41st Annual Conference - ISETL

Elena Kurinski, Professor of Spanish at St. Cloud State University, will be blogging from the International Society for the Exploration of Teaching and Learning conference, October 13 - 15, 2011.

You can read about her experience at her blog.

Elena is attending this conference in part thanks to funds from the Office of the Chancellor's faculty development grants. Round 3 of the 2011-12 grant program is still open.

Learning and the Brain Conference

This is Lalita again! Everyone in the group from SCSU loved the conference! I agree with Kathy in her last post when she says faculty might be trying to "fight it" rather than "ignite it." The matter is very complex, though! Many of the speakers cautioned the participants about the problems with the i generation: their need for instant gratification, lack of face-to-face social skills, difficulty in recognizing non-verbal cues etc. I think we may have all seen that in some of our students. I also noted, with some pleasure and satisfaction, that the speakers endorsed and affirmed what I have always known as the principles of good teaching and effective learning with or without the "technology": engage the students with the material, with each other, and with the instructor actively, give learners control over how to learn and to some extent what to learn, and, finally, ensure that they reflect upon the product and process of learning, in other words, use metacognition and meta analysis complete the learning cycle. Those principles of learning have not changed; they have merely been taken over very successfully by the providers of technology, the digital game makers, the software writers, etc. We have to beat those guys to it, because we faculty are in stiff competition with them!!

Enough on my soapbox!! I will write something more specific later!

Excellent Conference!

The iGeneration: Learning and the Brain Conference was excellent! The keynote speakers were very powerful and relevant to teaching and learning, especially in the area of teacher preparation. There are numerous outcomes from this conference that I aspire to embed in my own teaching. I also have purchased some great books and have learned about web resources that I will research more to be able to share the information with colleagues in our institutions. The main idea that has hit me from all the keynote speakers is "Fight it or ignite it." This is in relationship to technology and digital learners. Numerous faculty are still in the "fight" it mode, but it was apparent throughout the conference that technology as a learning tool and way of life for this generation and the future generations is here to stay. Therefore, it is up to us to "ignite" it and work with it in our teaching and learning in ways that  benefit knowledge and skill development. I look forward to working with the other faculty from this conference on future professional development opportunities for colleagues.
Kathy:-)

Brain and Learning Conference in San Francisco, 02/2011

This conference has been great!  It has opened my eyes especially about the facts that our young students are still molding their culture and we, as educators, have the obligation and opportunity to contribute to this process.  All researchers affirm that technological games and videos give our young students smart tools to work with, clear goals to achieve, training in problem solving, and feed-back on their performance, among other skills.  The problem is that electronic games and activities don't develop feelings of empathy on the young student.   Researchers suggest that we, as educators, play an important role in creating ways in which today's student learn to develop feelings of compassion because it is only by feeling compassion towards the human condition that today's student will recognize the importance of contributing to making a better world.  In addition, it is only through feelings of compassion that the young woman or man feels identified with others at the same time s/he creates a concept of the "self".

Bye for now.  

From Lalita Subrahmanyan in San Francisco

The conference so far has been excellent! The three keynotes were great! Lots of information about the brain, and strategies to help with not just P-16 learners, but for ourselves! I love the cartoons the speakers show; everyone just cracks up!

I wonder if we can invite James Gee to campus for our Convocation, he would be excellent for faculty to hear. I would have to tell him to focus his talk more on higher education faculty.

I am looking forward to Linda Darling Hammond's lecture tomorrow!

Yesterday, one of the faculty members from SCSU who attended the pre-conference workshop said she was so excited about what she had learned she was planning to make "all kinds of changes" to her course!!

I think we will have a great set of workshops in Fall! Hope you all readers pay attention to the announcements which we will send with the help of Tom Wortman and Lynda Milne. They will be most probably on Adobe Connect!

Good night, everyone! And, thanks, Tom and Lynda, for your support for us to come here to San Francisco!

Lalita

Instructional Design - Links

The foundation of a great course is great instructional design.
Here are a few sites which will walk over the basics and provide you with some models which can help you frame your process.

• Instructional Design Central
• Instructional Objectives and Tests
• Instructional Design Models

While these sites aren't "glitzy" - they provide good foundations in the principles and practices.

Plagiarism: Preventing or Punishing?

Last year I stumbled across a great set of presentations from Douglas Johnson who serves as the Director of Media and Technology for Mankato Public Schools in Minnesota. As we leverage online classes as a strategy to serve a broader market of students, faculty raise more frequent concerns about academic misconduct and plagiarism.

Of particular interest is a presentation titled "The Fence or the Ambulance: Are You Punishing or Preventing Plagiarism in Your School?" When you view the handout he has posted online you will see Doug's Qualities of LPP (Low Probability of Plagiarism) guidelines.
Here is the list:

1. LPP projects have clarity of purpose and expectations.
2. LPP research projects give students choices.
3. LPP projects are relevant to the student's life.
4. LPP projects ask students to write in a narrative rather than an expository style.
5. LPP projects stress higher level thinking skills and creativity.
6. LPP projects answer real questions (which students would ask).
7. LPP projects involve a variety of information finding activities.
8. LPP projects tend to be hands-on.
9. LPP projects use technology to spur creativity.
10. LPP projects use formats that use multiple senses.
11. LPP projects can be complex, but are broken into multiple steps.
12. LPP projects are often collaborative and produce results that are better than individual work.
13. LPP projects have results that are shared with people who care and respond.
14. LPP projects are authentically assessed.
15. LPP projects allow the learner to reflect, revisit, revise, and improve their final projects.
16. LPP projects are encouraged by adults who believe that given enough time, resources, and motivation, all students are capable of original work.

Each of these points is accompanied by a paragraph which gives context and strategies.

The presentation handout then goes on to present grading rubrics and assignment instructions which would be delivered to students.

Doug provides some excellent strategies to ensure that students have a genuine and meaningful experience in authoring their works by incorporating the student's own interests and goals into the assignments. Also - pacing is used - so that students are responsible for delivering components along the timeline (rather than a complete and finished work at the moment of deadline).