Center for Online Learning
by CENTER FOR ONLINE LEARNING on JANUARY 29, 2016
Here’s a quick look at what’s happening at the intersection of Higher Education and Technology:
What a Million Syllabuses Can Teach Us
Excerpt:
Over the past two years, we and our partners at the Open Syllabus Project (based at the American Assembly at Columbia) have collected more than a million syllabuses from university websites. We have also begun to extract some of their key components — their metadata — starting with their dates, their schools, their fields of study and the texts that they assign. Our hope and expectation is that this tool will enable people to learn new things about teaching, publishing, and intellectual history.
Examine the Benefits, Drawbacks of Online Learning for Introverts
Excerpt:
In many online classes, discussions involve more [writing] than just speaking – a variety that introverts usually prefer, [Heidi] Kasevich says. This was the case for Kelly Dyer, who says that in the face-to-face classroom, his grades would occasionally dip because of a lack of oral participation.
Ready to Flip: Three Ways to Hold Students Accountable for Pre-Class Work
Excerpt:
The flipped classroom—or any active learning environment—often asks students to come to class “prepared.” What do you mean when you say you want students to be prepared? For example, if you assign a chapter for your students to “read before class” or tell them to “come to class prepared to discuss the chapter,” what exactly are you expecting students to be able to do? it’s critical for the instructor to clarify exactly what being prepared means and what the expectations are.
