Researchers at the University of Missouri at Columbia found no consensus among academics about the definitions of “e-learning,” “online learning,” and “distance learning,” which they say makes it difficult to assess the strengths of each approach.
“As education researchers, we don’t get the true context of the instructional environment, and without that, it is impossible to compare learning results,” says Joi L. Moore, an associate professor in the School of Information Science & Learning Technologies at Missouri, who led the research, which was published recently in the journal The Internet and Higher Education.
Wired Campus would like to know, what do you think is the difference between the three? How important is it that researchers settle on a common definition of each?
Long Beach—The phrase “there’s an app for that” may be coming to textbooks.
Today a major textbook company, Cengage Learning, announced a new e-textbook publishing platform that lets professors plug in apps, some made by other software companies, to add to traditional textbook content features like tutoring services or the ability to trade margin notes with other students.
The system is called MindTap, and it is scheduled to be announced at the annual TED conference here. When Chris Vento, Cengage’s executive vice president for technology and development, explained the system to a reporter, he felt the need to put the word “textbook” in air quotes, since traditional textbook content is a small part of the new product. These digital textbooks essentially bundle together several products sold by Cengage and its subsidiaries, including their electronic test-bank system, called Aplia, as well as videos and other materials that the company owns the rights to, including the archives of…
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation just announced 47 finalists for its Next Generation Learning Challenges grants, and many of the colleges to make the cut have focused on using data about student performance to enhance teaching. “Once you get down to that learning moment, that’s when you are probably going to see the true power of data,” says Mark David Milliron, deputy director for higher education at the Gates Foundation. From the 2011 Higher Ed Tech Summit in Las Vegas, Mr. Milliron explains why he believes that “at the instructional level, that’s when you really can begin to use those data to innovate.”
Leigh Ann Sudol-DeLyser is doing some interesting work using worked examples to improve CS learning.
I employed a worked example strategy where students were given one example and the loops were broken into three parts (init, update, comparison) and students learned how to write each part separately. I’m preparing a journal paper on the subject, however a small preview of the results – the students were much better at it than I expected!
I believe that the combination of worked examples with specific line-level feedback helped these non-programmers understand not only that they were “wrong” when something didnt work, but why and therefore how to fix it in order to make it right. We need better intelligent tools in order to help scaffold student’s learning rather than relying on them to have the expertise and metacognitive abilities to figure it out for themselves. My current research focuses on developing an understanding of how students think and learn computing by supporting…
Do you buy this claim, that reasoning is the same cognitive activity as imagining? I don’t. There’s clearly an intersection (e.g., as in manipulating visual imagery, as described in the quote), but it seems to me that reasoning involves a critical component, a requirement to apply discipline, that imagining does not. In fact, exercising imagination (as in brainstorming) might be hindered by too much criticism. But I want my students to be critical reasoners when they are working through their code — I want them to say, “That doesn’t make sense” and “Why should that happen?”
For many years we’ve advocated the notion of teaching as an art (The Art of Teaching Science), and this new NSF initiative offers teachers and researchers an opportunity to look at science teaching through the lens of the arts. In our book, we connected with the views of Jacob Bronowski, in his writings, and his video program (The Ascent of Man), suggesting that artistry in teaching is related to human…