Sunday, March 28, 2010

Wikipedia

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/instant_mentor/weir22
Many teachers discourage students from using Wikipedia as a source. The author Rob Weir assigned a 750-page exercise titled “Does Wikipedia Suck?” Students picked a topic, did research and then consulted Wikipedia. None found any inaccuracies. Most commented that the information they found was clear and well organized. They did, however, find the information to be general, not specific and that it was only a good starting place.
One of the replies pointed to this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia in Wikipedia itself!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Do Students Cheat More in Online classes?

Do students cheat more in an online course?
According to a recent study the answer is NO, they cheat more in a f2f class. Moreover, cheaters are less successful in their school work – maybe cheating does NOT pay!
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring131/watson131.html

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Keystroke Commands

Keystroke commands
This is an interesting Web site with shortcut computer commands. It reminds me of the old World Processor Word Star, when it really WAS necessary to know this.
http://www.randalldean.com/Randy_Favorite_Keystroke_Combos.pdf

Even today some of these commands can be very useful, especially the copy and paste.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Divided attention


This article, about the attention of multitaskers, published in the Journal of Higher Education, cites a study that found that “"Heavy multitaskers are often extremely confident in their abilities." Clifford I. Nass, a professor of psychology at Stanford University states: "But there's evidence that those people are actually worse at multitasking than most people."
The article refers to a 1956 paper by a then-Harvard psychologist postulated that working memory consists of about seven units, and, if people are stressed they can store much less.
The article is interesting in that it discusses the implications of this research on the classroom. One professor will not let students use computers or take notes while in a lecture class. He put the material online and in a podcast, but while they are in the class he wants them to pay attention to him.

Monday, March 1, 2010

More on E-books in higher ed

E-books and Higher Ed
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/23/ereaders
The results are in from the first survey of students who used the E–reader for course work. They felt the inability to highlight and to open many documents at once was a problem. They did enjoy using them for outside reading, but many preferred textbooks for school work.

Publishers are now getting into the act too:
http://chronicle.com/article/Format-War-Heats-Up-Among/64323/ “Major textbook publishers are firing the first shots in a format war over their electronic editions, with several players hoping to control distribution to students and to make used textbooks extinct in a future they see as increasingly digital.”