ExamSoft Worldwide, Inc., a technology leader that helps schools more efficiently create and administer direct assessments, and generate actionable data to measure and improve individual student learning outcomes, today announced the launch of its Exam Intelligence (E.I.) solutions at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference in Denver.
Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), the trusted market leader for video management and academic, enterprise and event webcasting, today announced the company’s Mediasite platform will be used to webcast the EDUCAUSE 2012 Annual Conference this week at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colo.
The Writing Across the Curriculum movement has successfully introduced faculty across disciplines to a variety of writing, including very informal writing that faculty do not necessarily read or grade. The advocacy for this kind of informal writing rests on the old premise that practice makes perfect—that as long as students are writing something, their writing will likely improve.
Blackboard unveiled a major new release for its flagship LMS Blackboard Learn™, marking a significant milestone in the company's effort to bring new innovation to its core teaching and learning products. The release brings a fresh approach to the user interface, an emphasis on social learning and significantly improved value for institutions and educators working to improve student retention.
Pearson today announced Project Blue Sky, a cloud-based, content service that provides instructors with easy access to Open Educational Resources (OER). Pearson is partnering with Silicon Valley non-profit Gooru, a search engine for learning materials, and will leverage Gooru’s powerful search capabilities to build applications that seamlessly integrate high-quality learning resources on the web, including OER, with instructor-created and Pearson content.
Integrating technology with appropriate teaching strategies can help stimulate participation and create a student-centered atmosphere conducive to learning. One technology shown particularly successful in boosting student engagement is clickers (Martyn, 2007). In fact, a research study found that student test scores were significantly higher when clickers were used as part of an in-class lecture as compared to a different section of the same class that didn’t use clickers (Mayer, Stull, DeLeeuw, Ameroth, Bimber, Chun, et al. 2009).
Which online instructor characteristics help students succeed? It’s a rather basic question that has not been adequately answered. We did a literature search to find if anybody had done any research from the students’ perspective on what constitutes a quality online instructor. There were perhaps 10 articles by professors speculating about what they thought defined quality online instruction, but nobody had asked students.
We’ve all had conversations with students who want effort counted in their grade: “But I tried so hard ... I studied for hours ... I am really working in this course.” The question is, should effort count? Less commonly asked, however, is whether it should count in both directions. Students want effort to count when they try hard but their performance doesn’t show it. But what about when an excellent performance results without much effort? Should this lack of effort lower the grade? Beyond these theoretical questions are the pragmatic ones: Can effort be measured fairly, objectively? If so, what criteria are used to assess it?
Do business plan competitions really work? This was the challenge posed to college students from across the country who are studying entrepreneurship. The Department of Commerce Office of Innovation and…
Students are giving their instructors high marks for using technology effectively. Results from latest annual technology survey by Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) found that 68 percent of the more than 100,000 students surveyed said that most or all of their instructors effectively use technology to advance their academic success. That’s up from 47 percent just two years ago.