Introduction


 * Slideshow: Welcome to eLearning Bootcamp!**

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 * Video: Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.**

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 * Article: [|Why Web 2.0]** (pre-reading)

> With the dawning of Web 2.0, these alternate forms of teaching and learning are now becoming the "native" forms for this age. Open education, open knowledge, and open resources are different faces of the Web 2.0 revolution in higher education.

> Culturally speaking, with the advent of Web 2.0, the "traditional classroom" with one speaker and many listeners is now an oddity, a throwback, a form that should represent 15 percent of undergraduate interaction with faculty, not 85 percent as it does now. With so many ways to create knowledge now very rapidly and collaboratively, we are freed from the necessity of a singular approach to teaching. It no longer makes sense. If you are a faculty member and you are still walking into the classroom with a lecture in mind and "the points to cover," as I did for many years, you are living in the past, a past that is now obsolete. Granted, your job is easier and the students love it if you just talk, but do you feel right about what you are doing?

> The learning tools of this century and probably this millennium are not print-based. That world and all its assumptions about permanence, authority, and scarcity are gone. It is no longer the authority lecture but the conversation that is the emerging norm. The new textbook is student work; I'll say it again: The textbook of this age is the work that students generate under your guidance and within your design.

[|Read the rest of the article.]


 * Website: [|The No Significant Difference Phenomenon]**

> What is the "no significant difference" phenomenon?

> In the early 1900's, as correspondence courses came into vogue, there was a question that weighed on the minds of educators: could students learn as well at a distance as they could face to face? As with most controversial issues, there were proponents on both sides: traditionalists held face to face as the gold standard, while innovators held that distance courses could deliver equivalent, if not improved, learning outcomes. Both sides were eager to gather evidence to substantiate their claims - and thus began the movement in media comparison studies (MCS) in education. In these studies, researchers looked to compare student outcomes for two courses that were delivered through two different methods, thereby identifying the "superior" method for teaching effectiveness.

> The "No Significant Difference" phenomenon refers to a body of literature consisting of a particular type of MCS - those comparing student outcomes between face to face and distance delivery courses. This body of literature was originally compiled by Thomas Russell in his book, "The No Significant Difference Phenomenon: A Comparative Research Annotated Bibliography on Technology for Distance Education" (IDECC) to answer the following question: Does taking a course via distance education lower a student's chances for success as compared to the same student taking the same course in a face-to-face format?

> Mr. Russell collected research studies addressing this question from as far back as 1928. The studies included in his collection involve a wide array of distance delivery modes including correspondence (printed materials sent out to students), radio, television, video, and online. Mr. Russell found that an overwhelming number of studies showed that when the course materials and teaching methodology were held constant, there were no significant differences (NSD) between student outcomes in a distance delivery course as compared to a face to face course. In other words, student outcomes in distance delivery courses were neither worse nor better than those in face to face courses. Mr. Russell referred to this collection of results as the "No Significant Difference Phenomenon", thus coining the now-common identifier phrase for this body of literature.


 * Document: [|Evaluation of Evidence-based Practice in Online Learning]**

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 * PDF: [|Emerging Technologies in Elearning]** (pre-reading)

> As the capacity of the Internet evolves and expands, the potential for online teaching and learning also evolves and expands. The increasing number of new technology tools and expanding bandwidth are changing all facets of online activity, including e-learning. As technologies become more sophisticated and as they begin to converge (for example, cell phones becoming multimedia-capable and Internet-connected), educators will have more options for creating innovative practices in education.

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 * Article: [|Cheating on the Brain]** **(an example of how central social cognition is to human learning)**

> Discover Magazine

> Evolutionary psychologists argue that we can understand the workings of the human mind by investigating how it evolved. Much of their research focuses on the past two million years of hominid evolution, during which our ancestors lived in small bands, eating meat they either scavenged or hunted as well as tubers and other plants they gathered. Living for so long in this arrangement, certain ways of thinking may have been favored by natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists believe that a lot of puzzling features of the human mind make sense if we keep our heritage in mind.

> The classic example of these puzzles is known as the Wason Selection Task. People tend to do well on this task if it is presented in one way, and terribly if it is presented another way. You can try it out for yourself.


 * Video: Data, Information, and Knowledge**

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 * Extra Credit: [|The Future of Technology]**

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