A review on massive e-learning (MOOC) design, delivery and assessment

MOOCs or Massive Online Open Courses based on Open Educational Resources (OER) might be one of the most versatile ways to offer access to quality education, especially for those residing in far or disadvantaged areas. This article analyzes the state of the art on MOOCs, exploring open research questions and setting interesting topics and goals for further research. Finally, it proposes a framework that includes the use of software agents with the aim to improve and personalize management, delivery, efficiency and evaluation of massive online courses on an individual level basis.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Reflective Collaboration Practices to Explore Personal Belief Systems in Teacher Preparation Courses

The purpose of this article is to examine the need for intentionally designed faith integration conversations to explore the personal belief systems and concerns of teacher candidates through the use of effective reflective collaboration strategies in their preparation courses. The influence of one’s prior experiences and personal belief system cannot be underestimated when working effectively in a pluralistic society. This necessitates that all teachers be cognizant of how their belief system shapes interactions with students and families, as well as how they plan for instruction. Student voice and reflective collaboration techniques are important instructional tools that can be integrated into teacher preparation courses at Christian universities to assist pre-service teachers in reaching this understanding. Practical strategies to address faith integration questions are discussed in this article to assist instructors with incorporating student voice and reflective collaboration practices in their university classrooms

Media literacy at all levels: making the humanities more inclusive

The decline of the humanities, combined with the arrival of students focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), represent an opportunity for the development of innovative approaches to teaching languages and literatures. Expanding the instructional focus from traditional humanities students, who are naturally more text-focused, to address the needs of more application-oriented STEM learners ensures that language instructors prepare all students to become analytical and critical consumers and producers of digital media. Training students to question motives both in their own and authentic media messages and to justify their own interpretations results in more sophisticated second language (L2) communication. Even where institutional structures impede comprehensive curriculum reform, individual instructors can integrate media literacy training into their own classes. Tis article demonstrates ways of reaching and retaining larger numbers of students at all levels—if necessary, one course at a time.Published versio

From Gatekeeping to Engagement: A Multicontextual, Mixed Method Study of Student Academic Engagement in Introductory STEM Courses.

The lack of academic engagement in introductory science courses is considered by some to be a primary reason why students switch out of science majors. This study employed a sequential, explanatory mixed methods approach to provide a richer understanding of the relationship between student engagement and introductory science instruction. Quantitative survey data were drawn from 2,873 students within 73 introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses across 15 colleges and universities, and qualitative data were collected from 41 student focus groups at eight of these institutions. The findings indicate that students tended to be more engaged in courses where the instructor consistently signaled an openness to student questions and recognizes her/his role in helping students succeed. Likewise, students who reported feeling comfortable asking questions in class, seeking out tutoring, attending supplemental instruction sessions, and collaborating with other students in the course were also more likely to be engaged. Instructional implications for improving students' levels of academic engagement are discussed

Integrating Information Literacy into the Virtual University: A Course Model

published or submitted for publicatio

Implementing Guided Inquiry Learning and Measuring Engagement Using an Electronic Health Record System in an Online Setting

In many courses, practical hands-on experience is critical for knowledge construction. In the traditional lab setting, this construction is easy to observe through student engagement. But in an online virtual lab, there are some challenges to track student engagement. Given the continuing trend of increased enrollment in online courses, learning sciences need to address these challenges soon. To measure student engagement and actualize a social constructivist approach to team-based learning in the virtual lab setting, we developed a novel monitoring tool in an open-source electronic health records system (EHR). The Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) approach is used to engage students in learning. In this paper, we present the practice of POGIL and how the monitoring tool measures student engagement in two online courses in the interdisciplinary field of Health Information Management. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at integrating POGIL to improve learning sciences in the EHR clinical practice. While clinicians spend over 52% of a patient visit time on computers (called desktop medicine), there is very little focus on learning sciences and pedagogy to train clinicians. Our findings provide an approach to implement learning sciences theory to eHealth use training

Interactivity and integration in virtual courses

Web-based virtual courses focussing on content delivery only have turned out not to be as successful as expected. We will investigate reasons and suggest some remedies – using our own virtual Database course for illustration. Interactivity and integration are the two main remedies, which shall lead towards improved, learning-oriented virtual course environments. We will introduce a formalism to support their development and analysis

The future of technology enhanced active learning – a roadmap

The notion of active learning refers to the active involvement of learner in the learning process, capturing ideas of learning-by-doing and the fact that active participation and knowledge construction leads to deeper and more sustained learning. Interactivity, in particular learnercontent interaction, is a central aspect of technology-enhanced active learning. In this roadmap, the pedagogical background is discussed, the essential dimensions of technology-enhanced active learning systems are outlined and the factors that are expected to influence these systems currently and in the future are identified. A central aim is to address this promising field from a best practices perspective, clarifying central issues and formulating an agenda for future developments in the form of a roadmap

Active Techniques Implemented in an Introductory Signal Processing Course to Help Students Achieve Higher Levels of Learning.

Holding students to high standards and assessing, measuring and evaluating their learning with challenging, authentic problems in the midterm and final exams is the goal of the professors who teach core signal processing concepts. However, the heavy reliance of these subjects on mathematics makes it difficult for students to genuinely grasp the concepts and relate to a conceptual framework. Specifically, analyzing the signals and the functionality of systems in Fourier domain; separating the system level analysis from signal level analysis; and understanding how they are related in time domain and frequency domain are among the most challenging concepts. Students’ lower grades observed over past years in the introductory signal processing course exposed a potential disconnect between the actual level of learning and the high expectations set by the professors. In this paper, we present the active learning techniques that we implemented in one of the summer session offerings of this course in our department. The research explored Peer Instruction, pre-class reading quizzes and post-lecture quizzes. In addition to the mid and end of the quarter survey results, the comparison analysis of the grades students achieved in the active learning integrated course in the second summer session and the standard course offered in first summer session is discussed. According to our results, the developed techniques helped students in the active classroom perform significantly better than their peers participating in standard lectures when tested by challenging questions in their exams