Month: October 2013

What Is Agile Learning Design?

Agile started as a software development process—a reaction to the cumbersome “waterfall” methodology that had been brought over from older manufacturing practices. Early software development companies had no model for their new trade, so they simply borrowed what had been established for years in other industries where products are made.

The problem is that this method is extremely impractical for software development. This is because in order to move to the next stage of development, the stage before it must be 100% complete, perfect, and documented… and that’s just not how software development works. (I’m sure you can already start to see how this applies to learning design).

What Is Agile Learning Design?.

Agile vs ADDIE: Which Is Better for Learning Design?

This difference (of early sharing and collaborating) is such a breath of fresh air that some people have even recommended leaving ADDIE in favor of a new, more agile system.

I can see where they are coming from, because newer and more efficient processes have been developed. Agile (and other iterative models like it) take into account new technologies and more rapidly evolving ideas. But I’m not sure if “leaving” is the language we should be using. The concept behind the ADDIE model has worked for instructional designers for years. There is something about the simplicity of it—it grounds the team in stages so you know you’re not designing before you’ve defined the problem, or developing before you’ve laid out your design, etc.

Agile vs ADDIE: Which Is Better for Learning Design?.

Understanding the Building Blocks of Online Learning Series – pt1

This is an excellent series from a leader in educational technology and the affect on post-secondary institutions. I will will post a blog entry as these are published on the Contact North website. I encourage discussion!

For almost 50 years, Tony Bates has been a consistent, persistent and influential voice for the reform of teaching and learning in post-secondary education, notably through the effective use of emerging technologies. Author of 11 books and 350 research papers in the field of online learning and distance education, Tony Bates is also an advisor to over 40 organizations in 25 countries, and publisher of what is arguably the most influential blog on online learning with over 20,000 visits a month.  A Contact North | Contact Nord Research Associate, Dr. Bates has helped educators, academic administrators and policy makers grasp key concepts, trends and challenges in online learning. This posting is one of a series that looks at Tony’s perspectives and advice on key issues in online learning.  

This series was researched and developed by Contact North | Contact Nord Research Associates, Dr. Jane Brindley and Dr. Ross Paul.     

“Adapting technology for effective learning is the mantra for Tony’s entire career – technology for accessibility, for flexible response to diverse needs, for improved quality and cost control, and for institutional accountability.

His constant message is that most institutions are under-exploiting the potential of technology to respond to the growing pressures for change in post-secondary education. For meaningful improvements, major changes are needed in the prevailing institutional cultures and the way they are managed. Online learning, which harnesses the power of the Internet, multimedia resources and Web-based tools, is taking post-secondary education by storm.

For Bates, the change is starkly different from that of earlier technologies mainly used to broadcast content. In the opportunities it provides to engage students, enhance quality, widen access and be cost efficient, and the radical changes it requires for the effective organization and rethinking of post-secondary education practices and processes, online learning is a game changer.”

Understanding the Building Blocks of Online Learning: | Contact North.

Inventing the future of publishing through human curated big data

Semantic technology has been around for years and was supposed to save us from information overload. So far, it failed. The Semantic Web or Web 3.0 is still Tim Berners-Lee’s dream, and good old Web 2.0 keeps drowning us in oceans of content. But while social media is certainly the cause of this deluge of information, it can also be the solution: first, as it provides us with a huge amount of data that we can use to qualify this information through big data technology; second, because it educated and created a need for millions to become human curators. By combining algorithms and humans, we reinvent media while bringing the meaning back to the Web.

Motivating Students with Teaching Techniques that Establish Relevance, Promote Autonomy | Faculty Focus

Underachievement in college students is linked to lack of motivation (Balduf, 2009 and references therein). Two major factors that contribute to poor motivation are inability of students to see the relevance of classroom activities to their chosen careers (Glynn et al., 2009) and lack of a sense of autonomy (Reeve and Jang, 2006; Reeve, 2009).

In this article, I provide examples of how I addressed these two issues with activities that promote experiential learning and encourage students to be more active participants in their learning. These techniques were used mainly in science courses but could be adapted to other disciplines.

Motivating Students with Teaching Techniques that Establish Relevance, Promote Autonomy | Faculty Focus.

New Open Access Policy for NSERC, SSHRC & CIHR: Draft now Open for Comments! | Creative Commons Canada

Earlier this week, the three major Canadian research funding agencies released a new draft for a harmonized open access policy amongst the three organizations. Once finalized, this policy will apply to all researchers who receive a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), or the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

The proposed policy will advance important rules to help ensure that publicly-funded research in Canada is both accessible and beneficial to the public. Foremost, the rules will require researchers to make their results openly available within one year of publication.

New Open Access Policy for NSERC, SSHRC & CIHR: Draft now Open for Comments! | Creative Commons Canada.

6 Alternatives To Bloom’s Taxonomy For Teachers –

“At the end of the day, teaching is about learning, and learning is about understanding.

And as technology evolves to empower more diverse and flexible assessments forms, constantly improving our sense of what understanding looks like–during mobile learning, during project-based learning, and in a flipped classroom–can not only improve learning outcomes, but just might be the secret to providing personalized learning for every learner.

This content begs the question: why does one need alternatives to the established and entrenched Bloom’s? Because Bloom’s isn’t meant to be the alpha and the omega of framing instruction, learning, and assessment. Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy does a brilliant job of offering “verbs” in categories that impose a helpful cognitive framework for planning learning experiences, but it neglects important ideas, such as self-knowledge that UbD places at the pinnacle of understanding, or the idea of moving from incompetence to competence that the SOLO taxonomy offers.

So with apologies to Bloom (whose work we covered recently), we have gathered five alternatives to his legendary, world-beating taxonomy, from the TeachThought Simple Taxonomy, to work from Marzano to Fink, to the crew at Understanding by Design.”

6 Alternatives To Bloom’s Taxonomy For Teachers –.