eLearningWatchAugust2016

G’day
winter is making its presence felt,it’s still a touch warmer than usual but mustn’t complain as the crops are a little confused and raspberry canes are already sprouting.
Hi ho.
I’ve always been interested in some of the factors that have a positive effect on student learning. Some students are relatively independent and self motivated and seem to require little support or help. Others can be overdependent on hand holding; and there are those in between. Timely recognition of student need and effectively and efficiently applying and responding to feedback, encouraging reflective thinking, mentoring to engender self belief and facilitating learning through encouragement and support, all serve to enhance student success.
Given an environment that is conducive to learning,each of these factors on their own can be powerful student motivators, helping them to focus on their learning to realise their full potential.Maybe some bright guru out there could exploit the potential of social media and develop an App that incorporates a system that operates as a virtual mentor with focussed feedback and encouragement for self reflection and hence belief in own abilities. (NASA was developing a mobile mentor mentee App, not sure how far that got?). Some of the links in this posting explore mentoring and self reflection further.
In this posting there are links to learning analytics,science of learning, teaching online,guide to teaching and learning practices,mastery design guide,search tricks, facilitating reflection, classroom management,mentoring guide , conferences and the odd one out.
Until the September moon throws some light on more innovation… that’s it.
1.Teaching Online: The Northeastern University Online Best Practices Guide. It’s possible that you have a number of ‘good practice’ guides on teaching and learning online; one more could be added value to your portfolio and maybe indicate that you are and always have been on the right track. Or maybe there are some new things you could try. This particular guide is pretty comprehensive with some useful examples and tips. Although written specifically for the Northeastern University much or even most of the ides. suggestions and insightful comment could easily be adopted and adapted elsewhere.

http://tinyurl.com/jh89df2

2.The Science of Learning. An interesting document which looks at a range of cognitive principles and ‘matches’ them with practical implications for the classroom.Some useful references.

http://deansforimpact.org/pdfs/The_Science_of_Learning.pdf

3. Jisc and Learning Analytics: Learning analytics in higher education
A review of UK and international practice. This is an interesting and useful overview of the rapidly expanding area of learning analytics in higher education (and elsewhere).The usual good quality stuff from Jisc. Worth perusing if you are interested in the potential of analytics to support and improve student learning and achievement.

http://tinyurl.com/j4qcasg

4.Facilitating Reflection: A manual for leaders and Educators.Written and Compiled by Julie Reed & Christopher Koliba. Reflective practice is an esential part of the learning process (according to me anyway) so this manual shold be a good addition to your resources.

https://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/reflection_manual/

5.Instruction at FSU: A Guide to Teaching & Learning Practices. A useful set of ideas, suggestions tips and tricks.

http://tinyurl.com/h8vg6w5

6.Search smarter: An infographic from Zapier which provides 30+ Advanced Google search tricks. Some you may already know others might be the answer to your searching. Click on the top image to expand the infographic.

http://tinyurl.com/h9olm4z

7.Classroom Management. Always an interesting area and one that presents many challenges. This website provides some useful suggestions on how to deal effectively wiht a range of classroom management issues.

http://www.4faculty.org/includes/108r2.jsp

8. Making Mastery Accessible: Design guides. Useful ‘tools’ to enhnace student learning.

http://www.redesignu.org/design-lab/mastery-learning/design-guides

A look at one of the guides:Features of a Mastery Framework: Infographic. Nicely set out.

http://tinyurl.com/glct6q5

9.Competency education toolkit: This site currently hosts the latest versions of open source tools and resources under development to support competency based education at the School District of Philadelphia .
No doubt most of the principles and practice can be applied anywhere. Worth exploring for ideas and insights.

https://sites.google.com/a/philasd.org/competencyeducation/home

10.Mentoring Guide for Students. Both these guides offer some practical suggestions on mentoring and the benefits of the same.

http://www.mrs.org/mentoring-guide/

and
THE GOOD MENTORING GUIDE

http://www.versa.uk.com/apprenticeship/mentor_handbook.pdf

11. Conferences
11.1 ascilite 2016
The ascilite2016 conference will be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre from 28 to 30 November 2016. The conference is being hosted by the University of South Australia.Make a note of the dates.

http://2016conference.ascilite.org

Call for submissions is open:

http://2016conference.ascilite.org/program-2/submissions/

11.2 ALT Annual Conference 2016: Connect, Collaborate, Create. Registration now open.
The 2016 Annual Conference of the Association for Learning Technology will take place at Warwick University, 6-8 September 2016.The conference provides an international platform for Learning Technology research, practice and policy work from across sectors. Confirmed speakers include Josie Fraser, Ian Livingstone CBE and Lia Commissar.
To book please visit:

http://go.alt.ac.uk/2016altcReg

11.3 Innovate and Educate:Teaching and Learning Conference ANZ will be held in Sydney from the 28 to 31 August 2016. Education leaders, educators, course designers, system administrators and eLearning managers who partner and innovate with different Learning Management Systems such as Blackboard Learn, Enterprise Moodle and Moodlerooms, from across Australia and New Zealand will come together to share their knowledge and expertise in the field of online teaching and learning.
Find out more and register:

http://experience.blackboard.com/TLC-Sydney/

12. Odd one out: Take the Hello Brain Challenge. Just a little something to get the brain ticking over a little faster and maybe a little longer!

http://tinyurl.com/ztptrqp

Richard
Richard Elliott
The Eternal Macademic
Auckland
New Zealand

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