EDUCAUSE 2016

Highlights

Combining IBM’s cognitive capabilities with Pearson’s digital learning products will give students a more immersive learning experience with their college courses, and an easy way to get help and insights when they need it, all through asking questions in natural language just like they would with another student or professor. Importantly, it provides instructors with insights about how well students are learning, allowing them to better manage the entire course and flag students who need additional help.

For example, a student experiencing difficulty while studying for a biology course can query Watson, which is embedded in the Pearson courseware. Serving as a digital tutor, Watson will assess the student’s responses to guide them with hints, feedback, explanations and identify common misconceptions, working with the student at their pace until the topic is mastered.

Virtual Reality in the Classroom

Well, sort of. Mostly they talked about the Cave and the Yurt — too big to fit in a class. But also Google Cardboard, in particular the New York Times app giving students a different perspective on the news.

The Future of Learning

Sugata Mitra Professor, Educational Technology, School of Education, Communication & Language,Newcastle University

Funny, self-effacing, brilliant. See his TED talks.

“(He takes us) through the origins of schooling as we know it, to the dematerialization of institutions as we know them. Thirteen years of experiments in children’s education provide a series of startling results—children can self-organize their own learning, they can achieve educational objectives on their own, and they can read by themselves. Finally, the most startling result: groups of children with access to the Internet can learn anything by themselves. Studies in the slums of India; the villages of India and Cambodia; poor schools in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, the United States, and Italy; the schools of Gateshead; and the rich international schools of Washington and Hong Kong produced experimental results that show a strange new future for learning. Using the TED Prize, Mitra has now built seven “Schools in the Cloud,” glimpses of which he will provide.”

In real life, we have google. We have the internet. We can ask a group of 9-year olds, Can something be in two places at the same time?” and get back an answer, “Have you heard quantum superpositions?” Why then do faculty ban internet usage during exams?

The teacher’s role is to encourage, prompt and then to lead a session where the children report back. In developing countries, with teachers in short supply, that role can be performed by someone else, including a British grandmother with a Skype connection. Though many of those involved are young locals, this became known as the “granny cloud”.

Seeking Evidence of Impact: Methodologies in Teaching and Learning

“Benchmarking and collecting evidence of impact is important in any undertaking. In this respect, postsecondary teaching and learning presents a unique set of challenges and complexities, so the key is to identify those methods that will produce useful and actionable results. This session will consist of overviews of evaluation and research techniques and methods in three important domains in teaching and learning: online and blended learning, classrooms and learning spaces, and the LMS. We’ll conclude the session with a discussion with our domain experts about the relative strengths of the approaches they presented and considerations with respect to implementing them.”

They presented their toolkit. I have a copy, will try to read.