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Academic Digital

Student Centred Learning

I particularly like this diagram, found in one of Malcolm Murray’s presentations for Durham University:

student-centred-learning

 

See full presentation, and a useful definition of ‘Student Centred Learning’ here:

The term student-centered learning refers to a wide variety of educational programs,learning experiences, instructional approaches, and academic-support strategies that are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students and groups of students. To accomplish this goal, schools, teachers, guidance counselors, and other educational specialists may employ a wide variety of educational methods, from modifying assignments and instructional strategies in the classroom to entirely redesigning the ways in which students are grouped and taught in a school.

An important piece of thinking “Students experience of the institutional technology they are asked  to use should match the usability of the technology they choose to use.” Although we turned this on its head with Manipulating Media module, and used the technology the students used, and encouraged them to use it from a more academic perspective.

Students typically find that their HE tech provision is a step down from what they have had at previous levels, and the BODGIT project highlighted both poor practices within HE institutions (buy the software and scarper, leaving staff to learn how to use it, as it slips down their list of priorities), and a resistance amongst staff – which can be overcome by ensuring that staff understand what the software can do for them (in terms of time/money, typically), or for their learners. Much more complex than those few sentences would indicate!

See the associated Project Blog.

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Academic Digital Life(style) Speaker

[SPEAKER] Dealing with Bullying #YC14

This afternoon’s session – a huge topic …

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Digital

Generational Reactions to Technology?

I’m no great believer in the idea that people are limited/automatically skilled by age… but it is about age/learning/what you are exposed to. CODEC have purchased a set of Google Glass, so I was interested to see this video, as I’ll suspect I’ll react quite similarly as I try and get used to it (as Pete did in #MediaLit14) – and these guys raise some great questions about the why/how:

and for a bit of balance, they provided a range of old technology to teenagers (some of who adapted better than others to playing these games):

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Academic

Postgraduates: All about employability?

girl-on-trampoline-1399294-m

Interesting… I studied what I studied (although it was by research, rather than taught) because I was interested, and when following interest – more interesting opportunities open up:

“I feel guilty for finding it all so interesting,” a student on a taught master’s in history told me recently. My surprise must have been palpable because she went on to explain: “It’s just with the expense of it all, you have to tell people you’re doing it to get a job; otherwise it seems like an indulgence, really.”

Read full article.

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Academic

Teaching of Value?

Education

Teaching is the lifeblood/energy so far as I’m concerned in universities (hence why I was promoted to Senior Fellow in Learning and Teaching in my last job), so this is quite disappointing:

Amid concerns that promotion in the sector is too heavily based on research excellence, the report, commissioned by the Higher Education Academy, found that just 28.4 per cent of academics have been rewarded by their institutions for their commitment to teaching or student support.

Read the full article, or the report.