EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Interaction and Engagement

Envisioning the Educational Possibilities of User-Created Virtual Worlds

elilly — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:03:10 -0500

Educational games and simulations can engage students in higher-level cognitive thinking, such as interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting, and problem solving. Recent technical advances in multiplayer, user-created virtual worlds have significantly expanded the capabilities of user interaction and development within these simulated worlds. This ability to develop and interact with your own simulated world offers many new and exciting educational possibilities. This article explores the technical capabilities and educational potential of these new worlds. Additionally, it presents and illustrates a model, which uses interaction combinations, to identify course content and topics having educational applications in virtual worlds.

Emerging technologies for learning

ckeller — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:46:24 -0500

'Emerging technologies for learning' aims to help readers consider how emerging technologies may impact on education in the medium term. The publications are not intended to be a comprehensive review of educational technologies, but offer some highlights across the broad spectrum of developments and trends. It should open readers up to some of the possibilities that are developing and the potential for technology to transform our ways of working, learning and interacting over the next three to five years.

A comparison and evaluation of personal response systems in introductory computer programming

ckeller — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:59:13 -0600

This 2006 paper on classroom reponse systems was presented at the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois. This paper asks the question: Does the use of PRS increase student engagement during class and improve student understanding of course material?

Strategies to Engage Online Students and Reduce Attrition Rates

ckeller — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:06:19 -0500

Attrition continues to be a major issue in higher education. Attrition rates for classes taught through distance education are 10 - 20% higher than classes taught in a face-to-face setting. Educators should engage students early and often, using different learning strategies customized to the class content and the students' pre-existing knowledge. The goal for the professor is to develop relationships with the students such that they feel comfortable in the environment. The professor should facilitate learner-learner integration and collaboration so that they will learn from one another and expand their knowledge base together. Through an integrative literature review, this article presents key concepts in online learning and a review of different methods of engaging students with the goals of enhancing the learning process and reducing attrition rates.

Web 2.0: Big app on campus

ckeller — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:02:42 -0500

Many educators "see the enticement of notoriety through Web 2.0-style social tools--blogs, wikis and the like--as a way to engage students in their education and maybe even get them to choose one school over another. "

Are Video Games Evil?

drupal — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:02:50 -0600

"The important thing to find out about video games isn't whether they are teachers. The question is . . . what do they teach?"

An Investigation of the Effectiveness of Electronic Classroom Communication Systems in Large Lecture Classes

drupal — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:36:15 -0500

Since 2002 we have been investigating the use of an electronic classroom communication system in large first year lecture classes. Handheld keypads were distributed to teams of students during a lecture class. Students used the keypads to answer two step multiple choice problems after a discussion within their group. The questions were generated using students' answers from previous exams. We have evaluated our use of the classroom communication system using a survey about how comfortable students are with this type of interaction. In addition, we have tried to determine if the use of the classroom communication system can be linked to student performance on exams. Our results show that students are comfortable with this technology and feel that, on the whole, interactive lectures are useful. At a first glance, there is an improvement in students' exam performance, but there are too many competing factors to clearly say that this improvement is solely due to the use of the classroom communication system. Even though this paper is based in physics and a physics example is used to illustrate points, the technique can be applied to other discipline areas.

Students' Self Analysis of Contributions to Online Asynchronous Discussions

drupal — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 15:26:42 -0500

This paper presents an example of an approach that involves both the student and the instructor in the evaluation of an online discussion in a context of teaching and learning. According to this approach, the student conducts a self analysis of his or her contributions to the discussion, using criteria supplied in advance of the discussion. One student's four part self analysis of his contribution to an online discussion is presented to illustrate the approach. The self analysis focused on the number and length of postings, claims and grounds, and on knowledge construction, and was designed to engage students in higher levels of thinking. The approach to self analysis is discussed in terms of its modification for use in other contexts and implications for practice are presented.

Wireless Interactive Teaching Simulations

drupal — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:12:30 -0500

Undergraduate lecture courses at many institutions of higher education are quite large, making it difficult to actively involve students and maintain their attention. Ongoing and current budget crises make it difficult to hire additional instructors and reduce class sizes to levels that would allow for more faculty-student or student-student interaction. Wireless interactive teaching simulations (WITS) are seen as one solution to this dilemma.