JOLT September Issue

The September Issue of the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) is up online. Two articles that immediately caught my eye as worthy of a closer look are the articles by Cooper, Tyser, and Sandheinrich on using online quizzes to assignments to increase student learning and Davi, Frydenberg, and Gulati on blogging across the disciplines. I am possibly a little biased on the first as Scott Cooper is one of my favorite faculty members ever and it was always a privilege to work with him. I still quote him on course management systems. Years ago when I asked him about them and what he thought the educational payoff might be he  pointed out that in some ways I was  being too literal and asking  the question  too directly . He used the CMS to grade and post the syllabus and copies of notes etc which was important in a 400 student class. It did however mean that he didn't have 400 students coming to ask about grades and for a copy of the syllabus and notes 'cos Aunt Mabel died last week and they missed class. This meant that he could actually teach biology and answer student questions and increase learning in those moments after class and in office hours. So CMSs did contribute to student learning. But it seems that Scott and his colleagues have found another way to use the CMS. Its a nice straightforward article that will be of use to faculty looking for ways to increase student engagement.

I haven't read the blogging piece in full yet but it looks promising and,  as I am discovering to my dismay there is not a whole lot of good material out there to help faculty think through how they might integrate blogging into courses in ways that are not about busy work or using the technology for the sake of it. Other pieces I am using are the following:

1. Remediation, Genre, and Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogs Kevin Brooks, Cindy Nichols, and Sybil Priebe,  

2. A nice post about the different ways that people participate in blogs. It is very simple but it can be a useful way to think about how to incorporate blogs into a classroom or class activity. Going through each of the different C's of participation until you have all of them covered.

3. TLT Questions
A useful set of questions to ask when setting up blogs for use in class. Not focused on pedagogy so much as the logistics of class blogging

I have also found Chapter 2 of Will Richardson's Blogs, Wikis Podcasts and other Powerful Webtools for Classrooms to be useful.