Educause: Blackboard versus Moodle

This presentation is from the current Educause conference taking place in Denver. To view the presentation, you have to download MS Silverlight, but it’s quick:

http://educause.mediasite.com/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=3f76ff6fc7354dbdb81202bb6a00146c

 

Not Your Parent’s ‘Course Content Delivery’ — Campus Technology

Quite an interesting article about whether technology is driving the impending changes in envisioning courses as something other than content delivery .. or not. Comments?

Not Your Parent’s ‘Course Content Delivery’ — Campus Technology

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One-Minute Paper

A very concise version for quick classroom feedback:

minutepaper

Online teaching faculty discussion

Eleven faculty and staff gathered in the CTL last Wednesday to discuss online teaching over lunch. The conversation ranged widely, with significant time devoted to the use of the discussion board. A number of faculty shared how they use the discussion board, how they assessed students’ participation, and how it compared to in-class participation. The group discussed the usefulness of student tracking information and how they used it to motivate and encourage students. Other topics discussed included gradebook features, types of assignments, and group work. It is hoped that another meeting of this type can be held soon.

Four learning strategies from WSU

Check out this visual map of different virtual learning strategies:

4 strategies.pdf (application/pdf Object).

Teaching and Learning 2.0

A small group of BCC faculty met today for the first session of this faculty learning group on teaching and new technologies. The discussion ranged through a number of topics, including

• Guest lecturers in class using webcams through the Internet
• Various types of flash drives and their usefulness
• Wikis as “project space” for students to work on group assignments (kudos to Lois C. for this)
• Use of blogs for journaling; impact of adding comments
• Twitter: how is it different from email and will it be around long?
• Email overload and its impacts: “ADD” culture

Next meeting, Oct 20, 1-2pm, will continue the exploration and have a brief demo if there is interest of the webcam setup. Comments welcome!!

Call for PD Grant Proposals

The calls for Service-Learning, Student Research Success Grants, Online/Hybrid Course Development Grants, Travel Grants, and Mini-Sabbaticals have gone out via email, and are available here on the Blog under the “PD Grants” tab at the top of the site.

BCC Faculty Survey – Prelim Results

Here are some preliminary results of the Fall 09 faculty survey, more details to come. Thanks to all who contributed!

Total respondents: 64 (Full time: 33; Part time: 31) = 33% sample

Length of service (Over 10 years: 35; 2-10 years: 21; under 2 years: 9)

• Over the past five years, what have you found to be the most effective TEACHING & LEARNING METHODS?

Top Three: Class discussion, Group work, Presentations/demos (lecture was #4)

• Over the past five years, what have you found to be the most effective ASSESSMENT METHODS?

Top Three: Essays, Exams, Research papers

• Over the past five years, which TECHNOLOGIES have you found to be the most effective?

Top Three: Powerpoint, Video/DVDs, Blackboard

Can We Discuss This?

weir13 / Instant Mentor – Inside Higher Ed

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Teaching Tip

L Cooper has contributed (thank you!):

I’ve been correcting compositions for eons, and sometimes I have adopted techniques to make correcting simpler that I forgot over time.

Here’s the one I remembered, today:

Rather than make the exact same comments on the exact same errors on several different papers, as I see errors, I start typing out the short explanations in a master Word document. Whenever possible, I reference a page number in their textbook that has the appropriate explanations. I number the comments. Then, when I see the errors in students’ papers, I underline the error, write the number of the explanation next to the underlined error. I staple the comments to each composition. I assign a rewrite that requires that students actually read the explanations.

The virtues of this are:
1) No one can read my handwriting, not even me. There is a higher probability students will actually read the comments if they are legible.
2) The kinds of mistakes students make are on vocabulary or grammatical concepts they are learning and that I will assess on chapter tests and in their subsequent writing. Even if they don’t make all the errors on the master document, if they bother to read it, they’ll have a great study sheet for the test.
3) If I assign similar activities in the future, I’ll have a terrific master comment/correction sheet that I can use either as is or that I can add to when future students come up with even more exotic mistakes than those of this year’s students!

Do you have a tip to share? Add a Comment!