Rose, I think that you raise an important issue about staff agreeing to do work, but then being too busy and not delivering.  I suppose this should become part of the c…[Read more]

Project Stream

Like both Julie and Lisa, I found that staffing issues were a key aspect of the project.

TEL One: Planning (Week 5!) – A project to stream lectures to an overflow room. http://t.co/CVtP4AtfAV #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) June 11, 2014

Pre-reading for tomorrow’s course on Team Based Learning. http://t.co/mBx5UFHHbL #AppetiteWhetted #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) June 09, 2014

Even if you haven’t added captions to your video, YouTube may use speech recognition […]

YouTube provides auto-captioning. Sounds good, but… http://t.co/mHoW23TZjF #ocTEL @mhawksey @sheilmcn— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) June 06, 2014

Six Questions That Will Bring Your Teaching Philosophy into Focus http://t.co/oiWbxSKE77 … via @facultyfocus and @kcor1964 #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) June 04, 2014

Learning Behaviour

I think the classification would be a bit different for a cMOOC…[Read more]

It’s not so much a case of staff time being “saved” by using e-assessment, but that the time is…[Read more]

Are you a Viewer, Listener, Optimizer or Completionist? http://t.co/aJVCDoBlS7 Exploring learner behaviour in MOOCs. #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) June 03, 2014

This post describes an alternative method of e-assessment that we use for quite a specific purpose – assessing practical write-ups where students all follow the same experimental protocol but each record and analyse their own results.

Trying out new software can be frustrating, so it is useful to have feedback here from different people who have tried out different things.

Autograding with Excel: an alternative method of e-assessment. http://t.co/kPYmnLMBN4 #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) June 02, 2014

This suggests that courses should include multiple options (in presentation and assessment) from which the student can chose.

Declaring UDL – Universal Design for Learning

My favourite UDL idea was the graphic…[Read more]

Following on from learning styles, here are some thoughts on UDL. I’m a fan of the graphic syllabus. http://t.co/fMQR4ul8vt #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 27, 2014

Learning about learning styles

The term “learning styles” refers to the concept that individuals differ in regard to what mode of instruction or study is most effective for them. Proponents of learning-style assessment contend that optimal instruction requires diagnosing individuals’ learning style and tailoring instruction accordingly.

Pashler et al. looked for experimental evidence to support these claims, specifically for studies which demonstrated that

the instructional method that proves most effective for students with one learning style is not the most effective method for students with a different learning style.

They found

virtually no evidence for the interaction pattern mentioned above, which was judged to be a precondition for validating the educational applications of learning styles.

and therefore concluded that

at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. 

This is not denying that there are differences in learning style or preference, but that there is no clear benefit to be gained from evaluating this, because we can’t use the information to improve learning.
I next looked at Should we be using learning styles? What research has to say to practice by Frank Coffield, David Moseley, Elaine Hall and Kathryn Ecclestone.
A summary of this work paints a picture of the confusion surrounding the topic. For example, it raises the question, in relation to “a well known learning styles inventory”

does it really measure learning style at all, or is it actually a personality test? And even if the test does do what it says on the bottle, how should teachers respond?

One positive recommendation of the report relates to self-awareness and metacognition:

A reliable and valid instrument which measures learning styles and approaches could be used as a tool to encourage self-development, not only by diagnosing how people learn, but by showing them how to enhance their learning.

But…

One of the main aims of encouraging a metacognitive approach is to enable learners to choose the most appropriate learning strategy from a wide range of options to fit the particular task in hand; but it remains an unanswered question as to how far learning styles need to be incorporated into metacognitive approaches.

And this is not a recommendation for changing practice, because…

In a synthesis of 630 studies, Hattie (1992) [Towards a model of schooling: a synthesis of meta-analyses. Australian Journal of Education, 36, 5–13.] found an average effect size of only 0.14 for individualised teaching in schools.

In contrast, Marzano (1998) [A theory-based meta-analysis of research on Instruction. Aurora, CO: Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory] reported…

Interventions targeted at improving metacognition produced an average gain of 26 percentile points [0.26 effect size]

While Black and Wiliam (1998) [Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7–73], reported

formative assessment experiments produce typical effect sizes of between 0.4 and 0.7.

As Pashler et al. concluded, effort is better expended on implementing changes in practice for which there is more evidence of learning gain.
Coffield et al. are positive about two instruments, and recommend that

the concepts developed by Entwistle and others, of deep, surface and strategic approaches to learning, and by Vermunt of meaning-directed, application-directed and reproduction-directed learning styles, be adopted for general use in post-16 learning.

The concepts of Entwistle and others and Vermunt relate to context and motivation, which underlines that learners can adopt different strategies or approaches at different times. This contrasts with many of the other instruments which attach labels to learners, suggesting that they are of a particular fixed type.
As “Edutopia staff” say in this article on Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences: What Does the Research Say? – http://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-learning-styles-research

Labeling creates limits, and when it comes to learning, boundaries are the last thing we want.

A final positive recommendation from the Coffield report is that

a discussion of learning styles may prove to be the catalyst for individual, organisational or even systemic change

Learning about learning styles -http://t.co/OX7VpN7sXH #ocTEL Activity 3.4 Is any point diagnosing if there’s no clear treatment?— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 26, 2014

I’ve been learning about Lincoln and I liked it. http://t.co/iGQgUHUcu2 #octel #oer— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 24, 2014

This involved students from our Department of Computing developing a Java-based biofermenter simulation as their final year group project. The course that it was developed for no…[Read more]

eLearning Examples – http://elearningexamples.com/
I explored this website on my iPhone, and found that most of the examples were in Flash format and so were inaccessible to me. In the end I decided to test out Abraham Lincoln’s Crossroads – http://constitutionc…[Read more]

What does it say about me that I assume if it’s an activity it must be assessed?

I like the idea of students having space and time to explore ideas without the pressure of gaining marks.

I remember peer reviewing a lecture given by an Italian colleague. Her accent was delightful and just difficult enough to understand to require increased concentration. I found it very helpful in engaging with the content. Interestingly, this was  a…[Read more]

What is the best way to enter the Khan Academy? http://t.co/EC87arUkXn #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 23, 2014

Really useful > MT @A_L_T Webinar recording: Cable Green (Creative Commons) talks about open licensing & OERs http://t.co/1BrVHHZoDZ #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 23, 2014

Before you decide to ditch the close-ups and go for the Khan approach, here’s some research about preferred video formats -…[Read more]

A Khan Academy Experience

This partly address the question about increasing the effectiveness of these resources, and raises some other questions too:

Is it better to embed or link?
Do we have to quality control e…[Read more]

.@Kerr63 The tools I use most for TEL: email, VLE, TurnItIn, Excel, perl. #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 22, 2014

@Kerr63 My favourite TEL tool? As with my family, I love them all & don’t have a favourite. But I can’t embrace them all at once. #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 21, 2014

@James – I think that the PowerPoint recording feature only plays back within Powerpoint, so there is still a step required to make the recording into a portable format. But I could be wrong – things change constantly.

There are many different…[Read more]

This tool is very easy to use. It can be used online or downloaded and I was able to get started right away, without reading any instructions.

After recording the screencast,…[Read more]

I’m not really sure that it fits into this forum, but I hope you enjoy and please give feedback!

A video exploration of Mazur, xMOOCs, BF Skinner and the reported death of the traditional lecture. http://t.co/7s37RhrumZ #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 20, 2014

Things I like about this activity:

The students engage in depth with information from their textbook and a primary paper and then go on to create something new and useful with this information.
The activity encourages creativity and the online tools used allow students to learn from each other during the…[Read more]

MT @DonaldClark “It’s almost unethical to be lecturing if you have this data,” Eric Mazur, Harvard physicist http://t.co/Pmn74BtDoq #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 17, 2014

Last RT – “unethical to be lecturing if you have this data”? Let’s move this debate on from lecture/non-lecture to active/passive. #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 17, 2014

A strategic approach may offer quicker results and higher grades… Paper on deep v strategic learning http://t.co/ZdMc2M5rxt #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 16, 2014

You say, “strategic learners would be aiming to acquire and structure information differently, depending on their goal, rather than a particular task”, but if their goal is to get a good mark in the task then this will impact on their learning. For example, if they are…[Read more]

How you think matters: Deep learning

@guy75 @romieh Thanks for the positive feedback. I’ve had a go at ‘strategic’ here, but not sure about it. http://t.co/HINq9yGOCb #ocTEL— Moira Sarsfield (@msars) May 16, 2014

I haven’t really got to grips with ‘strategic’, but I think that perhaps…[Read more]

It is very immediate, with the learner’s experience in the online course feeding directly into their own course design while the “new learner” experience is fresh in their minds.

By making the students discuss their design choices, you are reinforcing the underlying theories, and allowing the students to…[Read more]

Let me know if you agree with my description and which category you fit into!