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Learn to code | Codecademy
Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It's interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.
tags: computers programming code
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Maslow 2.0: A New and Improved Recipe for Happiness - Hans Villarica - Life - The Atlantic
What are the ingredients for happiness? It's a question that has been addressed time and again, and now a study based on the first-ever globally representative poll on well-being has some answers about whether or not a pioneering theory is actually correct. The theory in question is the psychologist Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs," a staple of Psychology 101 courses that was famously articulated in 1954. It breaks down the path to happiness in an easy-to-digest list: Earthly needs, such as food and safety, are considered essential, since they act as the groundwork that makes it possible to pursue loftier desires, such as love, respect, and self-actualization (the realization of one's full potential).
tags: maslow psychology
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PerformanceXpress October 2002
I did a 99-second critique of Bloom’s taxonomy at the 2002 ISPI conference, and it generated more unsolicited feedback than any other presentation I have made. The response varied from those who completely agreed with me and abandoned Bloom many years ago to those who are still true believers and avid users. In those 99 seconds, I criticized the taxonomy but did not have time to present more valid alternatives. This article summarizes the criticisms and presents two alternative strategies for classifying objectives in order to design appropriate instruction and assessment.
tags: blooms_taxonomy
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Donald Clark Plan B: Gagne's Nine Dull Commandments
It's over 50 years since Gagne, a closet behaviourist, published The Conditions of Learning (1965). In 1968 we got his article Learning Hierarchies, then Domains of Learning in 1972. Gagne's theory has five categories of learning; Intellectual Skills, Cognitive strategies, Verbal information, Motor skills and Attitudes. OK, I quite like these - better than the oft-quoted Bloom trilogy (1956). Then something horrible happened. Nine Commandments - He claimed to have found the Nine Commandments of learning. A single method of instruction that applies to all five categories of learning, the secret code for divine instructional design. Follow the recipe and learning will surely follow.
tags: education instructional_design isd learning_theory
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The impact of instructional elements in computer-based instruction - Martin - 2006 - British Journal of Educational Technology - Wiley Online Library
"This study investigated the effects of several elements of instruction (objectives, information, practice, examples and review) when they were combined in a systematic manner. College students enrolled in a computer literacy course used one of six different versions of a computer-based lesson delivered on the web to learn about input, processing, storage and output of a computer. The six versions of the program consisted of (1) a full version that contained information plus objectives, practice with feedback, examples and review, (2) a version without objectives, (3) one without examples, (4) one without practice, (5) one without review and (6) a lean version containing information only. Results indicated participants who used one of the four versions of the computer program that included practice performed significantly better on the posttest and had consistently more positive attitudes than those who did not receive practice. Implications for the development of computer-based instruction are explored." (abstract)
tags: education instructional_design isd practice
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Whatever You Do, Don't Drop Practice
The only instructional element that really matters is practice with feedback. That’s what a study that dropped instructional elements from different sections of a college course and compared the results shows. Tom Crawford pointed me to Donald Clark’s post about the study by Martin, Klein, and Sullivan. (The study will be published in the British Journal of Educational Technology.) The researchers were interested in which of some of Gagné’s nine events of instruction were most powerful in promoting learning: objectives, information, examples, practice with feedback, or review. The researchers pretested 256 college students enrolled in a computer literacy course and divided them into low, medium, and high blocks on the basis of the pretest scores.
tags: education instructional_design isd practice
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Donald Clark Plan B: How do I get to Carnegie Hall?
A clever study from Arizona State University took several elements of instruction and eliminated them one by one from an e-learning programme on 'computer literacy', using 256 students. they wanted to see what instructional components really mattered in e-learning. They removed: 1. Objectives, 2. Information, 3. Examples, 4. Review, 5. Practice. Removing any of the first four made little significant difference to the learning outcome and attitudes of the tested students. It would seem, therefore, that Gagne. Mager et al were on shaky ground in recommending objectives at the start of every programme. Similarly with other supplementary elements.
tags: education instructional_design isd practice
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Older adults are better at decision-making than young adults
We make decisions all our lives -- so you'd think we'd get better and better at it. Yet research has shown that younger adults are better decision makers than older ones. Some Texas psychologists, puzzled by these findings, suspected the experiments were biased toward younger brains. So, rather than testing the ability to make decisions one at a time without regard to past or future, as earlier research did, these psychologists designed a model requiring participants to evaluate each result in order to strategize the next choice, more like decision making in the real world. The results: The older decision makers trounced their juniors. The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
tags: psycholology adult_learning decision_making
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Trial and error learning may benefit older people - latimes.com
If at first you don't succeed, try again -- and you may get a brain boost. A study released today in the journal Psychology and Aging found that older people benefited from trial-and-error learning. The research paper encompassed two small studies in which older and younger adults were given a series of memory tests using trial-and-error learning or errorless learning.
tags: psychology adult_learning trial-and-error
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FileStork Lets Your Friends Share Files Directly to Your Dropbox
Filestork is a web service that lets your friends share files with you through Dropbox, even if they don't use Dropbox themselves. So you're a diehard Dropbox fan, but your friends don't want to install a completely new program just to share files with you. All you need to do is attach FileStork to your Dropbox account.
tags: dropbox file_sharing
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How Families Headed by Same-Sex Couples Fare in Student Aid
Families headed by same-sex parents—and gay students who are married—are treated in convoluted ways by the federal financial-aid form because of how it determines who is counted as a parent and because the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriage. A new report from the Center for American Progress details those scenarios and makes policy recommendations on how to change them.
tags: education student_support
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Creative Approaches to the Syllabus
There’s no denying that syllabus bloat is a real phenomenon. Every semester, it seems, there’s a push to put more and more in the syllabus. And there’s no denying that it can sometimes be useful to treat the syllabus as a meaningful resource for the whole semester.
tags: teaching syllabus
