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The slides and video of this presentation can be found here. The speech is by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, and is entitled, "Human Futures for Technology and Education". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Digital information technologies have profound implications for education and force us to rethink how we teach, what we teach, and who we think we are teaching. Understanding these implications and rethinking education will help us prepare our students to build a more human future in an increasingly digital environment.

The slides and video for this presentation can be found here. The speech is by Thomas C. Reeves, Professor of Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia, and is entitled, "Technology and the Conative Learning Domain in Undergraduate Education". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Although many instructors teach to higher-order cognitive, affective, and psychomotor outcomes and to specific objectives derived from their disciplines, they ignore critical conative outcomes. Fortunately, technology has potential to foster engaged learning and authentic assessment that address the full range of cognitive, conative, affective, and psychomotor outcomes in undergraduate education.

Video and slides of this presentation can be found here. The speech is by Belle S. Wheelan, President of the Commission on Colleges at the Southern Association of Colleges & Schools, and is entitled, "Accountability in Higher Education". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

This session focuses on activities that began with the Spellings Commission and have continued with the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, as well as the responses by various publics along the way. Additionally, expectations of one regional accreditation agency in the area of accountability are discussed.

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.

Video and slides for this presentation can be found here. The speech is by George Siemens, Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. This plenary session is entitled, "Connectivism".

Video fand slides for this presentation can be found here. The speech is by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, and is entitled, "What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies".

Emblematic of the new participatory cultures and the emerging practices of collective intelligence, Wikipedia has drawn fire from academic institutions and traditional gatekeepers. Using segments from a forthcoming documentary about the Wikipedia movement produced by MIT's Project NML, this session will discuss how educators might use Wikipedia to introduce students to the ways that new forms of cultural production and knowledge sharing are reshaping the research process.

For the last few months, ELI has been focusing on authentic learning--learning by doing rather than learning by listening. Authentic learning allows students to use the practices of professionals to gain experience, understanding and motivation. ELI just released the second white paper in its Authentic Learning series: "Approaches that Work: How Authentic Learning is Transforming Higher Education" (see http://connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/ApproachesThatWorkHo/44821). The paper provides multiple examples of how colleges and universities are using these unique environments to improve student engagement and knowledge.

Over the past 12 days, we've been able to visit a number of universities in China--Peking University, Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, China Agricultural University, Fudan University, and Zhejiang University. The conversations with presidents, vice presidents, deans, faculty and students illustrate similarities and differences with US universities.