482 research outputs found

    Engaging Students in the Undergraduate Analytical Decision Making Course

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    There are many voices today discussing the necessity of changing the ways we teach, for example, Gen Y studies about the way students learn, employers’ lists of skills they say current graduates need, and colleges that desire to always improve how they deliver information. These have led to classes where the learning styles are more hand-on, less lecture-focused, and more engaging for the Gen Y learner. The purpose of this paper is to give an illustration of how an analytics class can be restructured to address these issues. We develop an undergraduate class that focuses not only on analytical methods, but also on presentation, writing, and team skills. These are all developed within the framework of an original student research project.

    Building a Call to Action: Social Action in Networks of Practice

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    The three research papers completed as part of this dissertation explore how people contributing to #BlackLivesMatter build knowledge, using social construction of knowledge (SCK), and what they are building knowledge about, using critical consciousness, because understanding how these processes play out on Twitter provides a way for others to understand this social movement. Paper 1 describes a new methodological approach to combining social network analysis (SNA) and social learning analytics to assess SCK. The sequential mixed method design begins by conducting a content analysis according to the Interaction Analysis Model (IAM). The results of the content analysis yield descriptive data that can be used to conduct SNA and social learning analytics. The purpose of Paper 2 was to use the typology of digital activism actions identified by Penney and Dadas (2014) from interviews with digital activists to validate them in a quantitative study. Paper 2 found that the actions taken by people who are helping to facilitate face-to-face action (p \u3c .0000001 , r = -0.076) or provide face-to-face updates (p \u3c .0000001 , r = -0.060) were negatively correlated with the actions of people who were facilitating online actions suggesting that digital activists should be treated as a unique population of activists. Paper 3 used the outcomes of a content analysis and lexicon analysis performed on #BlackLivesMatter data to determine 1) the levels of SCK and critical consciousness present in online data and 2) social learning analytics to ascertain the extent that SCK and critical consciousness can predict social action. Results of the content analysis and lexicon analysis found all levels of SCK and critical consciousness in the data. Results of social learning analytics conducted using NaĂŻve Bayes classification indicate that SCK and critical consciousness can only predict information sharing behaviors of online social action like personal opinions, forwarding information, and engaging in discussion. Evidence of information sharing behaviors on Twitter provides a high degree of confidence that further research including replies and other interactions between users will reveal robust SCK

    Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

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    As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

    Daily Announcements September 2022

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    Digital Historians: Engaging Students in Historical Thinking Through an Interactive Website

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    The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which students engage in historical thinking through the use of an interactive website, and how the students understood and experienced its various features and how they incorporated technology in their final video project. In the spring of 2022, five students participated in a class workshop focused on historical thinking using their Chromebooks. Following a week of learning about the five elements of historical thinking, students were asked to create a multimedia final video project on a historical figure of their choice. Two students completed the assignment. Thematic coding analysis and case study investigations were conducted on various data points that included Google Form questions, researcher’s notes, and surveys. Results showed that participants were able to engage in historical thinking through the format of an interactive website at the same time as final video projects showed different SAMR levels related to technology integration

    Daily Announcements October 2019

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    Teaching at Scale: Instructor Experiences with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

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    MOOCs are large online courses in which any individual with access to the internet can enroll, usually for free. Distance and online education are not new, but the scale and scope of MOOCs raise novel questions about access to higher education, faculty work, and the adoption of new technologies for teaching and learning. There is little literature on the motivations, experiences and behaviors of faculty who teach MOOCs. This dissertation study seeks to illuminate this unexamined aspect of faculty work by answering the following research question: Why do faculty teach MOOCs, and how do their beliefs and experiences inside and outside the university shape their MOOC experience? I investigate the question of why university faculty decide to participate in a new and potentially risky form of online teaching, and how their beliefs, values, and experiences are connected with, and/or shape, their MOOC teaching practices. I conducted a single-institution interview study of MOOC faculty at the University of Michigan. Michigan was an early partner of Coursera, a MOOC company, which announced its first set of offerings in April 2012. My methodology is derived from recent approaches to phenomenology (e.g. Seidman, 2005). I interviewed 16 U-M faculty and instructors who had taught at least one MOOC as of March, 2015. I also conducted observations at events where MOOC instructors were presenting as panelists and likely to be in attendance, and collected contextual information from publicly available videos, news coverage, and articles that involved the participants. Using a phenomenological approach to interviewing and analysis, I conducted multiple interviews with each participant, focusing on their lived experience and meaning-making of the MOOC experience. The professional growth perspective outlined by O’Meara, Terosky, and Neumann (2008) provides a set of sensitizing concepts for my approach to understanding MOOC faculty. The findings provide a set of profiles of the study participants as well as thematic analysis on participants’ motivations for MOOC teaching, and their experiences. I identified four major reasons why instructors chose to teach a MOOC. There was rarely a single motivating factor, but rather several considerations that contributed to the decision. They were: Desire for a platform, interest in experimentation, altruism, and an aim to raise the profile of either themselves or their programs. Among the experiences of MOOC faculty, I note several themes, including: MOOC instructors’ assertions that they learned a great deal about teaching from doing the MOOC; the contrast between participants who felt isolated in their MOOC work and those who made connections; the increased visibility that came with MOOC teaching, which was sometimes a source of awkwardness and discomfort; and the balancing act MOOC teaching required, because of the enormous time demands of producing a MOOC and the already busy lives of successful faculty. This study makes several contributions to the research on faculty work lives. First, provides insight into the experiences of faculty adopting a new educational technology in the early stage of development; MOOCs are new learning technologies that affect the way faculty teach, learn, and interact with students and that thus deserve study. It also evaluates the faculty growth framework, which is relatively new, as an analytical lens, as well as suggest possible expansions to the framework based on the findings emerging from my study.PHDHigher EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145913/1/mollyak_1.pd

    Grand Valley Magazine, vol. 14, no. 4 Spring 2015

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    Grand Valley Magazine is a quarterly publication about Grand Valley State University produced by University Communications since 2001.https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gv_magazine/1049/thumbnail.jp

    Open Education

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    "This insightful collection of essays explores the ways in which open education can democratise access to education for all. It is a rich resource that offers both research and case studies to relate the application of open technologies and approaches in education settings around the world. Global in perspective, this book argues strongly for the value of open education in both the developed and developing worlds. Through a mixture of theoretical and practical approaches, it demonstrates that open education promotes ideals of inclusion, diversity, and social justice to achieve the vision of education as a fundamental human right. A must-read for practitioners, policy-makers, scholars and students in the field of education.
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