By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Competency Education in a K-16+ World
Jonathan VanderEls, Connected Principals, 2014/12/01
The redefinition of learning as defined by outcomes rather than process is in full swing and there are proponents and opponents equally. I think the debate boils down to two sentences: first, competency-based education can support student learning as evidenced by good test scores (that's what this post shows), but second, is that all there is to an education? But maybe we're thinking of this incorrectly. More...
Educational technology 30 years on: why hasn’t education changed much?
By . For some inexplicable reason, Routledge, of the publishing group Taylor and Francis, has decided to revive this book I edited in 1984. As a result a copy landed on my desk recently. It is easy to forget how much has happened in educational technology over the last 30 years, and in particular how far the technology has advanced. At the same time, how little has changed in terms of the challenges of using technology to improve the quality of post-secondary education. Read more...A ‘starter’ bibliography on design models for teaching and learning
By . For the increasing number of students doing Masters’ dissertations or Ph.D’s on course or instructional design I have collected together for convenience all the references made in my chapter on course design models for my open textbook, ‘Teaching in a Digital World.’ However, there are many other publications – this cannot be considered a comprehensive list. Also note the date of this blog post: anything published after this will not be here, unless you let me know about it. I also tend to give preference to open access publications, which means that there are a lot of articles in academic journals not on this list that should be there. Read more...What design model for teaching and learning should you use in a digital age?
By . I have now finished the first draft on Chapter 6, Models for Designing Teaching and Learning, and this is now published as part of my open textbook, Teaching in a Digital Age.The chapter covers the following design models:
6.1 What is a design model?
6.2 The classroom design model
6.3 Old wine in new bottles: classroom-type online learning
6.4 Online collaborative learning
6.5 The ADDIE model
6.6. Design models for experiential learning
6.7. Competency-based learning
6.8 Communities of practice
6.9 Massive Open Online Courses
6.10 ‘Agile’ Design: flexible designs for learning
6.11 Making decisions about design models
6.12 References on design models
Most of it has been published as posts on this blog, except the last section (6.11), which I’m sharing with you here. I will publish the complete bibliography for the chapter separately. Read more...
Can you do experiential learning online? Assessing design models for experiential learning
By . One of the frustrating things about writing a book (Teaching in a Digital World) is that just when you think you’ve finished a chapter, you realise you have missed out something really important. I thought I’d covered the main learning design models when I became aware that I hadn’t covered experiential learning. Read more...Two design models for online collaborative learning: same or different?
By . Here I am looking at the work of two separate and important Canadian theorists and practitioners, what we might call the Toronto school, Linda Harasim and her former colleagues at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in Toronto (although Linda has been firmly based for 25 years at SFU in Vancouver/Burnaby), and the Alberta school, Randy Garrison, and colleagues Terry Anderson and Walter Archer. However, they are not the only contributors to the design of online collaborative learning, as the following post makes clear. Read more...‘Agile’ Design: Flexible designs for the digital age
By . Before I was rudely interrupted by MOOCs, I had almost finished my chapter on Models for Designing Teaching and Learning for my open textbook, ‘Teaching in a Digital Age.‘ I have now finished the last of the design models, which I have called ‘Agile Design’ because it is a new and as yet unestablished approach to course design. Read more...Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2014: School and "Skills"
By Audrey Watters. One of the challenges of pulling together this year end series is that education technology doesn’t break down neatly into ten separate trends. “The Business of Ed-Tech” bleeds into the politics of ed-tech, for example. More...
Hack Education Weekly News: FBI Seizes LAUSD iPad Documents
By Audrey Watters. MOOCs and UnMOOCs
Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Are MOOC-Takers ‘Students’? Not When It Comes to the Feds Protecting Their Data”
Via Politico: “Massive open online courses, first envisioned as a way to democratize higher education, have made their way into high schools, but Washington is powerless to stop the flood of personal data about teenage students from flowing to private companies, thanks to loopholes in federal privacy laws.”
MITx’s first high school course will launch in January: 8.MechCx: Advanced Introductory Classical Mechanics. More...
Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2014: The Business of Ed-Tech
By Audrey Watters. I usually end my analysis of all the trends in ed-tech on the topic of “the business of ed-tech.” (See: 2013, 2012, 2011.) Because “the business of ed-tech” really (sadly) sums up so handily most of what has happened in education technology over the course of the past few years. More...