Dr Simon Paul Atkinson (PFHEA)
Enhancing Institutional Outcomes
[See Courses on Educational Taxonomies] Updated higher quality versions are now available here Since October 17th 2012 [see updates] when I shared the most recent work on visualising taxonomies in a circular form and aligning these active verb patterns to particular assessment forms, I have had some great feedback – for which thank you. As a consequence, …
Continue reading “Updated: Taxonomy Circles – Visualisations of Educational Domains”
NOTE: updated high-quality visualisations of these taxonomies are available here. I think being able to visualise things is important. Faculty and learning designers need to be able to see Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) take shape, and many find existing lists uninspiring. It’s not uncommon for faculty and instructional designers to grow weary of ILOs; they …
Continue reading “Visualising Outcomes: domains, taxonomies and verbs”
In my last posting I suggested that a module specification could usefully have four sections, clearly articulated, for Intended Learning Outcomes, so that a student could identify from their assessment evidence that they had met specific ILOs in a range of domains. In doing so they not only have a useful platform to identify future …
Continue reading “Learning Design becomes mission critical”
MOOCs, self generated OER based curricula, kite-marking schemes, and elaborate credit transfer schemes are a reality in increasingly complex higher education sector. Students often pursuing studies from within the world of work where physical mobility of employable precludes commitment to a single campus based programme over four years require well defined, constructively aligned, module designs. …
Continue reading “Intended Learning Outcomes matter”
An online discussion forum should be an effective way of engaging students in careful and considered reflection, yet often they represent time-consuming and frustrating experiences for faculty. Getting students to share thoughts and ideas, balancing contributions and knowing when to stimulate, moderate or step-back can be challenging. I’ve long found the advice to faculty, much …
Continue reading “Effective Discussion Forums – disrupting assumptions with VoiceThread”
We really need to know what we each believe about learning, our personal epistemologies, before we start learning and teaching. Do we really change the way we see, feel, and hear international voices, or do we just make structural adjustments around the edges of our programmes, curricula and induction processes. We build prayer rooms, but …
Continue reading “Sharing Perspectives on Internationalisation”
1% of the World’s Population has a College education? I’ve been looking recently at some of the policy declarations around millennium goals and development targets. It’s confusing and, at times, contradictory. I came across this rather nice, succinct, if unreferenced, account which struck me as worth contemplating (and verifying). “If we could shrink the earth’s …
Continue reading “1% of the World’s Population has a college education.”
The EdMediaShare site from JISC Digital Media is developing some serious traction to support useful and usable video content. I think it has proved itself as a ‘proof of concept’. The EdMedia Share site allows for the sharing of educationally useful content, provide opportunities for ‘finding’ content and allows for ‘critique’. The browsing by discipline …
Continue reading “EdMediaShare providing opportunities to share practice”
The education press fizzed this week, having caught up with an end of 2011 TED talk from former Snapfish CEO Ben Nelson in which he proclaimed a $25 million war chest and an ambitious two-year timetable to “transform higher education” by creating an elite global university online. Not the first, and certainly not the last, …
Continue reading “New Ivy-League: Nice idea, wrong model”
The Society for Research into Higher Education (www.srhe.ac.uk/) or SRHE, held the inaugural meeting if the new Digital University Network, convened by Dr Lesley Gourlay and Dr Kelly Coate, at its office in London on Friday 2nd March 2012. The network is a response to the changing technological landscape in which Universities now operate and …
Continue reading “Post human frontiers for educational technology”
Delighted to be joining the International Board of JIME – Journal of Interactive Media in Education http://jime.open.ac.uk in 2012. Looking forward very much to making a contribution. JIME was launched in September, 1996. It’s aims are: To foster a multidisciplinary and intellectually rigorous debate on the theoretical and practical aspects of interactive media in education. …
Continue reading “Journal of Interactive Media in Education in 2012”