Tag: Higher Ed

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Education Life Technology

79. Self-Learning vs. Online Instruction

79. Self-Learning vs. Online Instruction

Research shows that online classes are most effective when there is substantial interaction among the students and between the students and the instructor. In this episode, Dr. Spiros Protopsaltis and Dr. Sandy Baum join us to discuss the possible adverse effects of proposed changes in federal regulations that may reduce the extent of this interaction.

This is a great episode which talks critically about how online education programs can also fail those same people they are meant to serve. For me, lost in some of the discussion around “access” is that online programs have allowed professionals like myself to pursue higher education degrees when I would have just stopped otherwise.

A lot of time and ink is given to other communities, and rightly so, but I am very thankful for the online opportunities that I have been given and is part of the reason that I continue to teach online as well.

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Education Life Technology

Laptop Required: Teaching Online While Mobile

It was not terribly long ago that I had almost completely rid myself of carrying a laptop. I was able to keep a desktop at home, a desktop at work, and a tablet for those times I was traveling and really needed to get online for something more involved than checking my phone.

laptop on tableHowever, that was then, and teaching online courses has tethered me to a laptop far more than being a sysadmin ever did. My dream of whittling my bag down to a tablet and various other small materials is essentially dead. Current online teaching platforms require a laptop to be effective while doing some of even the most mundane of tasks.

This is not a real complaint, more of an observation about how our tools are dictated by the platforms and the assumptions developers make. While my students could effectively handle most of their course from a mobile device (and I have in mind to work toward making the courses I have complete control over as mobile friendly as possible), the teaching experience still requires access to at least a laptop, and often a desktop with multiple monitors.

When Steve Jobs spoke about the stratification of computing into different categories (traditional PCs as trucks, tablets as cars, etc.), I thought the metaphor was apt, but I hoped to be able to stick myself into a car when it came to mobile computing.

Instead, I now carry a crossover in my bag so that I might be able to get work done even when I am away from one of my desks. While it works well, part of me wishes I could still stick with just a hatchback.

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Education Technology

teaching from the Kindle

teaching from the Kindle by Alan Jacobs

And let me tell you, friends, teaching a book from a Kindle stinks. Big time.

That is the money quote. Read the comments as well because they are quite good and extend on the article quite ably and usefully.

There is the need to adjust teaching methods to make the most of the tools available, where that is appropriate. However, this is an issue I ran into when working through grad school: so much of the technology and applications available today are really quite bad for educational purposes. It isn’t that the technology is bad itself, but that within the educational context, they are not as useful as they could be if time was spent working on what the needs are within education (and at this point, higher education).

Trying to work out a workflow for digital discovery and note-taking for my capstone was painful. I ended up having to switch between three or four different applications to make it all fit together, and even then it was less than ideal.

There is a lot of low-hanging fruit to make scholarship and writing better utilizing digital tools. Kindle is just an example.

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Education Technology

yet another post about making distinctions

yet another post about making distinctions by Alan Jacobs

I have to move slowly with some of these things, because by and large my students mistrust and are deeply uncomfortable with such technologies. But all of them are, at least in potentia, pedagogically fruitful.

I know there is always talk about the new digital natives within the realm of higher education, but I think this paragraph hits on a good point. There is also a tendency to view things as inauthentic if they are not done well or there is no understandable benefit. Mistrust is a good word.

Bringing technology into pedagogy for the sake of technology can have limited or negative benefit. Intentionality, mastery, sound technology is important. If you’ve had to deal with something similar let me know at http://Bidtraining.com

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Education Technology

resistance is futile, part zillion

resistance is futile, part zillion by Alan Jacobs

That’s where we are now with the true-believing digerati: there is no time at which it is legitimate to unplug. There are no good pedagogical reasons for focusing, for less than three hours per week, on learning to use codexes better. Everyone must conform to the all-digital-all-the-time regime!

I recommend reading the above article and remembering, it doesn’t need to be this way. It almost never has to be an “either-or” sort of question, but a question of the right tool for the right job, even within educational pedagogy.

Alan Jacobs puts it so well.