Learners

The EDUCAUSE Live! Spotlight on Identity Management series is a six-month series that will feature one or two speakers from a campus that have analyzed or solved a problem in a way that many people will find instructive.

The meaning of "student" is evolving at Duke University in response to many institutional and faculty outreach efforts. This trend is mirrored at many of Duke's peer institutions. In this free seminar on April 18, The Evolving Definition of “Student”: Identity Management at Duke University, presenters Klara Jelinkova, Director, Computing Systems, and Lynne O’Brien, Director, Academic Technology and Instructional Services, Duke University, will discuss the issues, concepts, and solutions surrounding identity management proposed and implemented at Duke University.

This 13 minute podcast features a conversation with Thomas C. Reeves, Professor of Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. Our discussion took place at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting, where Professor Reeves presented a plenary session entitled, "Technology and the Conative Learning Domain in Undergraduate Education".

Video and slides of this presentation can be found here. The speech is by Marsha C. Lovett, Associate Research Professor & Associate Director for Carnegie Mellon University, and is entitled, "Teaching Metacognition". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

As educators, we teach students “content” but also want to help them develop as learners. Metacognition—the process of thinking about one’s own thinking processes and strategies—is essential to both goals, and yet instructors often feel they lack time or expertise to teach metacognitive skills. In this session, Lovett discusses recent research on teaching metacognition, including a Carnegie Mellon program where metacognitive instruction is integrated into first-year science courses.

In this 61 minute podcast, we feature a speech by Marsha C. Lovett, Associate Research Professor & Associate Director for Carnegie Mellon University, and is entitled, "Teaching Metacognition". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

As educators, we teach students “content” but also want to help them develop as learners. Metacognition—the process of thinking about one’s own thinking processes and strategies—is essential to both goals, and yet instructors often feel they lack time or expertise to teach metacognitive skills. In this session, Lovett discusses recent research on teaching metacognition, including a Carnegie Mellon program where metacognitive instruction is integrated into first-year science courses.

George Siemens mentions the idea of teacher as curator in todays blog at elearnspace. He cites his own more detailed description of a curatorial teacher:

A curatorial teacher acknowledges the autonomy of learners, yet understands the frustration of exploring unknown territories without a map. A curator is an expert learner. Instead of dispensing knowledge, he creates spaces in which knowledge can be created, explored, and connected. While curators understand their field very well, they don’t adhere to traditional in-class teacher-centric power structures. A curator balances the freedom of individual learners with the thoughtful interpretation of the subject being explored.

I think there is genius in his phrase “expert learner”. What he describes, to me is very much the role of a producer in a video or recording project. Think of George Martin for the Beatles, Quincy Jones for artists from Sarah Vaughn to Michael Jackson, or Mutt Lange for Shania.

Joan Lippincott, associate executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, contributed a video interview to the ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session, Being Net Savvy: Developing Skills for A Rapidly Changing World. Here's her description of it:

"My daughter, Meg Lippincott, a sophomore at Vassar College, has been working at her college library reference desk and occasionally sharing some observations with me about how students seek information for their academic work.  I interviewed her for a brief video for the ELI Focus Session on net savvy students.  Her friend Jan Zhan, a student at University of Maryland, did the camera work.  Meg discusses some aspects of information literacy, the way she learned to use some math software, and her definition of a 'net savvy student.'"  --Joan Lippincott

The Internet and a variety of emerging communication, visualization, and simulation technologies now make it possible to offer students authentic learning experiences ranging from experimentation to real-world problem solving. Explore authentic learning, what it is, how technology can support it, what makes it effective, and why it is important in Authentic Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview, by Marilyn M. Lombardi, ELI scholar-in-residence and director of the RENCI Center and senior IT strategist at Duke University. This piece is part of the ELI white paper series.

Summary: Net Generation Students and Campus IT: Supporting Student Success in the Age of Multitasking, Facebooking, and Instant Messaging

The session was recorded for podcasting and will be available as a part of the conference proceedings.

General Session
Southeast Regional Conference
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Atlanta, Georgia

In this podcast of the presentation "Generation G and the 21st Century," Richard Van Eck, associate professor of instructional design and technology at the University of North Dakota, discusses the theory behind the effectiveness of games in teaching and learning; what the past can teach us about if, how, and when to implement digital game-based learning; and what this will mean for colleges and universities.

This was presented as a general session at Immersive Learning Environments: New Paths to Interaction and Engagement, the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's Spring 2007 Focus Session, held at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation in Raleigh, North Carolina, March 27-28, 2007. Additional resources from the event, including session recordings and audio interviews, video, presentation materials, and photos, also are available online.