Student-Centered Learning: Functional Requirements for Integrated Systems to Optimize Learning

The realities of the 21st-century learner require that schools and educators fundamentally change their practice. "Educators must produce college- and career-ready graduates that reflect the future these students will face. And, they must facilitate learning through means that align with the defining attributes of this generation of learners."Today, we know more than ever about how students learn, acknowledging that the process isn't the same for every student and doesn't remain the same for each individual, depending upon maturation and the content being learned. We know that students want to progress at a pace that allows them to master new concepts and skills, to access a variety of resources, to receive timely feedback on their progress, to demonstrate their knowledge in multiple ways and to get direction, support and feedback from—as well as collaborate with—experts, teachers, tutors and other students.The result is a growing demand for student-centered, transformative digital learning using competency education as an underpinning.iNACOL released this paper to illustrate the technical requirements and functionalities that learning management systems need to shift toward student-centered instructional models. This comprehensive framework will help districts and schools determine what systems to use and integrate as they being their journey toward student-centered learning, as well as how systems integration aligns with their organizational vision, educational goals and strategic plans.Educators can use this report to optimize student learning and promote innovation in their own student-centered learning environments. The report will help school leaders understand the complex technologies needed to optimize personalized learning and how to use data and analytics to improve practices, and can assist technology leaders in re-engineering systems to support the key nuances of student-centered learning

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Developing and Validating Stealth Assessments for an Educational Game to Assess Young Dual Language Immersion Learners\u27 Reading Comprehension

The purpose of this multiple-paper dissertation is to design a digital game and stealth assessments within the game to assess young second language learners\u27 Chinese reading proficiency. In Chapter 2 (Paper 1), I describe the game designed for this dissertation and how it was implemented in a dual language immersion classroom. This study found that the digital game and in-class implementation led to significant vocabulary and reading comprehension gains. Further, seven types of support that students needed while playing the game were identified. In Chapter 3 (Paper 2), I describe how educational data mining approaches, and more specifically, how data-driven explorations, can provide insight into how players interact with the game and further how those interactions relate to proficiency and learning. In this study, I identify time on task and use of an in-game glossing tool as important indicators for learning. In addition, four subgroups of students were identified based on their gameplay styles. Finally, in Chapter 4 (Paper 3), I describe how stealth assessments were designed and validated within the game. This study found that the stealth assessments were significantly correlated with two external measures of reading comprehension

Digital Dashboards for Summative Assessment and Indicators Misinterpretation: A Case Study

Over the last decade, teachers in France have been increasingly pressured to use digital learning environments, and to shift from grade-based to skill-based assessment. Educational dashboards, which measure student input electronically, could foster such a transition by providing insights into learners’ performances. However, such dashboards could also foster data misinterpretation during the summative assessment process, should the indicators that they display be used without a proper understanding of what they reflect. This article presents a methodology to detect potential mistakes in the interpretation of the indicators in the context of inquiry-based learning. During the design of a learning environment, we analyzed, through analytics and classroom observations in primary and middle schools, the issues that could arise from the use of a dashboard. Our data suggest that the amount of information practitioners needed to collect to make indicators relevant was burdensome, making the dashboard unfit for assessment purposes at the scale of a classroom.Au cours de la décennie écoulée, les enseignants de France ont été de plus en plus poussés, d’une part, à adopter l’évaluation par compétences, et d’autre part, à utiliser des applications numériques. Les tableaux de bord qui mesurent les actions des utilisateurs de ces applications peuvent faciliter cette transition en apportant des indications sur les performances des apprenants. Néanmoins, dans une perspective d’évaluation sommative, une question se pose quant à la capacité des enseignants à interpréter correctement les indicateurs mis à leur disposition. Cet article présente une étude de cas à visée méthodologique qui a pour objectif d’identifier de potentiels problèmes d’interprétation d’indicateurs lors de l’évaluation d’une démarche d’investigation. Durant la conception d’une application numérique, le CNEC, nous avons analysé, par le moyen de traces d’interaction et d’une étude de terrain au collège et à l’école primaire, les éléments susceptibles d’affecter l’utilisation d’un tableau de bord. Nous montrons que la quantité de données à collecter pour rendre pertinent l’usage des indicateurs rend leur utilisation compliquée dans un contexte d’évaluation sommative à l’échelle d’une classe entière

Innovating Pedagogy 2017: Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers. Open University Innovation Report 6

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This sixth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Learning In a NetworKed Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE). Themes: • Big-data inquiry: thinking with data • Learners making science • Navigating post-truth societies • Immersive learning • Learning with internal values • Student-led analytics • Intergroup empathy • Humanistic knowledge-building communities • Open Textbooks • Spaced Learnin

Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae of Dr. James Edward Osler I

Leadership in High Achieving Blended Learning Schools

The use of blended learning in kindergarten–12 (K–12) schools in the past decade has seen a dramatic increase, but the research on the effectiveness of blended learning has shown mixed results. However, some schools use blended learning that would be considered successful. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of principals in high-performing schools that use blended learning. A post-intentional phenomenological methodology was used to explore the lived experience of the principals in this study. The primary source of data collection was semi-structured interviews of 12 school principals. The principals in this study had common experiences related to (a) collaboration, (b) cultivating culture and climate, (d) development and evaluation of instruction, and (e) desk work. This study indicates that the experience of a principal in a blended school is like the experience of a principal in a school that does not use blended learning, except in the manifestation related to using data to inform development and evaluation of instruction. Additional research should be conducted on factors related to successful blended learning schools to those that are not successful. The definition of blended learning needs further examination as the definition of blended learning and hybrid learning is too broad in most research related to blended learning. Findings from this research will help future research on blended learning and help the leaders of hybrid and other schools that use blended learning