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Learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything. Building An Online Learning Community by Kevin Wilcoxon. “One thing is certain, learning communities are more engaging and members more engaged than is the case with traditional instruction.” How can an instructional designer (ID) leverage social interaction online to engage learners, increase exchange and dialogue, and get better results, without losing the purposeful focus provided by an instructor or traditional course content and structure? Many IDs are intrigued by the potential of communal experiences online, but there is a great deal of uncertainty about how to proceed. Here are a couple of cases that you may find interesting. Afterward, I offer a roadmap for producing similar results. Online Statistics course Michelle Everson teaches a Statistics course online.

Each group is required to work on eight small-group assignments during the course or series. Online Operations Management course Joel Mencena teaches Operations Management online. Learning communities Figure 1. We can further specify each element of a learning community. Figure 2. Harvard Education Letter. Students in Hayley Dupuy’s sixth-grade science class at the Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto, Calif., are beginning a unit on plate tectonics. In small groups, they are producing their own questions, quickly, one after another: What are plate tectonics? How fast do plates move? Why do plates move? Do plates affect temperature? What animals can sense the plates moving? They raise questions “that we never would have thought of if we started to answer the first question we asked,” says one of the students.

“And just when you think you already know the question you want to focus on, you realize: ‘Oh, wow, here’s this other question that is so much better, and that’s really what you need to think about.’” Far from Palo Alto, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Mass., Sharif Muhammad’s students at the Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA) have a strikingly similar experience. The QFT has six key steps: Step 1: Teachers Design a Question Focus.

Using Piazza to Encourage Interaction. [This is a guest post by Abir Qasem, who teaches intro to programming, AI, cloud, and device programming courses for the Computer Science Department at Bridgewater College. You can find him online or follow him on Twitter at @abirqasem. --@JBJ] In my introductory programming courses, my pedagogy relies heavily on collaborative problem solving during class time. A big challenge for me, until recently, had been getting the “quiet” students in my class to participate in class discussions. Piazza is a Web 2.0 tool that allows students to ask questions and engage in dialogue on the Internet with the professor and with each other. Click for full size. Piazza has a chatroom feel to it, while offering enough structure to be used effectively in a classroom environment. My initial goal was quite modest – I wanted to use it as an extension to the classroom discussion.

Piazza captures class statistics, which can be interesting (see screenshot for “posts” vs. What I specifically did The bottom line. How to get students to participate in Online Discussions… Pedagogy and Moodle. Let's sit back and really reflect on the pedagogy that is at the core of what we, as online educators, are trying to do. Definition of Pedagogy One definition of pedagogy in Wiktionary says The profession of teaching The activities of educating, teaching or instructing Wikipedia has a much longer page on Pedagogy. At one point it said Pedagogy is the art or science of being a teacher, generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction. The word comes from the Ancient Greek παιδαγωγέω (paidagōgeō; from παῖς (child) and ἄγω (lead)): literally, "to lead the child”. Moodle in three short paragraphs The heart of Moodle is courses that contain activities and resources. There are a number of other tools that make it easier to build communities of learners, including blogs, messaging, participant lists etc, as well useful tools like grading, reports, integration with other systems and so on.

Social Constructionism as a Referent Finding a balance Progression Community Hubs. Book Module Tutorial. 47 Interesting Ways to Use Moodle in the Classroom (started by @TomBarrett)  Creative uses of moodle modules. Widgets. Best Embeds for Moodle, Wikis, and Blogs. Apr26 Now that you and/or your students are using wikis and blogs, are you curious what could be added to them? From animated slideshows to collaborative documents to interactive review games, many great (and free) tools are available. As a follow up to my previous post “What Teachers Should and Should Not Be Posting on their Classroom Webpages”, I’ve pulled a master list of embedding options that will hopefully spark your imagination.

As you browse the list consider how you will use these embeds. While some of these work perfectly for classroom blog posts, others tend to be more effective wiki tools. Do you want students to view a video clip and then leave comments below? That’s a perfect blog scenario. One note of warning, however. Good luck and again if you have any other suggestions please post them in the comments section. Collaborative Project Tools aMap is an excellent tool for social studies projects. Communication Tools to Parents and Students Photos Student Products Videos. UW-Milwaukee Learning Technology Center | Example of Discussion Rubric. DiscussionRubric_V1. Discussion Rubric. University of Wisconsin - Stout — Schedule of Online Courses, Online Certificate Programs, and Graduate Degree Follow us on Facebook.

This rubric may be used for self-assessment and peer feedback. * Open class discussion is an important and significant part of an online course. While class discussion whether online or face to face, can be characterized by free flowing conversation, there are identifiable characteristics that distinguish exemplary contributions to class discussion from those of lesser quality. The criteria found on the rubric above will be used to assess the quality of your initial postings and responses to the postings and comments of peers during class discussion. Note: Initial postings are your comments based on the discussion prompt posted by the instructor. Responses to others are your replies to your peers' initial postings. Original rubric developed by: Lynn E. Used with permission and adapted by Joan Vandervelde. 2+threaded+discussion+rubric.

Weekly-online-discussions-rubric-eme5050. Wegmann_Online_Disucssions_Rubric. Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers - Cat's Pyjamas. §. Moodle Tips and Tricks (EdTecHacker) Moodle Minis (Tips, Videos, Handouts and...) (Moodle Minis) Moodle Tutorials ::: Educating Educators. 30+ Moodle Videos and Tutorials by @sbrandt (nice work!) | Moodl. Stumbled across this huge repository of video screencasts on Screenr.com last week and just had to share them. Shawn Brandt (@sbrandt) created them all and out of the nearly 80 videos he’s posted about 1/2 are all about Moodle.

The topics range from beginner to more advanced and most videos are under 5 minutes. Note that many appear to pertain directly to a Moodle training course that is not available publicly. But that doesn’t detract from the great ideas and processes outlined in the videos. They include (but are not limited to), adding events and using the calendarusing assignmentscreating pages and resourcesdisplaying directoriesusing .zip files to upload multiple filesimproving your course aestheticsand so much more.

Here’s a great one (creating a course that’s more learner-centric, For the full list of videos go to this link: And don’t forget to let @sbrandt know that the videos rock! Udacity - 21st Century University. Coursera. Moodle.com - We give you powerful free tools to help you educate the world.

A New Use for MOOCs: Real-World Problem Solving - Zafrin Nurmohamed, Nabeel Gillani, and Michael Lenox. By Zafrin Nurmohamed, Nabeel Gillani, and Michael Lenox | 9:00 AM July 4, 2013 There’s been no shortage of media coverage on Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the past year. Universities have touted the value of free on-line courses offered to millions of learners from all walks of life. Some MOOC critics have argued that the “MOOC revolution” has been characterized by the Gartner Hype Cycle and that 2012, the Year of the MOOC, has given way to a new trough of disillusionment. Recent criticisms by faculty at Amherst College and professors at San Jose State University have questioned the pedagogical value of these online courses.

However, directly comparing MOOCs to traditional classrooms may prevent us from realizing the true potential of global online education. Perhaps it’s time we stop trying to fit MOOCs into old educational molds and start considering how we can harness their powers in new and exciting ways. We can use MOOCs as platforms for real-world problem solving. Free online tutorials for learning to use technology and ict in education.

How to work with screencasting tools www.teachertrainingvideos.com uses Camtasia for making the training videos. I also use JING for making short videos. If you look at the menu on the left-hand side, you can see a complete list of the screencasting tools that I have worked with and made videos for. Here are a few of my favourites. Camtasia 7-Two sets of videos All the videos I have made on this site use Camtasia 7. SnagIt SnagIt is not free but it is a very reasonably priced option for creating screencasts and it also allows for doing much more. SnagIt part two ScreenR A simple screen cast tool that works on the web. ScreenCast-o-matic Another free screen casting tool that does not need any download and allows you to record quite long videos.

Russell Writes in the Teacher Training Journal. OER Commons. Learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything. Edmodo | Where Learning Happens | Sign up, Sign In. Think.com, Oracle Education Foundation, Progetti | Concorso | Libreria. Free Online Courses: Top 50 Sites to Get Educated for Free - InformED :

Facilitating Collaborative Learning: 20 Things You Need to Know From the Pros - InformED. OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials. Gooru | A Free Search Engine for Learning | Sign up, Sign in. eLearning for Personal Development.