Serendipity35

Course Hero is a website where educators (and students) can find free resources. You need to create a free Verified Educator account which will allow you to access sample assignments, case studies, lectures, labs, syllabi, and more. These resources have been shared by higher education faculty and students. There are 80,000+ college faculty using the site to get learning resources and inspiration for your own teaching.

Your ability to download resources is gained by you uploading your original study materials. You’ll earn free unlocks for sharing your knowledge - 5 unlocks for every 10 documents submitted.

They are hosting their free 2-day 5th annual Education Summit July 28–29 from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. PT. Their belief that teaching is a shared practice and the rapidly shifting educational landscape requires us to lean into our roles as both instructors and learners. You can join thousands of fellow educators, research experts, and instructional designers to unpack the latest in learning and pedagogy.

I first used their website when I was building a new course and was curious if any other teachers had uploaded their syllabi for a similar course. I found half a dozen that I was able to use to get started, including ones with links to readings I might also use.

I saw that the Rutgers-Newark campus was hosting a 3-Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition and clicked the link for some explanation. Explain your 75,000 word dissertation in less than 180 seconds? Apparently, doctoral students across the globe are doing just that in the Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT®). 

It is similar to the Ignite sessions I have done at conferences. In those, the presenters get to use 20 slides, which automatically advance every 15 seconds. It keeps the presentation moving and it last 5 minutes. It is a good way to sample a number of topics and works well if  there is a followup of a poster for the talk or the presenter is giving a longer session later.

They last only five minutes, but I have been bored by some that I have witnessed. Ignite® events are held in cities around the world. I haven't attended a 3MT® event, but they only allow one slide and less than 3 minutes. 

Are both of these an outgrowth of the PowerPointization of information? Yes, you can present information via slides with bullet points. Yes, it is important to be able to describe your work in a concise way. But sometimes that is just not enough.

I use this Albert Einstein quote on my website: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” That line is the one that presenter who do a 3 or 5 minute presentation need to be very aware of not crossing. 

We seem to like these things. Much older is the elevator pitch. I used it 20 years ago it with students to have them pitch a research topic to their class before they started the actual research. An actual elevator ride is quite short and would be a tough venue to pitch your idea (no slides or props), but my version was 2 minutes and you could use anything you wanted to use (props, slides, music...). Students got very "creative," especially after the TV program Shark Tank appeared in 2009.

3MT® (note the ® registered trademark) was founded at Australia's University of Queensland in 2008 and is now quite official. More than 600 universities host events. Part of the reason to do it is to develop presentation and engagement skills for doctoral students. It does bring research topics to larger communities. It is also a way to promote you and your work.

The very popular TED talks are a longer form of this concept. The speakers at TED conferences are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can.

Is this trend a good thing for attention spans? I keep hearing that attention spans are getting shorter every year for students but also for adults in general. If you see these at a larger conference, do the 45 and 90 minute presentations seem bloated?  

I do web design and there is this idea that "Users often leave Web pages in 10–20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people's attention for much longer. To gain several minutes of user attention, you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds."   10 seconds.  That is a very difficult pitch to make. 

And this idea carries over to TV commercials, movie trailers, book jackets and really all advertising.

In 3 or 5 minutes are you informing or marketing?

 

More information about 3MT® is available at www.threeminutethesis.org

 

Active learning is an approach that strives to involve students in the learning process more directly. That sounds so logical that I suspect some people would say "Isn't that what every class is doing?' It certainly is not a new idea, but it is not the norm in many courses and classrooms. 

I think the active learning approach was introduced by Reginald Revans as "action learning." Either term can describe an approach to have students do more than passively listening by being actively or experientially involved in the learning process.

Frequently, this approach has students read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solving problems, and engaging in higher-order thinking tasks such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. A very simple definition might be having students doing things and thinking about the things they are doing.

I am doing a presentation this week that I titled "Predator and Prey: Active Learning Is Social Learning at the Active Learning Symposium at Rutgers University.

I base it on the premise that active learning is often social learning. The session will be primarily hands-on using a problem solving activity identifying animal species based on viewing skulls.

It is a hands-on "active" presentation with people who have little or no background in osteology (the study of bones and skulls), but that is not what I am usually teaching when I do this activity.

I have used this activity with elementary school students, high school students, undergraduates and adults outside of a school setting.

I have usually used it in critical thinking classes, but the learners will also learn something about the skulls and species. When I use the activity to teach about osteology, it is an active way to involve the learners in critical thinking. Groups quite naturally are active and become social in the process. 

The action learning process typically addresses a real problem that is important, critical, and usually complex and involves a problem-solving set. The process promotes curiosity, inquiry, and reflection.

I'm not locked into labels and if someoen told me that my active learning activity was actaully experiential learning, or action learning, adventure learning, free-choice learning, cooperative learning, service-learning, or situated learning, I would say that is a good possibilty (though I know these terms are not strictly synonymous). My interest is in the learning, not the label.