The Next 10 Years: Helping STEM Students Thrive series, on January 10th, from 12-1:30 PM ET. The topic will be learning spaces with the following guest speakers:
- Jeanne L. Narum, Principal, Learning Spaces Collaboratory
Jeanne will discuss what she has learned about what works, why and how it works in achieving sustainable institutional transformation in the world of planning spaces for learning in the undergraduate setting.
- Lisa Stephens, Sr. Strategist- SUNY Academic Innovation – University at Buffalo
- Rebecca Rotundo, Instructional Technology Specialist, University at Buffalo
Lisa and Rebecca will share their experience in FLEXspace (Flexible Learning Environments eXchange) an open education repository project which has expanded to over 2,600+ users from 1,200+ educational institutions across 42 countries.
- Xin Li, Associate University Librarian, Cornell
Xin will share information about the Library’s initiative to install a Portal on the Cornell campus in Sept. 2018, with the goal to engage faculty, students, and the community in live conversations with Portal users in different countries, cultures, or life circumstances, such as what others do for STEM education.
For more information on the speakers and to register and log into the event please go tohttps://gateway.shindig.com/event/learningspaces
This collaboration between Cornell University and the University at Buffalo featuring the perspectives of national thought leaders and institutional representatives about expanding the participation of women in undergraduate STEM education at different scales.
This interactive, online series features a different topic per month. Each session kicks off with an introduction by our distinguished thought leaders followed by institutional representatives from Cornell University and the University at Buffalo who will share insights from their campuses. Participants may join the conversation, ask questions, share experiences, build networks and learn more about:
· Innovations that can expand female or underrepresented minority student participation and success in STEM undergraduate education.
· Effective evidence-based STEM teaching practices commonly adopted at research universities.
· Unique institutional and cultural challenges to achieving STEM diversity.
· What difference at scale looks like.
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more on learning spaces in academic environment in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=learning+spaces
An Open Repository of Learning Space Design
The cross-institutional FLEXspace team created a global forum for sharing examples of technology-enhanced learning environments and their impact on teaching and learning.
By Meg Lloyd 10/12/16
https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/10/12/an-open-repository-of-learning-space-design.aspx
The Flexible Learning Environments eXchange (FLEXspace) a highly searchable, peer-reviewed repository of technology-enhanced learning spaces, freely available to the higher ed community.
FLEXspace uses the Artstor Shared Shelf platform to create its open education resource and share it with the higher education community.
A user begins by accessing the public facing FLEXspace website, which describes each project.
Ultimately, FLEXspace, used in conjunction with other resources like the Learning Space Rating System, will not only promote understanding of other institutions’ efforts, but also assist individual campus stakeholders in creating master learning space plans.
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more on learning spaces in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=learning+space
How Remote Learning Subverts Power and Privilege in Higher Education
https://www-edsurge-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.edsurge.com/amp/news/2021-09-06-how-remote-learning-subverts-power-and-privilege-in-higher-education
It is important to use the lessons of this transition to challenge what Paulo Freire calls “the banking system” of education—where professors aim to simply deposit knowledge into students—and instead create inclusive pedagogies that acknowledge the diversity of our students and provide a safe space that invites them to speak up. Decolonization is not just about removing a few dead white men from our syllabi, or adding more women of color. It’s about making sure that everyone’s experience is represented. It’s about decentering the traditional power hierarchy in the classroom, so that the professor is not the sole transmitter of knowledge who imposes a singular (and often Western) view. It’s about ensuring equitable participation among students, so that they don’t remain silent and passive receivers whose varied life experiences are dismissed.
In a Zoom classroom, the teacher is no longer the central authority. Chat offers real-time parallel participation. The ability to enter and exit at will equalizes power.
Even before the pandemic, many educators knew that the traditional methods of teaching and research would have to be overhauled at some point. As a professor of humanities, I had been aware of the need to employ hybrid pedagogies more in tune with the digital age and shortened, over-stimulated attention spans. Advantages to joining students in their digital space far outweigh dated arguments railing against the medium; if anything, the pandemic’s isolating effects already prompted students to seek refuge there.
At this moment, the modern university stands at a turning point. Instead of wanting to go back to how things were, we should be looking at radical pedagogical interventions that make the most of remote learning as an accompaniment to the traditional classroom experience. This is the time to put “interdisciplinary” ideas into practice by experimenting with new methodologies.
BLEND-ONLINE : Call for Chapter Proposals– Privacy and Remote Learning
Digital Scholarship Initiatives at Middle Tennessee State University invites you to propose a chapter for our forthcoming book.
Working book title: Privacy and Safety in Remote Learning Environments
Proposal submission deadline: January 21, 2022
Interdisciplinary perspectives are highly encouraged
Topics may include but are not limited to:
- Privacy policies of 3rd party EdTech platforms (Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Schoology, etc)
- Parental “spying” and classroom privacy
- Family privacy and synchronous online schooling
- Online harassment among students (private chats, doxing, social media, etc)
- Cameras in student private spaces
- Surveillance of student online activities
- Exam proctoring software and privacy concerns
- Personally Identifiable Information in online learning systems and susceptibility to cybercriminals
- Privacy, storage, and deletion policies for recordings and data
- Handling data removal requests from students
- Appointing a privacy expert in schools, universities, or districts
- How and why to perform security/privacy audits
- Student attitudes about online privacy
- Instructor privacy/safety concerns
- Libraries: privacy policies of ebook platforms
- Libraries: online reference services and transcripts
- Identity authentication best practices
- Learning analytics and “big data” in higher education
More details, timelines, and submission instructions are available at dsi.mtsu.edu/cfpBook2022
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN AN AGE OF ONLINE LEARNING
http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/view/1055/892?fbclid=IwAR3SHDRFlxTbj7lMAuVJ_BsO3wLQaYEcEXEukUPQVXDDOqEnHg_XT9VJ1SE
Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy
Freire’s pedagogical concepts, such as problem posing, dialogue, praxis, conscientiazation and the politics of education, were devel-oped in a pre-Internet era. His work in popular education was deeply interpersonal and involved spending significant time in a community becoming familiar with the culture, linguistic patterns, and lifestyle of the people before ever embarking on teaching.
struggles to employ a critical pedagogy in the increasingly assessment-oriented, outcomes-based environment
While designed to make teaching in the online environment more efficient, these systems confront the critical pedagogue with challenges to create a teaching-learning environment that promotes critical reflection not only on the content of a course but on the very way in which content is delivered.
teaching in cyberspace requires a different teaching paradigm altogether
p. 170 Feenberg (2009) developed the Critical Theory of Technology (CTT),
p. 171 As outlined by CTT, technology creates a cyber culture that redefines human identity and the meaning and means of human interaction (Gomez, 2009). When viewed through this lens, online education is not simply another tool for the promotion of learning, but rather an all-encompassing environment managing and controlling access to information, structuring relationships, and redefining individual identities.
p. 171 While masquerading as efforts to enhance student learning, these industries are clearly profit-oriented. Knowledge has become a commodity, students have become consumers, faculty have become content providers, and schools operate as businesses
p. 172 Like Feenberg (2009), Freire would be concerned with the values and principles embedded in the technology of online learning, as well as the cyber culture it has created.
p. 173 Schools did not venture into online learning because they thought it was a better way to teach, but rather because they saw it as a way to reach unreached student populations with the promise of off-site educational offerings. Only later was attention given to developing online pedagogies.
Whereas education in the United States was originally viewed as a way to prepare students for effective citizenship, now it is seen as a way to develop loyal and capable employees of their corporate overlords
p. 174 A second area of concern is the banking nature of the LMSs. One of the underlying assumptions of an LMS like Blackboard™, Moodle™, or Brightspace™ is that the online platform is a repository of resources for teaching and learning.
Freire vehemently rejected this banking approach to education because it did not recognize or encourage the student’s creative, exploratory, and critical abilities. In the banking model the teacher is regarded as the holder and transmitter of knowledge, which is then imparted to the student. The banking model assumes the student is an empty vessel and does not value or recognize the student’s experiential and cultural knowledge
By contrast Freire argued for a problem-posing, constructivist approach that invites students to critically engage their world and one another. In the critical classroom, the student at times takes on the role of teacher and the teacher becomes a learner, inviting a sharing of power and mutual learning. While this approach can be carried out to an extent online, the LMS is set up to be the primary source of information in a course, and the teacher is assigned as the expert designer of the learning experience, thus limiting the constructivist nature and mutuality of the learning process.
p. 175 A third area of concern is the limited access to online learning to large sectors of society. While e-learning advocates tout the greater access to learning provided by online learning (Goral, 2013; Kashi & Conway, 2010), the digital divide is a reality impacting millions of students.
p. 176 A final area of concern is the disembodied nature of the online learning process. One of the major attractions of online learning to potential students is the freedom from having to be in a classroom in a particular time or place.
p. 177 Embodied learning means students must not only engage the cognitive dimension (thinking and reflection), but also partake in concrete action. This action in reflection, and reflection in action, referred to as praxis, involves acting on and in the world as one is seeking to learn about and transform the world.
To limit education to the transmission and reception of text-based knowledge without action undermines the entire learning process (Escobar et al., 1994).
Freire believed dialogue begins not with what the teacher professes to know, but with the student’s experience and knowledge.
p. 179 For Freire, the building of a learning community is essential to creating meaningful dialogue; this is also true for those who seek to teach effectively online. Palloff and Pratt (2007) contend that all online teaching must begin with building community and stress that a carefully constructed online learning community provides a space for students to test ideas, get feedback, and create a collaborative learning experience.
For Freire, learning was a social and democratic event where authoritarianism and control of the learning process are minimized.
“reading the world,” or conscientization, that is, understanding the larger political context in which experience occurs and knowledge is situated. In the current era of Facebook, Twitter, instant message, and other social media, in-depth discussion and analysis is often absent in favor of brief, often innocuous statements and personal opinions.
Through online academic databases, students have easy access to far more sources of information than previous generations. Furthermore, search engines like Google, Yahoo, and the like bring students in contact with remote sources, organizations, and individuals instantly.
p. 180 the challenge is not only the accessing of information, but also encouraging students to become discerning purveyors of information—to develop “critical digital literacy,” the capacity to effectively and critically navigate the databases and myriads of potential sources (Poore, 2011, p. 15)
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more on online teaching in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=online+teaching
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=online+learning