231 student participants to watch two YouTube videos (one on real estate appraisals and the other on the Roman Empire) at normal speed, 1.5x speed, 2x speed or 2.5x speed. They were told to watch the videos in full screen mode and not to pause them or take any notes. After each video, the students took comprehension tests, which were repeated a week later. The results were clear: the 1.5x and 2x groups did just as well on the tests as those who’d watched the videos at normal speed, both immediately afterwards and one week on. Only at 2.5x was learning impaired.
When the team surveyed a separate group of UCLA students, they found that a massive 85% usually watched pre-recorded lectures at faster than normal speed. However, 91% said they thought that normal speed or slightly faster (1.5x) would be better for learning than 2x or 2.5x. These new results certainly suggest that this isn’t right: double-time viewing was just as good as normal viewing.
While 2x viewing was fine for learning about the material in their studies — real estate appraisals and the Roman Empire — perhaps it might not work for more complex subject matter; again, only more research will tell.
My note: sometimes around 2011, the Chronicle had a report on Berkeley students listening to coursecasts at 2X (can’t find the reference). Here some other sources about #speedlistening:
the introduction of Overcast, a podcast-playback app designed by the creator of the text-bookmaking app Instapaper. One of Overcast’s key selling points is a feature called Smart Speed. Smart Speed isn’t about simply playing audio content at 150 or 200 percent of the standard rate; it instead tries to remove, algorithmically, the extraneous things that can bulk up the play time of audio content: dead air, pauses between sentences, intros and outros, that kind of thing.
The idea of backwards design has been around for several decades, starting with Understanding by Design, published in 1998 by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTigue.
The Journal of Applied Instructional Design (JAID) is excited to announce that the special issue Designing For All: An Exploration of Universal Design for Online Learning (Volume 10, Issue 1) has recently been published using the new open-access format. A special thank you to the guest editors and all those that contributed to the issue!
In my teaching career I worked at two colleges in Wisconsin. One public and one private. Both have Learning outcomes for each course, program/major outcomes for each major, and Institutional outcomes for the college (aka Employable skills, Career essentials, or Abilities).
Recently a friend of mine started teaching an online class at the University in a different state, and she kept asking them to give her learning outcomes for the course. After some back and forth emails it turned out that this other state university doesn’t have them.
It blew my mind , how do they know what the scope and depth of teaching should be in that course? How do they get their accreditation?
I am curious to know if it is just in Wisconsin or selected states/countries that it is a common practice to have outcomes? Also how do you teach without them?
Usually the instructor is required to create the outcomes for the class, but they are usually based on meta-outcomes from the department. That’s how it has been at all institutions I have worked at. With that said, I have worked with colleagues, full professors with Ph.D.s that didn’t understand the principle of learning outcomes, and unless forced to put them in the syllabus, they either would not do it on their own or when having them, would not follow them. And forgot about triangulation of LO to activities and assessments.
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Accreditors look for program LOs but not at course level. (We learned this after a faculty member was fired for pushing back on LOs on the syllabus, and when the Uni said “SACS requirements”, SACS responded w/“um no, not really…”) Since then, we’ve collected data as part of our assessment plan & can say w/confidence that students don’t read them…
“As I create and modify my course syllabi, I want to make sure my students use APA 7th ed. when writing their formal assignments. For those of you who also use APA, what do you say in your syllabi? What matters to you with your students giving proper credit to sources, images, or videos? I’m trying to do better and expect better”
I never assume the they learned the format, and I build in an APA workshop. I use OWL Purdue and go over a sample paper first, then the APA PowerPoint. Then I give them a low stakes assignment (like a discussion post) to practice.
I talk about documentation more as a convention of their discourse community, not just citations. There is a certain structure and way of writing in APA, that along with citations, represent the values of a particular discourse community. Those are the things that matter to me. (I also get more buy in from students.)
I was happy to discover that APA now has decent examples online, free, at their website. So in my instructions to students, I linked to the main page and also 3 specific pages with commonly used items, such as newspaper articles online, and YouTube videos. So step 1 is providing tools. Step 2 is clearly expressed grade penalties.
I actually don’t say anything my syllabus. What I do is in my LMS: give them a template and links to the Purdue OWL and other relevant websites. I have also written a “Dr. Kaminski’s APA 7th Ed Guide”. It’s more of my pet peeves and what they should be focusing on that students often miss. I give a lot of grace on the first (low stakes) written assignment, with more focus on the APA portion than the actual content. After that, I’m expecting them to have it down.
I post resources to our LMS. Mostly the usual subjects (APA, Purdue OWL, etc). I often add a short video on the bias-free writing chapter because that’s often not covered in their intro to research writing courses. For citations, I’m more a stickler for complete information than semicolons and whatnot. I don’t feel good about deducting points for anything that students were taught with APA 6 that is different in 7 since we changed the rules on them.
I provide a free workshop at the beginning of the semester to explain the ‘why’ and provide practice. It carries a rather high weighting in our rubrics so…some understanding and ‘free points’ if they use it appropriately.
I have a different document I refer to in the syllabus titled “Writing Expectations”. I briefly explain the importance of using APA and the characteristics of academic writing (e.g. paraphrasing, avoiding over usage of direct quotes, and other things I see in student writing). The second page is an APA job aid that shows the basics for citations, reference lists, and leveled headings.
