Dickens’ tale circa 1135 and other massive errors. Google Book Search’s mistakes provoke questions …
TimesHiger Ed. http://tinyurl.com/lm3kxl
“Professor Nunberg was even more outspoken in a blog posted on 29 August. With Google likely to become “the universal library for a long time to come”, scholars need good metadata. Unfortunately, Google’s information is “a train wreck: a mish-mash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess”. “
The Higher Education Academy and JISC welcome the publication (on Tuesday
12 May) of the HE in a Web 2.0 World report, which looks at the projected
future trends in the use of technology in higher education.
A committee of inquiry was set up after discussions between the Academy
and JISC examined the online experiences of young people currently
entering higher education, and how this impacts on their studies.
Findings from the report show that students typically spend four hours a
day online, a figure that looks set to rise as teenagers make increasing
use of Web 2.0 technology in their daily lives. One of the challenges for
the higher education sector is therefore to ensure that staff can keep
pace with the advancing technology which many of their students rely on
every day, using the technology to enhance the student learning
experience.
David Sadler, Director of Networks at the Academy, said: “This report
provides a valuable insight into the knowledge and experience our students
have of social web technologies.
“The Academy already undertakes significant work to enhance the student
learning experience through the use of Web 2.0, and we work closely with
institutions and their individual staff members to identify and share the
most effective practice in its use.”
Through their collaborative work, the Academy and JISC will continue to
support HEI staff in their use of Web 2.0 technology, to help them become
proficient users of a range of appropriate technologies.
Dr Malcolm Read, executive secretary JISC, said: “This report highlights
what needs to be done to maintain the UK’s position at the forefront of
higher education. JISC will continue to deliver a world-class
infrastructure to support the use of web 2.0 technologies giving access to
over 18 million people across education to secure online resources.
“We will also build upon our work in giving training, advice and guidance
on how learners and academics can re-use and re-purpose online content
freely while respecting and recognising intellectual property rights - all
of which will help to develop a digital and knowledge based economy.”
see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/heweb2.aspx
Report on teens and cell phone ownership in the US http://tinyurl.com/lufd5v
“Virtual worlds are about to plunge into a “trough of disillusionment”, lecture podcasts are fast becoming obsolete, but cloud computing will soon be on the “slope of enlightenment”. These are the findings of an analysis of the “hype cycle” of technology in education, published by Gartner, an IT advisory firm.”
…
“Cloud email for higher education - free email services offered to institutions by the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo - is also firmly ensconced in the sector. In 2008, the technology was heading towards the peak of inflated expectations, but this year passed through the trough of disillusionment and is now on the slope of enlightenment. Dr Lowendahl said the technology had seen a “tremendous uptake, especially in higher education”. Although cloud email for the sector was launched only in October 2005, the report, published last week, estimates it has a penetration rate of up to 20 per cent. I think it is the quickest uptake I have seen of outsourcing in higher education,” Dr Lowendahl said.”
From Report in Times Higher Education: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=407839&c=1
Press releases etc:
Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies http://bit.ly/ooVxT : potentially transformational technologies http://ff.im/6Tgjt
online ed continues to grow faster than brick-&-mortar, 2009’s economic woes accelerate the pattern http://bit.ly/9CYnO
“In its annual report on the state of online education, the Sloan Consortium reported in 2008 that online education continues to grow at a much faster rate than its brick-and-mortar competitors. Anecdotal evidence suggests that 2009’s economic woes will only accelerate the pattern”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/31/CMLM18L4MG.DTL#ixzz0N98M8aPk
Funded by the JISC Learning and Teaching Committee through the Innovation group’s e-Learning Programme, JISC infoNet, the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and the Higher Education Academy were presented with the challenge of trying to make some kind of sense of the diversity of current e-learning practice across the HE sector and to seek out evidence that technology-enhanced learning is delivering tangible benefits for learners, teachers and institutions.
The result is, we believe, a celebration of the diversity in the sector and shows the effectiveness of a range of approaches. Most importantly it shows that it is possible to address the thorny question of defining tangible benefits. The set of 37 detailed online case studies available here are supported by an accompanying publication and a briefing paper. We hope these will serve to inform, to inspire, to stimulate debate and to encourage others to participate in this form of knowledge exchange.
Taken from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible, see this page for more & reports
WASHINGTON — Online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning, according to a new meta-analysis released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.
The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took “blended” courses — those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction — appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.
The Education Department examined all kinds of instruction, and found that the number of valid analyses of elementary and secondary education was too small to have much confidence in the results. But the positive results appeared consistent (and statistically significant) for all types of higher education, undergraduate and graduate, across a range of disciplines, the study said.
A meta-analysis is one that takes all of the existing studies and looks at them for patterns and conclusions that can be drawn from the accumulation of evidence.
(see link below for more …)
Taken from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/29/online
June 29, 2009
Mobile Surveys at Different Colleges Produce Mixed Signals: http://bit.ly/4sHkt
RT @higheredu
Oxford Internet Institute’s “The Internet in Britain 2009″ sheds important light on the attitudes of non-users:
“Digital Britain is heavily focused on government investment in infrastructures and pilot projects, supported in part by a tax on fixed copper lines and a governmental ‘Digital Delivery Agency’. The OxIS 2009 survey indicates that the major issues are neither infrastructures nor innovation. The key concerns are the attitudes and beliefs of individuals uninterested in the Internet. It will be far less expensive and more effective to focus on informing those who think the Internet is irrelevant to their lives than on building information super-highway projects in the 21st Century.”
via Norbert Pachler
This project has had a lot of succcess Re-Engineering Assessment Practices (REAP). The three steps to REAP are taken from an email to me from the project leader, Professor David Nicol, and first appeared in the the internal report ‘Why Change’(by John Cook, May 2008)
Firstly, any any assesment project should be based on sound, compelling and transparent educational thinking. Most ICT implementations just add extra cost if they are not properly grounded in a research-based, and convincing, pedagogy. ICT should support the delivery of some powerful teaching and learning ideas (pedagogy). To my mind this requires transforming vague ideas about learning into defined principles that are easy to understand and that can guide implementation. For example, I was interested in how formative assessment could support the development of learner self-regulation and lead to learning gains. I identified some principles of assessment, clearly articulated them and then used technology to support their implementation in powerful ways. All local projects had to implement subsets of these principles to be funded and supported.
Second, and related to the last, you need a good brand to promote and further your case across the institution and with the V-C. I used assessment because everyone saw it as an issue; for staff this was time in marking and providing feedback, for students better formative assessment could lead to better quality learning. For the institution, things like the NSS have made this a hot topic.
Thirdly, you need evidence if you do something there will be payoff (learning or efficiency gains, enhanced reputation etc). We produced evidence of learning/efficiency gains in 11 out of 19 redesigned REAP modules with technology supporting assessment and feedback processes. However, if you don’t have evidence now a few pilots, properly evaluated and showing the possibilities could be the start. Whatever you do during implementation you must build evaluation in. Positive findings enthuse the staff involved and students and they become internal promoters of developments. But don’t ask teachers to provide the evaluation - make it a service that goes along with the implementation. They don’t usually have the time or the skill to do this. We provided a team that did the evaluations of all the modules. Also if you have clearly defined principles you can evaluate against process measures (this adds something).
Some of these ideas are on the reap website but here is a useful link
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/elearningsfc/sfcbookletreap.pdf
Posted by John Cook
