“Professors do not engage students enough, if at all, when trying to innovate the classroom. It’s shocking how out of touch they can be, just because they didn’t take the time to hear their students’ perspectives.”
The article and the excellent comments underneath the article do not address the possibility of cultural differences. E.g., when article cites the German research, it fails to acknowledge that the US culture is pronouncedly individualistic, whereas other societies are more collective. For more information pls consider:
Ernst, C. T. (2004). Richard E. Nisbett. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why. Personnel Psychology, (2), 504.
Nisbett, R. E. (2009). Intelligence and how to get it : why schools and cultures count / Richard E. Nisbett. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2009.
The article generalizes, since another omission is the subject-oriented character of the learning process: there are subjects, where lecture might be more prevalent and there are some where project learning, peer instruction and project-based learning might be more applicable.
What’s desperately needed is a bachelor’s-degree makeover, one that isolates the liberal-arts education everyone needs in a fast-changing global economy and is flexible enough to accommodate the demand for skills training throughout one’s life.
while critical thinking and communication are important, Wagner said schools are in danger if they stop there. “Above all, they need to be creative problem solvers,”
a bottom-up and top-down strategy should be implemented
the bottom-up strategy will only work, if it’s accompanied by business leaders clearly articulating the outcomes they’d like to see and helping align accountability to those outcomes.
Recently elite liberal arts colleges like Hampshire and Bard have announced they won’t consider SAT or ACT scores if they’re submitted with an application, because admissions officers don’t believe the tests are a good measure of students’ potential.
The survey found that student who felt supported — that their professors cared about them as individuals, that professors made them want to learn, that they had a mentor — were three times more likely to thrive as those who did not feel supported. Only 14 percent of college graduates answered that all three of those qualities were present in their college experience.
Even fewer college graduates found their higher education experience to be relevant to life and work after college. Only six percent reported with strong affirmatives that they worked on a long term project (at least a semester), had an internship where they could apply skills, and were very engaged in an extracurricular.
Sophia: Nudged along by my friend Todd Nesloney, I use Sophia for my computer applications instruction and am very pleased with the results.
Haiku Learning: This is the full content management system that I’m trying to get our school to adopt. It’s multiplatform and robust, which makes it a great fit for our BYOD environment.
There are many other apps like Moodle, Canvas, and Coursesites. The point is that you should have one in a BYOD environment.
Assessment Aids
All three of these apps — Quick Key, Grade Ninja, and WISE — are available on iTunes and Google Play, but there are more.
If you’re working with multiple apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive, Evernote and need to search across them in one shot, take a look at Xendo (http://xen.do) – gives you a personal, private Google-like search across all your apps.
Venmo, owned by eBay’s PayPal unit, already channels as much volume in total dollar value of transactions as Starbucks’ successful mobile payment app, according to BI Intelligence’s estimates.
Venmo allows users to easily send money back-and-forth to one another for expenses like rent, restaurant and bar checks, and event tickets. Venmo is free to use and appears to be gaining the most traction with U.S. smartphone users in their late teens and twenties. It’s very popular on college campuses.
These are the top 5 frequent e-Learning voice recording situations that I’ve come across:
A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.
Is this pronounced A-C-R-O-N-Y-M-S or ‘acronyms’? Is it read as letters or read as a word? A lot of scripts do have acronyms related to company or industry jargon. Define this in the script to avoid confusion and save re-records! You can use ALL CAPS but that may not be enough. Periods or dashes between letters (A-C-R-O-N-Y-M-S) generally indicate the word to be read as individual letters. But to be safe, put explanation notes in the margin or at the top of the script defining correct pronunciation, to reduce risk.
Audio file – technical specifications
If you hire a voice talent to record for you, usually you ask for either mp3 or wav audio files back from her. But are you also specifying the bit rate? 16 bit resolution is the gold standard. If you get 24 bit, your audio may sound garbled but only after it’s embedded into your program. Save time and trouble upfront by stating your audio tech specs!
Attitude or Point Of View
What kind of attitude do you want to hear in the voice recording? Think about the end listener. What will peak their interest and attentiveness more? By taking the small amount of time to define the “who is talking” and “to whom”, you can help the person recording to provide a POV (point of view) with the right attitude. Plus, it’s a great way to provide impact and underscore the project for the client. This is a gem – often unused! For example, is this a co-worker talking to her peers or (differently) is she showing a new person the ropes? Is this an SME (subject matter expert) sharing expert information? To whom – Top management or research engineers? If your project is required information, like an annual safety review or similar, it can often be very dry material. Taking a couple minutes to think about the role of who delivers such information can energize dry material. Some more general examples of attitude can be: Strong and Authoritative. Caring and Conversational. Casual like a co-worker. Blue collar vs white collar.
Proximity
Another gem of a different color! A voice recording can be done further or closer to the microphone. We call that ‘proximity’. This can change or impact the way a listener responds. Compare whispering vs talking at a cubicle vs presenting to a room of people. Changing ‘proximity’ can create poignant moments that listeners will notice. Let your clients know about this technique as well. Used sparingly = high impact!
Script Writing flow – or Writing with listening in mind
After all the information is written, review the script for a flow of words that, when read aloud, are easy to comprehend and will engage the listener. This may be hard to find time for, depending on your client’s budget – but it is one of those quality elements that can win you a client’s loyalty. When I see a line or two in a script that I think can be phrased to flow more conversationally, I might offer it as an alternate.
