September 2018 Archives

Learning Analytics: Promises & Limitations, with Dr. Ryan Baker

Monday, October 15th, 2018

Livingston Student Center 202 ABC

11:30 - 1:30 pm (Please RSVP)

Join us for a talk by Ryan Baker, a truly innovative thinker in the field of analytics, data mining, and machine learning, followed by a discussion on the role of learning analytics at Rutgers University. Dr. Baker studies how students use and learn from educational games, intelligent tutors, and other kinds of educational software. Drawing on the fields of educational data mining, learning analytics, and human-computer interaction, he develops methods for mining the data that come out of the interactions between students and educational software. He then uses this information to improve our understanding of how students respond to educational software, and how these responses influence their learning.

We will also have a panel of Rutgers faculty to continue the discussion, including promises and limitations, after Dr. Baker concludes. Lunch will be served.

To RSVP, please go to https://ctaar.rutgers.edu/workshops/register/analytics.html

CTAAR has created a page on our website with various resources on the use of learning analytics in higher education: https://ctaar.rutgers.edu/teaching/learning_analytics - be sure to check it out!

The New Brunswick Department of Anthropology is sponsoring a series of talks that will explore the role of linguistic difference in shaping education at Rutgers and in the United States. Each talk includes a workshop led by Anthropology faculty and graduate students.

To register and get the details of the locations, contact kah382@brokenmail.rutgers.edu please replace brakenmail with scarletmail.rutgers.edu

• Sept 28: Bernard Perley, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Associate Professor of Anthropology
  • 4:00 pm Lecture: Remediating New World Amnesia: The Return of Indigenous Ancestral Voices
  • 1:30 pm Workshop on linguistic blindness to indigenous linguascapes at Rutgers
  • Facilitators: Karelle Hall and Becky Schulthies
• Oct 19: Mara Green, Barnard College, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
  • 4:00 pm Lecture: Horizons of Language: Deaf Communicative Practices in Nepal
  • 1:30 pm Workshop on standardness ideologies and linguistic diversity in the classroom
  • Facilitators: Nan Hu and Kathleen Riley
• Dec 7: Sonia Das, New York University, Associate Professor of Anthropology
  • 4:00 pm Lecture: Heritage Language or Racial Slur? The Politics of Speaking Tamil in Québec
  • 1:30 pm Workshop on heritage language in the classroom
  • Facilitators: Reecha Das and Becky Schulthies
• Feb 8: Amy Paugh, James Madison University, Professor of Anthropology
  • 4:00 pm Lecture: Language Gap or Resource? A Language Socialization Approach to Linguistic Diversity
  • 1:30 pm Workshop on language impoverishment ideologies in the classroom
  • Facilitators: Marian Thorpe and Kathleen Riley
• Feb 22: Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania, Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics
  • 4:00pm Lecture: Becoming the System: A Raciolinguistic Genealogy of Bilingual Education
  • 1:30 pm Workshop on critical race educational pedagogies in the U.S.
  • Facilitators: Marlaina Martin and Christien Tompkins
• April 12: Bonnie Urcuioli, Hamilton College, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
  • 4:00 pm Lecture: Linguistic difference: hiding in plain sight
  • 1:30 pm Workshop on diversity talk in the classroom
  • Facilitators: Gabrielle Cabrera and Ariana Mangual Figueroa

CTAAR Workshop: Writing About Numbers, with Dr. Jane Miller

Friday, October 5th, 2018
College Avenue Student Center 411, ABC

Breakfast at 8:30, workshop from 9am-12pm (Please RSVP)

Communicating numeric information is an extremely common task for university members, whether faculty, students, administrators, or staff. For instance:

• Faculty members must convey the results of their quantitative research to lay audiences and to people in "applied" professions related to their topics, as well as other academics.
• Students must analyze and communicate data on a variety of topics for their coursework, research projects, and volunteer or other extra-curricular activities.
• Administrators must present budget figures, showing how much each component contributes, trends across time, and impacts of new or existing funding formulas.

However, few people are trained in how to communicate numbers effectively, leading to many bad habits such as overuse of tables with dozens of numbers in tiny font (many of which are not needed for the point at hand!), poorly designed charts, and sentences that require readers to do the math to figure out the answer to the question behind the numbers. These and other issues with poor quantitative communication plague scholarly books and articles, lecture slides, online instructional materials, grant proposals, and budget reports alike, making them far less effective than they could be.

Prof. Jane Miller (Bloustein School), author of two books in the Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing series (University of Chicago Press), has taught workshops to many academic, research, and communications audiences. On Friday, Oct. 5 she will offer a hands- on workshop for Rutgers University members, sponsored by the Center for Teaching Advancement and Assessment Research. The workshop will introduce and demonstrate use of numbers as evidence, tools for presenting numbers, and a set of principles to help participants learn plan for and evaluate their writing (and speaking) about quantitative information. Participants will have the chance to try their hand at some example exercises to practice the new ideas and gain some ideas on how to teach those principles and skills.

See more about Dr. Miller and the book, Writing About Numbers.

To RSVP, please go to https://ctaar.rutgers.edu/workshops/register/index.php?ws=831

We have canceled the September 13 Sakai workshop for TAs, and apologize for any inconvenience. If you would like other training opportunites for Sakai, please check the schedule of TLT Sakai workshops - https://tlt.rutgers.edu/webinars-workshops?categoryfilter-categoryid=4

Sakai is suffering periodic slowdowns this afternoon (September 4). OIT is aware of the problem and attempting to fix it, this may require that Sakai be restarted.

If you are unable to connect to Sakai, please try again in a few minutes. If you can connect, please be aware that it may take a long time for the Sakai pages to fully load - if you wait long enough, you'll probably get there.

All Rutgers university students and staff now have access to the Lynda.com library of self-paced courses and tutorials. Lynda.com covers many topics from educational subjects such as statistics and graphing through basic office productivity apps. Rutgers staff will find Lynda.com useful for learning new job skills, and faculty will find it useful for incorporating supplemental materials into their courses to develop students' cocurricular and ancillary skills. 

Previous Lynda.com users please note:

• If you see an "I've Had an Account" option, click that to migrate your previous history, badges, and account settings to your new university account. You will only see this option once, and cannot change your mind later.
• If you do not see the "I've had an account" option and used a Lynda.com account that was obtained through Rutgers, your previous history, badges and settings should have been automatically copied over to the new account. 

Log in to the the university-wide Lynda.com site here:

https://software.rutgers.edu/lynda/