Category Archives: Pedagogy

Link: Research in Action Podcast from OSU Ecampus

OSU Ecampus has just launched Research in Action, a weekly podcast about topics and issues related to research in higher education. The podcast features a range of guest experts from colleges and universities across the country and internationally. Each Research in Action episode also has show notes and a transcript on the website.

You can find the podcast on iTunesStitcher, and Soundcloud.  There is also a websiteTwitter account (@RIA_podcast), voicemail line (541-737-1111), and email address (riapodcast@oregonstate.edu). You can also subscribe via the RSS feed. If you want monthly updates about episodes, you can add yourself to an email list on the website.

Link: 3 Online Education Trends That Will Shape How You Hire in 2016

The CEO of Coursera shares three trends that he thinks will shape the relationship between education and employment in the near future:

  • Job Seekers Will Build Portfolios of Online Certificates, the New Currency for Skills
  • Learning Will Become the Most Coveted Perk at Hot Employers
  • The World Will Become Your Hiring Pool

Levin, Rick. “3 Online Education Trends That Will Shape How You Hire in 2016.” Forbes. February 25, 2016.

Link: How Faculty Learn To Teach Online: What Administrators Need to Know

Research shows most teachers teach as they were taught.  However, distance educators lack a model or benchmark for online teaching because many of them have not taken online courses as students.  Indeed, many studies on teaching online point to the importance of training for online instructors.  Few studies go into specifics about exactly what that training should look like.  The purpose of this study is to examine best practices in professional development for instructors learning to teach online.

Schmidt, S., Tschida, C. and Hodge, E. “How Faculty Learn to Teach Online: What Administrators Need to Know.” Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume XIX, Number 1, Spring 2016.

Links: Stanford Launches New Innovative Teaching and Course Design Grant Program

Stanford’s new grant program seeks to provide internal financial support for innovative uses of technology in learning, including course design or re-design.

The goal of the new grant program is to support future-facing, faculty-driven innovation.

Read more at Campus Technology (January 27, 2016), or read the official announcement.

Link: Summiting by the Online Route

Excerpts from a conversation between Michael Rodgers (Southeast Missouri State) and Carl Lashley (UNC Greensboro), on Lashley’s experiences teaching in an online doctoral degree program.

UNCG’s doctoral program is attractive because it is sensitive to the needs of working professionals. The strong online component saves commuting time. From the relative comfort of home, students are fresher and more relaxed when it is time to log into the online course after a very busy day of work. Even so, most of Lashley’s students live relatively nearby (less than a 2 hour commute), which affords them the opportunity to come to campus from time to
time for face-to-face courses, meet with faculty, and attend advising sessions and seminars. Lashley’s awareness of his students’ need for a sense of belonging motivates him to use the on-campus events to establish relationships that Lashley characterizes as “accidental cohorts,” which create connections and lend authenticity to the virtual relationships born of online interactions within discussion boards and group activities.

Rodgers and Lashley. “Summiting by the Online Route.” Tomorrow’s Professor (Stanford), #1454. January 2016.

File: Stories from Students in Their First Semester of Distance Learning

This unique study used video diaries to collect data on student experiences as first-term distance learners.

Learner stories reveal many shades of grey to the “soft factors” of what it means to be a distance learner and provide a unique insight into the complexity of studying from a distance.

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/edtechknowledge/files/2016/01/1647-18694-1-PB-2dthjkm.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]

Link: Online Teaching, it Turns Out, Isn’t Impersonal

Excellent reflections by UCONN professor Gregory Semenza, who taught an online course for the first time this year, over on the Chronicle’s Vitae site.

Now that I’ve completed this first course, I feel strongly that Edmundson and other critics — however well-intended — are simply misguided about online learning being too impersonal. I got to know my group of 30 online students as well as, or better, than any undergraduate course I’ve taught in recent years.

Read the full article here.

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.

File: Educational Technology and Faculty Development in Higher Education

This report looks across EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS) and ECAR resources to tell the story about how faculty use technology, how students experience technology, and how institutional practices support educational technology. Together, the findings from these sources provide a three-dimensional perspective for how technologies in the teaching and learning environment are used by faculty, consumed by students, and supported by institutions.

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/edtechknowledge/files/2015/12/ers1507-1fv6jr3.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]

Dahlstrom, Eden (2015). Educational Technology and Faculty Development in Higher Education. EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research, EDUCAUSE.