In the realm of teaching and learning, innovations happen on a daily basis. In both on-line and on-ground modalities, there were a remarkable number of events, releases of new research, and introductions of new tools and technologies.
Ultimately, the only developments that matter are the developments that resonate with people and lead to inspiration, motivation or deeper consideration. The content team monitors the news in teaching and learning to best share updates and insights with our clients. While this collection is not a comprehensive list of the year’s big news stories in teaching and learning, it is a collection of the stories that resonated with us.
“I have three faves,” said Kate Baggott, Head of Content and Communications for the Edusity family of companies. “One is the investigation into how role playing games on table top can help enhance the well-being of gamers. Then another piece of research illustrated how improv classes can help teens deal with social anxiety. I think these point to how supportive and structure “socially intense” experiences can help deal with the mental health aftermath of the pandemic. I think the lesson for parents and teachers is that teens, and probably young adults, need something like play dates so they can re-learn how to make friends.”
While it’s impossible to discount how deeply the pandemic lock-downs affected young people, there were other world events that had an impact on teaching and learning too.
“My third favourite story of the year brought us the expression “just in time training” that I think will shape how we think of course design and course delivery,” Kate explained. “The press release was about battlefield surgery learning modules created by the US military for use by surgeons in the Ukraine. In my view “just in time” communicates the urgency of how learning and development is seen in a lot of professional environments. They need what they need when they need it as quickly as possible. It also shows how archival material can be rapidly assembled and re-purposed for a highly-specific purpose and a specialized audience.”
Content writer Angela Britcher, who also works as an instructor and instructional designer, was preoccupied with humanity and relationships when AI moved to the fore of conversations in teaching and learning. Her favorite news story of the year is all about bringing the emphasis back to humanity.
This phrase from an interview with Paul Leblanc, President of Southern New Hampshire University, resonated most with Angela:
“And it’s really about our humanity,” he told the interviewer. “I used to think it was all about our skills. I actually think it’s about our relational power now. My old tendency was to start every meeting with the agenda. My tendency today is like, ‘How are you doing? How are you in this moment today?’ I think that’s partly a reflection of the world we find ourselves in.”
For Angela, the phrase took her back to basics.
“It’s easy to get caught up in creating and demonstrating the right learning objectives or trying on the newest tech tools,” Angela said. “Students of all ages need the right environments and cultures for learning. We co-create that culture with each group of learners. Building relationships and trust lay the foundation for learning. Once the foundation is in place, we can move on to meeting learning objectives and cool tools.”
There is so much new research coming out about online and hybrid teaching and learning that we created three information resources to help our clients and readers process it all. You can read the EdTech News on our blogs every Friday. On Mondays, we publish the Edusity EdTech Update on LinkedIn and on Tuesdays we have The Babb Group and Professor Services newsletter on the same platform. Be sure to subscribe for a quick infobyte.
Leonie Ramkaran, Junior Content Writer and Designer, named two well-loved resources as her favorite releases of the year.
“My fave is our piece that discusses the CHLOE report as well as the IHE student voice report,” Leonie said. “The CHLOE 7 report discusses the future of online learning, which is here to stay. And the IHE report shows what students really want which is something that needs more attention. The greater the diversity of voices and perspectives, combined with real data, the better!”
Sheila Fry, COO of The Babb Group and Professor Services, spent the year being completely enamored by the professionalism, skill, creativity and modesty of the content team (well, that’s how it looked to us).
“I love the organizational success stories,” she gushed. “They help us promote our clients and our own work. My other faves are all about best-practices that are helpful from both a teaching and administrative perspective, like the article about faculty negotiations in the creation of online courses. We also highlighted all the grant money that is out there to help institutions innovate. And, finally, we articulated the true collaborative nature of what we do.
Tracking the research, best practices and events in the entire teaching and learning sphere in 2022 was a task we undertook because we saw the need. We hope to continue to spark deeper conversations and support knowledge growth among all of our contacts at The Babb Group, Professor Services and Edusity in 2023 and beyond!
Latest posts by Kate Baggott (see all)
- How I Lead: Michael Graham, Vice President of Operations and Technology at NLU - March 22, 2023
- The EdTech News for Friday, March 17, 2023: AI Supports Reading Development, Educators Detect AI-Generated School Work - March 17, 2023
- The EdTech News for Friday, March 10, 2023: Families Coding, Mindsets Changing, and Edusity is Educating - March 10, 2023