EdTech Innovator Chase: Rewarding Faculty Innovation through badges

Each semester we celebrate our college EdTech Innovators– everyone who’s using technology to explore new pedagogical approaches. We applaud early adopters for developing best practices, because maybe they’re doing something nobody else has. Those who innovate in the most EdTech areas and (most importantly!) help their colleagues level up, compete for the epic win. The EdTech Innovator Chase, a gamified activity (digital badges) was created to showcase faculty innovations in teaching practices.

Rap Genius in the Classroom

Rap Genius began as a rap lyric website, but it has since moved far beyond just rap, with unique home pages for Rock, News, and Poetry. At its heart, the ‘Genius’ sites provide a social-collaborative annotation platform. Like Wikipedia, it’s a crowd-sourced database that allows any users to add content. Unlike Wikipedia, Genius invites users to annotate documents, to break down and close read novels, short stories, poems, and a wide variety of other texts.

Andragogy vs Pedagogy: Teaching the Adult Learner in an Online Environment

The purpose of this presentation is to offer a deeper understanding of adult learning and provide tips on how to effectively teach in the online environment. The presenter will compare and contrast two learning theories: andragogy and pedagogy. Furthermore, the roles of the online instructor and e-learner will be outlined. An open discussion at the end of the presentation will allow participants to make implications as to which learning theory is more effective for online learning.