What are the most important issues for students and parents when it comes to satisfaction with Higher Eduction?

What are the most important issues for students and parents when it comes to satisfaction with Higher Eduction (HE)? This infographic (based on US data) highlights important factors, as well as providing some guidelines for improving the overall college experience. I was particularly impressed that parents...an often neglected or unheard voice in education...are included - and there are 5 suggestions (scroll down to the  end of the infographic) about how colleges can work with parents. This is perhaps something less relevant where mature students are concerned, but it is likely to be a benefit for those students moving into HE directly from High School.

Designing learning spaces...some thoughts and resources

English: The media suite at Albany Senior High School, New Zealand. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is a growing interest in designing flexible learning spaces that will provide opportunities for students (of all ages) to learn in a space that best suits them. Some of the resources available to help guide thinking if you are a school, or other institution, thinking about re-designing your learning spaces.

• Enabling eLearning: Learning spaces - has some great accounts from New Zealand schools about their new learning spaces, as well as links to research and readings, and other related Web sites.
• Background from Albany Senior School and Designing new technology spaces - tips, wrinkles, and things to think about when designing innovative school learning spaces.
• JISC InfoNet - Planning and designing technology rich learning spaces - tertiary sector focussed, but with some really great advice and guidelines that are relevant to all sectors.
• Educause - Design of the learning space: Learning and design principles - again, tertiary focussed, but it raises some great points and raises some good questions to address.
• Designing an ecology that supports students to be critical thinkers, engaged in problem-solving - resources around learning space design.
• Redesigning learning spaces: Shifts pedagogy & locus of control - in this video Chris Bradbeer, Associate Principal from Stonefields School in Auckland, explains the ideas behind the open learning spaces at his school.
• Redesigning the learning spaces in a primary classroom...with the students! - in this video Lisa Parisi (teaches fifth grade on Long Island, US, in a collaborative classroom model), captures the process of collaborative rearrangement of learning spaces. She explains: "After a Conversations show with Trung Le, I was inspired to explore The Third Teacher and redo the setting of our classroom."



English: Students at Albany Senior High School, New Zealand. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Amazing Learning Spaces: Social learning any time, any where - video which provides a snapshot of how children who are ill and hospitalised can stay in contact with friends at school, and maintain their learning with the help of ICT.

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Great resource: The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators

The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators has a plethora of tips and ideas for teachers in primary, intermediate, and secondary schools, with focus on topic areas such as ESL/EFL. Tools have been selected and described for their suitability for students at different stages, and there are suggestions for how you and your learners might create the most effective learning opportunities with them. Well worth a look.
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Netsafe embraces social networking: Learn, Guide, Protect

Image source

A couple of weeks ago (August 26th 2010) I was lucky to be invited to a preview of NetSafe’s new cyber safety school initiative: Learn, Guide, Protect. I must admit to a certain frisson of negativity as I feared another 'lock it down, lock 'em up' solution. Instead, I was bowled over by the way that Netsafe has gone out and listened to what people would like, which has resulted in a superb conceptually shaped site where community members create the content, comments, feedback etc - and self-moderate. The idea is that educators develop "an online repository of material schools can use and adapt to promote a student-centred approach to digital citizenship and cyber safety" (Nancy Groh).

The site is still very much in its beta version (in the words of Sean Lyons, one of the key developers, beta = some things don't work yet), but those that do work, work well. The resources members contribute are entitled 'bits' (and yes, there was general chuckling around this) for several reasons, not least because a posted 'bit' could be made up of several other resources, and have ideas for using the resources in a range of contexts. Community members can link to and embed resources, add tags (to their own and other members' bits), edit, flag, and also do more exciting things such as vote for, comment on and 'remix' other bits (which enables members to add to the original posting).

To give some background to the underpinnings of the initiative it's worth looking at the Learn, Guide, Protect (LGP) framework that gives the community space its name. The framework is designed "to help schools develop a culture of responsible, safe use of digital technologies" (Nancy Groh).

Learn, Guide, Protect concept model

"The Learn Guide Protect framework has three components:

• Learn: Bits designed for students to help them develop positive, ethical behaviours in cyberspace and build the skills and attributes of a good digital citizen,
• Guide: Bits to help educators integrate the concepts of digital citizenship across into the curriculum all learning areas and into school culture,
• Protect: Bits to guide senior school personnel in developing local policies and strategies on effective, safe use of technologies.

To get a more in depth insight into the Learn, Guide, Protect initiative, please click HERE.

Netsafe community space

 Netsafe would be delighted if you visited and contributed to the Learn, Guide, Protect site. They will continue to work on the site’s functionality, in particular for in preparation for the launch in October at Ulearn in Christchurch. Please feel free to also offer Netsafe feedback over the next few weeks, as it is vital.

Related Articles

• ILA: NetSafe (ila.org)
• Common Sense Media Announces Launch of Free Pioneering Middle School Digital Citizenship Curriculum and Acquisition of CyberSmart! K-12 Student Curriculum (eon.businesswire.com)
• Hartford Schools Introduce Custom Science Program for Grades 1 and 2 (prweb.com)
• Digital Citizenship video resources from Hoover, Alabama Schools and Common Sense Media (speedofcreativity.org)

Analytics and intuition: Reading classroom gestures (Tom Murdock, Moodle Moot 2010)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Tom Murdock talked about transitions - students transitioning from high school to college or to a career. The mismatch requires some planning to address the issue, and a growing number of states in the US have policies that help prepare high school graduates for college through aligned standards, and course requirements. Furthermore, many states have policies to ensure high school graduates are workforce ready.

Remedial courses in the US are utilised by 77% - math, 30% - English, 29% - reading, 12% study skills, 35% - writing (these are percentages of 1st and 2nd year students who ave taken remedial courses since high school graduation).

A teacher can see, by doing a close reading of gestures, a student's engagement with elements of the course, find out about activity efficacy, and clues about course fulfillment. As such, Tom Murdock  suggests that one way of helping solve the transition problem is by teaching an analytics engine to intuit information from Moodle gestures is a positive way to 'fix it before it's broke' - finding out with a student where they are and offering support if required. Moodle activity reports, input into forum posts, and quality of responses can give real clues to student engagement or disconnection.

Separate and connected knowers - a separate knower will say, 'I understand this, and I have an idea', whereas a connected knower who does not really assert what he/she knows "but Jill just said something interesting". When we are online and can't look each other in the face and can't really help each other with communication, we have to practice both separate and connected knowing. Moodle has these principles underpinning its design.

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