Through the writings and research of pre-eminent online learning expert, Dr. Tony Bates
For almost 50 years, Tony Bates has been a consistent, persistent and influential voice for the reform of teaching and learning in post-secondary education, notably through the effective use of emerging technologies. Author of 11 books and 350 research papers in the field of online learning and distance education, Tony Bates is also an advisor to over 40 organizations in 25 countries, and publisher of what is arguably the most influential blog on online learning (link is external) with over 20,000 visits a month. A Contact North | Contact Nord Research Associate, Dr. Bates has helped educators, academic administrators and policy makers grasp key concepts, trends and challenges in online learning. This posting is one of a series that looks at Tony’s perspectives and advice on key issues in online learning.
This series was researched and developed by Contact North | Contact Nord Research Associates, Dr. Jane Brindley and Dr. Ross Paul.
Ten years ago, Lisa Lalonde, now a professor in the faculty of early childhood education at Algonquin College in Ottawa, was cautioned by a friend about her choice to pursue an education almost exclusively online.
"When I first started this journey, someone asked me about what my career objectives were in the long-term … and they warned me that some of the upper crust of academia don't look highly upon this [online education]," she recalls. "Whereas, I'm finding that is definitely not the case any more."
What exactly was the extent of Russian meddling in the 2016 election campaign? How widespread was its infiltration of social media? And how much influence did its propaganda have on public opinion and voter behavior?
Take a recent example: Jonathan Albright, a researcher at Columbia University, looked into a number of Russia-bought pages that Facebook had taken down. He concluded that they had amassed potentially hundreds of millions of views. David Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, wasn’t convinced, arguing that most of the "people" who had liked these pages were very likely Russian bots. (Full disclosure: I commissioned and edited Karpf’s post on The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.)
Successfully leading and guiding student discussions requires a range of fairly sophisticated communication skills.
At the same time teachers are monitoring what’s being said about the content, they must keep track of the
discussion itself. Is it on topic? How many students want to speak? Who’s already spoken and wants to speak
again? How many aren’t listening? Is it time to move to a different topic? What’s the thinking behind that student
question? How might the discussion be wrapped up?
As an instructional technologist at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, Tom Baer is no stranger to
working with faculty who struggle to understand the role of instructional designers. It’s not unusual for him to encounter instructors reluctant to give up their go-to lecture or PowerPoint Presentation, unsure of online learning’s effectiveness or resistant to a change in teaching style.
Enrollment in online courses at colleges and universities continues to grow, along with the need for IDs who help design curriculum and implement digital tools. IDs work closely with faculty members and subject experts to create measurable learning objectives, produce course content and craft engaging activities. But during the process, faculty may give IDs the cold shoulder for fear of having to give up control or appearing less knowledgeable in front of their students.
How many hours should professors work each week? Everyone has a different answer, especially professors.
Case in point: When Nicholas A. Christakis, a professor at Yale University, asserted on Twitter that graduate students should work more than 60 hours each week, a debate ensued. Professors pointed to studies that suggested not everyone can devote more than 40 hours each week to their jobs — for example, if they have kids — or that the institutions and departments they work for may have different standards of work, research, and competitiveness.
Most of the time, instructors use activities as a way for students to demonstrate their mastery. But activities can be used differently — to spark curiosity and get students thinking, before they know much of anything about a particular topic. That was the premise of “The Power of the ‘Naïve Task,’” one of the most interesting sessions I attended at the Designing Effective
Teaching conference in Bethesda, Md., last week.
Ontario ranks among Canada’s top-performing provinces on equity of outcomes in kindergarten to Grade 12 education and high school attainment.1 The province also earns an “A+” for college attainment in the Conference Board of Canada’s How Canada Performs rankings.2 What makes Ontario such a strong performer in these areas?
In part, these good results are due to special programs targeting individuals who are at high risk of dropping out of school. One such initiative is the School Within a College (SWAC) program. SWAC helps struggling students complete high school and get a head start on a college or apprenticeship credential. Other jurisdictions can take a page from the SWAC program’s model of transitioning struggling students into college-ready learners.
Faculty members juggle teaching, grading assignments, and conducting research. They write grants, run labs, and serve on the committees that keep their academic departments and institutions going.
One aspect of their jobs that stands out in both its rewards and its challenges is working with students. Here are key findings from a Chronicle survey of nearly 1,000 faculty members: Most faculty members find teaching students to be satisfying work.
Future teachers are likely to teach as they were taught—which can be problematic, researchers wrote in a recent
study, "because most teachers experienced school mathematics as a set of disconnected facts and skills, not a
system of interrelated concepts."
But even when prospective teachers are taught to teach math conceptually, a good content knowledge base is still
important, the study found.
Future teachers are likely to teach as they were taught—which can be problematic, researchers wrote in a recent study, "because most teachers experienced school mathematics as a set of disconnected facts and skills, not a system of interrelated concepts."
You’ve probably heard "ivory tower" jokes or other ways of lampooning academic researchers and scholars. Here’s
one: How many college professors does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Eight. One to secure funding for the
light bulb, one to observe and record the changing of the bulb, one to consider the theoretical implications of the
change, one to write the research paper, two to edit the journal to which the research paper is submitted, and two
more to serve as blind peer-reviewers for the manuscript. (The actual changing of the bulb will be done by a
graduate student.)
It will be some time before we know the full impact of the COVID-19-induced shift to remote learning this spring -- how it altered the arc of students' academic careers, for example, or affected the extent and nature of their learning.
But we now have some early data on how it reshaped instructors' teaching practices.
A survey released today by Bay View Analytics (formerly the Babson Survey Research Group) and its president, the digital learning researcher Jeff Seaman, offers some insights into the transition that virtually all colleges, instructors and students undertook this spring as the novel coronavirus shut down campuses across the country.
As Phil Baty’s recent blog makes clear, there is huge range of opinion in the UK higher education sector about the government’s wish to see more universities offering accelerated degrees.
To their proponents, they provide students, particularly mature students with existing work experience, with an opportunity to save on living costs and enter the labour market faster. To their detractors, they are detrimental to the student experience and academic quality, introducing time pressures that reduce opportunities for informal interaction with staff, subject societies and non-curricular seminars and lectures, not to mention social activities.
However talented, no one is a natural-born teacher. Honing the craft takes significant care and effort, not just by the individual, but also by the school at large. Though experience does matter, it matters only to the extent that a teacher -- regardless of how long he or she has been in the classroom -- commits to continued professional development to refresh his or her status as a transformational teacher. Along those lines, even after a decade in the classroom, I don't claim to be beyond criticism -- not in the least. Still, I wish to offer some advice on constantly striving toward perfection, however elusive that goal will always remain.
Since 1977, we’ve been recommending that graduate departments partake in birth control, but no one has been listening,” said Paula Stephan to more than 200 postdocs and PhD students at a symposium in Boston, Massachusetts, in October this year. Stephan is a renowned labour economist at Georgia State University in Atlanta who has spent much of her career trying to understand the relationships between economics and science, particularly biomedical science. And the symposium, ‘Future of Research’, discussed the issue to which Stephan finds so many people deaf: the academic research system is generating progeny at a startling rate. In biomedicine, said Stephan. “We are definitely producing many more PhDs than there is demand for them in research positions.”
Consider this scenario: as an editor of a scholarly journal, you are informed that an anonymous blogger has publicly accused your journal of publishing an article with allegedly numerous ethical violations and acts of misconduct from 20 years before you became editor. Your journal has no archives or records from that long ago, but you are being contacted by current authors and the media to respond. Who ya gonna call? If you are one of the approximately 11,500 members of a voluntary organization called COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics), that’s probably who you’ll call.
Think back to your time as a student. How did you experience feedback from your own instructors? Did reading their comments on your work bring moments of elation? Pride? Disappointment? Bewilderment? Do you still have a visceral reaction to a lot of red ink?
Feedback can be a powerful force in college classrooms, and there are ways to make the experience of providing and receiving it even stronger. That’s especially important as students continue to report dissatisfaction with the feedback they get on assignments and tests — calling it vague, discouraging, and/or late.
It was as a secretary in a busy English department at a large state university over 30 years ago that I first learned that full-time and part-time faculty occupied different worlds. Although these worlds intersected in the classroom -- and at times in my very small office -- I wondered even then if better communication and mutual recognition were possible. I saw students served by both forms of faculty. I handled instructional materials created by everyone, and I sensed the degree of commitment -- or frustration -- that both groups brought to their jobs.
Critical thinking is no longer a strange concept in this world. It is being talked about all over, from university to the
workplace, from developed countries to poor ones. The importance of thinking critically has never really been
considered properly until recently. In fact, critical thinking is believed to be the new intellect of the modern era that
reflects a person’s ability to analyze daily problems and make the right decision.
As it’s not a specific talent that people are born with, critical thinking requires practice and effort. Ironically, while
critical thinking has become popular all over the world, not many people know how to develop their critical thinking
skills effectively. Therefore, we are about to show you how you can effectively develop these skills.