Adaptive Learning... Some predictions for the future

Joshua Kim, Director of Learning and Technology for the Master of Health Care Science Program at Dartmouth, has some interesting "intuitions" about the future of adaptive learning in higher education. One that seems most intruiguing is the idea that adaptive platforms and LMS (learning management systems) well merge and become both seamless and ubiquitous. We see, for instance, some features of Moodle that can be used to create a quasi-adaptive experience for students in tools such as the personalized learning designer, but what Moodle offers is still far from a truly adaptive platform. While we may not be there yet, it's a propitious moment to consider the possibilities. What do you see in the crystal ball?  Read Kim's blog for more.

Photo by Isobel T

Sometimes the headline does say it all

Inside Higher Ed published, "Performance Funding Underperforms" identifiying some challenges and shortfalls to performance-based funding for community colleges. Even the CCRC has published a report providing a critical analysis of performance funding as it is currently conceived.

The question remains, what are the implications for developmental education? How do we promote student success without undermining the fundamental purpose and mission of the community college? I believe that the challenge lies in finding a "both/and" solution -- it is not an "either/or" choice between access and success that we must make...  but rather a solution that both preserves access for marginalized populations and promotes success that we must endeavor to find. Grassroots, faculty led initiatives, like DIG Co-Lab have the potential to help us do just that.

A sea change begins with a few drops of water.

photo by Matt Dinnery

SoftChalk Workshop today!

Just a reminder for the techie-minded -- there will be a SoftChalk workshop today (Friday, November 15) at 1:00 p.m. in CEN 232! Come and learn how to build interactive web-based lessons and activities for your students.

Image by Giulia Forsythe

Moodle updates coming!

Wow -- there are some really cool updates coming to Moodle at Lane in December! The ones I'm looking forward to include an option for displaying word counts in forums as well as integrated badges. In my classes I provide guidelines for forum posts, including minimum length, so having a word count displayed will be a useful, convenient tool for my students. Badges are a cool concept, and I think it will be great fun to experiment with them -- I anticipate that students will be highly motivated by the prospect of earning badges, and the fact that they can be displayed in a Moodle profile as well as in an individual students Mozilla "backpack" provides for a great deal of flexibility.

Learn about other Moodle updates coming to Lane here.  Thanks to Kevin Steeves for making this information available and the updates possible!

photo by Mark Drechsler

Procrastination... What if all students could overcome it?

Check out this Chronicle article recounting one university math professor's experience flipping the classroom. Sure -- he learned a great deal about screencasting, but what Robert Talbert found most noteworthy was students' need to manage their time -- to learn about scheduling, calendaring and to somehow not succumb to procrastination. Thanks to Alice Warner for sending the article!

photo by @Doug88888

"Class-sourcing" Assignments

In his article, "Class-sourcing as a Teaching Strategy," Gleb Tsipursky provides examples of rich multimedia assignments produced collaboratively by teams of his students. Tsipursky's students produced Pinerest boards on topics as wide-ranging as an analysis of Super Bowl ads to Art and Ideologies of the 19th and 20th Centuries through his "class-sourced pinterest project."  This assignment could be adapted for use in developmental education. I believe that such project work provides students with a rich opportunity to develop information literacy as well as digital literacy skills while focusing on specific content -- students would engage in the critical process of identifying, evaluating, and citing sources as they work to choose and cite resources to pin.

Imagine developmental writing students, for instance, working collaboratively to create Pinterest boards on compound sentences or on specific thematic content such as climate change or social inequity in higher education, all the while practicing the writing process skills of editing or revision as they succinctly analyze and summarize their "pins" within Pinterest's constraints of 500 characters or less. This approach is consistent with the ideal of a liberal approach to education, building students' skills to engage in a critical debate and analysis of ideas before they synthesize them for a broader audience -- a set of skills that could even facilitate students future work in the emerging field of digital humanities.

Image by mkhmarketing

Sharing

In the spirit of the Digital Co-Lab Faculty Fellowship, I have shared a shell for my WR080 course in our Moodle collaboration space for DIG. It contains all sorts of resources including quizzes, readings, writing assignments, instructional materials focused on paragraph writing and grammar -- all thematically organized. Unit themes include nutrition, communication, literature and descriptive writing, and information literacy. I have also created and compiled a set of online grammar modules for student use. Students can find these on the Academic Learning Skills website. While they serve multifarious purposes, any student can try the practice activities to brush up their skills before or after taking the placement test, and teachers can use them as instructional resources.

photo by Manuel Burgos