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Evidence-Based and the Marginal Cost of Zero
If you can conceive of a solution to a problem that has a marginal cost of zero due to cheap replication and economies of scale, then that’s good. If you’re doing that by going into the digital space, where cost of experimentation is low, even better. Many elements of education are best seen through the… Continue reading
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From Obama’s 2012 campaign blog. I am glad to see them standing up for what they accomplished here instead of running from it. This is truly something that the administration should be proud of. guardian: Photograph: Brian J. Clark/AP Two women share historic kiss at US Navy ship’s return For the first time since the… Continue reading
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Semantic Mapping vs. Pictorial Cues
From A Theory-Based Meta-Analysis of Research on Instruction by RJ Marzano: The next two techniques displayed in Table 7.2 employed the information processing function of idea representation. Techniques that provided students with metacognitive strategies for using visual memory had an effect size of 1.04, indicating a percentile gain of 35 points. Presumably, these strategies help students… Continue reading
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Stanovich on Conflict and Critical Thinking
Well, actually the Hitchcock review of Stanovich: What types of people succeed in overriding interactional intelligence in conflict situations? As one might expect, subjects with greater cognitive ability (as measured by SAT Total scores) were more likely to do so. But so were those with the dispositions characteristic of an ideal critical thinker: even after… Continue reading
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Openness as a Privilege Multiplier and the MIT Certificates
This is pretty huge news: Millions of learners have enjoyed the free lecture videos and other course materials published online through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare project. Now MIT plans to release a fresh batch of open online courses—and, for the first time, to offer certificates to outside students who complete them. The credentials are part… Continue reading
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Base Rate, Revisited
Reading Dan Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, and I can tell very early in it’s going to be excellent. The following Kahneman insight is an old saw of research on statistical intuition by now, but was revolutionary when he and Tversky came up with it in the early 70s. I thought I’d share it for… Continue reading
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Moonwalking with Einstein
Just finished Joshua Foer’s book Moonwalking with Einstein, one of the most amusing books I’ve read in a while. I’d highly recommend it to anyone, just based on the style of his writing alone, which strikes me as Jonah Lehrer as written by Sarah Vowell (of The Wordy Shipmates period, not Assassination Vacation). But that… Continue reading
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Higher Education is Already a Voucher System
Saw this about the K-12 online space today in NYT: Some teachers at K12 schools said they felt pressured to pass students who did little work. Teachers have also questioned why some students who did no class work were allowed to remain on school rosters, potentially allowing the company to continue receiving public money for… Continue reading
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Badges
Yep. As Rowin points out that badges ‘draw upon widespread use of badges and achievements in gaming‘ and as somebody who has many badges and achievements in various game systems I can’t help but wonder if some of the problems that have cropped up in games might cross over into the Open Badge Initiative. David… Continue reading
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The idea that you can just put stuff out there, and that it will magically be effective and used effectively — there’s just no evidence of that,” Twigg says. Collecting evidence requires integrating with college classrooms, which requires scale and support, which requires money, she says. Lots of it. “Sixteen million dollars is not chump change,” says Twigg, “but you need to be able to support and sustain it.” Nonprofit projects in higher education do not have a great track record on this, she points out, not even the most highly regarded ones.
The idea that you can just put stuff out there, and that it will magically be effective and used effectively — there’s just no evidence of that,” Twigg says. Collecting evidence requires integrating with college classrooms, which requires scale and support, which requires money, she says. Lots of it. “Sixteen million dollars is not chump… Continue reading
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