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The World Re-Discovered

Learning Abstracts June 2005, Volume 8, Number 6

Perhaps as a result of a too-insular perspective in some parts of the U.S. in recent years, but more likely because of the expanding global economy, global studies is a booming area of interest. Here's a recent piece on a global studies learning community within a community college.

Here in Minnesota, all who are interested in global studies or international education should consider attending this year's Education for Global Learning Conference on October 7. See CTL's "All Events" listing by clicking the Events section at left.

Preparing for Rita

RitaCollegeStudents.org

What a contrast. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has put up this helpful site before Hurricane Rita strikes.

OJDLA: You may know about it, but...

Index: Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration

From the "You probably know about this, but just in case..." department, here's the latest issue of a great, free, quarterly journal.

It's practical research about effective online instruction, focused on teaching and learning--from the administrator's more than the faculty member's perspective.

M&M in College and University Education

Carnegie Perspectives - Excellence: An Immodest Proposal

Lee Shulman has just published another fine piece in his series of "Carnegie Perspectives". In it, he invites us to think about adopting critique and review practices from clinical medical education. Here at CTL we recently had a conversation about challenges in our systemwide classrooms, and what systemwide data show us about grades and failure/withdrawal rates as measures of student learning. Things got charged when a couple of hard-working and weary composition faculty said, "We probably should be failing half of the students in our intro classes." Shulman's essay takes up where our truncated discussion left off:

"The day ended with “M&M” (Morbidity and Mortality), otherwise known as, "Where Did We Screw Up and What Can We Learn from It?" Pretty much the same group from morning rounds reconvened, joined by other faculty. Their goal was quality assurance. They reviewed at an institutional level one of their most persistent failures, namely the unacceptably high infection rate in the intensive care unit, primarily associated with running central lines into arteries..."

"In the M&M conference, the discussion of acceptable levels of infection sounded like arguments about acceptable levels of student failure. If one-third of students drop out in the first year, some may be ready to claim that those students simply shouldn't have entered college. What if a hospital said that if it lost a third of its patients, those patients never should have been admitted because they were too sick?"

Technological Horizons in Learning

In the June 2005 – Technological Horizons in Learning, T.H.E. Journal Online, the author, Laura Turner, suggests that there are 20 technology skills for educators to develop. Tutorials are provided as a way to help in developing the suggested skills.

She says: "During the last 15 years, we in education have moved at light speed in the area of educational technology. Whether you are involved in higher ed, secondary ed, elementary ed, or special ed, all of us find it difficult to catch up, keep up, and put up with fast-moving computer-based technology. Not since the introduction of the blackboard have we seen a piece of equipment make such a difference in how we teach. Today, not only do we use computers, but we also have laptops, wireless laptops, and tablet PCs. In addition, we have the World Wide Web, scanners, CD burners, USB drives, digital cameras and digital video cameras, PDAs, as well as video and DVD players. And most educators use a variety of tools-including video, e-mail, desktop conferencing, online programs such as WebCT and Blackboard, as well as video conferencing-to teach."

The tutorial offer basic training in creating spreadsheets, word processing, file management, using PDAs, DVDs, and more.

You can find out more at:
http://thejournal.com/magazine/vault/articleprintversion.cfm?aid=5387