2015 archive
Practical Tactics for Building Academic Grit
Effective interventions to build student resilience and grit.
earn how to identify specific resiliency challenges and offer practical solutions for students. Whether identifying campus resources or coaching students directly, you will leave this training better able to promote performance and persistence. Gain a number of effective interventions that you can start using immediately both in person and online to help students:
- Build self-efficacy in the classroom
- Improve faculty interaction skills
- Overcome life barriers
- Integrate into campus life and culture
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T|H|E Journal Resources
Using Twitter to Supercharge Your Professional Development
http://www.edcircuit.com/using-twitter-to-supercharge-your-professional-development/
http://edchat.pbworks.com/w/page/219908/FrontPage
https://sites.google.com/site/twittereducationchats/education-chat-calendar
Novelist teaches freshman writing, is shocked by students’ inability to construct basic sentences
Have we lost this essential skill and can it be recovered?
http://hechingerreport.org/novelist-teaches-freshman-writing-is-shocked-by-students-inability-to-construct-basic-sentences/
The First Year Writing program at my university stresses essay-writing skills: developing an arguable thesis, presenting strong supporting arguments, using quotations as evidence.
The prevailing opinion seems to be right: brief lessons don’t accomplish much. A few bright students will quickly absorb the new concepts; the others will fill out their worksheets on subject-verb agreement almost perfectly, and then write things like, The conflict between Sammy and Lengel are mainly about teenage rebellion.
Many of the writing instructors I spoke with shared my frustration. No one enjoys reading final papers that are just as awkwardly written as the first work of the semester. But none of them said what I’ve come to believe: that we should offer more help to students who reach for eloquence, only to trip over their own contorted clauses.
Could Rubric-Based Grading Be the Assessment of the Future?
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/10/14/could-rubric-based-grading-be-the-assessment-of-the-future/
I use rubrics and see the positive sides as well as appreciate the structure they bring in assessment. But this article makes me see also the danger of rubrics being applied as a harness, another debacle no different from NCLB and testings scores, which plague this nation’s education in the last two decades. The same “standardizing” as in Quality Matter, which can bring some clarity and structure, but also can stifle any creativity, which steers “out of the norm.” A walk on such path opens the door to another educational assembly line, where adjunct and hourly for-hire instructors will teach pre-done content and assess with the rubrics in a fast-food manner.
a consortium of 59 universities and community colleges in nine states is working to develop a rubric-based assessment system that would allow them to measure these crucial skills within ongoing coursework that students produce.
written communication, critical thinking and quantitative literacy. The faculty worked together to write rubrics (called Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education or VALUE rubrics) that laid out what a progression of these skills looks like.
“These rubrics are designed to be cross-disciplinary,” explained Bonnie Orcutt
Parents and teachers are pushing back against blunt assessment instruments like standardized tests, and are looking for a way to hold schools accountable that doesn’t mean taking time away from class work.
Gamification: Practical Strategies for Your Course
http://www.academicimpressions.com/webcast/gamification-practical-strategies-your-course-december-2015
What Gamification Is:
Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.
What Gamification is not:
Gamification is not digital game-based learning (DGBL); it does not allow students to play digital games to apply/identify concepts, nor does it allow students to create games to demonstrate comprehension. Unlike DGBL, gamification does not require the use of virtual environments or elaborate tech-based systems.
Engage students through creative course design.
Learn how to strategically implement game-based design principles that can help you better engage students in a more interactive approach to education. Using gamification in your courses does not have to be difficult nor does it have to be comprehensive. We will discuss a range of different approaches that you can implement immediately to help make assignments more competitive, grading scales more interactive, and content more compelling.
more on gamification in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=gamification&submit=Search
Classroom Response Systems, AKA clickers
Report to SCSU TPR
Plamen Miltenoff, pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu
http://scsu.mn/TechInstruct
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
- The work, findings and recommendations of the faculty task force of April 2013:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2013/04/05/classroom-response-system-crs-or-clickers-questions-to-vendors/
further documents from the interviewing process:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2013/04/10/clickers-documentation/
other related information on the interviewing and selection process of CRS vendors:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2013/04/08/vendors-presentation-on-classroom-response-systems-aka-clickers-thursday-april-11-11-am-miller-center-b-31/
- Other [including pedagogical] conversations about CRS in the IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2014/02/07/open-or-free-learner-response-software-i-e-byod-clickers/
http://www.educause.edu/library/clickers
- Additional information on polling tools:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/05/21/polls-and-surveys-tools-for-education/
From: Zac Feit [mailto:zac@myschoolflow.com]
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2015 11:50 AM
To: Miltenoff, Plamen <pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu>
Subject: Hope to hear back
Plamen,
My name is Zachary Feit, and I am with Via Response. Awhile back we had spoken about our student response platform and you had expressed interest in taking a look at a better time. I was emailing to see if this was still something of interest.
Via Response provides a cloud-based student response platform that enables students to use any mobile devices instead of legacy clickers to interact with instructors during classes (including students participating from remote locations). Because we are cloud-based, Via Response is much easier to use for faculty because all questions, assessments, grade books and student data for all sections are stored in a single location that they can access from any browser. Via’s architecture also eliminates the FERPA compliance issues that are common with clicker devices that store student/grade data files on instructor computers or thumb drives.
I would be delighted to give you a 15 minute demo that goes over our system and its benefits to both teachers and student.
You can either email me back or call me at the number provided below. Thanks in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Zachary Feit
Regional Account Director
Via Response (http://www.viaresponse.com)
407-477-4491
Information literacy Across the curriculum…and in your classroom
http://www.slideserve.com/jacqui/information-literacy-across-the-curriculum-and-in-your-classroom
Assignment Ideas
- Compare a scholarly and a popular information source. Evaluate them in terms of authorship, audience, purpose, etc.
- Compare different kinds of scholarly sources (e.g., print vs. online journals, journals with varying models for peer review).
- Explore online communities and discussion forums related to a specific issue or discipline.
- Explore Wikipedia. Debate pros and cons of “crowdsourcing” and collective editing.
- Have students create a class wiki on a given research topic.
more on information literacy in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=information+literacy&submit=Search
Journal Publishers Rethink a Research Mainstay: Peer Review
http://chronicle.com/article/Journal-Publishers-Rethink-a/233715/
Over the past few years, they have sought to repair, replace, or revolutionize the practice of peer review. Their methods vary. Some propose radical transparency. Some seek to decouple review from journals. Some propose crediting scientists for their review work. And some propose doing away with the system.
Much of this work was highlighted last month, when a small group of publishers held the first Peer Review Week, via online media, to promote the benefits of and debate changes in the existing system.
“All in all, it seems pretty dreadful,” says Andrew R.H. Preston, a physicist who helped start Publons, one of several services seeking to give researchers scientific credit for their reviews.
Started two years ago, Publons has prompted controversy. It allows referees to upload reviews, without journal approval, that could prove embarrassing to authors. It has raised ethical questions that researchers have only begun to ponder, including basic things, like just who owns peer review, anyway?
Mr. Stell is one of the founders of PubPeer, a website that allows anyone to anonymously comment on a published research article. The site has become known for its role in exposing several scientific frauds in the past few years.