The Ultimate List of Educational Websites

EdTech2014 Conference

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Eurovision 2020: Technology Enhanced Learning for a New Horizon

The Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) is delighted to present our fifteenth user conference EdTech2014 which will be hosted by University College Dublin, Ireland on May 29-30, 2014.

Conference Theme - Eurovision 2020: Technology Enhanced Learning for a New Horizon

Irish higher education is undergoing fundamental structural reform at a national level, while engaging in an increasingly globalised market place.  As we move towards 2020 student participation, retention and resourcing challenges sit alongside policy and practice tensions. However, the core issue of quality in higher education remains of paramount importance for all educational stakeholders. 

The EdTech2014 conference theme aligns with the forthcoming EU strategic report ‘New Methods of Delivering Quality in Higher Education’. The report will:

1.      Provide recommendations to Member States with respect to the effective use of technology-enhanced learning tools, methods and practices to support the quality agenda and;

2.      Address associated infrastructure, funding, policy, IPR, staff development and accreditation issues to support the adoption of these practices.

The report will be published in June 2014 by the EU High Level Group for the Modernisation of Higher Education which is chaired by former President Mary McAleese.

ILTA welcomes the continued support from the EU DG Education and Culture for presenting this theme, which builds upon the EdTech2013 EU conference theme Opening Up Education.

Conference Participation

We invite Irish and international participants to enthusiastically engage with the conference theme from pedagogical, research, innovation, policy and organisational perspectives. The aims of the conference are (1): to pro-actively contribute to this agenda-setting debate; and (2) provide a tangible evidence-base to inform our own policy and practice through information and practice exchange.

We promise delegates a welcoming and dynamic gathering point as we consider the opportunities and challenges afforded by this theme.   You can expect plenty of networking opportunities to swap stories, develop strategies, make new friends and reflect on an eventful academic year at Ireland’s longest running technology-enhanced learning user conference, EdTech2014.  

Some issues to consider may include:

·         Digital Literacies for All Stakeholders – students, staff, institutions and governments

·         MOOCs, SOOCs and SPOCs – how to, why to, or not to

·         Show me the Evidence-Base – informing policy and practice

·         Learning Technologies – Disruptive or Reductive?

·         eAssessment – the REAL student and staff focus

·         Digital Badges – new currency or non-runner?

·         mLearning / Social Networking – flexible learning for lifelong learners

·         Learning Analytics – rationale, process and application

·         Flipped/BYOD Learning – innovative use of scarce resources or DIY learning?

·         Digital Identity –  data, presence, ownership, safeguards

·         Engaging with EU programmes – who, what, when, how?

Modernisation of Higher Education – Fact Sheet

An EU Perspective

·         Horizon2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (€80bn)

·         Erasmus+ 2014-2020 programme to support student mobility (€14.7bn)

·         Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2020 (€40bn for education and training)

·         Modernisation of Higher Education: 2013 Quality in Teaching and Learning Report

http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/doc/modernisation_en.pdf

An Irish Perspective

·         Greater current higher education participation rate (30-34 yrs 51.1%) greater than EU2020 target (40%) (Eurostat, 2012)

·         MOOCS in Ireland e.g. IT Sligo, DIT, Hibernia College

·         Ireland projected higher education population to increase from 174000 (2013) to 192000 (2020) (HEA, 2012)

·         Part-time student access to undergraduate programme participation will continue to increase in line with current trends (i.e. from 7% in 2008 to 17% in 2013) (HEA, 2012)

EdTech2014 Further Information

·         Call for papers:                       January 2013

·         Conference Date:                    29^th and 30^th May, 2014

·         Conference Location:             University College Dublin, Ireland

·         Conference website                http://ilta.ie/edtech/edtech2014/

·         LinkedIn                                   ILTA Group

·         Email                                       info@ilta.ie

·         Twitter                                    #edtech14; #iltatweets

Free eLearning and Educational eBooks

The eLearning Guild
http://www.elearningguild.com/content/?mode=filter&source=publications&selection=doc.2587

The International Association for Distance Learning
http://www.iadl.org.uk/FreeeBooks.htm

Free eLearning Books
http://blog.efrontlearning.net/2010/11/free-e-learning-books.html

Elliott Masie
http://masie.com/Research-and-Articles/free-digital-books.html

eBooks Directory
http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/listing.php?category=68

Free Book Spot
http://www.freebookspot.es/TopTen.aspx?Category_ID=152

onlinebooks4free.com
http://www.onlinebooks4free.com/menu/education.html

digitalbookindex.org
http://www.digitalbookindex.org/_search/search010educationa.asp

Dieter Rams on Design

The Letters of 1916 project

The Letters of 1916 project is the first public humanities project in Ireland. Its goal is to create a crowd-sourced digital collection of letters written around the time of the Easter Rising (1 November 1915 – 31 October 1916).

http://dh.tcd.ie/letters1916/

"Waiting for Superman" and "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting For Superman"

Prototyping/Wireframe/Mockup Tools

Pencil Project
http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx

Verify
http://verifyapp.com/

Web Site Wireframe Tool
http://wireframe.talltree.us/default.asp

Mockingbird
https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/

fluidA
http://stage.fluidia.org/

fluidUI
https://fluidui.com/

Cacoo
https://cacoo.com/

Lumzy
http://lumzy.com/app/

iPhone Mockup
http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/

Google SketchUp
http://www.sketchup.com/product/newin7.html

SLASHDOT: Code.org Wants Participating Students' Data For 7 Years

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/11/28/1623205/codeorg-wants-participating-students-data-for-7-years?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

"As part of its plan to improve computer science education in the U.S., the Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates-backed Code.org is asking school districts to sign a contract calling for Code.org to receive 'longitudinal student achievement data' for up to seven academic years in return for course materials, small teacher stipends, and general support. The Gates Foundation is already facing a backlash from the broader academic community over attempts to collect student data as part of its inBloom initiative. The Code.org contract also gives the organization veto power over the district teachers selected to participate in the Code.org program, who are required to commit to teaching in the program for a minimum of two school years."

Gartner Hype Cycle for Education, 2013

• On the Rise
  • Mashware
  • Quantum Computing
  • Education Tablet
  • Open Microcredentials
  • Campus App Store
  • Affective Computing
  • SIS International Data Interoperability Standards
  • BPO
  • Open-Source SIS
  • Student Retention CRM
  • Citizen Developers 
  
  
• At the Peak
  • Learning Stack
  • Adaptive E-Textbooks
  • Big Data
  • Gamification
  • MOOC
  • Social Software Standards
  • Wireless aaS
  • COBIT
  • Adaptive Learning 
  
  
• Sliding Into the Trough
  • Digital Preservation of Research Data
  • BYOD Strategy
  • Mobile-Learning Low-Range/Midrange Handsets
  • Open-Source Financials
  • EA Frameworks
  • Web-Based Office Productivity Suites
  • ITIL
  • Social Learning Platform for Education
  • Cloud HPC/CaaS
  • Mobile-Learning Smartphones
  • Open-Source Middleware Suites
  • E-Textbook
  • Cloud Email for Staff and Faculty
  • Virtual Environments/Virtual Worlds 
  
  
• Climbing the Slope
  • Emergency/Mass Notification Services
  • Hosted Virtual Desktops
  • Open-Source Learning Repositories
  • SaaS Administration Applications
  • Enterprise Architecture
  • IT Infrastructure Utility
  • Intellectual Property Rights and Royalties Management Software
  • Lecture Capture and Retrieval Tools
  • 802.11n
  • Unified Communications and Collaboration
  • Tablets
  • Game Consoles as Media Hubs 
  
  
• Entering the Plateau
  • E-Book Readers
  • Self-Publishing
  • Mashups 
  
  https://www.gartner.com/doc/2559615
  

Froebel Gifts

The Froebel Gifts are a range of educational materials designed by Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852). Fröbel advocated the importance of free play in childhood. Each gift (Gabe) was designed to be given to a child to provide material for the child's self-directed activity. These Gifts are a series of activity-based playthings ranging from simple sphere-shaped objects, through to geometric wooden blocks and more advanced Gifts pertaining to sewing, cutting, weaving and the modelling of objects in clay.

Gift 1 - Yarn balls
Gift 2 - Sphere Cylinder Cube
Gift 3 - Eight Cubes
Gift 4 - 8 Rectangular prisms
Gift 5 - Cubes & Prisms
Gift 6 - Caps, Columns & Bricks
Gift 7 - Paper Tablets
Gift 8 - Wood Laying Sticks
Gift 9 - Points

How Music Affects and Benefits Your Brain by Belle Beth Cooper

http://blog.bufferapp.com/music-and-the-brain

 

Ambient noise can improve creativity

We all like to pump up the tunes when we’re powering through our to-do lists, right? But when it comes to creative work, loud music may not be the best option.

It turns out that a moderate noise level is the sweet spot for creativity. Even more than low noise levels, ambient noise apparently gets our creative juices flowing, and doesn’t put us off the way high levels of noise do.

The way this works is that moderate noise levels increase processing difficulty which promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity. In other words, when we struggle (just enough) to process things as we normally would, we resort to more creative approaches.

In high noise levels, however, our creative thinking is impaired because we’re overwhelmed and struggle to process information efficiently.

This is very similar to how temperature and lighting can affect our productivity, where paradoxically a slightly more crowded place can be beneficial.

Classical music can improve visual attention

It’s not just kids that can benefit from musical training or exposure. Stroke patients in one small study showed improved visual attention while listening to classical music.

The study also tried white noise and silence to compare the results, and found that, like the driving study mentioned earlier, silence resulted in the worst scores.

Because this study was so small, the conclusions need to be explored further for validation, but I find it really interesting how music and noise can affect our other senses and abilities—in this case, vision.

Music training can significantly improve our motor and reasoning skills

We generally assume that learning a musical instrument can be beneficial for kids, but it’s actually useful in more ways than we might expect. One study showed that children who had three years or more musical instrument training performed better than those who didn’t learn an instrument in auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills.

They also tested better on vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills, which involve understanding and analyzing visual information, such as identifying relationships, similarities and differences between shapes and patterns.

These two areas in particular are quite removed from musical training as we imagine it, so it’s fascinating to see how learning to play an instrument can help kids develop such a wide variety of important skills.

Similar research shows this correlation for exercise and motor skills in the same way, which is also fascinating.

http://blog.bufferapp.com/music-and-the-brain

Take college and university courses online completely free

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/take-college-and-university-courses-online-completely-free

In recent years massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become a trend in online education. The term was coined in 2008 by David Cormier, manager of web communications and innovations at the University of Prince Edward Island. The first MOOC was created the previous year, at Utah State University.

MOOCs are designed like college courses but are available to anyone anywhere in the world, at no cost. You do not receive a college credit, but you will receive a certificate of completion when you complete all coursework. The courses span dozens of subjects and are taught by some of the leaders in those fields. The courses are designed to be interesting, fun and rigorous; the courses are not just in science, and not just in English.

Coursera is perhaps the most well-known of the online education facilitators. Their latest numbers indicate that they have 17,000,000 enrollments from students representing 190 countries. There are 240,000
students in their most popular class. Coursera has over 400 courses in more than 20 categories, created by 85 Universities from 16 countries. Their courses are available in 12 different languages.

EdX is another non-profit course site created by founding partners Harvard and MIT and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. EdX offers MOOCs and interactive online classes in subjects including law, history, science, engineering, business, social sciences, computer science, public health, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has partnerships with tertiary institutions in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, China and Korea.

MIT has their own open courseware, where most of the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects are available on the Web, free of charge. They have more than 2,000 courses available. Stanford also has their own online and open courses. These are great options if you prefer to work at your own pace, as compared to structured classes like those offered at Coursera and EdX.

European institutions are also getting in on the act. Germany-based Iversity offers courses in both English and German and the first courses went online in October this year. Future Learn is a subsidiary of the British Open University and is currently in its beta stage. It already has partnerships with universities across Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The courses will begin this coming November.

For those looking to learn a language Duolingo offers completely free language education. If you're interested in learning a valuable skill CodeAcademy teaches programming and coding in online, free and interactive lessons.

Other sites, like Open Culture, are not affiliated with tertiary institutions. On Open Culture, the editor finds the free courses and audio books on the web and hosts them on the site. The courses are audio & video and can be downloaded straight to a computer or mp3 player.

This is by no means a complete list of all site and institutions that offer free online courses. http://www.mooc-list.com/ has many more listed.

Gamification Examples

CourseHero: Improving the Teacher-Student Interactions Online

 

Course Hero is an online learning platform for students and a portal for educators to distribute their educational resources. The site collects and organizes study materials that have been uploaded by educators and student users to form a vast learning repository. The Education Gamification platform provides materials such as syllabi, problem sets, and practice exams are combined with class notes, flash cards, and study guides that have been uploaded. In addition, Course Hero offers access to tutors, digital flashcards, and video lectures. 

GoalBook: Brings student teams together around their individual Learning Plans

Goalbook is an online platform that helps teachers, parents and students collaboratively track progress. Blending qualities of social networking and Individualized Education Program (IEP) tracking software, the program makes it simple for students and teachers to set goals and for all involved parties to watch everything unfold.

Brainscape: Turns Confidence Based Repetition into a Game

Brainscape is a mobile and wed-based education platform that is designed to help students study smart. The program uses adaptive algorithms to create flashcards, whose presentation pattern can change in response to what students know and what they seem to be struggling with, focusing attention on the more difficult topics.

ClassDojo: Turns Class into a Game of Rewards and Instant Feedback

ClassDojo is a classroom management tool to help teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It improves specific student behaviors and helps engagement by issuing awards and recording real-time feedback.

Socrative 101: In-Class mobile interaction between Teacher and Student

Socrative 101 makes it easier to engage students through a response system that offers educational exercises and games over a laptop or mobile device.

Recent conference on using personal response systems ("clickers") in Trinity College

A conference sponsored by one of the providers of student personal response systems, Turning Point, took place in Trinity College recently. A keynote presentation was given by Eric Mazur who has used Peer Instruction faciliated by clickers to good effect.

A storify collection of tweets from the conference is available by clicking here; Storify archive from Turning Point conference 
A blog entry from an attendee, Sharon Flynn reflecting on the conference can be found by clicking here; Sharon Flynn's blog entry on Turning Point conference

Three Simple Storyboarding Templates To Organize Your Content Creation Projects

What Makes Great Infographics?

Naming Student Experiences and Experiencing Student Naming

http://www.maxvanmanen.com/files/2012/12/Student_Naming.pdf

Van Manen, M., McClelland J., Plihal J., (2007).

Educators commonly speak of student experience. But do we really know what happens when a student has an experience? In everyday life, in schools and classrooms, teachers call on students, address students by their names, pronounce, mispronounce, or confuse their names, and sometimes forget student names altogether. We engage the art of phenomenological inquiry to explore the meaning and significance of student experience, by using the phenomenon of naming—and its relevance for pedagogy—as an example and as
a source for reflection.

African teachers must play a central role in the mobile phone revolution by Niall Winters

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/oct/23/african-teachers-role-mobile-revolution

Only projects that work with existing education systems, not against them, will bolster learning and eradicate poverty.

You've no doubt heard of the mobile phone revolution sweeping sub-Saharan Africa – perhaps mobile money transfer, or mHealth. The hope is that these technologies will transform lives by improving health, education, finance and women's position in society.

However, as knowledge management expert Piers Bocock notes, there is a vast disconnect between the companies that produce and market these technologies and on-the-ground implementers – with the hype perhaps best exemplified by Bill Clinton.

Referring to a 2010 UN report, the former US president stated that mobile phones "are one of the most effective advancements in history to lift people out of poverty". However, the report was clear that impact depended "on the context and on the environment in which ICTs are introduced and used".

Some may ask: what could be wrong with this focus on the mobile phone revolution? Don't we all support progress? In short, no. While innovation is welcome, in some cases, the way it is implemented risks increasing – not reducing – marginalisation. I'll discuss just one example from education: teachers and their role in mobile learning projects in sub-Saharan Africa.

Excluding teachers

Let's begin with a simple question: when was the last time you heard the voice of teachers from sub-Saharan Africa extolling the virtues of mobile phones in education? I'm not talking about nicely staged interviews – I mean really telling us how their teaching was fundamentally improved.

Now, a second question: when was the last time you heard that teachers in Africa are not trained properly, are demotivated and that the formal education systems in which they work are weak? My hunch is that you've heard much more about this than you've heard teachers praising mobile technology.

My concern is that some people use the problems with education systems to justify excluding teachers from the design and development of mobile learning interventions. Teachers' voices are marginalised. And the mobile operators association, GSMA, to take just one example, characterises the teaching profession in a way that divorces it from progress and innovation.

The difficulties teachers face are used as a starting point for criticism, rather than as a motivation to address systemic issues. A good example of this is how the technology community has openly welcomed 2013 TED prizewinner Sugata Mitra's work on learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge, even though his approach to achieving this is highly contested among educational researchers and practitioners.
It is a mistake to run down teachers' professionalism to justify technology use in education.

Alternative vision

Instead, we need to create an alternative vision that values and prioritises teacher involvement in mobile learning.

First, begin by acknowledging that supporting teacher involvement is a messy, time-consuming and resource-intensive process. And commit to it – there is no magic technology bullet.

Second, understand that many teachers in sub-Saharan Africa work under tough conditions; and build on research that analyses how these affect their teaching. A study last year in Tanzania, for example, found that teachers wanted to improve their qualifications and be respected but were constrained by resource limitations and the demands of daily life, which Unesco – the UN body promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture – clearly recognises: overcrowded classrooms, malnourished students, low pay and a high-pressure workload.

Third, learn from the One Laptop per Child programme. Its uptake in sub-Saharan Africa was generally judged to have failed because of a lack of integration with education ministries. It is teachers who will support students with mobile learning interventions and help safeguard success. They need a central role in truly multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Build local capacity

Clearly, more investment in teacher training is needed within – and beyond – mobile learning programmes. Research has shown the crucial role teachers play in designing, developing and implementing education technologies.

Three things need to happen to support a more central role for teachers: reconfiguration of mobile learning projects, an increased use of participatory methodologies and less techno-centrism. Reconfiguration requires a level of self-reflection. We know that many mobile learning projects are funded by sizeable donations made under corporate social responsibility budgets.

This often means a central role is played by the non-expert funder, not the teacher. If corporate funders stepped back, teachers would have more space to take on the more central role required.
However, this enhanced role cannot be supported without appropriate methodologies. Participatory approaches in development go back at least to the early 1970s and are still used in various ways – including giving a voice to marginalised people in the debate over the post-2015 developmental goals.
There is a vibrant Human-Computer Interaction for Development community that promotes user-centred approaches to technology design, use and evaluation. In my own work over the years, including in a current project for training community health workers in Kenya, we extensively use participatory approaches to help design and develop mobile learning interventions.

The idea that technocentrism or even solely content-based solutions can address important educational challenges by themselves must be dropped. Research shows they cannot.

The path to success is clear: the risks of increasing the marginalisation of teachers – and by extension students – can only be ameliorated by understanding teachers' practice, co-designing interventions with them and providing them with training.

Projects that work with existing educational systems, not against them, should have priority funding. Only then can mobile learning be seen to work for teachers, for their students and for the alleviation of poverty among those at the margins of society.

Crowdsourcing Linked Open Data for Disaster Management

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-798/paper2.pdf

Jens Ortmann, Minu Limbu, Dong Wang and Tomi KauppinenInstitute for Geoinformatics, University of Muenster, Germany


Abstract

This paper shows how Linked Open Data can ease the challenges of information triage in disaster response efforts. Recently, disaster management has seen a revolution in data collection. Local victims as well as people all over the world collect observations and make them available on the web. Yet, this crucial and timely information source comes unstructured. This hinders a processing and integration, and often a general consideration of this information. Linked Open Data is supported by number of freely available technologies, backed up by a large community in academia and it offers the opportunity to create flexible mash-up solutions. At hand of the Ushahidi Haiti platform, thispaper suggests crowdsourced Linked Open Data. We take a look at the requirements, the tools that are there to meet these requirements, and suggest an architecture to enable non-experts to contribute Linked Open Data.

The Spectral Game: leveraging Open Data and crowdsourcing for education

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1758-2946-1-9/fulltext.html

Jean-Claude Bradley¹  , Robert J Lancashire²  , Andrew SID Lang³   and Antony J Williams⁴ 

 

(1) Department of Chemistry, Drexel University, 32nd and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA

(2) Department of Chemistry, The University of the West Indies Mona Campus, Kingston 7, Jamaica

(3) Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Oral Roberts University, 7777 S. Lewis Ave, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74171, USA

(4) ChemZoo Inc, Wake Forest, 904 Tamaras Circle, North Carolina 27587, USA

 

 

Abstract

 

We report on the implementation of the Spectral Game, a web-based game where players try to match molecules to various forms of interactive spectra including 1D/2D NMR, Mass Spectrometry and Infrared spectra. Each correct selection earns the player one point and play continues until the player supplies an incorrect answer. The game is usually played using a web browser interface, although a version has been developed in the virtual 3D environment of Second Life. Spectra uploaded as Open Data to ChemSpider in JCAMP-DX format are used for the problem sets together with structures extracted from the website. The spectra are displayed using JSpecView, an Open Source spectrum viewing applet which affords zooming and integration. The application of the game to the teaching of proton NMR spectroscopy in an undergraduate organic chemistry class and a 2D Spectrum Viewer are also presented.

 

Socrates warns us about the dangers of new media

"I can­not help feel­ing, Phae­drus, that writ­ing is unfor­tu­nately like paint­ing; for the cre­ations of the painter have the atti­tude of life, and yet if you ask them a ques­tion they pre­serve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imag­ine that they had intel­li­gence, but if you want to know any­thing and put a ques­tion to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvary­ing answer. And when they have been once writ­ten down they are tum­bled about any­where among those who may or may not under­stand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are mal­treated or abused, they have no par­ent to pro­tect them; and they can­not pro­tect or defend them­selves."

- From Pheadrus

Article on using Peerwise - learners generate, answer and rate MCQs

 Describes using Peerwise and developing a related community of practice

Biologists Discover Tiny Neural Computers in the Brain by George Dvorsky

http://io9.com/biologists-discover-tiny-neural-computers-in-the-brain-1453512218

Neuroscientists have learned that dendrites do more than just provide passive wiring in the brain. These nerve cell connectors also process information, essentially functioning as tiny computers. Our brains, it would appear, pack more computing power than we assumed. 

Dendrites are those branch-like extensions at the beginning of neurons that increase the surface area of cell bodies, or soma. These tiny outgrowths receive information from other neurons and transmit electrical stimulation to the soma.

<Continued here>

You can’t read just one: Reproducibility and multiple sources By Bonnie Swoger

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2013/10/29/you-cant-read-just-one-reproducibility-and-multiple-sources/

There are lots of ways to mess with the heads of undergraduate students. Giving them a research assignment and failing to specify a minimum number of references needed is just one example.

“Include as many sources as you need to make your point and illustrate your thesis.”

For students, finding one scholarly article on their topic often seems to be enough. Researchers did an experiment, got some results, and answered the research question the student started with. All done, all set, time for dinner.
But science doesn’t work that way. One experiment may suggest something interesting, but it doesn’t prove anything. In fact, it is quite easy to point to many examples of intriguing scientific studies that were either proved false or that couldn’t be reproduced later on. Scientific ideas that are true should be reproducible: other researchers should be able to repeat the experiments and get similar results or use other methods to arrive at the same conclusions. You can’t say that you discovered something new if someone else can’t reproduce your result.

This fundamental scientific idea, reproducibility, may be in crisis. A recent article by Vasilevsky et al. in the journal PeerJ suggested that many scientific journal articles don’t provide the information that other scientists would need in order to replicate their results. Key information about chemicals, reactants or model organisms is often missing, despite journal requirements to include such information (Vasilevsky et al., 2013). And a recent item in The Economist suggests that this might not matter that much. The emphasis placed on new research (by funding agencies and tenure and promotion committees) means that few scientists even attempt to replicate the work of others (“Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab,” 2013).

All of this means trouble from the very beginning of a research project, before an experiment is even designed, when scientists start to do background research on their topics. In the same way that experimental scientists can’t rely on the results of just one experiment to prove something, relying on just one information source for knowledge is a sure way to end up with unreliable information. Journalists look for corroborating sources, wikipedia flags articles that need a wider variety of citations, and scholars need to find multiple scholarly articles to support their ideas.

Some innovative people, companies and publishers are trying to sort this mess out. A collaboration between PLOS ONE, Mendeley, Figshare and the Science Exchange will be attempting to replicate the results of selected projects as a part of the Reproducibility Initiative. The Reproducibility Project is a crowdsourced effort to evaluate the reproducibility of experimental results in psychology. And the Reproducible Science project aims to make the results of computational experiments reproducible by ensuring the sharing of code and data and by making that information available to reviewers who can test the results described in a manuscript they are reviewing.
Unfortunately, these innovative programs are just a drop in the bucket of modern science. Funding agencies, publishers and tenure and promotion committees still value original work more highly than verification work. Scientists who concentrated on replicating the work of others would risk their careers.
As a result it is important for students and scholars to be aware of the challenges facing the reproducibility of science. We teach students in introductory science classes that reproducibility is one of the hallmarks of science. As they learn more about their disciplines, they need to be aware of the practical challenges involved in reproducing the work of others, and the importance of finding multiple sources about a topic needs to be emphasized.

As a librarian, part of my job is to help students find additional sources related to their research topics, even if there isn’t a published reproduction of an original source. This isn’t about which database to use or whether to put quotes around a phrase. It is about getting them to think critically about their topics. For example, while there might not be a second study that repeated the experiment of the first, students can look for:

• Studies that examined the same topic in a different way
• Studies that used the same methodology on a different species, geographic area, etc.
• Background studies on individual aspects of their research question, including the statistical analyses used
• Studies that cite the original study (even if no one has tried to reproduce the results, other scholars might express doubts about their conclusions when they cite the original).

The issues surrounding reproducibility in science won’t be solved overnight, and it will take a concerted effort from scientists at all levels of the modern scientific enterprise to steer this very big ship. In the meantime, students and scholars can make special efforts to ensure that they are using the highest quality information available as the basis of their original studies.

Works Cited:
“Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab.” (2013, October 19). The Economist, 409(8858), 26-30.
Vasilevsky, N. a, Brush, M. H., Paddock, H., Ponting, L., Tripathy, S. J., Larocca, G. M., & Haendel, M. A. (2013). On the reproducibility of science: unique identification of research resources in the biomedical literature. PeerJ, 1, e148. doi:10.7717/peerj.148.

Learning Object Repositories

Open Educational Resources
http://www.oercommons.org/

Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects (CAREO) 
http://www.ucalgary.ca/commons/careo/CAREOrepo.htm

MERLOT 
http://www.merlot.org

JORUM  
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/

Education Network Australia (EdNA)
http://apps-new.edna.edu.au/edna_retired/edna/go.html

MIT Open Course Ware  
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Connexions Project at Rice University 
http://cnx.org/

National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS) 
http://www.needs.org/needs/

EducaNext 
http://www.educanext.org

Association learning technology  (ALT)
http://repository.alt.ac.uk/

INTUTE 
http://www.intute.ac.uk/

Bubl Information Service 
http://bubl.ac.uk/

Howard Gardner explains Multiple Intelligences

Behind The Scenes In The Making Of A MOOC by Michael Horn

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2013/10/14/behind-the-scenes-in-the-making-of-a-mooc/

The emerging world of K–12 blended learning remains a young field full of promise for personalizing learning and boosting outcomes for all students. More and more bright spots are emerging every day.

But there are also challenges. With the buzz surrounding 1:1 device programs and new classroom apps, there are risks that people might just take education technologies and layer it over the existing monolithic classroom processes and not fundamentally change the way students learn. The hype around and cramming of technology remains a serious risk to the field.

To help educators make the shift to blended learning that truly moves the needle for students, we’ve been working for the past few months with Silicon Schools Fund and the New Teacher Center to create a MOOC on Coursera about high-quality blended learning. The free course launches Tuesday.

Diving into the online-learning revolution about which I’ve written and spoken so much for the last seven years by actually creating an online learning experience has been a fascinating and humbling experience. Without the hard work of an entire team—from our team at the Clayton Christensen Institute to our partners and friends at the Silicon Schools Fund and New Teacher Center and from our videographer Eric L. Wong to The Learning Accelerator, which provided support—it’s been clear to me that we could not have pulled this off. This has made me appreciate so much more the hard work of those instructional designers who work to create high-quality online learning experiences for their full-time job—as well as how early we are still in the emergence of the newer MOOC platforms. It also makes me further wonder about the quality of much of what has been placed on the MOOC platforms to date. Below are a few behind-the-scenes shots of the making of the MOOC.

Continued at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2013/10/14/behind-the-scenes-in-the-making-of-a-mooc/

Bloom's Taxonomy According to Seinfeld

Why we need instructional design more than ever

David Merrill on Instructional Design

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Some Previous Assignments

Below are a selection of the resources designed and developed each year by participants working in small groups.

MSc Applied eLearning 2016-17
------------------------------
How to Compost
http://www.gerardkilkenny.ie/compost/

D'Northsiders: Famous places, and the people that make it.
https://dnorthsiders.wordpress.com

Emotional Learning
http://valerieconnor.wixsite.com/emotionelearning
Password: Emotion

MSc Applied eLearning 2014-15
------------------------------

Writing Academic Papers using APA

http://auraecommerce.co.uk/breda/story_html5.html

The Good Life
http://www.reelgood.com/moodle2211
Username: student1 Password: M0unta1n#
Guide to Automated Assessment
http://assessment.lucalongo.eu

Free Online Learner Online Assessment Tools
http://floatdit.zohosites.com


MSc Applied eLearning 2014-15
------------------------------
E-Learning Assessment for Successful Teaching
https://eastmsc.wordpress.com/

College Assignment Writing - An Introduction
http://joanhughes.wix.com/project-hashtag

The Fellowship School - Anti-Cyberbullying
http://fellowshipschool.net/


MSc Applied eLearning 2013-14
------------------------------
E-Toolbox - Mapping Technologies to Learning
http://elearnit.pbworks.com/w/page/70578191/eToolbox%3A%20Mapping%20Technologies%20to%20Learning

Team Woof - Online Resource for Puppy Training
http://hughmclain.ie/WOOF/

The BRAT Pack - Blended Resource for Academic Teaching
http://bratpack3.wordpress.com/evaluate/?preview=true&preview_id=29&preview_nonce=e9743edc8a

MSc Applied eLearning 2012-13
------------------------------
The Zoomable Microscope
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35330863/cystic_fibrosis_explorer/player.html

Child Obesity: A Guide for Parents
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7254603/child%20obesity%20-%20a%20guide%20for%20parents%20%28combined%20course%29/player.html

MSc Applied eLearning 2011-12
------------------------------
Study skills for students
http://studyskillsdit.yolasite.com

An elearning resource on the topic of Social Media Marketing
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5045823/Successful%20Social%20Media%20Marketing_Final_Jan6/player.html

MSc Applied eLearning 2010-11
------------------------------
Teaching resource for lecturers who want to use group work in their teaching  (as a zip file)
http://ditportfolios.learnonline.ie/view/view.php?id=932

MSc Applied eLearning 2009-10
------------------------------
Academic Writing for the New 3rd Level Student
http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2815

Becoming an eTeacher
https://sites.google.com/site/becominganeteacher/

Genealogy History Resource Finder
http://www.nialldixon.utvinternet.com/player.html

Resource on using wikis for learning
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Wikiresources

MSc Applied eLearning 2008-09
------------------------------
The Wizard of Oz movie
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Research/MScArtefacts/MSceLearning/2009/index.html

MSc Applied eLearning 2007-08
------------------------------
A Guide to Dublin
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Research/MScArtefacts/MSceLearning/2008/Group%20index.html