Articles: August 2010 Archives

As we gear up for the fall instruction push I though everyone might be interested in Judith Boettcher, Ph.D., an expert in online learning's Nine Ways to Customize Learning Experiences.  The good thing to note is we already are doing some of this, or about to start!

• Item 3 is about examining the course structure. Now is a great time to review items in the IL Toolkit and add items to inspire your colleagues with fresh ideas. 
  
• Consider checking out some clickers to use in your instruction sessions to give students' the power to choose what they are most interested in and to give periodic feedback through a session.  This aligns nicely with item 4, Differentiate assignments and content resources.
• Personally, I <3 the idea of having a discussion around learning goals and objectives and having students comment on a discussion board.  Maybe using Google Docs this could happen before you have an instruction session with them, or consider collaboratively writing them with the course instructor?

Interesting article that Jerilyn sent out this week:

"In Google we trust." That may very well be the motto of today's young online users, a demographic group often dubbed the "digital natives" due their apparent tech-savvy. Having been born into a world where personal computers were not a revolution, but merely existed alongside air conditioning, microwaves and other appliances, there has been (a perhaps misguided) perception that the young are more digitally in-tune with the ways of the Web than others.

That may not be true, as it turns out. A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results. Apparently, the students favor search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it's legit."

Blog post about article