I joined the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course, described as a “rather large open online course” with hundreds of participants worldwide. I had the intention of actively participating, but soon became overwhelmed, downgrading myself to lurking and snatching a few tidbits from their daily newsletter. This reminded me of a post on Zen... »

Our college recently purchased access to Turnitin, one of the more widely used plagiarism detection tools. I have used it in one class, but gave it a pass in another. While I have seen some glaring examples of plagiarism in my classes, I am still conflicted about the Turnitin process. On one hand, using another... »

In my last post on alleged generational differences, I concluded by saying we as educators should pay less attention to generations and more attention to both traditional and digital literacy. A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education resonated with me, and seems to reinforce this approach. We can not turn back the... »

It comes form an unlikely source, but this month’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) includes the publication of a meta analysis of Internet based learning in health professions.  The study, led by David Cook and assisted by 5 others, looked at 201 eligible studies. “We sought to answer (1) to what extent is... »

I am alternately fascinated and frustrated by the whole “digital native/digital immigrant,” Net-Gen discussion. Prensky is probably the most well-known proponent of this digital generation idea, suggesting that “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently than their predecessors.” New books continue the emerge, and I dare say we have all sat through... »

MERLOT has hundreds of links and references for learning materials, so we are adding just a few links to papers and studies that we have read and pondered over the past couple of years. Please add any that you would like to share. References for The Screen is Flat: MERLOT CRL Information Literacy: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.cfm Pew Internet and American... »

We are here at the MERLOT International Conference 2008 in Minneapolis, preparing for the presentation Becky Hines, Fritz Nordengren and I will give tomorrow in the Reinventing Libraries track. The title of the talk is “The Screen is Flat” (hat tip to Becky for this creative take on the popular book). We have ... »

This was an agenda item of one of our recent faculty meetings. As online course enrollment continues to grow, no doubt fueled by the recent spike in gas prices, we online teaching faculty are finding the lines of work blurring more often into evenings and weekends since that is when many of our graduate... »

Fritz and I did a podcast at the beginning of the year on organization in which we talked about how we were trying new and old tools to manage our work life. Since then I have really paid attention to what is working and what isn’t. Here’s a partial update: Zotero is a winner. I... »

Becky Hines, our medical librarian colleague expanded on an idea we shared over coffee in her blog TheScreenIsFlat.org, Are we are still trying to control the data and expecting users to utilize data in the ways in which we have organized? I’m not suggested that Librarians get out of the game of offering expertise in... »

You may have heard the buzz on the new book Brain Rules. Author and scientist John Medina scoured peer-reviewed brain research to distill some nuggets of knowledge palatable for the masses. One item that caught my eye was the fact that multi-tasking doesn’t work. When we think we are multi-tasking, we are merely... »

I spend a lot time reading about evidence-based medicine (EBM) or the more broad term, evidence-based practice (EBP). Back in 2000, the grand-daddy of EBM, David Sackett, called it quits. For some reason, this surfaced recently on some blogs. Sackett stated that… “….he would “never again lecture, write, or referee anything to do with evidence... »

Our librarian colleague Becky Hines has shown that librarians do have a sense of humor.  Ann and I both knew this, its fun to be able to share it. Her Twelve step program starts with the reason we’re all here: 1. We admitted we were powerless of our information needs and that our lives had become... »

In January, Ann and I had the good fortune to meet many of you during the ELI annual conference in San Antonio. That was the first of three events I’ve attended in as many months which have given me a look at three conferences and how each represents a piece... »

Are you a “sage on the stage” or a “guide on the side”? Those cliches have been around academia for a while. I must admit I still enjoy being a sage on the stage when I have the rare opportunity to teach in a F2F class. But since switching to online teaching... »