^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

My main point is that participatory teaching methods simply will not work if they do not begin with a deep bond between teacher and student. Importantly, this bond must be built through mutual respect, care, and an ongoing effort to know and understand one another. Somebody using traditional teaching methods (lecture) can foster these bonds and be as effective as somebody using more participatory methods. The participation and “active learning” that is necessary for true understanding and application may not happen in the classroom, but the lecture is just one piece of a much larger ecosystem of the college campus. An effective lecture can inspire deep late night conversations with peers, mad runs to the library for more information, and significant intellectual throwdowns in the minds of our students.

–Michael Wesch, Professor of Anthropology, Kansas State University, in an email message to The Chronicle editor Jeff Selingo, shared in Wesch’s blog, Digital Technology With Professor Wesch. Wesch was a hit the last time SCUP visited Chicago, at SCUP–42, when he closed “Shaping the Academic Landscape: Integrated Solutions, with a rousing presentation. 

 ^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

This is good for a basic understanding, but what we most wanted to share—in case you don’t click and go read it—is a concept that we just finally understood: Flipped Learning uses technology before and after class, to support the engagement of learners and faculty in the rare and valuable face to face moments we call “class time". There are other interesting concepts in this piece, as well:

What are the implications of student response system availability on the design of learning spaces? This resource helps to answer that question.

An open-ended student response system is an electronic service or application that lets students enter text responses during a lecture or class discussion. Open-ended systems give faculty the option of collecting such free-form contributions from students, in addition to asking the true/false or multiple-choice questions that conventional clicker systems allow. Such tools open a channel for the kind of individual, creative student responses that can alter the character of learning. The great strength of open-ended student response systems may be that they create another avenue for discussion, allowing students to join a virtual conversation at those times when speaking out in live discourse might seem inappropriate, intimidating, or difficult.

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

We agree. This particular series is great, including such core resources as:

This brief essay from Faculty Focus by John Orlando describes and discusses the utility of "personal learning environments." Its set of links is also useful, especially the one to the EDUCAUSE resource titled 7 Things You Should Know About Personal Learning Environments (PDF).

We all know that much of a college education happens outside of the classroom. Colleges foster an intellectual atmosphere around campus by bringing in speakers, and one of the purposes of student centers is to enable evening “bull” sessions around coffee or some stronger drink. Until recently, students had no way to structure their learning experiences around topics that excite them. They attended talks as they came up, or pursued interests with others they happened to meet. But now social media allows institutions to provide students with a “Personal Learning Environment” (PLE) for pursuing their intellectual interests outside of the classroom. ...

Of course, Alex would still attend classes to satisfy his degree requirements, but his PLE would be a way of extending his education through a self-structured and self-organized learning environment. Whereas some of his classes might intersect his particular interest, everything about his PLE would revolve around his interest. Maybe his passion would eventually fizzle, but until then he would be honing his communication and thinking skills through collaboration with others—which will benefit him in any future pursuits.

We've seen a lot of reporting coming out of this year's EDUCAUSE conference. In this report, Joshua Kim says that this year's conference felt different than previous events - and that the Gates Foundation is the reason. Below, some language from this brief report. Here's a link to the Next Generation Learning Challenge website. Planners need to pay attention - this could be a major turning point in, for example, online learning.

This EDUCAUSE Conference has felt different from all the rest, and the reason I think is Gates Foundation Next Generation Learning Challenges. This is the first EDUCAUSE Conference that I've attended where there is a real feeling of confidence that information technology can be the lever for structural change in our higher ed system.

The real power of the Gates Next Generation Learning Challenge is not the money, although that helps, but the ability to focus the problems in higher education around a defined set of issues. Gates has us all speaking the same language. In talking with Cameron Evans (Microsoft), Ray Henderson (Blackboard), and Don Kilburn (Pearson), the conversation kept coming back to the role that their companies can play in addressing the issues that have been identified by Gates.

Leadership from technology, LMS, and publishing companies are now all focused on utilizing the power of their companies to work on the specific issues that the Next Generation Learning Challenges are designed to address.

Very little about the American classroom has changed since Laura Ingalls sat in one more than a century ago. In her school, children sat in a rectangular room at rows of desks, a teacher up front. At most American schools, they still do.

Slate magazine's got a contest going on until the end of October. It is asking people to describe or design the ideal fifth-grade classroom for today, This article describes the contest and spends some time critizing the failure to markedly change classroom design.

Education has changed even if the room has not, and if you go into most schools, you are likely to see teachers and students chafing against the rectangle. The 21st-century imperative is to closely monitor students’ individual progress and teach them accordingly. Teachers are supposed to work together to analyze data and coordinate their approaches. Most classes include at least some traditional instruction: one teacher up front, addressing 20 or 30 students. But it is also common for students to work on projects in small groups, for aides to conduct "interventions" with a few kids around a table, and for teachers to assess children one at a time. Where the space has not been modified accordingly--which is to say, most everywhere--you see lots of kids sprawling on cold tile floors and huddling in converted closets. Why haven’t schools evolved the way museums and playgrounds and supermarkets have? 

Jeanne Narum, recipient of SCUP's 2010 Founders (Casey) Award has started up a new Learning Spaces Collaboratory. SCUP is a collaboratory member. The collaboratory has a series of webinars coming up, the first this coming Wednesday, September 15,  titled "Steps Taken to Imagine, Prototype, Design, Construct, and Assess a Major Library Renovation: The Duke LINK Project."

(SCUP has a webcast with ACUHO-I on the next day, September 16, on Sustainable Residence Hall Renovation: Teach Your Old Dog New Tricks.)

The collaboratory will also hold a colloquium November 5-7 near Dulles Airport, in northern Virginia.

According to this author - Benedict Carey, The New York Times - a number of things we tend to believe about learning are ... wrong; here's what's correct:

• Studying the same material in different spaces yields better learning than always studying it in the same place.
• Studying a variety of things in each study session yields better results than focusing on a single type of learning.
• Repetitive study sessions space out over time are more fruitful than mass cramming.
• Testing is far more valuable as a learning tool than as a mere assessment measure for grading purposes.

The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard.

***

Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding. “When students see a list of problems, all of the same kind, they know the strategy to use before they even read the problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like riding a bike with training wheels.” With mixed practice, he added, “each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had to do on the test.”