WSU Teaching & Learning Blog

Faculty might be interested in following the growing campaign focused on reducing the costs of textbooks. Perhaps the fastest window into this work is the maketextbooksaffordable.org website.

Recently, legislation passed in the House of Representatives that would, if passed in the Senate as well, involve 3 components.

1. Requires publishers to disclose textbook pricing and revision information up-front to faculty
2. Requires publishers to offer textbooks and supplemental materials “unbundled” (separately)
3. Requires institutions, to the maximum extent practicable, to provide the list of required and recommended textbooks (including prices and ISBNs) when students register for classes.

There is also growing support for open access textbooks. Faculty are being encouraged to sign the Open Textbooks Statement found online here.

Alan Levine, one of the better known digital pioneers in higher education, put together a great tour of 50 different tools that can be used to tell a narrative tale with pictures and more online. A narrated slideshow walks you through them, and a wiki points you to the sources discussed. Very interesting…

Last week, UNESCO released a report (authored by Susan D’Antoni) entitled Open Educational Resources: The way forward (.pdf). A wiki version is available as well. George Siemens from the University of Manitoba has put together a short online presentation (using Articulate) that summarizes key points from the report. It’s a good way to get up to speed on some of the current buzz on OER’s.  

As one possible indication of the sea change we’re headed for, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has just adopted a policy that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online, making it the first U.S. university to do so. Here’s a link to more details.

Suggestions from R. Palloff and K. Pratt (2007) Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom, John Wiley & Sons, San Francisco, CA

These are a few suggestions that might be relative to your online teaching. Collaborative learning is a powerful principle and your students might benefit from working together. See if you could apply some of the following examples:

Have students read a case study and then with a partner from class come to consensus on issues involved in the case, a diagnosis of the problem, a treatment plan, or suggestions to resolve the issue or problem. Post their work as a position paper.

Students form teams and come up with a discussion topic which the group researches. They must also post questions to each other and summarize answers to the questions. The team then decides the format they want to use to present the research on the topic to the whole class. The group organizes around that format with individual members taking on different responsibilities for the presentation.

Student teams develop and produce a simulation or role play that demonstrate one of the main concepts or principles for the subject. The simulation could then be performed live by the team or using animations or props.

The interdependence of the students will help create learning communities and encourage collaboration and group study habits that can translate to their future lives.

The Connexions clearinghouse at Rice University offers a wide variety of open learning content. One very useful jumping off point for faculty and students interested in the growing wealth of shared learning content is the online course Introduction to Open Educational Resources. 

Developed by Judy Baker, the course walks the user through the major topics in the OER world, namely Open Courseware, Fair Use and Copyright, Finding Sources (including discipline-specific ones), Public Domain Textbooks, Primary Sources, Development of OER resources, and mechanisms for the Delivery, Storage and Organization of free content. Plenty of links and examples provide a quick entrance into an exciting area of growth for instructors at all levels of our educational system.

While aimed at a 5th-grade audience, all ages can appreciate the old songs, folktales, legends and history presented by the Windsor Public Library in their online exhibit known as The Folklore of le Détroit. The exhibit focuses on the Detroit River French who lived on both sides of the River through most of the 1700’s. Here’s a quick history lesson from the site: 

The French founded a colony at le Détroit du lac Érié in 1701. Détroit means “strait”, and that’s exactly what the Detroit River is: the strait between Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair. The colony was the brainchild of Antoine Cadillac, first commander of Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. He brought soldiers, farmers and merchants, as well as members of several First Nations, to settle in the area, in order to help defend the Great Lakes and French possessions in the interior against advances by the British and their Iroquois allies. Initially, the colonists settled on the north shore of the river (on what is now the American side). But from1749 on, they began occupying the south shore as well. Some of the settlers came directly from France, others from the Saint Lawrence River Valley. They practised a bit of agriculture, but most of them relied on hunting and fishing and the fur trade to earn a living. The colony became a British possession in 1760, but Francophones continued to settle in the area. Even after the north shore became part of the United States in 1796, the Detroit River remained for all intents and purposes a French river.      

History Matters

Successful Web-based assignments—some developed by university professors, others developed by the Library of Congress and the National Archives—as practical models for integrating new media into the classroom. Browse through the full list or go to the search feature that allows you to quickly locate assignments by topic, time period, or keyword. There are guidelines for information on submitting your own lesson plan.

Colorado University has an award winning site for Physics Education

Diagrams of molecules for chemistry with animations that illustrate concepts, University of Cambridge, Clinical Lab.

Nutrition instructor Betty Clamp designed a series of interactive nutrition lessons. Students read text, view videos and animations, and then perform diet analysis by experimenting with an interactive online calorie and body mass calculator.

“Explore Science” features highly interactive science activities for students and educators allowing users to change variables and see how that effects the outcome. For instance, students can learn about additive and subtractive color by changing the values and seeing the results.

The SF Exploratorium has some innovative interactive allowing users to experiment with variables to see how effect outcomes.

Round World Media developed several interactive lessons an interactive linear regression calculator that allows users the x, y coordinates of points to plot a line of best fit and outliers and an online statistics lab.

The Public Broadcast Service (PBS) offers tele-Web courses. The majority of the content is delivered via traditional media, such as books and video. The assignments,course discussion, tests, and any additional information are on the Web site. PBS Adult Learning Services—teleWeb courses include Programs: Full audiovisual, documentary-style learning experiences featuring outstanding professors, on-location footage, and enlightening interviews Internet Component: Offers students interactivity, a sense of community, and extensive Web-based resources and activities that reinforce course lessons Textbook, Student study guide, Faculty manual.

The University of Idaho’s Engineering Outreach program has developed a thorough set of guides to help faculty understand distance education. Some of the references are already out of date (web tools, for instance), but otherwise it is a great place to start if you want a quick summary of distance education practices. Here’s the index to content covered in Distance Education at a Glance:

Guide 1: Distance Education: An Overview
Effectiveness of distance education; delivery options; best technology; key players in distance education.

Guide 2: Strategies for Teaching at a Distance
What is different about teaching at a distance; reasons for teaching at a distance; ways to improve planning & organization; ways to meet student needs; Guidelines on teaching skills; methods for improving interaction & feedback.

Guide 3: Instructional Development for DE
Need for instructional development & the key phases of the process including design, development, evaluation, and revision.

Guide 4: Evaluation for Distance Educators
The need to evaluate; types of evaluation; methods; what to evaluate; evaluation tips.

Guide 5: Instructional Television
Reasons for choosing instructional television (ITV); advantages & limitations of ITV; instructional design
Guidelines for ITV; tips for conducting ITV lessons.

Guide 6: Computers in Distance Education
Discusses use of computers in distance education; advantages of computers for distance education; limitations of computers for distance education; the internet and distance education; instructional possibilities of the Internet; and teaching considerations for incorporating internet use into a distance delivered course.

Guide 7: Print in Distance Education
Discusses reasons for using print materials; advantages of print; limitations of print; formats of print materials; and tips for designing instruction for print.

Guide 8: Strategies for Learning at a Distance
Profiles the distant student, discusses distant student’s development as learners; and describes ways to improve distant learning.

Guide 9: Distance Education: Research
Describes common research questions, distance vs. traditional education, why distance students are successful, why distance instruction is successful, the importance of interaction, and cost vs. benefits.

Guide 10: Interactive Videoconferencing in Distance Education
Describes interactive videoconferencing; summarizes technology; provides advantages and disadvantages of the technology; profiles types of videoconferencing systems; discusses designing instruction for interactive video; describes instructional strategies; and provides information on training instructors and students in the use of the equipment.

Guide 11: Distance Education and the WWW
Describes the WWW; why the WWW should be used for distance learning; provides suggestions for developing a home for distant students.

Guide 12: Copyright and Distance Education
Discusses copyright issues related to distance education.

Guide 13: Glossary of Distance Education Terminology
Glossary of some terms used in distance education.

The January 2008 Issue of the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is now available online. This is a great place to see what people are thinking and discovering as they strive for quality teaching based on reflection and assessment. 

While this isn’t exactly about teaching and learning in the traditional sense, conference blogs provide an important resource for staying up-to-date on the latest information in your field. At our Virtual Citizenship conference for instance, WSU faculty member Kevin Deegan-Krause did an impressive job covering both the speakers and audience participation. Just in case you are going to a conference and want to try blogging about it, or if you are hosting an event and want to encourage blog coverage, you may want to have a look at this idea-packed 6-page booklet presenting Tips for Conference Bloggers developed by Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani. Here’s the direct link to the  PDF.