List Members.... On a yearly basis I do give a shout-out to a Rick Reis, Ph.D. and their Newsletter called Tomorrow's Professor. Have included in formation about the Newsletter below. They're doing something right, with over 45,000 people subscibed to date.
He does a nice job of giving a short summary at the very beginning, so you can decide quickly if the topic could be valuable to you or you can hit the delete button. These are achived on the web, so I believe you can even do a search for topics. I post this today, because over the past couple of years, several have been devoted to on-line learning in today's world. It is not advertising about what Stanford offers. Some very interesting articles about the use of technology in the classroom recently. Good stuff for Educators at any level. Thank you. Mike Nolan....see below "Desktop faculty development 100 times per year." Over 45,000 subscribers at over 850 institutions in more than 100 countries TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php Archives of all past postings can be found at: http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php Sponsored by Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning http://ctl.stanford.edu Check out the Tomorrow's Professor Blog at: http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/ NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by going to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor You can UNSUBSCRIBE by hitting "return" to this posting with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== tomorrows-professor mailing list tomorrows-profes...@lists.stanford.edu https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor I agree, its like everything else. It has a place, some things work well that way, and other do not. For example, histology can be taught online very effectively because modern histology almost 90% is looking at images on a screen, not a scope. I think video lectures are a very powerful way to deliver online ed, but substituting discussion boards are largely over-rated, and in many cases simply busy work that give the impression of learning. I was exposed to one online course in which the total semester content was less than I would expect in a week of lecture (this was a for profit degree). I can see environmental policy being taught online effectively, but how you teach someone to do say wildlife techniques, fisheries techniques, or other field intensive subjects is beyond me. The histotech folks have a histotechnology program that is 100% online, you take the courses online, then do a 1 year paid intern to learn the lab techniques. The problem I see has always been laboratory components that are intended to teach skills rather than demonstrate things. Years ago the U of IL had extension coursework taught via correspondence and video cassette through their agriculture extension service. The bulk of the material was simply reading a series of books and watching the videos. Then, you had to go take tests at a local high school, extension office or such. The lab was handled by driving once a week to the U of I in Champaign-Urbana. I think this blended approach used for online education could be very effective. I know it is used at some schools rather than the either-or approach. For example, you could teach the general ecology via video lecture on the net, then once a week the students show up for lab at the university. Most people can handle driving 150 mi to take a lab once a week despite as bad as it sounds. Then again, does every biology course really need a lab? How many do we teach with a lab that actually only have one because some administrator required us to have one? I'm convinced that the laboratory's are not needed as much as they are used. In some classes we offer something called a lab and then have nothing more than discussions in it. Such an adjunct should not be a lab, it should be called a discusssion section to provide distinction between a section where we are doing activities to learn techniques or see things happen first hand, or even to investigate the structure first hand via dissection for example. I'm kind of wandering here, but the article I forwarded got me thinking about a lot of different angles, but to get back to the point, I think there is a stigma to online delivery because it is perceived as inferior due to the poorly structured and poor quality of some for profit programs combined with the stigma of correspondence courses from decades earlier. Agree, disagree, You can cast your stones now. :) M ---------- If we are on another line or away from the phone, please leave your number, best time to return your call and your e-mail address. After hours and weekend phone appointments are available upon request. Sincerely, J. 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