Experience Design
In my last blog post, I wrote about Making Things and Drawing Boundaries, a great collection of essays written by practitioners of digital humanities. When I first encountered the book's…
Making Things and Drawing Boundaries
If you read my About the Author page, you will see that I have a BA, an MS, and a PhD, all in Computer Science. What you won't see is…
Assessment That Works
We at Plymouth State University have been talking about appropriate assessment of our General Education program for most of the 20 years that I have been here. When we instituted…
B is for Belonging
Last week, I wrote a post reviewing the book The ABCs of How We Learn. The book provides a ton of information about learning science, including practical advice about how…
The ABCs of How We Learn
I've just finished reading the second book on my sabbatical list. The ABCs of How We Learn: 26 Scientifically Proven Approaches, How They Work, and When to Use Them was…
National Survey of Student Engagement
Plymouth State University participates every other year in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which measures student participation in meaningful learning experiences. The survey is given to first year…
Lifelong Kindergarten
I'm on sabbatical for the Spring 2018 semester. My first sabbatical project, getting my knee replaced, began in earnest on January 12 and I've made great progress on it over…
Creating OERs with Students
With the end of the Fall 2017 semester, I want to record my thoughts about creating the open educational resource (OER) Introduction to Media Studies with students in CM2770 (Intro to Media…
Advising and General Education
The General Education Committee held a town hall on Friday, December 8, to discuss the President's idea of theming General Education. He has written in his blog that "while individual…
Guest Post from Alex Richard
A couple of weeks ago, my First Year Seminar (FYS) classes discussed ways that we might assess the learning outcome in our class related to General Education. In particular, at…
General Education and Clusters Revisited
Back at the beginning of the semester, I wrote about the realization I had that President Birx's Four Tools of Clusters mean that when we talk about "cluster curriculum," we…
Media Studies OER
Here is the first set of chapters written by the students in Introduction to Media and Cultural Studies in our Open Educational Resource called Introduction to Media Studies: https://mediastudies.pressbooks.com/. Please remember…
A Win for Open
In my last post, I wrote about a new experiment in open pedagogy in my two sections of Introduction to Media and Cultural Studies. My students had been writing excellent…
A New Open Ed Experiment
I have been teaching Introduction to Media and Cultural Studies (CM2770) for a long time and for a long time, I've been concerned about text book prices. This introductory course…
Lessons Learned Five Weeks In
The semester is five weeks old and my experiment with open pedagogy in Plymouth State University's First Year Seminar has been an up and down experience so far. I have…
Getting Students to “Own” Their Education
The most exciting aspect of the integrated cluster initiative for me is the idea that we will redesign our classes to provide students with experiences that will encourage (require? is…
First Open Ped Lesson
I've had 2 classes with my First Year Seminar students so far and I've already learned a huge lesson about using open pedagogy. I have planned several exercises for the…
Cluster Curriculum is General Education
After a busy summer, today is the first day of classes at Plymouth State University. The lead up to this new semester was full of meetings and presentations as we…
Open Educational Resource for First Year Seminar
My major summer project has been to create an Open Educational Resource to be used as the common text for Plymouth State University's First Year Seminar. The first draft is…
Information Literacy, Fake News, and Habits of Mind
Although I haven't posted in several weeks, I have been doing a lot of reading, writing, and thinking. In particular, I've been working on pulling together the Open Educational Resource…
