21st Century Perspectives on Teaching, Learning, and Technology

E-Learning: 21st Century Perspectives on Teaching, Learning, and Technology

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MOOCs & The Secret Garden

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Prologue For those who have been following trends in higher education, the term MOOCs (pronunciation: muk) is not foreign anymore but for some people it is still kind of clouded in mystery. A simple google search using ‘MOOC’ as a keyword turned up 2.4 million hits and when searched using the full acronym ‘Massive Open Online Courses’ it gave a massive 24 million hits! Mind-boggling indeed! If the number of hits can be used as a simple measure of popularity then perhaps we can surmise that MOOCs is a phenomenon that have a potential to disrupt the education world and will bring about significant impact on achieving “ Education for All ” movement of the United Nation. This article is my attempt to deciphering and demystifying MOOCs. Note that this is my personal view on MOOCs (not that of USM or CDAE) and I must say that I’m inclined towards supporting it because I liked its underlying philosophy. That said, I'm not a MOOCs cheerleader or its fan boy — I keep an open mind on this ev...
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Social Media and the Dwindling Attention Span

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I would like to share an interesting fact: According to a survey of 2,000 people conducted by Microsoft Corp in Canada, an average human attention span is 9 seconds; the goldfish has an attention span of 8 seconds! The survey also showed that the average attention span of humans has fallen from twelve seconds in 2000 to eight seconds. Here’s another fact: According to a study by MarketingProfs, the new millennials cannot think more than 140 characters at a stretch! Maybe this is the reason why Twitter limits the tweet to 140 characters only. These findings are significant and perhaps worrying especially for educators that have to deal with the millennial generation in their classroom. Imagine the challenge to hold the attention of students (or participants in a training environment) in one hour face-to-face class. The challenge is even more profound for online courses. We have to accept the fact that we are living in the world full of distraction. What kind of distraction? The smart de...
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Understanding How Learning Works

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“ When it comes to teaching, most of us are still learning. Teaching is a complex activity, and yet most of us have not received formal training in pedagogy. Furthermore, teaching is a highly contextualized activity because it is shaped by the students we have, advancements in our respective fields, changes in technology, and so on. Therefore, our teaching must constantly adapt to changing parameters ” -- Ambrose et al., 2010, How Learning Works . Constructivism, behaviorism, pedagody, andragogy, Bloom Taxonomy, student-centered learning...?? I must humbly admit that, after more than 16 years teaching, I didn’t know much about the various learning theories and pedagogical aspects of teaching-learning. I’m not trained as a teacher – I’m a food technologist. My only experience in teaching was teaching my friends and a short stint teaching in a private school (secondary level). Soon after I completed my Ph.D. in Food Technology, I came back and joined the university as a lecturer – and I ...
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