Recently in Resources Category

Seth J. S., Byron L. Z., & Robert S. W. Broadening the Study of the Self: Integrating the Study of Personal Identity and Cultural Identity. Social and Personality Psychology Compass (2-2), 635-651.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCJ-47RRDP7-4&_user=209810&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1293960060&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000014439&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=209810&md5=643749dee63958b0172611eed4eabb71

Karen F Osterman.  "Students' need for belonging in the school community. " Review of Educational Research  70.3 (2000): 323-367. ProQuest Education Journals, ProQuest. Web.  12 Apr. 2010.

For full text, click here

There are three questions framing this synthesis:
1. Is the sense of belonging important in an educational setting?
2. Do students experience themselves as members of a community?
3. How do schools influence students' sense of community?

From the psychological perspective, students who experience acceptance feel more highly motivated and engaged in learning and more committed to school, which are closely linked to students performance and quality of learning. In addition, the sense of acceptance also affects the quality of relationships with others.

The research also tells us that conditions in the classroom and school influence students' feelings about themselves and their personal identity. McMillan and Chavis (1986) or Furman (1998) identify the sense of belongingness as the essence of community.

Organizational practices and policies also affect the development of students' sense of community. In general, interpersonal, instructional, and organizational strategies that support positive interaction among students and other members of the school community should enhance students' sense of community.

I have been reading the National Educational Technology Plan and here are some ideas I've noted:

2 Main goals: By 2020, 1) raise the proportion of college graduates from 39% to 60%.  2) Get all students, regardless of race, income, or neighborhood, to graduate from high school.

We need to rethink 3 things: learning, assessment, and teaching. There is a drive to rethink learning as connections and collaborations (much as Wenger believes, or Siemens). There should be core competencies, but students should get tailored learning experiences according to their interests. Students should be connected to parents, experts, others via technology. Assessment should be non-intrusive, formative, and real-time. Teachers should use technology to improve their own practice, by learning from others.

Rethink assumptions: 1) Why should education be seat-based or time-based? Why not organize around competency rather than rigid semesters/years? Why not do other schedules instead of "you have to be in your seat at 7:30 until 10"? 2) Why group students together by age? Why not by competency? 3) Why group students into separate academic classes? Why not combine math and reading together? 4) Why are classes all the same size?

Goals put forth by the administration (that I think are relevant to our class):
1. Revise, create, and adopt standards and learning objectives...that reflect 21st century expertise and the power of technology to improve learning.
2. Design, develop, and adopt technology-based content, resources, and online learning communities that create opportunities for educators to collaborate for more effective teaching.
3. Develop and adopt a common definition of productivity in education and more relevant and meaningful measures of learning outcomes and costs.
4. Rethink basic assumptions in our education system that inhibit leveraging technology to improve learning.
5. Design, implement, and evaluate technology-powered programs that ensure our students progress through K-16 and emerge prepared for the workplace and citizenship.

Sorry for the late posting. I just experienced a frustrating technology meltdown and realized how important it is to back up the system whenever you can. If you haven't done it, do it now.

I used ProQuest from the library to start a massive survey about the articles that are related to student participation and its assessment. Even though my original idea was to gain some insights for teachers' assessment, the focus of students' assessment in this article seems to me as important as that of the teachers. So, here you are...

Trees, A. R. & Jackson, M. H. (2007, March). The learning environment in clicker classrooms: student processes of learning and involvement in large university-level courses using student response systems. Learning, Media and Technology 32 (1), 21-40.

Online (In-Text) Abstract:

To explore what social and educational infrastructure is needed to support classroom use of student response systems (Roschelle et al., 2004), this study investigated the ways in which student characteristics and course design choices were related to students' assessments of the contribution of clicker use to their learning and involvement in the classroom. Survey responses of over 1500 undergraduates enrolled in seven large enrollment 'clicker courses' offered by three university departments are analyzed. A number of factors contribute to students' positive perception of clickers: a desire to be involved and engaged, a view that traditional lecture styles are not best, valuing of feedback, class standing, previous experience with lecture courses, anticipated course performance, and amount of clicker use in the classroom. These results underscore the importance of considering social and communication elements of the classroom when adopting student response technology.

Some Annotations:

Instead of viewing large classroom in higher education as an undesirable classroom management, the researchers force readers (educators) to admit the inevitableness of large classes. I ponder on this a lot. As an education research, should I critically think about improvement based on the status quo or to change the status quo? Is it impossible/difficult/inappropriate to change it? The article also recognizes the difficulties for both teachers' engaging students and students' involvement in class. Clickers, according to the article, is a very simple and effective tool to allow both teachers and students to have certain access to the interactivity of the courses.  With little attempt to claim that Clickers or similar technology response systems are effective in engaging students fully, the data within show the potential of it. People might hold some doubts to its use of multiple choice questions as the measurement, but this seems to be a good starting point to involve more students in class engagement. 

Thanks to Jamie Oberdick (Twitter @JamieOber) for pointing this out. You can watch the whole show online (which actually seems a little ironic, given the topic).

Thanks for taking the time to participate in the class blog. Both Scott and Cole value the different perspectives and new knowledge that can come from an open, civil dialogue. By enabling comments and group posting, we hope to encourage constructive conversations regarding the specific topics on this site. If you have something to add, please feel free to use this forum and let your voice be heard by your fellow classmates and visitors.

Please know that, given the reality of spam and the potential of "a few bad apples," we are reviewing all first time comments before posting. Subsequent comments will usually go through directly.

To make sure that your comment is given the thumbs up and not deleted, simply use common sense, play fair and be civil. A few quick reminders:

• No off-topic comments.
• No personal attacks - hostile, derogatory or deliberately insulting comments directed toward a specific individual are never okay.
• No comments intended to induce an angry response or disrupt the flow of discussion.
• Remember to think of this space as an extension of our classroom -- only say things here you would in the "real" world.

Cole and Scott reserve the right to change these guidelines as the course evolves. We also welcome you to add any thoughts to these guidelines in the comments below.

The new web publishing model we'll discuss in class is something I've been calling "The One Button Web."

With that in mind, we've created a quickpost bookmarklet to let you to publish to this space on the fly. Just drag this link to your bookmark bar in your browser to add this functionality. The video below illustrates how it all works.

Those of you still trying to figure out what Twitter is should watch the new Twitter video from the folks at Common Craft. Those of you hooked into the "TwitterStream" can leave comments here about why you have gotten engaged -- I know some of you are Twitter people, so let's hear from you!

Hi all ... Bart Pursel from the College of Information Sciences and Technology will be in class on Thursday to talk to you a bit about virtual worlds and how they play out in a learning landscape.  Bart maintains a blog that you might want to take a look at it.  He also passed a link along to a PDF he'd like you to skim over.  It should be a fun and interesting discussion, so please try to come ready to participate.