"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
With my colleagues at the VCU Center for Teaching Excellence, we have challenged ourselves this Fall to dedicate time each week to exploring a learning framework that has informed our work for years – the Community of Inquiry Framework. Or as Bud Deihl so eloquently stated, we are starting a Community of Inquiry about the… Read more Inquiring into CoI
After finishing Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age by Helen Beetham and Rhona Sharpe, that I discussed in my last post, I have moved to a book I have meant to read for years – The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. Self confession time. I do read a lot, but not all my books… Read more Courage to Teach Online
In my last post, I discussed how I was rethinking some fundamentals based on our White Paper. “Rethinking” must be in vogue. Yesterday, I received my copy of a new edition of a book edited by Helen Beetham and Rhona Sharpe – Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing for 21st Century Learning (Routledge, 2013).… Read more Rethinking Pedagogy
These are exciting times at our Center for Teaching Excellence at VCU. Gardner Campbell is reporting next week as our new Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Student Success. Jon Becker started yesterday as our interim Director of Online Education. We are saying goodbye to Phillip Edwards as he leaves for the Ohio State University Center… Read more Rethinking Fundamentals
We just wrapped up our annual institute…a part of our year-long Online Course Development Initiative. Again this year, we have 20 faculty who joined our eLearning Team this week at the VCU Center for Teaching Excellence to focus on teaching and what teaching means in an online environment. During our final lunch, we all discussed… Read more Our Annual Online Teaching Institute
In this last week of the University of Edinburgh’s Coursera MOOC – E-Learning and Digital Cultures, I mentioned in my last post that our assignment was to create a digital artifact for this learning experience. I chose to explore Scoop.It as a way of curating resources from this course, and posted my resulting artifact here. … Read more Exploring EDCMOOC Digital Artifacts from My Global Classmates
As we entered the fifth and last week of the University of Edinburgh’s Coursera MOOC – E-Learning and Digital Cultures, our assignment was to create a digital artifact for this learning experience. I chose to explore Scoop.It as a way of curating resources from this course, and then to use Camtasia to record a short… Read more EDCMOOC and My Digital Artifact
Last week, alongside engaging with the week’s tasks, we were invited to begin experimenting with visual ways of representing our understanding of being human in a digital world. Several hundred images were uploaded to Flickr. You can see the entries in Flickriver – and even click interesting ones to vote for the best. I thought… Read more EDCMOOC Flickr Competition
We have moved into our third week in the University of Edinburgh’s Coursera MOOC – E-Learning and Digital Cultures and have shifted from examining utopias and dystopias to an examination of what it means to be “human” in a digital age. This is a timely examination for me, as it gave me a new… Read more EDCMOOC Week 3 and Being Human
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