Lecturers (Speakers, Presenters)
Apr 14th
With my dissertation officially complete, I have… gasp… free time to do any number of things. Tonight, I lost myself for an hour or more in long neglected RSS Feeds and was up long past my bedtime. Rather than reading specific feeds, I took the mixed bag of the top level folder and just started reading and watching content in one post/article after another.
Two items stand out in my mind at the moment.
- Roger Ebert’s presentation, Remaking my Voice. [Ebert @Suntimes and @Twitter]
- Stephen Downes’ presentation, The Lecture Must Stand.
Taking the two presentations juxtaposed, there’s a stronger message for me than perhaps either of the two presentations in isolation. I want to give this more thought, but briefly and roughly….. More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Where’s all the assessment specialists? learning analytics? and tweets?
Feb 23rd
EdTechatouille definitely will become more of a mixed bag of educationally related commentary over the coming months. I changed positions this past October and am no longer working day-to-day in EdTech. I’m still at the same higher ed institution, just a different position, office and location. My focus now is on curriculum development, innovation and assessment. I’ll explain that in more detail at some point, or it may become evident what that means exactly through some of the posts I’ll be writing.
In my new role, I spent the last three days in
College Station, Texas at the 11th Annual Texas A&M Assessment Conference. I will post more about individual sessions and thoughts as I have time, but I wanted to mention three things that struck me throughout the conference More >
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Effectiveness of Colleges of Teacher Education?
Feb 11th
I wanted to experiment with a new tool: iPadio, a web-based “phonecasting” tool with an accompanying iPhone app. Since I haven’t had much time to blog, I leveraged iPadio and my 80 minute, one-way commute to record my thoughts on the recent story regarding the National Council on Teacher Quality research project supported by US News & World Report and the response it has elicited from educational institutions.
The articles I read regarding the story before I jumped to my own conclusions were:
- Teachers Colleges Upset By Plan to Grade Them, New York Times, February 8, 2011: http://me.lt/4C4xt:
- President and Dean Respond to NCTQ Project to Rate Education Programs, Montclair State University, February 9, 2011: http://me.lt/6a8bF
My thoughts follow in podcast form.
(I don’t know how often I’ll do this since I really don’t like the sound of my own voice – particularly when I’m in “rant” mode. Plus, the point of recording it is to get thoughts “out the door” without much overhead in minutes; so the recording is very rough, perhaps too rough. I slapped some *really bad* techno-geek music on the front and end and edited out a cough that strangely only surfaced during the podcast – not before nor after ;-)
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Facebook Meme as Online Class’ Personal Introduction Assignment?
Jan 23rd
Teaching an online class, I’m always looking for ways for students to introduce themselves in a method other than a discussion board post. They typically don’t write anything spectacular, and after all is said and done, it is text. I have seen folks use ToonDoo.com, Animoto.com and other online tools to have students create media that introduces themselves in some way to their classmates. Tonight, I encountered a Facebook Meme that AJ (@sorry_afk) posted. It was interesting enough that I decided to follow along; I don’t do that very often. As I was finishing it, I thought this might be an interesting activity for students to do as a first activity in an online class. For it to work though, some intentionality would have to be inserted. My result, at least the image, for the meme is to the left, and the modified list of instructions for a first assignment are below. The original that AJ posted to FB is at the bottom. More >
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