June 2011
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OER and Sandra Lee’s 70/30 Semi-Homemade Cooking
I’d never heard of the IKEA effect, the tendency of people to overvalue work done themselves, but it seems really pertinent to OER (and OpenCourseWare). As an example, Dan Ariely points out when cake mixes were first introduced, you just added water. Simple! And no one bought them. After focus groups they found the problem Continue reading
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Sharing and Collaborating with Google Docs: The influence of Psychological Ownership, Responsibility, and Student’s Attitudes on Outcome Quality
Sharing and Collaborating with Google Docs: The influence of Psychological Ownership, Responsibility, and Student’s Attitudes on Outcome Quality I haven’t been able to go over the methodology closely, but this finding fascinated me: Participants in all groups believed that collaboration improved the document quality. However, evaluation of the real contribution of collaboration was asymmetrical – Continue reading
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U.S. says colleges with big tuition hikes must explain
U.S. says colleges with big tuition hikes must explain This is almost sadly funny. So there’s all these tuition hikes, particularly at state colleges. It’s out-of-control spending, right? So the DoEd is asking colleges that have the sharpest hikes to explain why they are being so profligate with money. Except, as everyone knows who actually Continue reading
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Plan to Restructure British Higher Ed
Plan to Restructure British Higher Ed I wish I knew more about the British educational system to say for sure, but this sure looks like the voucher slide to me: Willetts, the universities and science minister, said the “conceptual shift” was that the whole framework of regulation needed to focus on “the student in receipt Continue reading
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Serious Discussion About Constructivist Pedagogy
I agree with this, I think: “The constructivist-direct instruction characterization is a false dichotomy, and trying to operationalize something as complex and contextually varied as teaching in such simplistic terms seems to me a mistake. What is needed is not coarse labeling of artificially grouped approaches to instruction; but an iterative program of studies that Continue reading
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Increased Structure and Active Learning Reduce the Achievement Gap in Introductory Biology
Increased Structure and Active Learning Reduce the Achievement Gap in Introductory Biology It’s yet another article in Science dealing with pedagogy, and if the note in this news brief under “Teaching to Achieve” is right, it looks like the second vindication of Peer Instruction in Science in the the space of two months. According to Continue reading
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U.S. College Tuition Rises 4.6%, Beating Inflation
U.S. College Tuition Rises 4.6%, Beating Inflation It pays to read these things carefully. Tuition at private non-profit colleges increased at 4.6%, but adjusted for inflation this was a 1% increase, one of the smallest in the past 40 years. And again, these are published prices: student aid is up 7% which means this is less Continue reading
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Cockroach Performance Anxiety
Cockroach Performance Anxiety Via Ariely, this great experiment on the social facilitation effect from the 60’s: cockroaches do better on simple tasks in the presence of other cockroaches, but worse in the presence of other cockroaches when the task is difficult: However, research by Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman (1969) argued that such conscious, cognitive processes Continue reading
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Large Stakes and Big Mistakes
Large Stakes and Big Mistakes I’m on vacation, and catching up with some reading. Dan Ariely’s book on the Upside of Irrationality is so far decent, though a little too chatty at times (I like a little less of the human interest backstory, YMMV). In any case, one thing I plan to do over the Continue reading
Hapgood 