Wednesday, April 08, 2009
« Follow Educational CyberPlayGround on Tw... | Main | [ECP] K12 Newsletters Science Headlines ... »
[ECP] NetHappenings
Production Line Professors
Papers on Digital Literacy
Report on Computer-Based Assessment
Factors Influencing Faculty CMS Use
Recommended Reading

......................................................................

PRODUCTION LINE PROFESSORS

"In higher education in the United States, teaching and research in the
fields of language and literature are in a desperate condition.
Laboring on the age-old axiom 'publish-or-perish,' thousands of
professors, lecturers, and graduate students are busy producing
dissertations, books, essays, and reviews. Over the past five decades,
their collective productivity has risen from 13,000 to 72,000
publications per year. But the audience for language and literature
scholarship has diminished, with unit sales for books now hovering
around 300."

In the white paper "Professors on the Production Line, Students on
their Own," Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University,
argues that the trend for faculty to do more research and publishing
translates into less time for motivating and mentoring students. The
result is "less academic engagement" and a lack of balance between
scholarship and instruction on the part of professors. While decrying
the situation, Bauerlein presents several recommendations for improving
the situation, including "creating a 'teacher track' in which doctoral
students are trained and rewarded for generalist knowledge and multiple
course facility rather than a highly-specialized expertise."

The paper is available online at
http://www.aei.org/docLib/20090317_Bauerlein.pdf

The white paper is a publication of the American Enterprise Institute
for Public Policy Research, a "private, nonpartisan, not-for-profit
institution dedicated to research and education on issues of
government, politics, economics, and social welfare." For more
information, contact The American Enterprise Institute, 1150
Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036 USA; tel: 202-862-5800;
fax: 202-862-7177; Web: http://www.aei.org/


See also:

"Unread Monographs, Uninspired Undergrads"
INSIDE HIGHER ED, March 18, 2009
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/18/production
Article about the paper plus readers' comments.

......................................................................

PAPERS ON DIGITAL LITERACY

"In the beginning of the 21st century, we are experiencing an
interesting evolution of the demand for learning both by individuals,
societies and education authorities. Evidently, the acrimonious
relation between the education provision and the social mandates of
growth (performance) and social inclusion is becoming extremely
complex. Economic globalization and the emergence of what has been
identified as the Knowledge Society go, hand-in-hand, with a gradually
changing set of key competences. They have been feeding in the dialogue
about academic and policy implementation of what some thinkers and
stakeholders already have named as the Literacies of the 21st century."
-- Nikitas Kastis and Roberto Carneiro, eLearning Papers editorial

"Digital Literacy -- The Evolution of the 21st Century Literacies" is
the topic of the latest issue of ELEARNING PAPERS (no. 12, February
2009). Papers include:

"Digital Literacy for the Third Age: Sustaining Identity in an
Uncertain World" by Allan Martin
-- digital literacy for older citizens

"A Digital Literacy Proposal in Online Higher Education: The UOC
Scenario" by Montse Guitert and Teresa Romeu

"T-learning for Social Inclusion" by Chiara Sancin, Valentina Castello,
Vittorio Dell'Aiuto, and Daniela Di Genova
-- instruction delivered through interactive digital television
(IDTV)

"Designing E-Tivities to Increase Learning-to-Learn Abilities" by Maria
Elisabetta Cigognini and Maria Chiara Pettenati

"How to Strengthen Digital Literacy? Practical Example of a European
Initiative 'SPreaD'" by Michelle Veugelers and Petra Newrly

The issue is available online at
http://www.elearningpapers.eu/index.php?page=home&vol=12

eLearning Papers [ISSN 1887-1542] is an open access journal created as
part of the elearningeuropa.info portal. The portal is "an initiative
of the European Commission to promote the use of multimedia
technologies and Internet at the service of education and training."
For more information, contact: eLearning Papers, P.A.U. Education,
Muntaner 262, 3rd, 08021 Barcelona, Spain; tel: +34 93 367 04 00;
email: editorial@elearningeuropa.info; Web:
http://www.elearningpapers.eu/

......................................................................

REPORT ON COMPUTER-BASED ASSESSMENT

"Future international surveys are going to introduce new ways of
assessing student achievements. Electronic tests, especially adaptive
ones can be calibrated to the specific competence level of each student
and become more stimulating, going much further than can be achieved
with linear tests made up of traditional multiple choice questions.
Simulations also provide better means of contextualising skills to real
life situations and provide a more complete picture of the actual
competence to be assessed."

The report "The Transition to Computer-Based Assessment: New Approaches
to Skills Assessment and Implications for Large-scale Testing"
(European Commission's Joint Research Centre Scientific and Technical
Reports, 2009, edited by Friedrich Scheuermann and Julius Bjornsson)
represents a combination of paper presentations from a 2008 research
workshop along with additional articles that grew out of workshop
discussions.

The themes of "The Transition to Computer-Based Assessment"
workshop and the papers associated with it were:

-- Comparison between paper and pencil tests and computer-based
assessment

-- Electronic tests and gender differences

-- Adaptive vs. linear computer-based assessment.

The report is available online at
http://crell.jrc.it/RP/reporttransition.pdf

The report was produced by the Educational Testing Institute and
CRELL.

CRELL (Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning), sponsored by the
European Commission's Directorate General for Education and Culture,
was established in order to "gather expertise in the field of
indicator-based evaluation and monitoring of education and training
systems. CRELL combines fields of economics, econometrics, education,
social sciences and statistics in an interdisciplinary approach to
research." For more information, see http://crell.jrc.it/

The Educational Testing Institute is an independent institution funded
by the state through the Iceland Ministry of Education, Science and
Culture and is "responsible for organising, setting, and grading the
nationally co-ordinated examinations and for undertaking comparative
analysis of the educational system through participation in
international surveys."

......................................................................

FACTORS INFLUENCING FACULTY CMS USE

In "Factors Influencing Faculty Use of Technology in Online
Instruction: A Case Study" (OJDLA, vol. XII, no. 1, Spring 2009)
authors Elizabeth Reed Osika, Rochelle Y. Johnson, and Rosemary Buteau
report on a study they performed " to investigate faculty perceptions
of the usefulness and importance of online courses, the factors that
contribute to the decision of a faculty member to use the CMS [course
management system] in their courses, and the barriers that exist which
make the use of the CMS difficult." They found that faculty attitudes
that presented barriers to adoption of online instruction included
belief that:

"[T]he quality of online courses is not equivalent
to traditional courses."

"[Online courses are] impersonal; no-face-to-face; no
discussion; no substitute for being in class."

Their paper provides suggestions that universities can implement to
overcome some of the factors that influence faculty who do not use
online technology tools. The paper is available at
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring121/osika121.html

The ONLINE JOURNAL OF DISTANCE LEARNING ADMINISTRATION (OJDLA) is a
free, peer-reviewed quarterly electronic journal published by the
Distance and Distributed Education Center, The State University of West
Georgia, 1603 Maple Street, Carrollton, GA 30118 USA; email:
distance@westga.edu; Web: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/

......................................................................

RECOMMENDED READING

"Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or
that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or
useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits
subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu for
possible inclusion in this column.

"Getting Serious About Research Online"
By Sara Kubik
INSIDE HIGHER ED, March 20, 2009
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/20/kubik

"[I]n 2006 the creator of Wikipedia advised us not to use the site as a
source, and yet two years later he now wants to make the site more
accepting to academic referencing by having "faculty-approved" sites.
Also, wikis such as Scholarpedia claim to have content written by
experts with a curator moderating all changes. Gray matter, it seems.
If we are to use these quality online resources, while insisting on
high standards for students, academics need to take seriously issues
related to citing materials in media that didn’t exist a generation ago
more seriously."

......................................................................

INFOBITS

NetHappenings Mailing List
Wednesday, April 08, 2009 7:12:17 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)    Disclaimer  |   |  Related posts:
Fair Use The Google Scholar service has been extended so that users can choose to search legal opinions and journals for information that they need.
Tweet Black Friday Deals
How do you Upgrade Planet Earth by Marcus Ranum
Microsoft's Bing search engine has a vulnerability with its cash-back promotion, which impacts both merchants and customers.
Barak Obama's half brother is Jewish
Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.