Faculty perceive undergraduates to be less proficient with digital literacy skills. One-third think
their students do not find or organize digital information very well. The majority (52%) think
they lack skill in validating digital information. My note: for the SCSU librarians, digital literacy is fancy word for information literacy. Digital literacy, as used in this report is much greater area, which encompasses much broader set of skills
Faculty do not prefer to teach online (57%) or in a hybrid format (where some sessions occur
online, 32%). One-third of faculty reported no experience with these least popular course types
my note: pay attention to the questions asked; questions I am asking Mike Penrod to let me work with faculty for years. Questions, which are snubbed by CETL and a dominance of D2L and MnSCU mandated tools is established.
Table 5. Do you use these in-class technologies for teaching undergraduates? Which are the Top 3 in-class technologies you would like to learn or use more? (n = 442)
usingonline resourcesto find high quality curricular materials
37%
48%
31%
3%
18%
iClickers
24%
23%
16%
9%
52%
otherpresentation tool (Prezi, Google presentation, Slide Carnival, etc.)
23%
14%
21%
15%
51%
whiteboard / blackboard
20%
58%
23%
6%
14%
Powerpoint or Keynote
20%
74%
16%
4%
5%
document camera / overhead projector
15%
28%
20%
14%
38%
Table 6. Do you have undergraduates use these assignment technology tools? Which are your Top 3 assignment technology tools to learn about or use more? (n = 432)
D2Lasa portal to other learning tools (homework websites, videos, simulations, Nota Bene/NB, Voice Thread, etc.)
21%
28%
18%
11%
42%
videos/animationsproducedelsewhere
19%
40%
36%
2%
22%
In both large and small classes, the most common responses faculty make to digital distraction are to discuss why it is a problem and to limit or ban phones in class. my note: which completely defies the BYOD and turns into empty talk / lip service.
Quite a number of other faculty (n = 18) reported putting the onus on themselves to plan engaging and busy class sessions to preclude distraction, for example:
“If my students are more interested in their laptops than my course material, I need to make my curriculum more interesting.”
I have not found this to be a problem. When the teaching and learning are both engaged/engaging, device problems tend to disappear.”
The most common complaint related to students and technology was their lack of common technological skills, including D2L and Google, and needing to take time to teach these skills in class (n = 14). Two commented that digital skills in today’s students were lower than in their students 10 years ago.
Table 9. Which of the following are the most effective types of learning opportunities about teaching, for you? Chose your Top 2-3. (n = 473)
Count Percentage
meeting 1:1 with anexpert
296
63%
hour-longworkshop
240
51%
contact an expert on-call (phone, email, etc)
155
33%
faculty learning community (meeting across asemester,
e.g. ASSETT’s Hybrid/Online Course Design Seminar)
116
25%
expert hands-on support for course redesign (e.g. OIT’s Academic Design Team)
114
24%
opportunityto apply for grant funding with expert support, for a project I design (e.g. ASSETT’s Development Awards)
97
21%
half-dayorday-longworkshop
98
21%
other
40
8%
multi-day retreats/ institutes
30
6%
Faculty indicated that the best times for them to attend teaching professional developments across the year are before and early semester, and summer. They were split among all options for meeting across one week, but preferred afternoon sessions to mornings. Only 8% of respondents (n = 40) indicated they would not likely attend any professional development session (Table 10).
Table T1: Faculty beliefs about using digital technologies in teaching
Count
Column N%
Technology is a significant barrier to teaching and learning.
1
0.2%
Technology can have a place in teaching, but often detracts from teaching and learning.
76
18.3%
Technology has a place in teaching, and usually enhances the teaching learning process.
233
56.0%
Technology greatly enhances the teaching learning process.
106
25.5%
Table T2: Faculty beliefs about the impact of technology on courses
Count
Column N%
Makes a more effective course
302
72.6%
Makes no difference in the effectiveness of a course
42
10.1%
Makes a less effective course
7
1.7%
Has an unknown impact
65
15.6%
Table T3: Faculty use of common technologies (most frequently selected categories shaded)
Once a month or less
A few hours a month
A few hours a week
An hour a day
Several hours a day
Count
%
Count
%
Count
%
Count
%
Count
%
Computer
19
4.8%
15
3.8%
46
11.5%
37
9.3%
282
70.7%
Smart Phone
220
60.6%
42
11.6%
32
8.8%
45
12.4%
24
6.6%
Office Software
31
7.8%
19
4.8%
41
10.3%
82
20.6%
226
56.6%
Email
1
0.2%
19
4.6%
53
12.8%
98
23.7%
243
58.7%
Social Networking
243
68.8%
40
11.3%
40
11.3%
23
6.5%
7
2.0%
Video/Sound Media
105
27.6%
96
25.2%
95
24.9%
53
13.9%
32
8.4%
Table T9: One sample t-test for influence of technology on approaches to grading and assessment
Test Value = 50
t
df
Sig. (2-tailed)
Mean Difference
95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower
Upper
In class tests and quizzes
-4.369
78
.000
-9.74684
-14.1886
-5.3051
Online tests and quizzes
5.624
69
.000
14.77143
9.5313
20.0115
Ungraded assessments
1.176
66
.244
2.17910
-1.5208
5.8790
Formative assessment
5.534
70
.000
9.56338
6.1169
13.0099
Short essays, papers, lab reports, etc.
2.876
70
.005
5.45070
1.6702
9.2312
Extended essays and major projects or performances
1.931
69
.058
3.67143
-.1219
7.4648
Collaborative learning projects
.000
73
1.000
.00000
-4.9819
4.9819
Table T10: Rate the degree to which your role as a faculty member and teacher has changed as a result of increased as a result of increased use of technology
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Somewhat Disagree
Somewhat Agree
Agree
Strongly Agree
Count
%
Count
%
Count
%
Count
%
Count
%
Count
%
shifting from the role of content expert to one of learning facilitator
12
9.2%
22
16.9%
14
10.8%
37
28.5%
29
22.3%
16
12.3%
your primary role is to provide content for students
14
10.9%
13
10.1%
28
21.7%
29
22.5%
25
19.4%
20
15.5%
your identification with your University is increased
23
18.3%
26
20.6%
42
33.3%
20
15.9%
12
9.5%
3
2.4%
you have less ownership of your course content
26
20.2%
39
30.2%
24
18.6%
21
16.3%
14
10.9%
5
3.9%
your role as a teacher is strengthened
13
10.1%
12
9.3%
26
20.2%
37
28.7%
29
22.5%
12
9.3%
your overall control over your course(s) is diminished
23
17.7%
44
33.8%
30
23.1%
20
15.4%
7
5.4%
6
4.6%
Table T14: One sample t-test for influence of technology on faculty time spent on specific teaching activities
Test Value = 50
t
df
Sig. (2-tailed)
Mean Difference
95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower
Upper
Lecturing
-7.381
88
.000
-12.04494
-15.2879
-8.8020
Preparing course materials
9.246
96
.000
16.85567
13.2370
20.4744
Identifying course materials
8.111
85
.000
13.80233
10.4191
17.1856
Grading / assessing
5.221
87
.000
10.48864
6.4959
14.4813
Course design
12.962
94
.000
21.55789
18.2558
24.8600
Increasing access to materials for all types of learners
In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics are non-traditional metrics[2] proposed as an alternative[3] to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and h-index.[4] The term altmetrics was proposed in 2010,[1] as a generalization of article level metrics,[5] and has its roots in the #altmetrics hashtag. Although altmetrics are often thought of as metrics about articles, they can be applied to people, journals, books, data sets, presentations, videos, source code repositories, web pages, etc. They are related to Webometrics, which had similar goals but evolved before the social web. Altmetrics did not originally cover citation counts.[6] It also covers other aspects of the impact of a work, such as how many data and knowledge bases refer to it, article views, downloads, or mentions in social media and news media.[7][8]
++++++++++++++++
more on analytics and metrics in education in this IMS blog
The data shared in June by the Office for Civil Rights, which compiled it from a 2013-2014 survey completed by nearly every school district and school in the United States. new is a report from Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center that encourages schools and districts to use their own data to pinpoint ways to take on the challenge of chronic absenteeism.
The first is research that shows that missing that much school is correlated with “lower academic performance and dropping out.” Second, it also helps in identifying students earlier in the semester in order to get a jump on possible interventions.
The report offers a six-step process for using data tied to chronic absence in order to reduce the problem.
The first step is investing in “consistent and accurate data.” That’s where the definition comes in — to make sure people have a “clear understanding” and so that it can be used “across states and districts” with school years that vary in length. The same step also requires “clarifying what counts as a day of attendance or absence.”
The second step is to use the data to understand what the need is and who needs support in getting to school. This phase could involve defining multiple tiers of chronic absenteeism (at-risk, moderate or severe), and then analyzing the data to see if there are differences by student sub-population — grade, ethnicity, special education, gender, free and reduced price lunch, neighborhood or other criteria that require special kinds of intervention.
Step three asks schools and districts to use the data to identify places getting good results. By comparing chronic absence rates across the district or against schools with similar demographics, the “positive outliers” may surface, showing people that the problem isn’t unstoppable but something that can be addressed for the better.
Steps five and six call on schools and districts to help people understand why the absences are happening, develop ways to address the problem.
EBSCO Information Services has debuted Stacks, a hosted content management system for libraries, and Stacks Mobile, a native app for iOS and Android devices.
Social media integration, including Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn;
AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner have a “natural monopoly” since they’ve simply been at it the longest. While the Telecommunications Act of 1996 attempted to incentivize competition to upset these established businesses, it didn’t take into account the near impossibility of doing so. As Howard Zinn wrote in A People’s History of the United States, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 simply “enabled the handful of corporations dominating the airwaves to expand their power further.”
Chattanooga has somewhat famously installed its own. Santa Monica also has its own fiber network. The reason these communities have been successful is because they don’t look at these networks as a luxury, but as a mode of self sustainability.
The 19th century’s ghost towns exist because the gold ran out. The 21st century’s ghost towns might materialize because the Internet never showed up.
Social media has the potential to facilitate much closer relationships between libraries and their patrons. Current usage of social media by the library community generally remains ad hoc and somewhat experimental, but the uptake of these tools is accelerating, and they will likely play an increasingly important role in library service provision and outreach in the future. Taylor & Francis has produced a white paper that analyzes current practices relating social media’s use in the library and how this differs by librarian job role. The sample was taken from academic librarians around the world, which also allows us to examine differences by geographic location. The goal: to establish how librarians are currently using social media in their roles, the most useful social media tools and best applications for these tools in a library setting.
explores a variety of social media tools in terms of how they can be used to organize information and communities. Together, you will survey and use a variety of social media tools, such as Delicious, Diigo, Facebook, Goodreads, Google Hangouts, LibraryThing, Pinterest, Storify, Twitter, and more! You will also explore how social media tools can be used to organize and disseminate information and how they can be used to foster and sustain communities of learning.
With the widespread use of library technology that incorporates social media components, intelligent objects, and knowledge-sharing tools comes the ability of libraries to provide greater opportunities for patron engagement in those discovery systems through user-generated content. These features may include the ability of users to contribute commentary such as reviews, simple point-and-click rating systems (e.g. one star to five stars), or to engage in extensive discussions or other social interactions. This kind of content could transform authoritative files, alter information architecture, and change the flow of information within the library discovery system.
Across generations, concerns for privacy may dissipate with time as specific technologies take hold or as people become aware of a technology’s benefits and value those over their value for privacy.
Library Privacy Guidelines for Students in K-12 Schools
