Currently I am facilitating an online grant to help 13 faculty members form  the University of Hawaii Community Colleges develop authentic online learning activities. Our online community is located here.  We have been using the 10 Characteristics of Authentic Learning  as criteria for the activities faculty are creating. This is a new experience for all participants and we find ourselves learning by doing by the “seat of our pants” authentic learning experience in its own right. The thrill of the unexpected and uncovering of new ways to learn helps to maintain an exciting and mostly positive learning environment..

After reading and watching Jan’s post and video’s on the the 9 Elements of Authentic learning we remixed our criteria form both lists and now have 10 Elements of Authentic learning.  We based our revisions on the feedback we have been receiving as participants create their activities.

We have found that faculty struggle creating authentic activities are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity. This approach is completely opposite of the traditional way faculty have developed their activities. They are required to have specific objectives for learners to meet. As a result they create highly structure processes that lead to the outcomes. When asked to create ill-defined activities the most common responses are; “that approach may be good for graduate level courses but my students are not ready for this”, and “if the activity is ill-defined how do I know they will do what I want them to do?”

As the project progresses it would be great to have feedback on the activities form other educators who are interested authentic online learning. If you would like to join our community here is the link:

Authentic Online Learning

Here is a link to his new ebook . You can download it from http://edmac.usask.ca/rick/ebookflyer it as a free download.

Craig Kapp, from New York  University was the keynote speaker on Firday at the E-Learn conference in Waikiki. The title of his presentatin was Visualizing the Future: How Augmented Reality can empower faculty…, inspire students and bring ideas to life in the classroom

Craig also created ZooBurst, a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. Here is his demo.

http://www.zooburst.com/index.php