Hapgood

Mike Caulfield's latest web incarnation. Networked Learning, Open Education, and Online Digital Literacy

link

  • The Benefits of Using Clickers in Small-Enrollment Seminar-Style Biology Courses

    The Benefits of Using Clickers in Small-Enrollment Seminar-Style Biology Courses More decent stuff out of CU, this time on clicker use in small classes. Not anything rigorous here in regards to measuring learning gains (the problem with interventions in a twelve person seminar is, of course, it’s a sample size of twelve) but a nicely written explanation… Continue reading

  • Single-Concept Clicker Question Sequences

    Single-Concept Clicker Question Sequences Interesting research about a small modification to Peer Instruction sequence (from Sept 2011 issue of The Physics Teacher). What I fine maybe most interesting though is this chart: Leaving aside the E&M results (students should be able to review clicker questions, obviously) the interesting thing to me is that the gains… Continue reading

  • Quantitative Literacy Hits the New York Times Op-Ed Page

    Quantitative Literacy Hits the New York Times Op-Ed Page Today: In math, what we need is “quantitative literacy,” the ability to make quantitative connections whenever life requires (as when we are confronted with conflicting medical test results but need to decide whether to undergo a further procedure) and “mathematical modeling,” the ability to move practically… Continue reading

  • We Need A Taxonomy Of MOOCs

    We Need A Taxonomy Of MOOCs People often complain that taxonomies are pedantic. But taxonomies force one to contemplate and respect significant differences in phenomena — and the process of making taxonomies is the process of understanding one’s aims and one’s value system. So taxonomies are hardly trivial. In any case I like terms that… Continue reading

  • Xeni Jardin stops her Google public posts

    Xeni Jardin stops her Google public posts Not exactly breaking news, but she was one of the few people using people using G+ the way I hoped people would grow to use it, as a sort of cross between twitter and blogging. And she’s quit doing it because of some unnamed unpleasantness.  It’s bad for… Continue reading

  • Cognitive surplus watch

    Cognitive surplus watch A lot of Shirky’s formulations are spot on, but I’ve always felt uneasy about the cognitive surplus idea. It’s not just, as Carr points out in the linked article, that there’s not much evidence that the Wikipedia hours are coming out of a surplus, but it’s the view of human endeavor as a noncount… Continue reading

  • Schoolchildren Can Also Learn Complex Subject Matters On Their Own, Researchers Find

    Schoolchildren Can Also Learn Complex Subject Matters On Their Own, Researchers Find Another entry in the great debate, I suppose, though it comes down in part to what you mean by “on their own”: Following an introduction on the general topic by their teachers, the school children were given a workbook of geometric tasks that… Continue reading

  • Publishing Gives Hints of Revival, Data Show

    Publishing Gives Hints of Revival, Data Show The “buggy-whip” theory of industry collapse has never really sat well with me. You know, the idea that the buggy-whip producers couldn’t see that cars would collapse their industry, etc. Here’s the problem — did anyone back then really produce (and only produce) buggy-whips? I imagine most “buggy-whip… Continue reading

    ,

  • Stat Lit Chart of the Day

    Stat Lit Chart of the Day This chart could mean that the more education you get, the more you drink. How many of your students know what else could it mean? Continue reading

    ,

  • A Means A: Solving the problem of unbundled credentialing

    A Means A: Solving the problem of unbundled credentialing I am suspicious of any idea posted on econlib.org, to say the least. I mean really suspicious. But this is an interesting point a poster there is making — we need to come up with a hybrid solution to credentialing. Why? Well, unbundled credentialing tends to lead… Continue reading