Monthly Archives: August 2010
How to measure the effectiveness of professional development activities
This post on measurement on the effectiveness of professional development attracts my attention.
Stephen commented in his OLDaily:
And the good point he make is that the effectiveness (if you want to call it that) of a learning event isn’t measurable at the time of the event – you have to wait for the cycles to complete.
Can the effectiveness of professional development be measured? How and When?
I have composed a post on Teacher Training and classroom teaching here. I have also shared my views and perspectives on Cooperative Online Education here.
I think an objective measurement of the effectiveness of professional development needs to be based on the context of application of the skills learnt and the teaching or learning situations. An alternative assessment could be based on the learning achieved both by the educators and learners, throughout the course delivered by the educators, and after the course, in the form of research and course review. This allows for a learning development for both the educators and learners rather than a “judgment” on a course based solely on the “effectiveness” of the professional activities.
Besides, the sole reliance of professional development is often not enough, especially in a complex learning environment.
What needs to be considered in mind could be illustrated with the pictures below:
How about this?
Here is the Networked Teacher (Photo: Flickr source: Alec Courus)
On Emergent Learning:
Integration of learning by Terry Anderson
Use of Forums and Blogs in MOOC
The Yin and Yang of Ideas, and Creativity
Is a bad idea a good idea? This article about BadIdeas provides some interesting insights.
This paper describes BadIdeas, a collection of techniques that uses ‘bad’ or ‘silly’ ideas to inspire creativity, explore design domains and teach critical thinking in interaction design. We describe the approach, some evidence, how it is performed in practice and experience in its use.
Hence, in treating design as a creative process, we must understand it as a social creative process. We argue that theoretically social creativity should be more productive than individual creativity, and so design teams should be more creative than individual designers working alone. However, there is a considerable body of experimental evidence that suggests that real groups are less creative than nominal groups. This dampening effect on social creativity is primarily the result of three interacting social influences: production blocking, evaluation apprehension and free riding.

Why should one blog?
Read this interesting blog post and see if you could relate to Leo
Thanks for sharing. Have I listened to your question? I am a bit sensitive to the word w….somewhat scary to identify oneself with, as I sensed it, though the post sounds interesting. I suppose it is about addiction to the web & social media (like blogging) instead.
Technology and our life – Part 1
How has technology affected our life?
How will technology affect our life?
This iPad would surely make a great impact on learning, an attraction to many kids and adults indeed.
Have you thought of what it means when people are falling in love with another person(s) or community without even meeting them face-to-face (i.e. virtual or online)?
Grounded Theory and Research
After watching this Grounded Theory, I found many ideas worthy of reflecting on research.
This relates to my experience in the Blogs and Forum research and the Ideals and Reality of MOOC.
What are some of my learnings through such CCK08 and MOOC research from a Grounded Research perspective?
Still thinking and reflecting….
Postscript: Here is another part: