By David Schejbal - EvoLLLution. Quality assurance is “the maintenance of a desired level of quality in a service or product, especially by means of attention to every stage of the process of delivery or production.”[1] In higher education, we’re challenged to determine how we identify whether we maintain the level of desired quality at every level of the education process. Paraphrasing Brennan and Shah, David Dill adapts the notion of quality assurance to higher education. More...
By Susan Aldridge - EvoLLLution. Authentic learning has always been a critical component of professional studies in such fields as healthcare and education, law and engineering — where internships and practicums are routine academic requirements. And with interactive technologies such as virtual reality and videoconferencing, we’re now able to reinforce, and in some cases reproduce, these site-based learning experiences by creating high-quality, digital teaching tools that can be incorporated into any learning environment. More...
By John Ebersole - EvoLLLution. State authorization, gainful employment and the credit hour; these three regulatory areas are the focus of the Department of Education’s so-called “Program Integrity” regulations. More...
By Walter Rankin - EvoLLLution. A few years ago, The New York Times ran an in-depth story that analyzed how companies were trying to market their products in ways that built upon consumer behavior because, the logic goes, “once consumers’ shopping habits are ingrained, it’s incredibly difficult to change them.”[1] A key example in the article is Febreze, originally marketed by Proctor & Gamble in 1998 as an odorless spray that eliminated bad smells. Febreze was initially deemed a marketing misfire that failed to build upon established “habit loops” of consumers. In follow-up tests, P&G found consumers had become so used to the odors within their own homes that they saw no value in changing their cleaning routine. More...
By . I use the term scaffolding to cover the many functions of an instructor in diagnosing learners’ difficulties, helping students when they struggle with new concepts or ideas, helping students to gain deep understanding of a topic or subject, helping students to evaluate a range of different ideas or practices, helping students to understand the limits of knowledge, and above all challenging students to go beyond their current level of thinking or practice to acquire deeper understanding or a higher level of competency. Read more...By . Resources available to teachers/instructors and the learners are a critical component of an effective learning environment. As in the case of learner characteristics, an instructor may not have a lot of control over the resources available to him or her, but resources (or the lack of them) will impact a great deal on the design of teaching. Fighting for appropriate resources is often one of the most challenging tasks for many teachers and instructors. At the same time, of all the components, resources reflect some of the greatest changes resulting from a digital age. Read more...By . I started Chapter 5 by suggesting that instructors should think about design through the lens of constructing a comprehensive learning environment in which teaching and learning will take place. I have been working through the various components of a learning environment, focusing particularly on how the digital age affects the way we need to look at some of these components. Read more...By . While there are several providers of open source learning management systems for education, Kuali is the only provider of free, open source administrative software specifically built for higher education. In a blog post on August 22, it announced that while its software will still continue to be developed, open source and freely available, it will be creating a commercial company to provide for profit commercial services, such as hosting and contracted software development. Read more...By . Chapter 5 of my open textbook, ‘Teaching in a Digital Age’ is about the design of teaching and learning, which I am currently writing and publishing as I go.
By Cathy Davidson. Do students learn less when they are taking notes on a laptop than they learn when they take notes in a lecture class by handwriting? Apparently, according to this one much-quoted popular report on an actual study, the answer is yes. ( I'll add something later, in the Comments section, about the study itself, which apparently does not say some of what the media says), but the point is why do people keep asking this question, the wrong question: handwriting versus laptops in a lecture hall. Okay, so if that is your binary, maybe you should have them take notes. More...
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