October 7th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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I have just read Lisa Lane’s article in First Monday entitled “Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching”. I really liked her paper, not least because it raised some issues that I hadn’t considered before regarding default settings in an LMS and the idea of opt in and opt out learning management systems. It also described the way many academics use (or don’t use) the web in their work or play and how this effects their ability to use some of the more ‘advanced’ features of an LMS that go beyond an instructivist model of delivery. Perhaps most importantly of all it discusses the importance of emphasising pedagogy before ‘features and tools’ when working with web novices.
» Read more: Insidious Pedagogy – some thoughts on Lisa Lane’s article
September 29th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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Personal learning networks and personal learning environments are featuring highly as topics of discussion in e-learning and educational technology at the moment. I thought I would take the step into public self broadcasting and record a short video about why my PLN is important to me and some of the tools that I used to both create it and manage it. I hope you find it useful. » Read more: Why my Personal Learning Network is Important to Me
September 20th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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Many universities are currently, or have recently, reviewed their enterprise LMS including my own employer. Unfortunately we haven’t made our review process public but many universities have been generous enough to provide information about their reviews. The following list are some of the publicly available LMS reviews that I have found. These were really useful in developing and informing our own review and I hope that by bringing them together in one place it will be useful for others. » Read more: Public LMS Evaluations
September 13th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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I was having a look at the Times Higher Education site the other day when a post entitled “Students get marks just for turning up” caught my eye. The post describes how some universities have been accused of bribing undergraduates by awarding assessment marks simply for turning up. » Read more: Delicate Geniuses
September 8th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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I have just finished read a really interesting post by @mollybob on the growth model for personal learning environments (PLE). This coincided with reading @catspyjamasnz post on the relationship between a PLE and a PLN (personal learning network). It’s a subject that’s close to my heart at the moment as we consider the implications of implementing an institutional ePortfolio that, in the trial phases, seems to be seen as a PLE for students at least as much as a portfolio tool. In fact there seems to be quite a bit of fuzzy thinking (not least by me) about the roles and relationships between these different concepts not to mention how the VLE fits in with all of this (though this video by @jonmott looks at that relationship). To try and help me clarify my thoughts I have developed the following diagram. » Read more: PLEs, PLEs Me
September 3rd, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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A bit tongue in cheek this post but here is a list of big lists that might be useful for people interested in education, educational technology and e-learning. A fully expect that soon we will be having lists of lists of lists but there you go. These are some of the big lists I’ve bookmarked on www.delicious.com during 2009. » Read more: 22 Big Lists for Educators
August 30th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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I spent most of last week in Coolongatta at the CAUDIT-Educause Institute 2009. For those unfamiliar with the terms, CAUDIT is the Council of Australian Universities Directors of Information Technology and Educause is the peak body promoting intelligent use of information technology in higher education. The Institute has run annually in Australia since 2002 and is based on a similar institute that runs twice a year in the US. It is ‘designed as a professional development program for those who manage some aspect of information technology and resources in higher education, whether within their department or for the entire institution‘. » Read more: Re-arranging Deck Chairs
August 16th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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August 9th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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A few days ago I wrote a post about some the future challenges facing higher education over the next ten years. In that post I covered some of my initial thoughts about the challenges of open content and that I believed the key for universities will be in developing rigorous and consistent assessment in order to help maintain their reputations.
Related to both of these issues is the rise of new players in higher education in what will be an increasingly competitive business. I had planned to write something on this in the near future but I have been spurred into action by two links I came across this morning. The first was a link to a site that provides comparison services for online courses at universities and colleges in the US.
August 9th, 2009 by Mark Smithers
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There has been a bit of criticism recently about slowness of Delicious to add new features and even some questions about its future as social bookmarking site. I have said it before and I’ll say it again – Delicious is a vital part of the way I organise and share information. Anyway I was please to see that they have added a new ‘Send’ feature that makes it easier to share bookmarks at the time they are being saved. You can send links to your network, email addresses and/or Twitter. The screenshot below shows this small but important feature.
