Ethnography in a 21st Century Classroom: What teaching settings look like today

Higher Education 0 comments

Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classroom

Ethnography in a 21^st Century Classroom

What teaching settings look like today

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Post 244

What does it feel like going into a higher education institution classroom nowadays? How much has it changed over the last 150 years? Has the number of learners per classroom increased or decreased? There are indeed many more questions to ask and try to find an answer, but the fact is that today’s classrooms structured have not changed much and that the conformation of the students per class is radically diverse.

Prof. Michael Wesch (2010) has made a great point in what is happening with the structure of classrooms today and what is going on with the conformation of groups in higher education. Wesch was indeed working on an ethnography of what higher education looked like in college across the USA back in 2010. With the many advancements in technology, one wonders what the real future of education is; when one enters a university classroom, though there are some technological gatgets used by the professor, how much has the transfer of knowledge really changed from the 19^th Century to what happens now in this second decade of the 21^st Century? As Hardesty (2013) pointed out, the real learning takes place “during periods of study, lab work and homework,” not in lectures within the classroom.

Prof. Wesch’s (2010) students participating in the creation of his video on college student ethnography have made important points regarding their lives in the classroom. Not all readings provided to higher education students are relevant to their lives (Wesch, 2010). As someone who has been an active learner for many years, I sympathize with this comment since we were assigned readings that were not relevant to our development of skills and competencies to better perform our jobs. Besides, student reading habits are now very much different if compared to people who studied at a university some 30 years ago. Based on Prof. Wesch’s (2010) Introduction to Cultural Anthropology students (at Kansas State University), they will be reading from some 2300 webpages and about 1281 FaceBook profiles in a year. And as pointed out by Turkle (2012) when discussing how psycholigically powerful technology is today, learners will be much more engaged in their social networking than the class content that is not relevant to their lives. As teaching professionals we will continue to see how these technological gagets “can negatively affect concentration, communication and sleep, or increase fear of missing out, procrastination and stress” (Busch, 2016).

If we can extrapolate what is being depicted by Wesch’s students to our local teaching contexts, our education systems need to start a revolution. If we continue with our current educational practices, more and more students will not benefit from courses or majors that are meant to prepare them for their futures. No doubt, our learners in class are doing much more engaging tasks while attending class. What can be done to revert this and help them develop the skills and competencies they need to become successful professionals? This is a question all of us need to answer depending on what is happening in our countries and cultures.

References

Busch, B. (2016, March 8). Fomo, stress and sleeplessness: are smartphones bad for students? The Guardian .

Hardesty, L. (2013, March 6). Higher-ed leaders meet to discuss future of online education. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/edx-summit-0306.html

Turkle, S. (2012, February). Connected, but alone? (TED.Com) Retrieved from TED.Com: http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together#t-152139 [Video]

Wesch, M. (2010, December 17). A Vision of Students Today. Retrieved from Wimp.Com: http://www.wimp.com/studentstoday/ [Video]

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Describing Learning and Teaching: How humans learn another language

ELL, ELT, Teaching Practicum 0 comments

Taken from https://allthingslearning.wordpress.com/tag/questions-for-learning/

Describing Learning and Teaching

How humans learn another language

By María José Mesén-Molina

Pre-Service Teacher, School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Post 243

Learning can vary in level of difficulty especially when it comes to learning in different stages of our lives, and as teachers we must keep in mind that the same teaching method used on children cannot be used on adults.

The gist of this chapter from Harmer’s (2007) book is not so much a gist since so far this has been the best part I have come across in this book. The chapter mentions why when children are young they can acquire a language easily compared to when they are in school and become older they have to learn a language; no longer acquiring it. Because of these two ways of obtaining new knowledge, there have been numerous amounts of methodologies that try to reach the final objective of obtaining knowledge of a new language. Some of the methods mentioned were the grammar-translation, audio-lingualism, PPP, communicative language teaching, and task-based learning. Because there have been so many different types of teaching methods, which all contain their good and bad there has been a recent tendency to use customize teaching methods by using bits and parts from the methodologies mentioned earlier.

The best part of this chapter was that it reopened my mind to the great mysteries of how humans learn a new language. The fact that there is no one way to teach a language and how the different teaching methods have evolved over time made me realize that English education is still in its first stages. It is a field that will forever keep evolving day after day. I particularly liked that Harmer (2007) did not point out the best or worst method; he instead focused on the fact that all methods can be used as long as 3 main elements are incorporated in the lesson plan: study, engage and activate. Not only did he free me from the thought that teachers must use only one methodology but he also opened up my mind to consider that those 3 latter elements mentioned do not particularly have to be in a specific order. It all depends on the students I have and their level of the language.

For the first time I do not have any “cons” in a chapter written by Jeremy Harmer. He did a great job at describing learning and teaching and everything in between.

To summarize such a well-written chapter, “Describing Learning and Teaching” mentions how children acquire language through exposure and rough-tuning and how older students learn a language through the three elements that need to be incorporated in a lesson plan which are study, engage and activate in no particular order. A great chapter which sparked the flame of my dying curiosity for education.

Bibliography

Harmer, J. (2007). "Describing Learning and Teaching." How to Teach English. Essex: Pearson.

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Describing Learning and Teaching: Personal reflection on Harmer’s (2007) Chapter 4

ELL, ELT, Teaching Practicum 0 comments

Taken from http://hansrt.blogspot.com/

Describing Learning and Teaching

Personal reflection on Harmer’s (2007) Chapter 4

By Melissa Cortés-Ramírez

Pre-Service Teacher, School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Post 242

The fourth chapter of the book written by Harmer (2007) is about the description of learning and teaching. Learning is a conscious process in which every person makes the decision of studying, being in this case a new language. And teaching is in charge of an instructor who can provide the learners with comprehensible input so that they can learn the language correctly. Also, learning can be developed with the application of different methods and elements.

The main idea provided by Harmer (2007) is that learners have different reasons to learn the language, and teachers have different ways of helping the students in the language learning process. For example, students need to have a motivation to study the language; they also need exposure to it, and they need to actually use the language so that they can learn. On the other hand, teachers need to provide the students with the right exposure and opportunities to use the language so that they can practice and improve their knowledge.

In these cases, both, students and teachers can have a lot of advantages. If teachers use different methods of teaching like Grammar-translation, audio-lingualism, PPP, CLT or TBL, they will have different tasks or activities in their lessons and they can fulfill all of the student’s needs. Also, if teachers perform lessons that will show students engagement and will activate their knowledge; they are going to learn successfully and can be able to communicate. Besides, if teachers use different lesson sequences, students will have variety and experiment a more natural environment.

Some disadvantages can also be that sometimes teachers are forced to use a textbook, and this situation reduces the time for teachers who want to do different activities for students. Another one can be that the motivation of the students depends only on them; if they lose motivation it is going to be difficult for the teacher to get the person to participate or to gain the motivation again. Also, the constant changes of methods can benefit some students and make it hard to learn the topics for some other students.

As a conclusion, we can say that there are many reasons for studying a language. Every student has a motivation and a reason to learn that is different from one student to another one; and in order for them to learn they need a teacher who can help them. It is the job of a teacher to maintain the motivation of students by applying different methods of teaching and challenging them to learn and practice more. By applying various methods and taking into account the elements that are necessary to learn, we as teachers can guarantee that our students will learn successfully.

Reference

Harmer, J. (2007). “Describing Learning and Teaching” How to Teach English. Essex: Pearson.

Sunday, March 27, 2016

The Way Learning Environments are Evolving: What’s in stock for us in the future?

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Taken from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254109

The Way Learning Environments are Evolving

What’s in stock for us in the future?

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Post 241

Psychologist Sherry Turkle, in a TED Talk back in 2012, pointed out an interesting reflection on how cell phones have changed our lives. Turkle posits the following after inverviewing hundreds of people of all age groups, “What I’ve found out is that those little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they don’t only change what we do, they change who we are” (2012). If her contemplation of cell phones were taken to all possible innovations that are coming our way in the field of education, would they be learning enhancers or disruptors?

Web-based technologies for learning accessed by means of smartphones and tablets can be paradoxically good and evil. “As with all technology, mobile phones can have their pros and cons, depending on how they are used. At their best, they can be useful tools for staying in touch, finding out new information and co-ordinating social activities. At worst, they can negatively affect concentration, communication and sleep, or increase fear of missing out, procrastination and stress” (Busch, 2016). And if this idea plainly stated by Busch is extrapolated to other commonly used devices in the hands of college students, such as tablets and laptops, we are bound to encounter lots of problems that will affect student learning and course achievement. College learners are at risk of missing lots of important information being delivered to them, and consequently not developing skills and competences for their current or future jobs.

Dispite the need for the development of skills and competences, mobile computing is indeed one of those changes, innovations, and trends that will have a strong influence in higher learning environments in the next 3-5 years. As stated by Mark West for UNESCO, “Access to robust mobile networks is nearly universal: 90% of the world’s population and an impressive 80% of the population living in rural areas are blanketed by a mobile network. This means that learners who might not have access to high-quality education or even schools often do have working mobile phones” (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 2012). Costa Rica is not the exception to this penetration of mobile technology and networks. And in terms of higher education, this penetration of mobile phones (and tablets) is going to create attractive virtual learning spaces for students and instructors. Five years from this point in history, more and more learners will be engaged in blended and online education.

Costa Rican learners are transitioning towards a more dynamic way of learning and being part of the new trends in university life. If Eric Mazur, a professor of physics at Harvard, is 100% right, “during periods of study, lab work and homework” it is when pupils are the most engaged and in a state of ‘arousal associated with emotion, cognition and attention’” (Hardesty, 2013). If we facutly members can emotionally and cognitively motivate leaners with hands-on task to apply the concepts that being studied in a course, our Costa Rican pupils will positively respond to this new challenge in their way of being educated.

Lecture-led instruction in classrooms will become an obsolete practice in a few years, but not in five. “The advantages of interactive learning over lectures have been well-documented for decades, if not centuries” (Hardesty, 2013). Going back to what Mazur was alluding about “the pedagogical efficiency of lectures” studied by MIT Professor Rosiland Picard, these practices’ “readout flatlined during two activies: attending class and watching TV” (Hardesty, 2013). In other words, the “arousal associated with emotion, cognition and attention” is not present during class lectures. What we are bound to find in Costan Rican higher education contexts in the future is faculty members who are going to be recording and producing their own teaching material in vodcast-like formats, like the ones used by Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, to teach mathematics.

References

Busch, B. (2016, March 8). Fomo, stress and sleeplessness: are smartphones bad for students? The Guardian .

Hardesty, L. (2013, March 6). Higher-ed leaders meet to discuss future of online education. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/edx-summit-0306.html

Turkle, S. (2012, February). Connected, but alone? (TED.Com) Retrieved from TED.Com: http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together#t-152139

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. (2012). Turning on Mobile Learning Global Themes. Paris: UNESCO.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Managing the Classroom: A Critique of Chapter 3 written by Jeremy Harmer (2007)

ELL, ELT, Teaching Practicum 0 comments

Taken from http://englishbookgeorgia.com/blogebg/teachers/

Managing the Classroom

A Critique of Chapter 3 written by Jeremy Harmer (2007)

By Zhang Xiao Yu

Pre-Service Teacher, School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Post 240

Receiving a good reward for teaching not only relates to teacher’s plan and teaching, but also relates to how managing the classroom is important. Talking about management, this is connected to how teachers organize their classes, the way to talk with their students, the way to introduce the class to new topics, how the class space is organized, and so on.

Chapter 3 by Harmer (2007) is about some aspects to manage the classroom. These aspects are: classroom management; the teacher in the classroom; using the voice; talking to students; giving instructions; student talk and teacher talk; using the L1; creating lesson stages; different seating arrangements and different students groupings. The chapter by Harmer (2007) reminds us that we should be flexible to face the aspects appropriately, some details like movements; the place to stand; using the voice; the way we talk with students in the different situation, like giving instructions or doing an activity; some advantages and disadvantages of seating arrangements, grouping and pairing.

I disagree with the point made regarding different students’ groupings, class-to-class. The test stated that joining two different groups, could be the same levels or different levels, so that they can interact with each other. If the high levels students interact with low levels students, the lower ones might learn some things, but how about the high ones? And sometimes the lower ones might be afraid to talk with the high ones, like some shy students, they can talk with their peers, but afraid to talk with the new ones that maybe will cause uncomfortable to some learners.

The chapter by Harmer (2007) also mentions some different seating arrangements. If a teacher only works with one type of seating, that will bore the students. For that, sometimes teachers can change the seating in other to work better. In regards to giving instructions, the chapter says that the best activity in the world is a waste of time if the students do not understand what it is they are supposed to do. It is true; try to make a simple and easy instruction, and do not complicate them. When you are giving the instructions, make sure that your students are paying attention and make sure that all your students will understand it. If you can, it is better to give the students at least one example and that will make they work easier.

There are a lot of teachers who ignore managing the classroom, or maybe they have nerve care about it. It is a very important to know it because it will help a teacher’s teaching become easier and successful.

Reference

Harmer, J. (2007). “Managing the Classroom”. How to Teach English. Essex: Peason.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Managing the Classroom: Some tips to keep in mind

ELL, ELT, Teaching Practicum 0 comments

Taken from http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/rookie-teaching-technique-choosing-a-seating-arran.html

Managing the Classroom:

Some tips to keep in mind

By Karolina del Carmen Bermúdez Zúñiga

Pre-Service Teacher

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Post 239

If a teacher wants to manage the classroom successfully, he or she has to know how to handle some aspects like how the classroom space is organized, whether the students are working on their own or in groups, and how we organize classroom time.

The teachers´ role in the classroom is really important, how they behave, how they look (appearance); therefore, educators have to take into account how close they can be to their students; some of the learners are uncomfortable if the teacher is close, and for other students they feel that if the teacher is not close, that means coldness from his/her part. This is also related to the perception of what is appropriate, in order to work with the students.

Another aspect is the use of the voice. For us teachers our voice is really important in the class; it must be able to be heard from the back of the class and to hear students’ voices as well; hence, it is important for teachers to vary the quality of their voices and the capacity they speak at, according to the type of lesson and the type of activity it is being carried on. On the other hand, the manner that teachers talk to students, the way in which they interact with them, is one of the critical teacher skills needed in the classroom; however, it requires from educators to sympathize with the people they are talking to by creating a good relationship with them.

To give instructions to our students it has to be done very simple and clear. Teachers have to be careful to not speak a lot, because the students would not have time to practice their English; learners have to speak in the class, too. About the siting arrangements, it is important to keep the students working in a specific activity and work with their classmates; this also depends on the behavior of the students and what it is better for them.

There are some positive aspects to mention; for example, the importance of the tone of voice, which is our main tool. Depending on the tone of voice of the teacher, students can understand instructions clearly without feeling stressed. Additionally, the behavior of the teacher with the students is significant to make them feel comfortable, and the educator has to know how to get close to the students without making them feel uncomfortable.

Related to the siting arrangement, in my opinion, some of ideas proposed by Harmer (2007) works, but the students working in groups, do not work as they have to. From my standpoint, that it is not a positive sitting arrangement.

To conclude what, I think it is better to use in teenagers’ classes is the use of the horseshoe sitting arrangement, because the students are closer to each other and can help one another, and the teacher can have access to the whole class. Also I will use the circle siting arrangement to make the students work together without missing the control of the classroom, and it is a really organized method to have the class going on.

References

Harmer, J. (2007)” Managing the classroom” How to teach English Essex: Pearson

Saturday, March 26, 2016

The 21st-Century Student Experience

Future for Education?, Higher Education 0 comments

Taken from http://d20innovation.d20blogs.org/2012/11/03/assessing-21st-century-skills/

The 21^st-Century Student Experience

The voice of the active learner

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Post 238

“What do we know about today’s ‘new students’? Perhaps most obviously, we know that these students have been heavily influenced by information technology” (Oblinger, 2003). But what happened to us, pre-digital era learners? What was it like to be a student when we were in college, say, around the 80s? And now that we are in charge of the education of millennials, we “current higher education administrators, as well as many faculty and staff, represent a different generation from the majority of the student population” (Oblinger, 2003); our “different generation” had very different learning, studying habits when compared to what 21^st learners do.

Pre-digital era learners had a different way of doing things! We college students in the 80s (and before) studied differently. Though those learning, studying approaches we got to use at that time are still on force nowadays, most –if not all- of our studying was paper-based in a way. We had books, photocopies, notebooks with notes and mind maps, notepads to jot down ideas, scrap paper to work on practices or summaries, flashcards, index cards with notes and terminology to learn, and so on. When contrasted to what learners do today, I see the evolution of education and how it is being held back by our old-fashioned practices. Students now have eBooks or PDF docs, Google Docs to keep notes, practice, and write their summaries, apps for flashcards and terminology on their smartphones and tablets, pages to create and collaborate with peers in the creation of mind maps, and so. The way we used to study and learn is indeed a mere vision of what the past was to us.

And when did we study or went to college? Back in my college days, having a job and going to the university was simply unheard of. That is, at least in the public university system in Costa Rica whose schedules seemed to suit the professors’ agendas rather than the students’, one had to be a full-time learner; working was out of question since it was impossible to have a job and take a full block of subjects per semester. But nowadays, 21^st Century college students do work and pursue a college degree. As someone who did work at the time of my college years, I had to enroll just a few courses to be able to get a part-time job and support my family. But today, not only do college students have a fulfilling university life but continue with their social and working lives, simultaneously. And when it comes to studying time, as we probably did before, we can study anywhere, anytime, but with different tools. 21^st Century learners have access to CMSs (Content Management Systems), LMSs (Learning Management Systems), wikis, blogs, web pages, and so on, right there on their smartphones and tablets. We just had access to our notepads with notes, summaries, notebooks, and books. The way we used to make use of time is so far away swallowed by the mist of time and quite unpractical in the eyes of today’s pupils.

Where did we study in our college days? And where do our learners do it today? In hindsight, I can see myself sitting at home in my room with my books, notebooks, papers, cards, and so on at my desk. If I came across a piece of information that was not clear, I had to wait for the next lesson to ask the professor for clarification, or if I had a partner’s landline phone number, I called hoping my classmate would be home to see if I could get an explanation or example for me. If a big project was to be developed in groups, we had to agree on a working meeting at the campus library or elsewhere to put our minds to work. But, boy, times have indeed changed! Learners can now study literally anywhere, anytime. Learning for them has become synchronous and asynchronous; clarification of doubts can be immediate with or without the assistance of the instructor or peer, especially with the abundance of sites, such as You Tube, to get tutorials, explanation videos, and the like. Students do not phone peers anymore; they contact each other by means of Whatsapp or Viber or Google Hangouts, or any other similar app. And to meet, they do it now virtually, avoiding commuting and nasty traffic jams; campus libraries are now deserted and at times underused by the college community. Grandpa would probably be perplexed at what his grandchildren (my kids) do to study and pursue a college degree.

If students today are the way they have been depicted above, can we all imagine what college students would be like in 20 years? Though I am not H. G. Wells who foresaw nuclear power or Aldous Huxley who foresaw genetic engineering, I can foretell that education will have changed drastically in less than a decade. College life and studies will be full of flipped classrooms, connected to mobile apps and tablet/smartphone computing; more and more learners will be enrolled in MOOCs. Blended, hybrid, and online education will be the norm. Based on the MNC Horizon Project Short List (Project, 2013), augmented reality, game-based learning, the Internet of Things, Learning Analytics will have become another norm by then, or even perhaps new emerging educational practices will have been adopted and some of the practices on the list, abandoned. And for sure, wearable technology, 3D printing, flexible displays, and next generation batteries will be fully embedded in our teaching, instructional practices. If we based our predictions on how others have failed to forecast, we can simply say that the future of education will not be like whatever we think it will be like, but it will be awesome to see how students will be learning at that time in the future.

Are Costa Rican public and private universities ready for the many changes and innovations in education to come? Well, the answer to this is rather elusive. Somehow there are higher education institutions in my country that are getting prepare to serve and engage the learners who will come to classrooms in the future. For sure the Laureate family of colleges in Costa Rica is on its way to become ready to face the challenges, but some other institutions need to think about the changes to come and how they can cope with them to really prepare students for jobs and new positions of the future.

References

Oblinger, D. (2003). Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials: Understanding the 'new students'. EDUCAUSE Review , (38)4, 36–47.

Project, N. H. (2013). NMC Horizon Project Short List: 2013 Higher Education Edition.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

The Future in Higher Education

Higher Education 0 comments

Taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/umdnews/7881316248

The Future in Higher Education:

Trends to come in the very near future

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Post 237

“Life is not linear but organic” (Robinson, 2010), and so is education. Learning is then a process in which pupils create their own knowledge coming from very different angles, viewpoints, and perspectives. That is, technology nowadays is auspicious of all these new trends in autonomous, flipped learning students are facing and encountering every step of their education process. Instead of profligate technologies or intentions to use Internet-mediated “learning,” as stated by Prof. Sebastian Thrun, we teaching professional ought to look for ways to “democratize” learning (VOA Voice of America, 2012) in various formats to involve as many of our students as possible in the new trends that are common for them, more than they are for us individuals who were born before this digitalized way of education (Robinson, 2010) learners are experiencing in their day-to-day lives.

Mobile computing, or simply apps, supported by Galaxy, Android, and iPhone, is one of the most important trends in digital learning. “Mobile apps are particularly useful for learning as they enable people to learn and experience new concepts wherever they are, often across multiple devices” (NMC Horizon Project, 2013). Take the case of the students who need to take the GRE test and are looking for ways to practice, enhance, or learn new lexical items to be graded on the vocabulary, written part of this test; what can they do? Kaplan or Magoosh have created apps to help learners work on their word-base to face this part of the GRE test.

Mobile computing, based on the NMC Horizon Project (2013), has a time-to-adpotion span of one year or less. As stated above, and avoiding a harangue of incomprehensible facts about apps, we can have a glimpse of how these mobile computing products are contributing to higher education. The array of apps is so vast that learners can practice from algebra to phonetics, from vectors to literature, and so on. And as “new research from the University of Maryland has found […] mobile Apps - and even text messages - enhanced learning and produced a richer learning experience for college students” (UMD Research Shows Mobile Apps Help Students Learn, 2010), can we faculty members imagine the potential these apps have in our fields of work and teaching? And how about going beyond the acrimony some pre-digital ear teaching professionals profess towards technology-mediated learning and assessment, and getting the right training to create our own apps ourselves to have summative evaluations (quizzes, tests, etc.) or terminology review and its corresponding practice? Mobile computing is fertile ground but though its adoption is not that much, we faculty members need to get the training to move upwards in the latter of education technology.

As a language professor working with literature and phonemics in higher education, I often struggle to stop the areas in which learners are having trouble and cannot provide them with immediate feedback for their academic improvement. If I could get to use and apply learning analytics, students will be blessed with meaningful and instantaneous feedback. As stated by West (2012), “many of the typical pedagogies provide little immediate feedback to students, require teachers to spend hours grading routine assignments, aren’t very proactive about showing students how to improve comprehension, and fail to take advantage of digital resources that can improve the learning process.” Those “typical pedagogies” West (2012) mentions are present in our day-to-day teaching/assessment practices and we cannot get back to our pupils with meaningful feedback for their improvement. And in spite of the fact that learning analytics is still taking its very first steps, all these data produced by learners can help us plan courses, lessons, learning activities, etc. to help them improve individually. We will see how it evolves in the next two to three years, which is its time-for-adpotion horizon timeframe (NMC Horizon Project, 2013).

“Data-driven approaches make it possible to study learning in real-time and offer systematic feedback to students and teachers” (West, 2012). With an approach like this, neither learners nor teachers do have to wait for datat to be analyzed to supply individualized feedback that can help students their learning practices. As stated by Siemens (2013), “Learning analyticsis is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs.” If we had access to these “measurement, collection, analyis and reporting of data” from any form of student learning activity, we could be able to work with pupils in higher education to really develop their skills and competencies needed for their working field. By spotting any single area where students need to coached, then the teacher can intervine to give a helping hand if the system cannot provide learners with individualized coaching.

“Known in industrial circles as rapid prototyping, 3D printing refers to technologies that construct physical objects from three-dimensional (3D) digital content” (NMC Horizon Project, 2013). 3D Printing in education contexts can be the next boom in learning. Though this is not my area of expertise, nor my cup of tea, this type of new technology can be a real hit in product design, engineering, and so on, where students can create prototypes that can be then physically represented (printed) for further analysis and improvement. Though its time-to-adoption horizon is four to five years (NMC Horizon Project, 2013), its potential in higher education is simply out of question.

From the Getting Smart webpage (Parker, 2012), it can be seen the many possible uses for 3D printing in educational fields. Parker (2012) singles out several uses for 3D printing, among them she states its use in biology, auto industry, geography, drafting in architecture, graphic design, history, and artifacts in anthropology. In today’s higher education, all these areas benefit from this kind of printing. 3D printing can give learners tactile experiences they could not have had before when they had only pictures of books instead of the manipulation of a replica of the object of study. We are indeed in the verge of encountering a gamut of uses for this piece of technology that time will help us discover and utilize in higher education.

If we are just passive spectators during the abandonment of broken models of education systems, as Robinson (2010) refers to them, and we do not dare to challenge what we educators have taken for granted since our student college days, learners will mutiny on us demanding for more meaninful ways of getting an education and of develping the skills and competencies needed by them for their current and future jobs. We cannot simply state that these innovations in education systems around the world are just barging in on my comfort teaching zone, and we cannot be blinded by the old dogmas in education that cannot cope with the advancements in technology we all are facing in the 21^st Century.

References

NMC Horizon Project. (2013). NMC Horizon Project Short List 2013 Higher Education Edition.

Parker, N. (2012, November 14). 7 Educational Uses for 3D Printing. Retrieved from

GettingSmart.Com: http://gettingsmart.com/2012/11/7-educational-uses-for-3d-printing/

Robinson, K. (2010). Bring on the Learning Revolution. Retrieved from http://www.tedx.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution

Siemens, G. (2013, January 9). The Structure and Logic of the Learning Analytics Field. Retrieved from SlideShare.Com: http://www.slideshare.net/gsiemens/columbia-tc?ref=http://www.learninganalytics.net/

UMD Research Shows Mobile Apps Help Students Learn. (2010, March 23). Retrieved from Merrill College of Journalism, University of Mariland: https://www.flickr.com/photos/umdnews/7881316248

VOA Voice of America. (2012, March 21). Getting a Free Education, in Huge Online Classes. Retrieved from SlideShare.Com: http://www.slideshare.net/jonacuso/se-edmassiveopenonlinecourses

West, D. (2012, September 12). Big Data for Education: Data Mining, Data Analytics, and Web Dashboards. Retrieved from Bookings: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/09/04-education-technology-west

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Change and Innovation in Higher Education

Higher Education 0 comments

Taken from http://enswmu.blogspot.com/2014/06/musings-how-technology-innovation-helps.html

Change and Innovation in Higher Education:

A glimpse to what’s been happening

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Post 236

On the verge of common affairs in education today, many great minds of the end of 20^th Century and the emerging ones of the 21^st Century conceptualize higher education quite differently if compared to what renowned educational champions and professional -50 years ago- could envision of what education entails today on the second decade of the 21^st Century. The new gurus on education now predict and anticipate substantial changes, novelties, permutations, trends, and tendencies in what we understand as higher education and what is to come in our near and far future. Would we meet those challenges with the actual models of education that we hold on and whose rationale we take for granted?

As a higher education professional, who started taking part in significative changes in how learning can be fostered, I have come to witness, participate in, or facilitate some of those changes among my students. One of those meaningful changes I came to be part of was linked to hybrid and blended education. The Internet has come to exercise a powerful influence on how learners access information; thus, learning can be mediated by means of data bases accessed via computer, web pages with educational content, documents available to be downloaded, and so on enriching the experience all learners have. The construction of student knowledge is no longer just happening in F2F classroom sessions but in virtual spaces where instructors and learners can interact with one another synchronously or asynchronously. We faculty members cannot shrug our shoulders showing indifference towards these major and dramatic changes in the way our students are learning nowadays.

Another dramatic innovation in higher education I have been witnessing and am willing to facilitate more is learning through flipped classrooms. “The flipped classroom refers to a model of learning that rearranges how time is spent both in and out of class to shift the ownership of learning from the educators to the students” (NMC Horizon Project, 2013). Personally, I have implemented this sort of approach with literature students at Universidad Latina in Costa Rica allowing them to manage the content of the course to suit their studying needs and available time to work on their projects. “Rather than the teacher using class time to lecture to students and dispense information, that work is done by each student after class, and could take the form of watching video lectures, listening to podcasts, perusing enhanced e-book content, collaborating with their peers in online communities, and more” (NMC Horizon Project, 2013). My literature students are provided with projects (literary analyses) to be developed after class time and that are enhanced with online content to explore, videos, multimedia, and so on. Though it took me around a year to fully implement it and modify course content to become flipped and though I do not want to seem boisterous at my students’ achievements, their results (grades obtained by pupils and learning gained by them) has been more than rewarding.

Back in 2008 I came to witness the introduction of MOOCs for those people who were interested in furthering their learning and education but lacked the resources to pay for tuitions. Udacity.Com was the very first webpage I heard of that offered Massive Open Online Courses for any learner willing to continue working on his/her education. When Sebastian Thrun started Udacity at Stanford University, he wanted to “democratize” education since he believed that “education should be free, accessible for all, everywhere and any time” (VOA Voice of America, 2012). Bearing in mind the my lumpy understanding of MOOCs at that time, I tried to take part of these courses, which originally “were conceptualized as the next evolution of networked learning” (NMC Horizon Project, 2013). MOOCs are now courses that I encourage my students to enroll, especially the ones in ELT, my field of work. Having participated in the Shaping the Way we Teach MOOCs by the University of Oregon, the adoption of this way for higher education may take less than a year, and a year to start seeing real results. It gives me the creeps just to think of the fact that there are faculty members who cannot still see the value of this change in education and networking.

Sir Ken Robinson, while participating in a series of presentations hosted by Ted Talks (Robinson, 2010), addressed the audience on the need for a revolution in education. Among his most interesting considerations regarding learning, he pointed out that though education systems are being worked on in spite of the fact they are now broken models (Robinson, 2010). If life is no linear but rather organic, education should be thought in the very same way, and that is why a revolution is needed to meet the needs of 21^st Century learners. If we do not want these obsolete broken models to mutiny on us and our students, innovation is necessary; “challenging what we take for granted” (Robinson, 2010) nowadays is also a must because our ideas of education “need to meet the circumstances” (Robinson, 2010) of what we are currently facing in higher education.

References

NMC Horizon Project. (2013). NMC Horizon Project Short List 2013 Higher Education Edition.

Robinson, K. (2010). Bring on the Learning Revolution. Retrieved from http://www.tedx.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution

VOA Voice of America. (2012, March 21). Getting a Free Education, in Huge Online Classes. Retrieved from SlideShare.Com: http://www.slideshare.net/jonacuso/se-edmassiveopenonlinecourses

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Ethnography in a 21st Century Classroom: What teaching settings look like today

References

Describing Learning and Teaching: How humans learn another language

Describing Learning and Teaching: Personal reflection on Harmer’s (2007) Chapter 4

The Way Learning Environments are Evolving: What’s in stock for us in the future?

References

Managing the Classroom: A Critique of Chapter 3 written by Jeremy Harmer (2007)

Managing the Classroom: Some tips to keep in mind

The 21st-Century Student Experience

References

The Future in Higher Education

References

Change and Innovation in Higher Education

Reflective Online Teaching

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