Category Archives: Flipped Classes

8 Characteristics of Good Online Video

video-online-learningAccording to a report published in the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, instructor-generated video can have a positive influence on student satisfaction with, and engagement in, online courses. But not all videos are created equal.

Research conducted by the American Academy of Neurology also reveals that “watching videos helps boost brain plasticity,” or the ability of the brain to undergo physical changes at any age. Learners who were trained to perform a particular task through videos performed better than those who learned through images and text, the researchers found—and they concluded that video has a “higher impact on the brain.”

 

Learn 8 high-impact strategies here.

Rubrics for Assignments in Online Courses

An important aspect of an online course is grading assignments and providing feedback. This is especially true in an asynchronous course where there is no real-time interaction between the instructors and students. Once a student completes a learning activity, the instructor teaches via the grading of the assignment and provides clear and helpful feedback to the student.

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Link: 7 Trends That Will Revolutionize Online Learning

The idea that online learning could actually be better than face-to-face instruction has gained credence in recent years as new technology solutions promise to make the educational experience more personalized and engaging. Has that time finally arrived? Here, eCampus News looks at seven trends that have the potential to remake the world of online learning.

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LINK/FILE: A Different Vision of the Bachelor’s Degree

Op ed blog post commending a November 2015 report from New America entitled “Flipping the Paradigm: Why We Need Training-Based Pathways to the Bachelor’s Degree and How to Build Them” which advocates “flipping” the bachelor’s degree path to “start with applications and work upwards towards theories.”

We build degrees that move from the broad and general at the beginning — the theory, the survey — to the specific at the end. That structure pretty much guarantees that initial encounters with large and sweeping theories will be shallow at best, since they lack both context and a sense of why they matter. By the time students get to specifics, they’ve left the big questions behind. If they return to the big questions later, it’s despite, rather than because of, the way we’ve organized degrees. They rarely get the benefit of coming back to the big questions with the benefit of context, and that’s our failure.

Download the PDF of “Flipping the Paradigm: Why We Need Training-Based Pathways to the Bachelor’s Degree and How to Build Them” by Mary Alice McCarthy. November 2015.

Matt Reed. A Different Vision of the Bachelor’s Degree. Inside Higher Ed. November 12, 2015.

Link and File: Partial Credit – The 2015 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/edtechknowledge/files/2015/10/Faculty-Attitudes-on-Technology-2015-1x2qcqt.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”] The most recent survey of faculty attitudes on technology produced for Inside Higher Ed details the 2015 responses to multiple aspects of educational technology use, online learning, and social media effects on academia. The responses come from 2,175 faculty members and 105 academic technology administrators.

Colleges and universities have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on technology they believe will improve student outcomes and simplify administrative tasks. Educational technology companies continue to demolish investment records on a quarterly basis. With all this money raised and spent under the guise of improving postsecondary education, the 2015 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology suggests that many instructors believe the gains in student learning justify the costs — even if the results are perhaps less significant than desired.

Link: How to Teach in an Age of Distraction

Image from How to Teach in an Age of Distraction

Sherry Turkle, professor of social studies of science and technology at MIT, argues against a technologically integrated classroom and cautions against the widespread use of digital technologies in the service of learning, asserting that these technologies lead to unimaginative (if efficient) multitasking. Turkle argues that “unitasking,” focusing on one topic at a time, allows for a deep engagement with curriculum content and peers, which is necessary to a quality education. In addition to degrading the in-class experience by constant checking of mobile devices, Turkle argues, outside of class students use tools like GChat and Google Docs to complete their assignments, avoiding in-person collaboration. Further, they miss the “serendipity” of spontaneous ideas that occur when people talk in person (but not digitally?).

“[A tool like GChat] doesn’t leave room for what I want my students to experience when they collaborate. I call it intellectual serendipity. It may happen when someone tells a story or a joke. Or when someone daydreams and comes back with an idea that goes in a new direction. None of this is necessarily efficient. But so many of our best ideas are born this way, in conversations that take a turn.”

Turkle, Sherry. “How to Teach in an Age of Distraction.” Chronicle of Higher Education October 2, 2015.

Link: In Sign of the Times for Teaching, More Colleges Set Up Video-Recording Studios

Meg Bernhard, “In Sign of the Times for Teaching, More Colleges Set Up Video-Recording Studios,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 31, 2015.

Gardner Campbell, vice provost for learning innovation and student success at Virginia Commonwealth University, says he’s seen an increase in the last five years in what he calls “self-service production facilities” — on-campus studios that require minimal setup and are easy for any faculty member to use. Indeed, those facilities seem to be appearing more and more frequently; Ohio State University’s studio opened just last fall, and one at Dartmouth College, called the “Innovation Studio,” opened in May.

The article examines the increasing efforts on college campuses to provide video production support for online and hybrid course instruction.

Link: Where Flipped Learning Research Is Going

David Raths, “Where Flipped Learning Research Is Going,” Campus Technology, April 15, 2015.

While most agree that the flipped classroom model benefits learning, researchers are delving into the details and exploring the many facets of a flip.

Raths examines a number of research efforts to analyze the effect of active learning within flipped class models on student outcomes. Efforts include side by side comparison of ‘traditional’ and ‘flipped’ courses in the same subject, as well as close analysis of active learning elements to measure the effectiveness of individual components.

Link: “Flipped classrooms” provide better approach for instruction of students

David Lockett,  “’Flipped classrooms’ provide better approach for instruction of students,” Daily News Journal, April 18, 2015.

Given the flexibility afforded by digital technology, we have a significant opportunity to modify the way we present material to students, such that presentation is strategically designed to increase the efficiency of learning.

This brief article considers the role of MOOCs as “a way to enhance the educational experience itself ” by incorporation into traditional class offerings. The use of MOOC materials, innovative video lectures, and other digital tools to present information allows in-class activity to focus on the promotion of active learning by engaged students.