Supporting Learning & Teaching

I was introduced to the Lecture Series from KMDI at the University of Toronto from my former U of T colleague.  This series is free and open for live events to the viewing public by creating a log-in ID and password.  The other option would be to check out the Recently Published Events on the ePresence Presentation Portal.

Yesterday’s 2-hour lecture series was on the topic of  “Supporting Learning & Teaching.”  Three Curriculum Learning and Teaching presenters from OISE discussed various topics around this main idea for the viewers.  Here are the presentation topics and a few few notes/thoughts/questions that I had for each:

1. New Ways of Teaching & Learning with Technology, by Jim Slotta
2. Digital communication technologies: educational and social practices, by Claire Brett
3. Technologies for Higher Education, by Jim Hewitt

 Here are some notes & references made during the webcast that caught my ear/eye:

• The challenges to using technology in education is the evolution and perspective of social online resources.
• Check out the WISE Project: http://wise.berkeley.edu/
• Values in Education (Terry Anderson, 2008): Presence, notification, cooperative learning, student modelling, documenting and sharing
• Technology & learning is understanding HOW to best utilize & embedd these technology resources into education and courses.
• How do you reconcile the difference between education and cultural purposes of these tools??
• Social vs. Technical integration; the GRAIL model: GRaduate Student Academic Identity on-Line – to help students see how their research and training is connected to their broader academic experience and relevance to their social life.
• Higher education learning with powerpoint, clickers, podcasts & wiki:
• Do students skip class if the lecture is available on podcast?
• Havard study says NO; students use podcasts for key points in lectures, or could podcasts be used to replace lectures and use the lecture time for more in-depth review of matrial 
• Clickers: “gateway” technology to expose more lecturers to the great uses of technology in their teaching practice. 
• Clickers promote learning by: questioning, encourage peer to peer learning, take a vote/poll & discuss results with peers in the class
• Clicker Results: Increased performance on test, decreased dropout rates & reduced failure rates (10-12% is now down to 4%)
• Higher education needs to consider utilizing peer instruction/learning instead o f traditional teaching practices
• MIT are going the way of Blackboard: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html

Overall, these lectures provided a few insights and it is interesting to see what colleagues elsewhere are thinking about learing & teaching with technology.

A few technical notes, that you should keep in mind if you are to partake in these lecture series:

• distance viewers are able to engage in online chat & questions
• ensure you have a strong wireless connection for streaming video
• attach  good set of speakers as the sound quality was low