Revisiting the Horizon

  Report that is!  It has been a few years since we reviewed the Horizon Report and I thought it would be a good time to double back take a look at the predictions from 2010 and continue forward to the Horizon Report 2012. Just as a recap, The Horizon Report is published each year as a joint…Continue Reading Revisiting the Horizon

Motivation and the medium

In the book “Distance Education: A Systems View”, authors Michael Moore and Greg Kearsley discuss the various ways to deliver instruction. One statement that particularly resonated with me was the idea that “Motivation is a more critical variable than the medium…” The variety of instructional tools that are present today can provide both instructors and…Continue Reading Motivation and the medium

Seven Principles at WPI: Technology as a Lever

Several years ago – dare I say it – before blogging took off, I wrote a short piece for our TTL team e-newsletter on applying the “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” (Chickering and Gamson, 1987) based on the follow-up “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as a Lever” (Chickering and Erhmann, 1996).   Since…Continue Reading Seven Principles at WPI: Technology as a Lever

Introducing Video Workshops in the Classroom

I teach workshops on media production, often focusing on empowering students to create videos and web pages of their own, and I have plowed through all sorts of snags along the way. I’d like to take a few minutes to share with you some of the things I’ve run into, some strategies I’ve devised, and some thoughts about how all of this works. I’d also really like to hear your thoughts, ideas, and methodologies!…Continue Reading Introducing Video Workshops in the Classroom

3, 2, 1…Explain!

My favorite “Explainer”, Lee Lefever, just posted a new blog about the new age of the video explanation.  In it, he postulizes that perhaps 2012 will usher in a new genre for video:  “Drama, comedy, documentary, advertising and explanation.”  Lee does a great job of explaining (no surprise there) why this trend is being enabled and adopted globally,…Continue Reading 3, 2, 1…Explain!

How are our students communicating? Let me count the ways!

As the new term approaches many faculty across campus are beginning to reach out to their students. This got me thinking about the what tools our students using for electronic communication.  According to the 2011 ECAR National Study of Students and Information Technology in Higher Education (http://www.educause.edu/library/ERS1103), Email and Texting are students’ two most common electronic communication tools…Continue Reading How are our students communicating? Let me count the ways!

LMS Unconference

WPI is pleased to be participating in NERCOMP’s LMS unSIG Unconference this March! Whether your campus has adopted an out-of-the-box learning management system (LMS), an open source solution or has developed a home-grown course management system (CMS), challenges surrounding management, deployment, assessment, upgrades, training, support, security and integration with campus resources are universal. The LMS…Continue Reading LMS Unconference

Responsibly using the wild, wild world of social media

Fair warning:  This post contains more questions (we like to think of them as thought-provokers) than answers about navigating the world of social media.  We’d love to hear your thoughts – please comment! Can Facebook get you fired? Or maybe worse, not even hired?  Boston University School of Management Professor Kabrina Chang recently spoke about…Continue Reading Responsibly using the wild, wild world of social media

How do we collaborate? Let me count the ways!

col·lab·o·rate – verb \kə-ˈla-bə-ˌrāt\ 1: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor – Merriam Webster Online Collaboration is at the heart of the WPI project system but, as many teams know, collaboration can be hard.  You need to keep people, documents, and tasks all organized and this can be a…Continue Reading How do we collaborate? Let me count the ways!

YouTube meet PowerPoint!

Everyone has heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but sometimes a picture just does not do justice to a what is being presented in the classroom.  This is where video can come in! Video has been a part of classroom educational technology since 1910 (Saettler, 2004) and its use has continued to grow…Continue Reading YouTube meet PowerPoint!