Helpful resources for mentoring
Elizabeth Bernstein shares observations with implications for modern communication in a Wall Street Journal article entitled “How Facebook Can Ruin Your Friendships.” Do you see implications for your own use of online social media?
Here’s an interesting article in Newsweek that focuses on students who choose online learning even when they could easily go to classroom-based classes.
Staying current with new trends, learning ways to improve your online teaching and sharing with other trainers and instructors is all an important part of professional development. Thanks to Janet Clary at Brandon Hall Research for sharing this great training resource.
In Sync Training offers ongoing webinars focused on improving teaching and learning primarily in the online environment. They also offer a great handout of 100 Tips for Increasing Student Success (you do have to register in order to download the file).
I’ve been listening to Instructional Design for the Real World.
Take some time to explore the site and see what you think. The list of future seminars looks interesting, too.
While checking my RSS feeds today, this site appeared in the Experiencing E-learning blog. Accessify contains many useful tools for making websites (and online course material) more accessible including an easy form builder, youtube video tagger and many other tools. I’d encourage you to take a few minutes to try out some of these programs and see how they can help you in your course development.
WELL WORTH READING: Here are two great articles recently sent to me; both are from Inside Higher Education:
During a recent mentor training we heard much excellent information from David Tiller. This post comes in response to one tiny thing he said about keeping a fast pace, but being willing to pause at times for effect. It made me think about something I read in Communication Education four or five years ago. (When I can find the reference, I’ll update this post.) It recounted a study about how long teachers pause after asking a question in class. Common complaint: “I ask questions, but they don’t respond.” Realize I’m going from memory here–I’ll also clean up these details when I find the original. But here’s what I remember.
First, they observed teachers to see how long, on average, they paused to wait for an answer before moving on. They found, on average, that teachers paused for four seconds. Anyone who has worked in radio can tell you that four seconds of “dead air” seems like forever, and you’ll recognize that from a listener’s standpoint as well. Still, it’s not all that long, really. On average, after four seconds teachers would give the response they sought and move on (occasionally getting a response during that period, of course).
Next, they asked teachers in the study to commit to asking a question and then keeping silent regardless of how long it would take for someone to respond. Teachers anticipated having to keep quiet for ten, fifteen minutes if necessary, but they agreed to do so. Observers then watched the classes to see how long, on average, teachers had to wait to actually get a response.
Average wait time? Seven seconds.
As with this kind of research, even assuming I’ve reported it correctly, there are a lot of factors that may be hard to track. I don’t recall, for instance, whether they tracked it over time to see if teachers had to wait longer periods of time in the beginning until students got the idea that “we’re not moving on until you guys respond.” If so, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that wait times came down drastically, approaching the four seconds they were waiting before.
I do know my own experience bears this out. After reading the study, I decided to use the technique in my own classrooms, and for some of them, I really did have to wait a long time–a minute or two. I’m comfortable with silence, but it was hard at times. Once, the response finally was, “Did you want us to answer that?” Several more times, after a half minute or so, the first response was, “What was the question?” But it quickly turned the climate around.
Side effect: I also had to get better at using body loanguage to be clear when I was asking a rhetorical question, since I began getting responses to those too.
What has been your experience with this? What are the implications for online teaching? Remember, all you have to do to comment is register, if you’re not already.
This game strikes me as having combined old-style “technology” (pen and paper) with modern electronics to turn problem-solving into a game. Obviously, games involve problem-solving; the trick sometimes is to keep people from knowing that it’s educational.
Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo.
You may have heard the term API tossed about in a meeting, for example, “D2L hasn’t released the API yet” or “When will the API be available for xx tool?” but what exactly is an API?
This blog post by Andy Wibbels explains API in non-tech terms so you may want to read this.
Andy Wibbels, “What is an API?”
FIVE QUESTIONS…For George Siemens
Barry Dahl sums it up and comments on it; D2L announces it succinctly. Bottom line: D2L’s pre-existing art shows Blackboard just didn’t invent what it says it invented, so there is no patent infringement.
Pardon me while I offer an editorial opinion, that is mine alone (i.e., it does not necessarily represent the opinion of anyone except me): duh! Now, Bb, can you leave them alone so they can focus on educating students instead of enriching lawyers?
Full US Patent Office report is available in PDF format.
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