"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
In our GRAD 602 class last week, we spent some time surfacing our students’ beliefs about learning. As Laura noted in her blog, we “dabbled in the classic ‘See one, do one, teach one.’” From there, we then discussed some of the work of John Bransford on How People Learn, as well as the opening… Read more Impact of Prior Knowledge on Teaching
It’s Spring Break here at VCU, so no GRAD-602 class this week. However, as Jeff Nugent, David McLeod and I are all here this week…and since the Open VA Conference was cancelled due to a March snow storm, we decided to have another podcast conversation. Last week in our class, our students discussed a case… Read more A Conversation on Risk Taking by New Faculty
Sat down with Jeff Nugent and David McLeod, my co-teachers for GRAD-602, to discuss the tension between learner autonomy and learner compliance. This is planned to be the first in a series of podcasts we three will do for this course. Good discussion around power, roles, self-directedness, and learning-centered students. Note: The Skeptical Goat made… Read more A Conversation on Learner Autonomy and Compliance
Again this spring, Jeff Nugent, David McLeod and I will be co-teaching GRAD-602 – Teaching, Learning and Technology. For the first time, we have chosen to run the course in the open rather than using the traditional Blackboard LMS. Our course website is here. We have 26 graduate students with us for this learning journey,… Read more Spring 2013 GRAD-602 Underway
Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to 2013! I have two “open” new years resolutions. We have been talking about how the web has become increasingly open, social and participatory for the past four years…yet with the arrival of the MOOC bandwagon last year, “open” took on new significance. So, as 2013 gets rolling, I and… Read more Starting the New Year Open
It has been my privilege to teach the eight-week summer course, ADLT 640 – The Theory and Practice of eLearning – for the VCU School of Education Adult Learning program. I blogged in late June and early July about teaching this course. Tonight, we wrap up the course with our final session. Sonja’s comment in… Read more Wrapping Up Summer Course
Last week my students in ADLT 640 learned some amazing lessons … including some that were not on the syllabus. ADLT 640 – The Theory and Practice of eLearning in Adult Environments – is an eight week summer course that starts a three-course track in the Adult Learning Masters program on teaching with technology. We… Read more Peanut Butter, Mother Nature and eLearning
This summer session, I am teaching an eight-week graduate course in the Adult Education graduate program on the Theory and Practice of eLearning Integration in Adult Environments (ADLT-640) for VCU. The course was originally designed as a hybrid course, meeting once a week, but I suggested a format change to meet twice a week the… Read more Teaching an eLearning class F2F
This week in our Teaching, Learning and Technology course, GRAD-602, we will explore active learning. I was delighted that one of our students jumped in to the topic early with her post, “Educators Against Active Learning.” Now, EvoAcademic is not against active learning herself. Rather, she is commenting about Kevin Mattson‘s 2005 article, “Why ‘Active… Read more Which Word is Emphasized in “Active Learning”?
During the past spring in the course I co-taught with Jeffrey Nugent, we asked our graduate students in the Preparing Future Faculty program to create a personal teaching project. Many chose to develop a teaching philosophy. Several good ones are here and here and here. It occurred to me that I have not updated my… Read more My Teaching Philosophy