The Changing Learner Experience, UK

Posted by Celia Walter | 11 Feb, 2009
Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience
The Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience is a group of high level educational policy makers looking at the policy and strategic challenges of the dramatic growth in the availability of a wide range of affordable, high quality personal communication tools and technologies. Essentially they are examining how the students expect technology to be part of their learning experience in universities, especially with regard to the use of Web 2.0 technologies. Specific areas of enquiry include learner behaviour, attitudes and expectations, drivers of the use of technology and access to resources. Their emerging findings are available, with a final report due out early in 2009. From Intute.ac.uk
http://www.clex.org.uk/

Global Issues in Context, an e-resource. Free access till 9th Frebruary 2009

Posted by Celia Walter | 27 Jan, 2009

GALE/Cengage Learning has just released Global Issues in Context, an e-resource with a non-U.S.-centric view that examines global issues and events and attempts to help students “… develop the framework to better understand 21st-century issues, helping them think critically about global connections and the interdependence of all nations.” The site includes: “background information and explanations of the impact of issues and events, expert perspectives analyzing issues from cultural, religious, political, social, economic, scientific and health standpoints, full-text international magazines, academic journals and news sources, primary sources (such as legislation and court proceedings), statistics (including interactive graphs, tables and charts)…,

250 media-rich issue pages, 200 country pages, 400 international newspapers and magazines,

and a multimedia library.”

 

GALE/Cengage Learning is making this new file available for free to e-Views readers until February 9, 2009, via this link: Global Issues in Context.

 

Some of the topics:

AIDS Orphans

 

Global Economic Crisis

Global Warming

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Restrictions on Women

2009 Horizon Report: emerging technology impact on higher education

Posted by Celia Walter | 22 Jan, 2009
The annual Horizon Report is a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons: a year or less, two to three years, and four to five years.

The areas of emerging technology cited for 2009 are:
• Mobiles (i.e., mobile devices)
• Cloud computing
• Geo-everything (i.e., geo-tagging)
• The personal web
• Semantic-aware applications
• Smart objects
Each section of the report provides live Web links to examples and additional readings.

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5612.pdf

Teaching and Learning Challenges of 2009

Posted by Celia Walter | 16 Jan, 2009

Following four months of discussion, Educause has issued their Top Teaching and Learning Challenges for 2009. They have set up a Ning network and a wiki to address these issues:

  1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation.
  2. Developing 21st-century literacies among students and faculty (information, digital, and visual).
  3. Reaching and engaging today’s learner.
  4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with IT.
  5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning (with technology) in an era of budget cuts.
iLibrarian permalink

7 Things You Should Know About Lecture Capture

Posted by Celia Walter | 23 Dec, 2008

Educause has published another of its 7 Things guides, this time focusing on the tech which enables instructors to record their lessons for students to access digitally. In 7 Things You Should Know About Lecture Capture, the folks at Educause answer the following questions:

  • What is it?
  • Who’s doing it?
  • How does it work?
  • Why is it significant?
  • What are the downsides?
  • Where is it going?
  • What are the implications for teaching and learning?
From iLibrarian blog

Colleges and Universities [in USA] Increasingly Rely on Underpaid Contingent Faculty to Teach Courses.

Posted by Celia Walter | 10 Dec, 2008

Colleges and Universities Increasingly Rely on Underpaid Contingent Faculty to Teach Courses
Source: American Federation of Teachers

More than half of the undergraduate courses at U.S. public colleges and universities are taught by “contingent” faculty and graduate instructors rather than full-time tenured faculty, resulting in an unstable and financially exploited workforce, according to a report released today by the American Federation of Teachers. The report, “Reversing Course: The Troubled State of Academic Staffing and a Path Forward,” also includes a novel formula to track staffing and wage trends and correct inequities. “Reversing Course” was prepared for the AFT by the research firm JBL Associates.

According to the report, contingent faculty and instructors, including graduate teaching assistants, make up almost 70 percent of the people teaching in U.S. colleges and universities today. The report also found that contingent faculty members teach nearly 49 percent of all undergraduate public college courses. Because graduate teaching and research assistants are not counted as college “faculty” in most databases, that figure does not include graduate instructors. When graduate teaching assistants—who teach 16 percent to 32 percent of undergraduate sections at public research universities—are added to the mix, it becomes clear that nonpermanent faculty members instruct well over half of all undergraduate classes.

In addition to the disturbing loss of full-time tenured positions, the report found that contingent faculty face job insecurity, financial inequity and lack of professional support. According to the report, contingent faculty members are earning disproportionately low wages per class. Part-time/adjunct faculty members, who comprise the majority of the contingent faculty pool, receive an average of $2,758 per course, often with few or any health benefits and pensions.

+ Full Report (PDF; 3.4 MB)

Docuticker permalink

International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (IJTLHE)

Posted by Celia Walter | 4 Dec, 2008

International journal of teaching and learning in higher education (IJTLHE)
The International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (IJTLHE) is a freely available, online peer reviewed journal that provides a forum for higher education staff, administrators, researchers, and students who are interested in improving post-secondary instruction. It covers higher education pedagogy and the scholarship of teaching and learning across subject areas, educational institutions, and levels of instructional expertise. It is the journal of the International Society for Exploring Teaching and Learning (ISETL). The website includes an archive of past issues stretching back to 2005, a search facility, a listing of the most popular downloads and the option to download an entire issue. Individual articles are available as PDF files, with online abstracts and the option to email them to your contacts. Users can also sign up for an email alert to learn about new issues or subscribe to the RSS feed. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/

The Tower and The Cloud, an Educause e-book

Posted by Celia Walter | 3 Nov, 2008

The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual -- or consumerization -- is reducing the individual's reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones. Second, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with network standards, open standards and content, and techniques for virtualizing hardware, software, and services is making it possible to leverage scale economies in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing -- a standardized infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services. Comsumerization and industrialization beg the question "Is this the end of the middle?"; that is, what will be the role of "enterprise" IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions? This volume examines the impact of IT on higher education and on the IT organization in higher education. iLibrarian blog

Entire book

 Table of Contents

©2008 EDUCAUSE ISBN 978-0-9672853-9-9

Foreword
by Diana G. Oblinger
Preface
by Richard N. Katz
About the Authors

Higher Education and Information Technology

The Gathering Cloud: Is This the End of the Middle
by Richard N. Katz
A Matter of Mission: Information Technology and the Future of Higher Education
by Clifford A. Lynch
The University in the Networked Economy and Society: Challenges and Opportunities
by Yochai Benkler

The Globalization of Higher Education

Growing in Esteem: Positioning the University of Melbourne in the Global Knowledge Economy
by Glyn Davis, Linda O’Brien, and Pat McLean
Higher Education and the Future of U.S. Competitiveness
by David Attis

Accountability

The Social Compact of Higher Education and Its Public
by Larry Faulkner
Accountability, Demands for Information, and the Role of the Campus IT Organization
by Brian L. Hawkins

IT Governance

E-Research Is a Fad: Scholarship 2.0, Cyberinfrastructure, and IT Governance
by Brad Wheeler
Beyond the False Dichotomy of Centralized and Decentralized IT Deployment
by Jim Davis
From Users to Choosers: The Cloud and the Changing Shape of Enterprise Authority
by Ronald Yanosky

Open Information, Open Content, Open Source

Cultural and Organizational Drivers of Open Educational Content
by Malcolm Read
Challenges and Opportunities of Open Source in Higher Education
by Ira H. Fuchs
Who Puts the Education into Open Educational Content?
by Andy Lane

Scholarship in a Cloudy World

The Tower, the Cloud, and Posterity
by Richard N. Katz and Paul B. Gandel
From the Library to the Laboratory: A New Future for the Science Librarian
by Mary Marlino and Tamara Sumner
Social Networking in Higher Education
by Bryan Alexander
Scholarship: The Wave of the Future in the Digital Age
by Paul N. Courant
Where Is the New Learning?
by Kristina Woolsey
Teaching and Learning Unleashed with Web 2.0 and Open Educational Resources
by Christine Geith
University 2.0
by John Unsworth
The Tower, the Cloud, and the IT Leader and Workforce
by Philip Goldstein

Afterword
Index

 

NMC: Horizon Project and Horizon Report, 2008

Posted by Celia Walter | 24 Jul, 2008

Background and updates about this project that "charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and creative expression and produces the ... annual Horizon Report." Downloadable reports available back to 2004 (some in other languages). Includes related links. From the New Media Consortium (NMC), "an international ... not-for-profit consortium of over 260 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies."
URL: http://www.nmc.org/horizon
LII Item: http://lii.org/cs/lii/view/item/26508

Annotation copyright LII.ORG 

Journal of Online Learning and Teaching [pdf]

Posted by Celia Walter | 21 Jul, 2008
Journal of Online Learning and Teaching [pdf]

http://jolt.merlot.org/

More and more educators may wish to get involved with online teaching initiatives, but they may not be sure where to start. That's where the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) steps in to provide a bit of assistance. JOLT is published four times a year, and its objectives are to enable faculty to use technology effectively in teaching and learning and also to enable academic programs to design and deploy academic technology. The journal has been published since the summer of 2005, and first-time visitors should take a look at the current issue to get a sense of their work. Visitors will find pieces on course management systems, creativity in online courses, and how to monitor and examine online discussions. Those who are so inclined should feel welcome to submit their own work for potential inclusion in a forthcoming volume. [KMG] Scout Report

Summer Reading That May Improve Your Fall Teaching

Posted by Celia Walter | 10 Jul, 2008


Description:
This summer reading list features titles on improving teaching and learning at the college and university level, most from a national association of faculty developers. From the Chronicle Review of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

 http://tinyurl.com/6eq6eg

Annotation copyright LII.ORG 

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