Category Archives: University

What’s the point of feedback?

Posted on 3rd September 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I recently had a conversation with some other academics about the whole marking, assessment and feedback parade that we go through in HE, and the NSS student survey results, which always score lower for feedback than for other areas. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Online learning, Teaching, Technology, University | Tagged , | 1 Comment

When is a pilot not a pilot?

Posted on 29th August 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Student pilot Jean McRae of Homosassa: Tallahassee, Florida flickr photo by State Library and Archives of Florida shared with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons) Recently we’ve been running some software pilots in our unit. Although I am sure that some … Continue reading →

Posted in Online learning, Technology, University | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Vicarious learning

Posted on 24th August 2015 by NomadWarMachine

If we think that tutorials and seminars are an important part of the campus based learning experience, then how to we replace these when we are designing and delivering online courses? One way might be to use virtual classroom software … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Online learning, Peer interaction, Teaching, Technology, University | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

WYSIWYG

Posted on 17th August 2015 by NomadWarMachine

There’s a new challenge going around – watch a short video and write a bog post tying what you have seen into something about education. So Whitney sent me this one about the Landfill Harmonic, who make musical instruments out … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Teaching, University | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Introducing the swarm

Posted on 13th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

 I used to refer to myself as “One of Eight” in emails regarding my tutoring. Back in 2009 (or thereabouts) the University conceded to pressure from the trade union and put we lowly teaching assistants on a proper pay scale … Continue reading →

Posted in #rhizo14, #rhizo15, Rhizomes, University | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Be careful what you “black box”

Posted on 12th May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I often describe my job as a learning technologist as “trying not to break things”.  Folk respond to this with a nervous laugh, because they are fairly sure it is a joke that they don’t understand, but there’s a serious … Continue reading →

Posted in #rhizo14, Politics, Rhizomes, Technology, University | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Returning to learning

Posted on 1st May 2015 by NomadWarMachine

So this week Turnitin announced their automated marking service.  My first reaction was to groan and wonder how long it would be before we were asked if we’d be supporting the service.  Then Scott said something that made me think … Continue reading →

Posted in #rhizo15, Academia, Learning, Teaching, University | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Posh white boys

Posted on 26th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

There’s a common assumption that there is a gender bias in STEM subjects in HE, but a recent study released in Science has discovered that this is not  actually the real story, and that actually philosophy is among the five subjects with the … Continue reading →

Posted in #MoocMooc, Critical pedagogy, Philosophy, University | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Lecture notes

Posted on 23rd April 2014 by NomadWarMachine

I gave a workshop today about Flipping Classrooms which I’ll blog about on my other blog.  At one point I paraphrased Eric Mazur saying something like this: College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, University | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I have the questions for all of your answers

Posted on 2nd February 2014 by NomadWarMachine

Years ago (gosh, at least ten years, how shocking to realise), I ended up moderating a public Philosophy forum.  It’s long gone now but I am still friends with many of my fellow moderators including the wonderful Andrew Jeffrey, who … Continue reading →

Posted in #rhizo14, Academia, D&G, Learning, Philosophy, Plato, Rhizomes, Teaching, University | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments