Student-staff collaborations to enhance the remote learning environment | Engineering - Imperial College London

Chemical engineering undergraduates and teaching staff have designed several projects to enhance collaboration in virtual spaces, says Sara West, Communications Manager - Department of Chemical Engineering Department of Chemical Engineering.

Photo: Imperial College London

A group of undergraduates have teamed up with Chemical Engineering Teaching Fellows on several projects to enhance the virtual learning experience. They have focused on trialling tools for collaborative learning, both within and outside the curriculum, ranging from assessed activities to informal group-learning.

Their projects have produced a range of digital tools that undergraduate and masters’ students can utilise to collaborate with their teachers and peers online...

Imperial Chem Eng Wiki

The Imperial Chem Eng Wiki site was created by Chemical Engineering undergraduates Thomas Nok Hin Cheng and Pierre Walker. Their vision was to create a site where they could consolidate learning materials for their modules, including lectures notes, and facilitate the sharing of learning resources in a communal online space.

Thomas and Pierre launched the Wiki in February 2020, just before the first UK national lockdown and the start of remote teaching. They trialled it with second-year students who were revising for their summer term exams. In a follow-up survey, 95% of respondents said they found the Wiki useful and thought it helped them retrieve information and consolidate concepts...

Next steps 

These student-staff collaborations have led to transforming the delivery of content and assessment in a more engaging and helpful manner. Moreover, several students have shown interest in improving these resources further for the benefit of their peers in the future and on-going work to strengthen these projects are planned for the 2021 Summer period.

Read more... 

Source: Imperial College London

‘Schools need to update their priorities to accommodate a hybrid learning future’ | Comment - Independent Education Today

As new methods of attack emerge, Mark Belgrove, head of cyber consultancy at Exponential-e, says schools need to make cyber security a priority to safeguard students.

Photo: Independent Education Today

The education industry has been a top target for cyber criminals since the rise of remote learning. Just weeks ago, laptops issued to vulnerable children to support their remote learning were infected with a strain of malware linked to servers in Russia, and more recently 15 Nottinghamshire schools fell victim to a sophisticated cyber-attack that forced them to shut down their IT networks. Both served as a stark wake-up call for the education sector....

The past year has pushed an already emerging trend toward hybrid learning into the mainstream. And even though students and staff are now back in school, it has never been more important for the education sector to make cyber security a priority when it comes to safeguarding students, as well as physical safety while on school grounds...

...Remote learning has been indispensable during lockdown and provided a powerful foundation for new channels of education, many of which are expected to remain prominent for hybrid learning methods post-pandemic. 

These innovations augur well for the future, but with every innovation comes an extended and more complex threat landscape. Many technology partners possess the expertise in hands-on security monitoring, cutting-edge threat intelligence, and secure, compliant hosting of sensitive data, to help education institutions adopt a robust approach to security that is tailored to the systems, tools and materials being used by pupils and staff.

Read more...

Source: Independent Education Today 

Top 5 Remote Learning Tools for Students | College - Study Breaks

Top five must-have remote learning tools to make your distance learning successful and hassle-free. Pick software to help you with time management, planning, and note-taking.

Just because you're apart from your classmates doesn't mean that you can't work together.
Photo: Oluwatobi Fasipe on Unsplash

Modern students can study in different ways: in a large class, individually with a teacher, remotely, or even independently. And distance learning takes a special place here. It has many advantages and is an excellent alternative to the classic lessons. However, it also comes with several drawbacks that can jeopardize the success of the whole idea. In practice, both students and teachers face serious difficulties that prevent successful learning:

• Difficulty in adapting to the online format of learning — moving from traditional classroom learning to an online learning hub makes the process completely different and decreases its effectiveness;
• Low computer literacy — the lack of computer literacy is a serious problem in the modern world that has affected both students and teachers;
• Not knowing the basics of time management – the freedom that the online learning format offers often decreases one’s vigilance and creates a false sense of time. Distance education puts higher demands on discipline and self-organization;
• Poor self-motivation — a lack of motivation is a common problem for the majority of students. The online format requires a lot of discipline and dedication to complete assignments on your own, stay motivated and make progress.

Obviously, there are many advantages of e-learning; however, distance education still results in some problems. So how to make the transition from offline to online learning as effective as possible? How to build a distance learning system without the need to spend days on end only to get middle-level marks in the end?...

...Of course, distance learning is very different from traditional ways of learning, which gives rise to certain problems. 

Read more... 

Source: Study Breaks 

The benefits of digital learning for improving employee performance | Digital learning - Retail Technology Innovation Hub

From schools to businesses by way of individuals looking to improve their skills, digital learning, or e-learning, has become commonplace for a wide range of demands by Staff Writer.

Photo: Unsplash

It has allowed students to continue to learn even when they are unable to get to school, and it has brought entire classes of people together no matter where they are in the world.

E-learning can also significantly benefit your business and your employees, and if you want to know why here are the top four benefits. 

Always improving 

Any business should strive to provide adequate options for their employees to develop skills and improve.

While training courses and mentoring are some of the most popular, it’s also vital to consider other avenues such as e-learning to give them a range of options. 

Read more... 

Source: Retail Technology Innovation Hub 

Ask a Trainer Video: Visual Design for E-Learning | E-Learning - ATD Blog

When you fall into the world of e-learning, there’s so much about the job that no one tells you by Tim Slade, authoring tools trainer for Artisan E-Learning and Bianca Woods, instructional designer with BMO Financial Group.

Photo: ATD Blog

Not only do you need to be a good instructional designer, but you also need to be a project manager, user interface designer, video editor, audio editor, LMS administrator, and occasionally the only one who knows how to un-jam the office copying machine.

Then, of course, there’s the visual design and graphic design aspects of the job...

Ask a Trainer Answers Your Questions About Visual Design for E-Learning.PhpPhoto

In this Ask a Trainer video, Tim Slade and Bianca Woods, answer questions about visual design best practices when creating e-learning solutions. 

 

Read more... 

 

Source: ATD Blog 

Why I’m Hosting The Joy of x Podcast | Mathematics - Quanta Magazine

The noted mathematician and author Steven Strogatz, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University explains why he wanted to share intimate conversations with leading researchers from diverse fields in his new podcast. 

Photo: Ashley Mackenzie for Quanta Magazine

As a teenager in the 1970s, I used to love snuggling up in a big, soft velvet chair in my high school library. There, in its burnt-orange upholstery (I told you it was the ’70s), I’d lose myself in the memoirs of great scientists. One of those autobiographies, Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, made an abiding impression on me. In it, he describes feeling hopelessly stuck on a problem as a young postdoctoral fellow. To make matters worse, he was suffering from such a severe case of hay fever that he had to take two weeks off and escape to a remote, pollen-free island in the North Sea. One night, he suddenly saw the solution to his problem. He was far too giddy to sleep, so as a new day dawned, he climbed “a rock jutting out into the sea … and waited for the sun to rise.” His late-night epiphany is now called quantum mechanics.

This is the kind of fascinating thing we can learn by hearing great minds talk about their work and how it connects to their lives. It’s the best way, and maybe the only way, to learn not just what great scientists do but why they do it.

So when the editors at Quanta Magazine invited me to host a podcast for them, I jumped at the chance...

One last thing. Maybe you’re wondering why we call this podcast The Joy of x. Aside from the pun that only people of a certain age will get, we feel that this is a show about different kinds of joy — the joy of discovery, the joy of curiosity, and the joy of being a scientist, to name a few. As in algebra, the letter x represents the unknown quantity, the solution we’re seeking. But to us it connotes anything that sparks imagination and curiosity, anything that lies beyond the edge of what’s known. In short, x stands for the scientific quest.

 

Read more...

 

Source: Quanta Magazine 

Empty protractor | Mathematics - Association of Teachers of Mathematics

"The use of a protractor is twofold, viz, to lay down an angle or to measure an angle already laid down." (Meredith, 1791). 

Tom Francome, Lecture in Mathematics Education at the University of Birmingham describes how he uses an empty protractor to develop pupils' understanding of angle. 

Protractors  are  used  routinely  in  schools,  typically from year five (9-10 years) onwards...

The attached document has been downloaded or otherwise acquired from the website of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM) at www.atm.org.uk.

Read more... (PDF)

Source: The Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM)

Why the Unknowable Number Exists But Is Uncomputable | Mathematics - Mind Matters

Sensing that a computer program is “elegant” requires discernment. Proving mathematically that it is elegant is, Gregory Chaitin impossible.

Abstract virtual binary code illustration on blurry modern office building background. Big data and coding concept. Multiexposure

In this week’s podcast, “The Chaitin Interview IV: Knowability and Unknowability,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed mathematician Gregory Chaitin on his “unknowable number.” That’s the topic of this series, based on the fourth podcast. Last week, we tried getting to know the unknowable number. Today, let’s look at the question of how we know that the number is unknowable — instead of merely non-computable. Lots of things are non-computable but we do not expect that to be true of numbers.

Read more... 

Source: Mind Matters

The Beauty of Math in Architecture | Math - Newsmax

Alexandra York, author and founding president of the American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) a New-York-City-based nonprofit educational arts and culture foundation (www.art-21.org) explains, Humans are hardwired to find delight in nature’s designs. We gravitate toward order rather than chaos. 

Pythagoras
Photo: denny vrandecic - Flickr

We like spirals, curves, zigzags, symmetry, harmonious proportion, and congruence: snail shells, waves, sunflowers, honeycombs, galaxies, leaves… all of nature’s fractal compositions that create an integration of details the whole of which seems so much greater than the sum of its parts. A fractal is a repeating geometric pattern that can be subdivided endlessly into parts, each part being a smaller copy of the whole; yet, it is the “finished” structural pattern that charms us.

How do nature’s geometrical pleasures transfer to manmade forms of architecture? Does an element of humanism enhance this art form to turn nature’s purely optical pleasure into a personal and/or communal one? As usual, we repair to ancient Greece for answers. Born from requirement to measure land — "geometry" means “earth measuring” — the Babylonians and Egyptians used geometry empirically to construct civic and religious buildings millennia before Greek flourishing in 5^th-century BCE. But when Greeks eventually traveled to “modern” versions of those early civilizations, they not only learned much about math in general but also expanded the basics — geometry in particular — into a scientific philosophy that became a separate discipline.

Pythagoras (569 BCE) started it while visiting Egypt and grasping principles beneath brilliant but experientially achieved structures...

All of the arts utilize math. Painting and sculpture necessitate an underlying geometric design to support composition. Fictive arts require thematic structure — a beginning, middle, and end — to support story progression...

...mathematically designed physical substances and forms as its only means of communicating. Communicating what today?

Read more... 

Source: Newsmax 

University of Dundee offers scholarship for Indian students | Education - The Indian Express

The 'GREAT scholarship' offers international students who want to study at UK University for a one-year postgraduate course. Interested and eligible candidates can apply for the scholarship by May 7, 2021 by Education Desk.

The 'GREAT scholarship' offers international students who want to study at UK University for one-year postgraduate course.
Photo: The Indian Express

 

>The University of Dundee in collaboration with the British Council is offering the ‘Great scholarships’ 2021-22 for Indian students to study a full-time, on-campus, postgraduate course of value £10,000. The offer starts in September 2021. Interested and eligible candidates can apply for the scholarship by May 7.

The scholarship is given for the tuition fees. It offers international students who want to study at the UK university a one-year postgraduate course. It also encourages the students to apply and demonstrate an interest in the chosen subject, through examples of work or academic experience...

The University of Dundee currently has 14 ‘Great scholarships’ available for the 2021-22 academic year for students from China (two), Egypt (one), Ghana (one), India (one), Indonesia (two), Kenya (one), Malaysia (two), Pakistan (two) and Thailand (two) for all subjects.

Read more... 

Source: The Indian Express  

Butterfly 'perfectly preserved for almost 400 years' in Cambridge University book | Entertainment - Yahoo

The insect book's original owner could have placed it there in the 17th century, according to Jimmy Nsubuga, Yahoo.

Rare preserved butterfly discovered in a copy of the earliest insect book published in England 

 

A butterfly found perfectly preserved inside a Cambridge University library book may have been there for almost 400 years.

Head of Library Services at Trinity College Jenni Lecky-Thompson was shocked after discovering the insect in a specialist book from 1634. 

College officials have said there is a possibility the original owner could have placed it in Theatre of Insects, which is the earliest insect book published in England...

“This one could have been put there by the first owner back in the 17th century, and if so it is amazing that is has survived there for so long.”

Read more...  

Source: Yahoo and Trinity Hall Cambridge Channel (YouTube)  

Gen Xers are "thriving" with digital work while millennials struggle | CXO - TechRepublic

R. Dallon Adams, Staff Writer at TechRepublic notes, Adobe's Workfront released a report about the impact of COVID-19 on employees, the importance of workplace tech, generational differences among workers and more.

Photo: iStock/torwai

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, organizations around the globe adopted remote work policies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. On Thursday, Adobe's Workfront released its annual State of Work report for 2021 outlining "how COVID-19 changed digital work," generational differences among employees, the importance of useful technology in day-to-day workflows and more.

Overall, the report compares the results of two Center for Generational Kinetics-conducted studies. The first study was conducted in February and March of last year and the second was held eight months later in November and December. Each study involved 1,000 respondents who "worked on a computer and collaborated with other people" and were employed by a company with a minimum of 500 employees, the report said. 

In the telecommuter age, remote teams have leveraged a vast suite of technologies to enable collaboration from afar...

Digital workers are more comfortable with "a variety of foundational work elements," but Gen Xers "appear to be thriving," according to the report. For example, the number of millennials who said they were comfortable with communication ideas and expression opinions increased one point, while Gen Xers reported an eight-point increase in both categories.

In terms of a person's ability to "build and reinforce trust in the workplace," millennials' comfort levels dropped three points while Gen Xers reported a four-point increase...

The report ends with a series of "takeaways" for business leaders and this includes treating "technology as a critical workforce issue."   

Read more...

Source: TechRepublic  

The number of Caribbean islands offering remote-work visas expands | Caribbean - Travel Weekly

Gay Nagle Myers, Contributing Editor inform, Dominica and Montserrat are the latest destinations to offer opportunities for digital nomads to power up their laptops in a tropical setting.

Zoom backdrop? Little Bay in Montserrat; the island is now offering long-term visa options for visitors who want a remote-work option.
Photo: Travel Weekly

Remote-work programs have sprung up across the Caribbean, as islands look to entice long-term visitors who contribute to the hospitality economy. The programs require visitors to stay in certified, approved properties -- hotels, resorts, villas and Airbnbs. Many are beachfront, and some properties offer discounts for long stays.

The chance to relocate and work remotely was first launched by Barbados with its Welcome Stamp program in July and was followed by Bermuda's One Year Work program in August, which allowed non-Bermudians to relocate their home and office to the 21-square-mile island for research study or remote work.

Others islands followed: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Curacao, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico...

The newest entry is Dominica with its extended-stay visa program dubbed Work in Nature (WIN), which offers remote workers, digital nomads, academics, families and those on sabbaticals to work remotely for up to 18 months on the island.

Dominica has high-speed internet, modern health-care facilities, educational options for families and opportunities to join for volunteer programs.

Read more... 

Source: Travel Weekly

Education: The evolution towards blending Arts and Science | BizNews

The theory of left and right brain dominance is fast being discounted by growing evidence that creative and analytical thinking are not separate, as was once thought. Nicole Willis discusses why society still considers the Sciences and the Arts as opposing forces in education, and why this is short-sighted. In South Africa, mathematics and science have been subjects of great debate in the schooling system. The 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study ranks South Africa as unable to reach the lowest benchmark in the report. Willis dissects the skill sets we will need moving into the future of a rapidly evolving world and whether one ‘side’ of the brain will ever outweigh the other. This article appeared on FirstRand Perspectives. – Melani Nathan.

___________________________________________________________

Perspectives on education and the balance between analytical science and creativity are shifting. Nicole Willis, considers new thinking.

Photo: BizNews

A debate through the ages

For those of you into your second or third decades in the working world, think back to a point in time during high school when the conversation with parents, and sometimes teachers, was about future study choices and career ambitions.

The debate centred around which university degrees and fields of study had more credibility than others, and would therefore result in the assurance of future success and wealth. There seemed to be a foregone conclusion that a ‘real’ qualification would provide a ‘real’ job – and those would invariably be either doctor, lawyer, auditor, or accountant...

Jumping back a few centuries to the Classical Greek period, philosophy was seen as the mother of all sciences, as a subject covering the scientific and intellectual understanding of the world.

It seems that, as humans have evolved, it has become more important to favour one over the other, based mostly on their ego value and perceived societal stature. So, are we now seeing a return to placing equal value on left and right brain capabilities?...

Where do we place the value?

...The ‘clever kids’ studied science, technology, engineering, and maths as a path to guarantee future success and today, we are living in a society that is more technically advanced than ever before.

But we are also living in a society where humans have more of a face and a voice and more power than ever before, and demand a human discourse between business, governments, and the people...

While, in the past, there may have been a clear winner depending on the zeitgeist of the time, the winners today are those mastering flexibility, educational and professional resilience.

In 2015, the World Economic Forum released the most important skillsets for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Source: Future of Jobs Report, World Economic Forum

Read more...

Source: BizNews   

4 apps to help you solve mathematical doubts with a click! | Schools - The Tribune

Remember maths "guide" book from the good old school days?, recommends The Tribune.

Photo: Image Istock

The one which always solved our doubts by explaining each and every step with minute details. In 2021, we have different apps which are helping students in a better way, where they can click their doubts and instantly can get the solution. Today, you can choose from learning tools that help you track formulae and learn algebra, to apps that let you solve equations by simply pointing the camera.

Here are 4 such apps that students can use:

Read more... 

Source: The Tribune

Disability, access, and the virtual conference | Editor's Picks - OUPblog

After my first Zoom meeting of the pandemic, I found myself lying on the bathroom floor with my noise-cancelling headphones on, on the verge of a full-blown meltdown, writes Sonya Freeman Loftis, Director of English and Professor of English at Morehouse College.

Photo: ThisIsEngineering from Pexels

As an autistic person, I’ve always been hypersensitive to noise and to visual stimuli—but I hadn’t realized that a Zoom meeting with my colleagues could cause sensory overload. The number of images on the computer screen, the amount of movement in those tiny thumb-nail images, and the speed with which the images had moved, flashed, and changed—not to mention the obtrusive noise of malfunctioning microphones and noisy, socially-distanced households—had been enough to make me physically sick. Although many people tend to assume that an online event is automatically more accessible than an in-person event (after all, people can attend without leaving their homes), this isn’t always the case. Even when online events are more accessible, one of the lessons the pandemic has reminded me of is that the act of creating disability access can fundamentally change the nature of the thing that is accessed.

In writing my new book, Shakespeare and Disability Studies, I was interested in exploring disability access as art and in exploring disability access as a complicated (and complicating) multifaceted phenomenon. Disability access is rarely just a question of “Can someone with X impairment use Y?” but rather more often a question of “If we modify Y so that someone with X impairment can use it, how does it change the meaning, the experience, and the effect of Y?” Creating access for people with disabilities sometimes means fundamentally changing the nature of the thing that is made accessible, whether the thing made accessible is a Shakespeare play (“the play’s the thing”) or a Zoom meeting. When we change the nature of the thing made accessible, we don’t just create access and inclusion for people with disabilities—we often create a new kind of experience altogether. I continue to be delighted and inspired by the innovative works, events, and objects we create (whether knowingly or inadvertently) when we create access for people with disabilities. Sometimes those new works, events, and objects bear a resemblance to the inaccessible version from which they grew. At other times, they do not...

Disability, in our culture, is stereotyped as loss. Accessibility, in our culture, is deemed as always good, always a gain. It is also often misunderstood as simple and one-dimensional, as easy to understand and to explain. This year, for the first time ever, I will attend the Shakespeare Association of America without a support person. I will be independent. It is important, however, to think about the enormous cost of making the conference fully accessible to me. This act of access will fundamentally change the nature of what the conference is. 

Read more... 

Additional resources 

Shakespeare and Disability Studies

Shakespeare and Disability Studies by Shakespeare and Disability Studies (Oxford Shakespeare Topics by Sonya Freeman Loftis, Professor of English, Morehouse College.

Source: OUPblog 

Introducing The Curiosity Academy, Stylist’s new digital learning hub | The Curiosity Academy - Stylist

Are you looking to find new hobbies, grow your passions and learn new skills? Introducing The Curiosity Academy, Stylist’s new learning hub for curious minds by Stylist Team.

Photo: Stylist Team

Over the past 12 months you have shared with us your growing passion for learning new skills – from candle-making and meditation to launching podcasts and perfecting public speaking. We know you have a thirst for knowledge in all areas of your life, and are curious to know more, do more and go further. 

You told us that your curiosity for learning isn’t just about lockdown life (although certainly that has fuelled a desire to learn for many) but about a new mindset – continuous learning is the answer to finding new passions and living life to the full.

With that in mind we are delighted to unveil The Curiosity Academy – a new digital space where you can access workshops, how-to guides, new research and learn the most up-to-date skills from the UK’s most in-the-know people.

Read more... 

Source: Stylist

Buckle up for blended learning | Learning Delivery - Chief Learning Officer

Catie Bull, senior marketing manager at Intrepid by VitalSource says, Blended learning works, and not just as a pandemic-era means of getting by.

Photo: Adobe Stock

Most in-classroom training was, of course, put completely on hold last year due to safety restrictions posed by the global pandemic. Organizations and training firms that weren’t high on the digital maturity scale already had to do some hard and fast turns to meet the needs of their learners and clients remotely. But merely shifting eight hours of in-person training to eight hours of video conferencing quickly proved ineffective, and there simply was no single answer, no silver bullet when it came to learning technologies.

So, many organizations turned to a blended learning approach that has now become the new normal in our pandemic world. But what is it, exactly? How did we get here, how do you do it well and why is it so effective that experts think it’s poised to take over corporate learning for the long haul?

Following, let’s dive into blended learning — or “the digital blend,” “the blend” — whatever you prefer to call it. In fact, a digital learning leader at a national restaurant chain says, “I think that pretty soon we won’t call it ‘blended learning’; it’ll just become ‘learning.’...

In conclusion

Blended learning works, and not just as a pandemic-era means of getting by. It appeals to the new “in the flow of work” means of learning that has arisen due to the increase in remote or remote-hybrid workplaces, and there’s no going back to just classroom-based one- or two-day trainings. Classroom will likely replace some of the VILT components of the blend, but it will remain a blend of synchronous and asynchronous, online and virtual and live, face to face and self-directed, and so on. As the restaurant chain digital learning leader enthuses, “It’s an exciting 10 years coming. Buckle up!”

Read more... 

Source: Chief Learning Officer 

Academic Minute: After-School Academics Amid Remote Learning | Quick Takes - Inside Higher Ed

Today on the Academic Minute: Pawan Dhingra, professor of American studies at Amherst College, discusses whether after-school education is helping or hindering children in this era of remote learning, as Doug Lederman, editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Learn more about the Academic Minute here.

Download Episode   

 

Source: Inside Higher Ed

 

The Ultimate Skill Data Handbook | Handbook - Degreed blog

Get ahead of disruption. Stay ahead of competitors by Degreed blog.

Download the Skill Data Handbook

Most HR, talent, and learning professionals are looking for new ways to be data-driven and strategic about people development. 

The good news is that your people are generating valuable information every day about the skills they’re building and how they relate to your larger organization. So how can you access this information? It starts with skill data.

This handbook will teach you the basics of skill data by simplifying common terminology, providing use cases, and answering FAQs. Here's what else you'll learn:

• Different types skill data
• Where skill data comes from
• The difference between good and bad skill data
• Where skill data should be stored
• Examples of how skill data can be used

The true secret to being data-driven is not just about accessing data. It’s about understanding how to collect, analyze, and use it effectively so you can bridge the gap between learning initiatives and your organizational goals. It sounds daunting, but this guide keeps it simple. 

Download the Skill Data Handbook 

Source: Degreed blog

How to Structure Your Online Class for Inclusion: Two Principles for Fostering Engagement, Part 2 | Online Student Engagement - Faculty Focus

Jenae Cohn, PhD writes and speaks about digital pedagogy and online teaching and learning and Courtney Plotts, PhD writes and speaks about culturally responsive teaching and community building explains, A sense of community fosters a sense of belongingness and is critical to student engagement. 

Students attend video call with discussion chats and emojis on computer
Photo: Faculty Focus

Principle #1: Build community to foster engagement online 

Building a sense of community is a first step in ensuring that students are engaged in their classes, especially for historically minoritized students (Pacansky-Brock et. al 2020; Plotts 2019; Brown and Burdsal; 2006, Rovai and Gallien; 2005; Tu & Correy, 2002). To structure a class that includes everyone and promotes student engagement, we need to think about what goes into building a community and what that can look like when teaching online. 

The Council For At Risk Student Education and Professional Standards Accreditation (2020) provides evidenced-based standards for building a sense of community, student engagement, course introductions, assessment, group projects/group development, and experiential learning. The following recommendations are based on those standards.

A strong sense of community begins with faculty designing and planning for the sense of community in the course. In order to build a strong sense of community within an online course, instructors should start by identifying the type of community they want to create...

Many offices on your campus may be involved in efforts to engage students in their online university experience, like the 

• Campus library
• Disability services
• Teaching and learning centers
• Technology services
• Multicultural centers
• Career centers
• Counseling and psychological services

When we help students become aware of these networks and resources, we can reinforce students’ sense of belonging not just in our own online classes, but in the university as a whole.

Read more... 

Related link

How to Structure Your Online Class for Inclusion, Part 1

Source: Faculty Focus

Leveraging Mobile Technology to Achieve Teaching Goals | Teaching & Learning - EDUCAUSE Review

Near-ubiquitous mobile-device ownership and widespread internet connectivity offer opportunities for mobile learning to take center stage during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond. ___________________________________________________________

Introduction

The sudden move to remote online instruction, coupled with social justice issues plaguing the United States, has forced college and university instructors to grapple with what it means to be a good teacher in socially distanced, unpredictable, and emotionally charged circumstances by Mindy Colin, Instructional Consultant at UC Santa Barbara, Samantha Eastman, Instructional Design Consultant at UC Riverside, Margaret Merrill, Senior Instructional Design Consultant at UC Davis and Alex Rockey, Instructional Technologist Instructor at Bakersfield College.

Photo: emojoez / Shutterstock.com © 2021

As instructional designers, we have noticed an undercurrent in our interactions with new and experienced university instructors that indicates they are doubting their teaching skills, confronting uncomfortable questions about their roles, making pedagogical decisions on the fly, and trying to use technologies that were once only written into science fiction novels. While the move to remote teaching has been challenging, it has also provided an opportunity to reenvision pedagogy. As colleges and universities have collectively moved online, teaching and learning professionals can leverage mobile learning (m-learning) to inform and facilitate effective teaching in a virtual environment.

Near-ubiquitous mobile-device ownership and widespread internet connectivity offer opportunities for mobile learning to take center stage during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond.

Mobile learning: Using portable computing devices (such as iPads, laptops, tablet PCs, personal digital assistants [PDAs], and smartphones) with wireless networks enables mobility and mobile learning, allowing teaching and learning to extend to spaces beyond the traditional classroom. Within the classroom, mobile learning gives instructors and learners increased flexibility and new opportunities for interaction.^Footnote1

Contemporary m-learning definitions and discourse focus on using technologies that support the mobility of learners and teachers and that are based on constructivist and learner-centered pedagogies that promote individualization, flexibility, and communal engagement with content regardless of whether a course is online or face-to-face. To benefit from affordances like these, Yu (Aimee) Zhang, CEO of WEMOSOFT in Wollongong, Australia, recommends using m-learning in formal higher education to supplement face-to-face or online classes.^Footnote2 Near-ubiquitous mobile-device ownership and a stable combination of agile technological infrastructure and widespread internet connectivity offer opportunities for the key affordances and strategies of m-learning to take center stage during the coronavirus pandemic.^Footnote3 That is not to say that all students (or instructors) have fully equitable opportunities to access tertiary education through mobile devices—as the pandemic has revealed—but it does emphasize the current collective ability among colleges and universities to maintain a somewhat reasonable level of instructional continuity—something that would not have been possible just ten years ago.^Footnote4

Takeaways

While the use cases in this study are all unique, span disciplines, and largely represent m-learning within face-to-face courses, m-learning strategies could also help to guide instructors' pedagogical balancing act during emergency remote teaching and beyond. This study demonstrates the variety of ways that m-learning technologies can help instructors in their ongoing efforts to become better teachers:

• Build and maintain classroom community by creating safe spaces that allow for peer interaction as well as anonymity.
• Increase student interest and motivation by providing multiple means and opportunities for participation.
• Illustrate concepts or topics more clearly.
• Develop students' emotional, cognitive, and technology-based skills for their future careers.
• Increase engagement by having students use their mobile devices to generate, collect, and analyze data.
• Identify and adapt to gaps in student learning.
• Facilitate a more efficient feedback cycle for student learning.
• Get through basic concepts more quickly, allowing students more time to engage deeply with complex concepts.

Although our study focused on faculty members' experiences, research on student perspectives demonstrates that m-learning benefits students in similar ways (by creating safe spaces for peer interaction, increasing student interest by offering multiple opportunities to participate, and supporting students who increasingly rely on mobile technology).^Footnote18 

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Source: EDUCAUSE Review

How Leonardo da Vinci Made His Magnificent Drawings Using Only a Metal Stylus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk | History - Open Culture

The modern artist has what can seem like an unlimited range of materials from which to choose, a variety completely unknown to great Renaissance masters like Leonardo da Vinci, published via Core77.

How Leonardo da Vinci Made His Magnificent Drawings Using Only a Metal Stylus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk
Photo: Open Culture

Few, if any, can say, however, that they have anything like the raw talent, ingenuity, and discipline that drove Leonardo to draw incessantly, constantly honing his techniques and exploiting every use of the tools and techniques available to him.'

 

Leonardo da Vinci's Drawing Materials
 

 

What were those tools and techniques? Conservator Alan Donnithorne demonstrates Leonardo’s materials in the video above, with examples from the holdings of the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. Leonardo “drew incessantly,” the Royal Collection Trust writes, “to devise his artistic projects, to explore the natural world, and to record the workings of his imagination.” He used metalpoint, a method of drawing on coated paper with a metal stylus; pen and ink, with pens made from a goose wing feather; and, after the 1490s, red and black chalks.

Leonardo produced thousands of drawings during his lifetime“many of them of extreme beauty and complexity,” says Donnithorne, “and it’s incredible to think that he produced them using these very simple ingredients.”...

The artist’s “prodigious skills” are evident among his many shifts in style and subject and we see even in utilitarian illustrations how “he overturned so many conventions and sometimes mixed his media to wonderful effect.” Leonardo’s choice of media was hardly expansive compared to the dizzyingly colorful aisles that greet the budding artist at art supply stores today. But what he could do with a stylus, goose-quill pen, and chalk has never been equalled. Learn more about how he used his materials in Donnithorne’s book, Leonardo da Vinci: A Closer Look, published on the 500th anniversary celebrations of Leonardo’s death.

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Additional resources

Leonardo da Vinci: A Closer Look

Leonardo da Vinci: A Closer Look by Alan Donnithorne, former head of paper conservation at the Royal Collection Trust.

Source: Open Culture