Success is on the far side of failure
The following is really just taking some notes for future use. Related to the idea that attempts to improve learning and teaching within Universities needs to think about more than just workshops, manuals etc. The idea being that the aim isn’t to improve the knowledge of learning and teaching of University teachers, it’s to help
Continue reading Some notes on behaviour change and improving L&T
This post arises from two events today The ASCILITE’2014 call for papers came out today and I’m thinking about a paper I might submit. The first #edc3100 assignment is due today and my use of BIM has struck a unique problem that I need to solve. The third is that I’m a touch fried from
In my previous academic life, I never really saw the point of book chapters as a publication form. For a variety of reasons, however, my next phase in academia appears likely to involve an increasing number of book chapters. The need for the first such chapter has arisen this week and the first draft is
While reading a recent post from Gardner Campbell I was taken by a quote from Alan Kay The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas A google search later and I came across this interview with Kay for the Scholastic Administrator magazine. The article is titled “Alan Kay still waiting for the revolution”
Continue reading Alan Kay and some reasons why the educational technology revolution hasn't happened
Came across the article, “Nobody likes a do-gooder: Study confirms selfless behaviour is alienating” from the Daily Mail via Morgaine’s amplify. I’m wondering if there’s a connection between this and the chasm in the adoption of instructional technology identified by Geoghegan (1994) The chasm Back in 1994, Geoghegan draw on Moore’s Crossing the Chasm to
Continue reading Nobody likes a do-gooder – another reason for e-learning not mainstreaming?
While I’m traveling this week I am reading How people learn. This is a fairly well known book that arose out of a US National Academy of Science project to look at recent insights from research about how people learn and then generate insights for teaching. I’ll be reading it through the lens of my
Continue reading How people learn and implications for academic development
In some reading for the thesis today I came across the concept of McNamara’s fallacy. I hadn’t heard this before. This is somewhat surprising as it points out another common problem with some of the more simplistic approaches to improving learning and teaching that are going around at the moment. It’s also likely to be
Continue reading The McNamara Fallacy and pass rates, academic analytics, and engagement
Yesterday, via a tweet from @marksmithers I read this post from the author of the DIYU book titled “Vast Majority of Professors Are Rather Ludditical”. This is somewhat typical of the defict model of academics which is fairly prevalent and rather pointless. It’s pointless for a number of reasons, but the main one is that
D’Arcy Norman suggests that Edupunk is a McGuffin. I like the metaphor. But I think it breaks down a bit, at least in the context I’m interested in. Wikipedia uses a definition of a McGuffin that suggests it is “a plot element that catches the viewers’ attention or drives the plot of a work of
Continue reading McGuffins, learning, teaching and universities
A blog post on the website of Gilfes Education Group (apparently a “network of independent education experts”) picks up on the Indicators project and its take on academic analytics. The post seems to largely in agreement with what we’re doing and the reasons behind it. The following seeks to pick up on a point made
Continue reading Functional fixedness, analytics, and the LMS
Thinking outloud