Publishing In Transition Discussion: January 29, 2008

The University Libraries and The Center present:

PUBLISHING IN TRANSITION: A DISCUSSION
New models of publishing can extend the options for disseminating work and preserve the stages of scholarly research. How can we create an improved scholarly communication system that addresses ownership, capture, distribution, and preservation of the intellectual output of BGSU community members? Join this discussion and share your ideas. Lunch will be provided.

Tuesday, January 29, 11:30-1 p.m. in the Jerome Library Pallister Conference Room.

To register, contact the Center at ctlt@bgsu.edu, 372-6898, or complete our online registration form.

Ken Bain (Part 3): Effective Learning Environments

This is Part 3 of our series on Ken Bain's visit to BGSU. Ken serves as Vice Provost, Professor of History, and Director of the Research Academy for University Learning at Montclair State University and is the author of "What the Best College Teachers Do."

In order to create an effective learning environment, 2-3 very complex conditions need to take place:

1) Create an “expectation failure”
We learn from our mistakes often better than from our successes. Bain suggests that teachers need to put the learner in a situation where their existing paradigm does not work, then rebuild it from there. This is usually created from some sort of intellectual challenge or cognitive dissonance. "It needs to be more than just telling them the truth – that doesn’t work," explains Bain. (i.e. - lecture doesn’t work - for long term, for most students)

2) Make it meaningful or engaging
The learner has to care deeply enough to struggle through the incongruity (and this needs to be timely... if it takes too long, they are onto other things)
Teachers must carefully select mental models or paradigms that can cause this incongruity, but yet attract student interest, leading to student engagement. In other words, "How can you create an expectation failure where students will care enough to struggle through it?"

3) Provide emotional support (if needed)
As students encounter a challenge to their beliefs, some sort of emotional support may be needed, especially when dealing with most religious convictions, which are very difficult for students to question, let alone consider alternatives.

---

What do you think about these conditions for effective learning environments? Do you agree? What other conditions are needed, if any?

Click on the COMMENTS link below to leave your thoughts!

---

Need File Storage? Find Where to Get it!!!

Have you ever wondered where to host your files (Podcasts, PowerPoints, Videos, etc...) on campus?

Well luckily ITS has provided all of us with a nice easily to use grid to determine where we should look to find the proper file storage...

Click here to check out the webpage.

---

What file storage services do you use? Do you utilize any other file storage service other then the services that ITS provides? If so, which ones?...Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!

---

Images for Learning

Stock.xchng is a leading, free, stock photo site. This site is great for generic searches, yielding high-resolution images that could be used to enhance student or faculty presentations or applied to any other visual media projects.

Along with browsing over 250,000 quality stock photos by more than 25,000 photographers, you can share your own personal photography as well.
If your search doesn't yield a large number of free results, there is a linked site, stockxpert.com, which produces results at the bottom of the page showing images available for purchase.

All you need is a free account to begin your search!

---

How do you use images in your teaching or presentations? What other image sites have you or your students used?

Click on the COMMENTS link below to post your thoughts!

---

Winter Break Reading: eBooks on Teaching & Learning

In addition to the traditional books offered by the university library, OhioLink has a large section of E-Books available. Here are some of the books currently available.

From Principles of Learning to Strategies for Instruction: Empirically Based Ingredients to Guide Instructional Development 2004
The purpose of this volume is to help educators and training
developers to improve the quality of their instruction. The authors present a four-stage model that includes acquisition, automaticity, near term transfer, and far term transfer.

Learning and Teaching for the Twenty-First Century: Festschrift for Professor Phillip Hughes 2007
This book stresses learning and teaching, rather than teaching
and learning. The focus is therefore on how learning can be
enhanced, through effective teaching; and how individuals can be
best prepared to be excellent teachers.

Engaged Learning with Emerging Technologies 2006
The major purpose of this book is to present and discuss current
thinking, theories, conceptual frameworks, models and promising
examples of engaged learning with emerging technologies.

International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments Series: Springer International Handbooks of Education , Vol. 14 2006
The International Handbook of Virtual Learning
Environments was developed to explore Virtual Learning
Environments (VLEís), and their relationships with digital, in
real life and virtual worlds.
*Also available in hardcopy

Rethinking University Teaching: A Conversational Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies 2002
This new
edition builds upon the success of the first and contains major
updates to the information on learning technologies and includes
the implications of using technology for the university context -
both campus and electronic - which suggests a new approach to
managing learning at institutional level.
*Also available in hardcopy

What's the Point in Discussion?
2000.
This text presents the skills of discussion and how they can be
taught in the context of developing what the author refers to as
a thinking society.

These and many more E-Books can be found here:
http://ebooks.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ebc/search?subject=Education

---

What do you think about these E-Books? What are your favorite E-Books?

Click on the COMMENTS link below to post your thoughts!

---