Student engagement is among the most discussed topics in online learning. Many instructors encounter difficulties in creating meaningful interactions and fostering active participation in virtual environments where physical presence is absent. So, how to engage students online? Why Engaging Students Online Matters Like traditional in-person learning, online education demands active participation and involvement of students…
For the Fall 2016 semester, UMass Amherst has 10 new classrooms with integrated Echo360 lecture capture technology: Ag Engineering 119 Arnold House 120 Furcolo 101 Furcolo 102 Draper 124 Herter 225 Marcus 131 Morrill IV N201 Stockbridge 301 Totman 156 To request Echo360 for these or any of our other classrooms with integrated lecture capture technology, see our Request…
Looking for a detailed guide to provoking rich, focused discussions among students in your courses, even large ones? Peter Newbury of UC San Diego has a great set of procedures and recommendations for how to use audience response tools like i>clicker to do just that. “Peer instruction is a powerful, evidence-based instructional strategy that supports…
Games and game-like activities can make the process of thought visible to players, and help them explore issues and topics that are difficult to understand except through experience and interaction. This is the theory of procedural rhetoric, which “argues that games can make strong claims about how the world works—not simply through words or visuals…
You don’t have to Google too deeply to find examples of how technology in the classroom can go off the rails, sometimes spectacularly. While doing research on why iPad use in education sometimes fails, I came across an article from @thomasdaccord on Edudemic, 5 Critical Mistakes Schools Make With iPads (And How To Correct Them). Before reading the article, I could…
Have you ever struggled with how to structure and administer peer review activities in your course? ELI Review published an excellent feature article (Designing Effective Reviews) on designing effective peer review activities, backed up with research and voices from instructors. Though ELI Review promotes their own peer review tool in this article, most of the faculty…
Advancing technology and changing pedagogy have flipped our classrooms, changed the way we lecture, and put lectures, homework and assignments online. Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology David Gross has embraced these changes and uses his tablet as the lynch-pin to hold it all together. Here’s a look at how he’s integrated a ton of…
For Fall 2014, UMass Amherst is offering iPeer, a web-based tool that allows students to evaluate their peers as part of team-based work assignments. About iPeer Peer evaluation is particularly useful in courses where teams or groups are utilized for collaborative work. iPeer provides a number of different peer evaluation tools, including: Simple: students evaluate…
The Center for Teaching and Faculty Development (CTFD) is hosting an Active Learning Institute on May 19th and 20th, 2014. While registration is now closed, you can contact the CTFD at ctfd@acad.umass.edu if you are interested in incorporating more active learning techniques into your pedagogy. UMass Amherst IT currently supports a number of technological tools…
Suzanne Surina Baur, a Technology Resource Teacher from Southeastern Cooperative Educational Program in Norfolk, Virginia, suggests ways to have students drive their learning in class. She notes that being lectured to or talked at makes it hard for students to be engage with the material and take ownership of their learning. Read her suggestions at…
Integrating storyboards into a course or as part of a multimedia assignment makes a course more interesting and will engage students. Storyboards can also be assigned to students as a tool for presenting a project. Free storyboard templates and trail versions of storyboard creators are available to get you and your students started with this…
EDUCAUSE defines massively open online courses (MOOCs) as a model for delivering learning content online to virtually any person—with no limit on attendance—who wants to take the course. MOOCs are offered on a wide range of subjects, including physics, journalism, and zombies. Wait…zombies…? Yes, that’s NOT a typo!