The brain is actually three brains: the ancient reptilian brain, the limbic brain, and the cortical brain. This article will focus on the limbic brain, because it may be most important to successfully using interactive video or web-based video. The limbic brain monitors the external world and the internal body, taking in information through the senses as well as body temperature and blood pressure, among others. It is the limbic brain that generates and interprets facial expressions and handles emotions, while the cortical brain handles symbolic activities such as language as well as action and strategizing. The two interact when an emotion is sent from the limbic to the cortical brain and generates a conscious thought; in response to a feeling of fear (limbic), you ask, “what should I do?” (cortical).
The importance of direct eye contact and deciphering body language is also important for sending and picking up clues about social context.
The loss of social cues is important because it may affect the quality of the content of the presentation (by not allowing timely feedback or questions) but also because students may feel less engaged and become frustrated with the interaction, and subsequently lower their assessment of the class and the instructor (Reeves & Nass, 1996). Fortunately, faculty can provide such social cues verbally, once they are aware of the importance of helping students use these new media.
Attachment theory also supports the importance of physical and emotional connections.
As many a struggling teacher knows, students are often impervious to learning new concepts. They may replay the new information for a test, but after time passes, they revert to the earlier (and likely wrong) information. This is referred to as the “power of mental models.” As explained in Marchese (2000), when we view a tree, it is not as if we see the tree in our head, as in photography.
The coping strategies of the two hemispheres are fundamentally different. The left hemisphere’s job is to create a belief system or model and to fold new experiences into that belief system. If confronted with some new information that doesn’t fit the model, it relies on Freudian defense mechanisms to deny, repress or confabulate – anything to preserve the status quo. The right hemisphere’s strategy is to play “Devil’s Advocate,” to question the status quo and look for global inconsistencies. When the anomalous information reaches a certain threshold, the right hemisphere decides that it is time to force a complete revision of the entire model and start from scratch (Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998, p. 136).
While much hemispheric-based research has been repudiated as an oversimplification (Gackenbach, 1999), the above description of how new information eventually overwhelms an old world view may be the result of multiple brain functions – some of which work to preserve our models and others to alter – that help us both maintain and change as needed.
Self-talk is the “the root of empathy, understanding, cooperation, and rules that allow us to be successful social beings. Any sense of moral behavior requires thought before action” (Ratey, 2001, p. 255).
Healy (1999) argues that based on what we know about brain development in children, new computer media may be responsible for developing brains that are largely different from the brains of adults. This is because “many brain connections have become specialized for . . . media” (p. 133); in this view, a brain formed by language and reading is different from a brain formed by hypermedia. Different media lead to different synaptic connections being laid down and reinforced, creating different brains in youngsters raised on fast-paced, visually-stimulating computer applications and video games. “Newer technologies emphasize rapid processing of visual symbols . . . and deemphasize traditional verbal learning . . . and the linear, analytic thought process . . . [making it] more difficult to deal with abstract verbal reasoning” (Healy, 1999, p. 142).
At University of Wisconsin – Superior – we have stopped offering proctoring for students. Faculty, however, have come up with a way for online testing. They ask student to use Kaltura tto record their face and part of the test and then post the video in the dropbox.
The Integrated Advising and Planning for Student Success or ‘iPASS’ grant has been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; it supports the transformation of advising and student services in higher ed through the redesign of structures, processes, and technologies. To date, this work is ongoing in 26 grantee institutions across the country.
created and delivered our Series on Excellence in Advising through iPASS as a semi self-paced online course to ensure the broadest access possible to all grantees.
Some 79 percent of U.S. 13- to 18-year-olds surveyed said they have a Snapchat account, more than any other type of social media. Of that age group, 73 percent have an Instagram account and just 57 percent say they are on Facebook.
Respondents had to choose only one social network they could keep if they were “trapped on a deserted island.” This time, 44 percent of teens picked Snapchat, ahead of Instagram (24 percent) and Facebook (14 percent). One year ago, for RBC’s same survey question, the percentage of teens who insisted on keeping Snapchat on a desert island led with 28 percent — suggesting the app is still growing in necessity/popularity among young people.
This case study of Indiana University’s e-text initiative reports on students’ actual use of and engagement with digital textbooks.
In a typical semester, students read more in the first four weeks and less in later weeks except during major assessment times; in a typical week, most reading occurs between 5:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. from Monday to Thursday, indicating that students use e-texts mainly as a self-study resource.
Highlighting was the markup feature most used by students, whereas use of the other interactive markup features (shared notes, questions, and answers) was minimal, perhaps because of students’ lack of awareness of these features.
Research found that higher engagement with e-texts (reading and highlighting) correlated with higher course grades.
Although cost savings is often cited as a key advantage of electronic textbooks (aka, e-textbooks or simply e-texts), e-texts also provide powerful markup and interaction tools. For these tools to improve student learning, however, their adoption is critically important.
The Indiana University e-texts program, which began in 2009, has four primary goals:
Drive down the cost of materials for students
Provide high-quality materials of choice
Enable new tools for teaching and learning
Shape the terms of sustainable models that work for students, faculty, and authors
To date, student savings on textbooks amount to $21,673,338. However, we recognize that many students do not pay the full list price for paper textbooks when they purchase online, buy used copies, or recoup some of their costs when they resell their texts after the semester is over.
herefore, we divide the calculated savings by two and report that total as a more accurate representation of student savings. Consequently, we claim that students have saved about $11 million since IU’s e-texts program started in spring 2012.
In addition to printing through the e-text platform, students can purchase a print-on-demand (PoD) copy of an e-text for an additional fee.
One downside of e-texts is that students lease their textbook for a limited time instead of owning it. This lease generally lasts a semester or six months, and students lose their access afterwards. However, with IU’s e-text model, students get access to the textbook before the first day of class and maintain their access until they graduate from Indiana University. That is, students can go back to the e-texts after their course to review or reference the content in the book. This could be especially important if the e-text course is a prerequisite for another course.
Causes and Solutions to Low Morale of Online Faculty
Written by Dani Babb Published: 24 March 2016
The common threads and take-aways for administrators:
Faculty don’t like being micromanaged. Hire faculty you trust to do the job, provide guidelines and training, and let professionals do their thing.
Pay appropriately, and give notice if you are canceling a course.
Set expectations clearly, and communicate with faculty in the same tone you’d expect; assume the best not the worst.
Include adjuncts as part of your team.
Compensate when job duties increase.
Handle student issues quickly, make sure prepared students enter programs (particularly in graduate work).
Move away from the “gotcha mentality” into an inclusive, people-make-mistakes, “we are all in this together” model.
Here’s what some of the faculty who agreed to have their comments posted had to say about what lowers their morale:
Sean-David McGoran noted that students allowed to bully faculty, repetitious and unnecessary training and unreasonable deadlines at final and midterm examination time can be demoralizing.
Linda Chilson said that pay, curriculum that doesn’t make sense, student behavioral issues and school districts funding unnecessary training are issues, as well as lack of support for out of the box thinking.
Leah Murray noted that micromanaging every little detail is demoralizing – and understandably added, “why not teach the class yourself if you are going to pay that much attention“. She also noted that lack of positive reinforcement and others taking credit for work you did is troubling.
Mary Kay Westgate-Taylor cited poor new faculty orientation, unclear expectations, micromanagement and lack of support from administration regarding student issues as concerns.
Dr Steve Woodsmall noted open admissions – too many graduate students who aren’t able or willing to do graduate level work or have a sense of entitlement (paying tuition guaranteeing a degree) and complaining when they receive clearly deserved failing grades causes low morale.
Quiana Bradshaw noted that schools acting like adjuncts don’t matter causes low morale. Adjuncts often work hard with no promotional opportunities with no mentoring or encouragement, and only veteran individuals offered promotions. Not including adjuncts as part of the team or micromanaging adjuncts with reports and comments is concerning.
Jeanie Rogers-Street noted that education not being the driving force of education (instead, finances being the main focus) is a cause of low morale.
Christina Krepinevich Houston noted rude emails from supervisors as a cause of low morale.
Stacie Williams commented that supervisors or administrators with a lack of experience in curriculum design and hiring skills dismissing the experience and knowledge of instructors is demoralizing.
Traci Schneider Cull noted that not having support from online higher-ups or fixing issues in courses/not responding causes low morale.
Nicki Favero Puckett cited continuous increases in workload without additional compensation as a cause.
Terri Hennessy Craig stated that severely under, or unprepared, students and canceling classes (particularly without notice) is a cause of low morale.
Maria Toy noted micromanagement and an increased workload with no additional compensation as a low morale cause
company or group who is doing online program evaluation?
this information is extracted from the Blend-Online discussion list
Colleagues,
Do you know any company or group who is doing online program evaluation? Our school is seeking a consulting group to come to review our online programs and identify areas relate to online learning that we need to improve.
Thanks,
Carrie Halpin, Ph.D. Professor/Instructional Designer & Technologist eLearning & Instructional Technology (eLIT) Virginia Western Community College 3095 Colonial Ave. SW, Roanoke, VA 24015 Office: Brown Library 102 Phone: 540-857-6636 Fax: 540-857-6138 Email: chalpin@virginiawestern.edu
iDesign will do both of those things using a fee-for-service model versus a revenue-sharing model like Academic Partnerships or 2U. I have no personal experience with any OPM, but iDesign is the only one I know of that offers that ala carte type service.
2018 Special Focus: Education in a Time of Austerity and Social Turbulence 21–23 June 2018 University of Athens, Athens, Greece http://thelearner.com/2018-conference
Theme 8: Technologies in Learning
Technology and human values: learning through and about technology
Crossing the digital divide: access to learning in, and about, the digital world
New tools for learning: online digitally mediated learning
Virtual worlds, virtual classrooms: interactive, self-paced and autonomous learning
Ubiquitous learning: using the affordances of the new mediaDistance learning: reducing the distance
Theme 9: Literacies Learning
Defining new literacies
Languages of power: literacy’s role in social access
Instructional responses to individual differences in literacy learning
The visual and the verbal: Multiliteracies and multimodal communications
Literacy in learning: language in learning across the subject areas
The changing role of libraries in literacies learning
Languages education and second language learning
Multilingual learning for a multicultural world
The arts and design in multimodal learning
The computer, internet, and digital media: educational challenges and responses
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PROPOSAL: Paper presentation in a Themed Session
Title
Virtual Reality and Gamification in the Educational Process: The Experience from an Academic Library
short description
VR, AR and Mixed Reality, as well as gaming and gamification are proposed as sandbox opportunity to transition from a lecture-type instruction to constructivist-based methods.
long description
The NMC New Horizon Report 2017 predicts a rapid application of Video360 in K12. Millennials are leaving college, Gen Z students are our next patrons. Higher Education needs to meet its new students on “their playground.” A collaboration by a librarian and VR specialist is testing the opportunities to apply 360 degree movies and VR in academic library orientation. The team seeks to bank on the inheriting interest of young patrons toward these technologies and their inextricable part of a rapidly becoming traditional gaming environment. A “low-end,” inexpensive and more mobile Google Cardboard solution was preferred to HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens or comparable hi-end VR, AR and mixed reality products.
The team relies on the constructivist theory of assisting students in building their knowledge in their own pace and on their own terms, rather than being lectured and/or being guided by a librarian during a traditional library orientation tour. Using inexpensive Google Cardboard goggles, students can explore a realistic set up of the actual library and familiarize themselves with its services. Students were polled on the effectiveness of such approach as well as on their inclination to entertain more comprehensive version of library orientation. Based on the lessons from this experiment, the team intends to pursue also a standardized approach to introducing VR to other campus services, thus bringing down further the cost of VR projects on campus. The project is considered a sandbox for academic instruction across campus. The same concept can be applied for [e.g., Chemistry, Physics, Biology) lab tours; for classes, which anticipate preliminary orientation process.
Following the VR orientation, the traditional students’ library instruction, usually conducted in a room, is replaced by a dynamic gamified library instruction. Students are split in groups of three and conduct a “scavenger hunt”; students use a jQuery-generated Web site on their mobile devices to advance through “hoops” of standard information literacy test. E.g., they need to walk to the Reference Desk, collect specific information and log their findings in the Web site. The idea follows the strong interest in the educational world toward gaming and gamification of the educational process. This library orientation approach applies the three principles for gamification: empowers learners; teaches problem solving and increases understanding.
Similarly to the experience with VR for library orientation, this library instruction process is used as a sandbox and has been successfully replicated by other instructors in their classes.
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