Educational Technology
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USask Professor Adopting Open Textbook
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Eric Micheels, Assistant Professor, Department of Bioresource Policy, Business and Economics The following post was written by Eric Micheels of the University of Saskatchewan and was originally published on his blog on October 6, 2014, under the title, The Economic of Economics Textbooks. It is reprinted here with his permission. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of having a meeting with Heather Ross, an instructional design specialist at the University of Saskatchewan, where we discussed open-access textbooks. The meeting came about after a conversation on twitter where I mentioned that I was considering adopting an open-access text for AGRC 113, a course that has a…
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John Boyer touches Down on Tuesday at the U of S
[social_share/] [social-bio] Sometimes, the time is right to reach into the past for a “re-post”. Now is such a time to look again at the February 24, 2014 post by Susan Bens since we are in the wonderful position to be hosting John Boyer at the U of S on Tuesday, October 7. He’ll be speaking from 2:30 – 3:30 in the GSA Commons on the very structure of assessment he uses in his huge, blended course on World Regions. Check out this event, and other events appearing under the Academic Integrity Awareness Week Banner. What? A Menu of Assessment Options? By Susan Bens I have recently come upon…
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Open Textbooks Easily Available Through BC Project
[social_share/] [social-bio] There has been a growing amount of talk around the U of S, and higher education in general about open textbooks. These are digital textbooks that are freely available to learners and customizable for instructors. Textbooks are expensive, something particularly clear to first year university students. This fact has had a shift toward open textbooks a priority of University of Saskatchewan Student Union President Max FineDay’s since his first term. The provincial government has also this issue on its radar as evidenced by the Saskatchewan government signing a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on the creation of open educational resources with Alberta and British Columbia. There are several…
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How Do We Define Success in an Open Course
[social_share/] [social-bio] A version of this post was originally published on Heather Ross’s blog on June 24, 2014. In June I attended the Society for Teaching and Learning In Higher Education (STLHE) conference in Kingston, Ontario. As part of the conference I presented, along with Nancy Turner and Jaymie Koroluk (University of Ontario Institute of Technology), a poster about the Introduction to Learning Technologies (ILT) open course that the GMCTE offered earlier this year. During discussions around our poster as well as in other sessions related to open courses, I had a number of conversations with colleagues about just what is “success” in an open course. Completion rates are often used…
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Are You a Digital Immigrant? Probably Not
[social_share/] [social-bio] About a decade ago I started hearing about this idea of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”, terms coined by Marc Prensky (and frequently repeated by such speakers and authors as Don Tapscott) to describe generational differences between technology users. In his 2001 book Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Prensky argued that “Our students today are all ‘native speakers’ of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.” (Presnkey, 2001). He went on to argue that the rest of us (I wasn’t quite 30 when the book came out) will never be quite as good at technology as those young “natives”. Even then I was skeptical of what he…
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Lynda.com Open to All at U of S
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Lavonne Cloke Have you ever wanted to learn new software, design or business skills to enhance your personal or professional goals but don’t have the money for expensive courses? U of S faculty, staff and students now have the opportunity to fully access thousands of unlimited, free tutorials, seven days a week, day and night with lynda.usask.ca – a valuable online training resource. Lynda.usask.ca is an online training library that contains thousands of professional grade Windows and Mac tutorials accessed through streaming video. In these videos you will find information that covers many software titles, scripting languages, design and web development platforms as well as popular online…
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Curating your Experience – What an ePortfolio can do for you
[social_share/] [social-bio] I recently spent some time on a project to move a learning log used by a non-profit organization to track the progress of their young participants into an online environment. I have since learned a lot about the various tools available to create and publish such documents online, but I remained curious about the rationale behind creating an online learning log or, as it is commonly called, an ePortfolio. Luckily, the TOOC (Introduction to Learning Technologies) currently running through the GMCTE covers e-portfolios extensively in week 11. My goal with this post is to provide a summary of what I have learned about ePortfolios, some of which draws…
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2014 Higher Ed Horizon Report Released
[social_share/] [social-bio] Every year the New Media Consortium (NMC) and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative release a series of reports on what they see as the coming trends in learning technologies. One such report looks specifically at higher education and the 2014 edition was recently released. While the report has always included what these groups see as the “important developments” that will be adopted in this area in three time frames (within one year, in two to three years, and in four to five years), this year’s report also includes “Key Trends Accelerating EdTech Adoption in Higher Education” and “Significant Challenges Impeding EdTech Adoption in Higher Education”. The “key trends” are broken…
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Why You Should Consider Lecture Capture
[social_share/] [social-bio] “Lecture Capture describes technologies instructors can use to record voice and data projector content and make those recordings available digitally” (ICT University of Saskatchewan). At the University of Saskatchewan, many rooms are equipped to allow instructors to easily record their live lectures and distribute these recordings to their students. Now that I’ve defined what lecture capture is, let’s explore why you should consider using it. Research has shown numerous benefits. A study found that, after using lecture capture across a variety of disciplines, class sizes, and teaching styles, students and faculty were both in favor of using lecture recordings. Benefits for students included: being able to review material that was…
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Using Google Hangouts to Bring in Guest Speakers
[social_share/] [social-bio] This post was originally published on Heather Ross’s blog on February 28, 2014. I’m considering myself very fortunate that I’m the instructor for Introduction to Learning Technologies. I get to meet with students in the blended cohort. I get to communicate with participants in both groups through email, Twitter, Facebook and Google+, and a couple of weeks ago I got to sit down and have a Google Hangout with John Boyer, a geography professor at Virginia Tech. He’s done some amazing things with learning technologies in his World Regions course. I started following John some time ago on Twitter and he was kind enough to respond to my…