here it is, again

Here’s that new semester, the fall renewal, even though it’s still pretty hot outside. We are all excited about starting up again, before the complexity of courses, grading, student conferences, and committee work start to fill up all those moments we had planned to learn about new innovations in teaching and learning. Some of us have new ideas we’d like to try out in the classroom, whether on ground or online, and hope to keep up our excitement long enough to put the ideas in motion.

Pardon a personal note: I’ve been reading about online teaching, since I’ll be teaching online for the first time, reading about translating face-to-face practices into online experiences, all the while trying to keep three areas in mind–student/content interaction, student/faculty interaction, and student/student interaction. That doesn’t seem like a difficult organizational plan, until you start to fill in the blanks. Assignments and due dates are easy enough, but creating experiences that engage students as they work through those assignments is the hard part. All of a sudden I feel like an orchestra conductor waiting for the sheet music, and discover that I am the composer, too. I know that if I feel overwhelmed, students may have the same reaction, so my first order of business has been to retreat from displaying all the content of the semester at once. In a f2f course, I would never hand out all the assignments on day one, so why would I try to make them all available on our LMS? I’m giving myself permission to slow down and judge how the course is going in the first few weeks, leaving room for adjustment. I’m sure it would be nice to have the whole course and its content created on day one and just turn it on, but for this first time around, I need to test the waters a little. I’ll be busy in the evenings and on weekends.

Here are a few of the things I’ve been reading online:

Instructional Design for Online Learning: http://www.ibritt.com/resources/dc_instructionaldesign.htm

Getting Started Online: http://vfc.project.mnscu.edu/index.asp

Principles of Online Design: http://www.fgcu.edu/onlinedesign/index.html

Instructional Design Handbook: http://www.psuonline.pdx.edu/docs/id_handbook.htm

Guidelines for Teaching an Online Course: http://tltc.findlay.edu/onlinesupport/Guidelines/index.html

Teaching Strategies: Online Teaching: http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsot.php

Send me your favorites to post, whether about online teaching or not.

Filed under: 7 principles, course design, education, learning, online learning, pedagogy, student-centered learning, teaching, technology

writing, revising, and a record of it

Thanks to Gardner Campbell for recommending this short, but fascinating, video about one Wikipedia page transformation over time: Jon Udell: Heavy metal umlaut (temporary link until the original one becomes available again). The evolution from single sentence to accepted full page is a good example of how what Udell calls “a loose federation of worldwide volunteers” can commit to creating an honest and valid record of cultural history.

Why would this be interesting to you? Well, it would be a great example to students of the value of editing to produce good quality writing (and Campbell echoes this idea). What if your students were assigned, alone or in groups, to work in a wiki to create a report or write a paper that showed all their revising history? It would be a terrific record for students who generally write over existing text when revising in a word-processing program and lose those previous passages. In one sense, the wiki space allows us to return to that world of manuscripts and handwritten notes that have thrilled students of textual studies for decades. More importantly, it would give today’s digital students a deeper connection to their writing processes and make them better writers and thinkers.

I’d love to hear about your experiments with wikis in your courses.

Filed under: digital literacy, learning, peer review, student-centered learning, wiki

technology for whom?

It’s encouraging to hear that the new administration is calling for “an investment in technology” in education, but what are you thinking when you hear that and how do you put it into action? Too often, as faculty, we don’t go far enough in exploring and utilizing new technologies. Too often we learn new technologies to employ in the classroom–f2f or online–but we don’t look into technologies that our students can work in and learn from, whether they are discipline-specific technologies they will use in their professions or technologies that will sharpen their skills and general comfort level with technology.

That’s why you always hear instructional technologists pushing technologies that require collaboration and interaction among students, and why we encourage the use of what we all may think are everyday technologies. Even if you can’t find a technology that pertains to your field of study, you can use ones that will make students into good digital citizens. What are some of the skills all our students need to sharpen?

• Email etiquette and development. Students need to know good practices for communicating by email, since that is the standard for professional communication today. Did you know that the youngest of our students think of email as a tool for old people? That usually translates into poor writing habits, particularly when students start using SMS shorthand in emails–not appropriate. Such components as subject lines, greetings, closings, and signatures can be addressed in your syllabus–if it sounds like an exercise in letter writing, it is.
• Uploading and downloading documents and all that goes with it. Our students need a good understanding of how to handle document exchange. They are wrong if they think it’s only a process needed at school. You can offer a variety of opportunities to work with documents, particularly if you use Blackboard. Use the Assignments feature and the Digital Dropbox to require uploading; use email to require attachments. Educate your students on how to avoid problems when others view their files, from file formats to good filenaming conventions.
• Make sure that your students have had instruction on how to search effectively and how to evaluate information for validity. Here’s a short video explaining that: 

The next time you are adopting a technology, think about whether it helps you or your students. That’s fine if it’s a tool to improve your teaching, but do you also have enough uses of technology to help improve your studetns’ skills?

Filed under: Web 2.0, digital literacy, student-centered learning, teaching, technology

evolution of clickers to no clickers?

I’m collecting information on how faculty can employ classroom response (clicker) technology on the cheap. Before we buy into a product, particularly one that students have to purchase that are of no use outside the classroom, I think we need to explore using cell phone text messaging or SMS.

Even a top company like Turning Technologies has been moving fast in the direction away from the independent clicker. First they created the anytime, anywhere Response Card Anywhere that you could use on a field trip, and now they have software for your phone–Responseware.

That’s cool, but why payware in a world of freeware?

Then there’s the Open Source Poll Everywhere software that is free for classes of 30 or less. That’s a pretty tight limitation that would only work for a select few classes. I will be trying it out and reporting in a formal document to distribute to faculty.

Here’s a sample poll from Poll Everywhere. The Keyword is the phrase that begins with “cast”:

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

I’m sure that if there’s not one already, that the Apple iTunes App Store will have one soon for free, but then there’s the cost of an iPod Touch or iPhone to deal with, and that’s an even bigger cost.

I’m probably going to suggest a wait and see how it all turns out before we commit to a campus-wide contract.

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In response to the comment, below, I tried a Google form poll (although not with any respondents, yet). They are really easy to make, and you’ll notice in my second question that you could choose other, and that would become part of the class discussion. Alternatively, I could have let the audience type in their “other” response.

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As noted in Chris’ blog description, students would need to be in a computer lab or have individual access (mobile or laptop). In such a situation, I think the Google option is good. I especially like that it is not connected to PowerPoint. I certainly don’t want to promote PPT unless necessary and done very well. Breaking up a presentation/discussion by going to the Google form, seems a good way to keep a variety of actions in a class.

Filed under: Web 2.0, grading, pedagogy, student-centered learning

slide it or write it?

Posting early, because I’ll be in the outdoors tomorrow, inclement weather or not. Count this one for Monday.

I’ve been reading slide:ology, a book about creating great presentations with PowerPoint, instead of the presentations we dread. Created by Nancy Duarte, of Duarte Design, the book has an engaging visual emphasis, and while most of the slide visuals would require a graphic designer, there is an interesting section on organizing elements to indicate the flow of information–with many, many graphic illustrations for just about any organization you can think of: process, hierarchy, flow, data, etc.

The argument is that our listeners are there to hear what we have to say, not to read it on or hear us read it from a slide. I couldn’t agree more, yet, surely there is a difference between an educational lecture and a business speech.

I think we often create PPT slides to replicate what we would write on a board, saving that writing time to discuss the content. We might even have lines of text fly in one by one to simulate how we might have written and stopped to discuss each line. I liked and still like that kind of action in the classroom, because as I’m moving around, writing, pointing to key terms, I serve as a point of reference in the presentation of material, and I think it’s easier to draw in responses from students, maybe because they are not intimidated as by a formally-prepared slide that seems to make pronouncements that students dutifully write down.

How can we recreate that kind of informal, thinking-on-the-fly dynamic of writing on the board in a PPT that is created and edited and beautified long before that moment in the classroom? I’m still looking for that kind of advice.

Filed under: student-centered learning, teaching

should you remove your talking head?

My, that sounds a little painful, but it might be in your students’ best interest.

There’s been an interesting thread on the NMC (New Media Consortium) listserv (please read this post about our membership in the NMC) about whether a talking head in an online presentation–think Presenter or Connect–is a distraction to students/attendees.

[Removed a video of my own talking head for vanity reasons--bad lighting, etc. I was just musing about the value of my talking head in this post. Next time, I'll have my avatar speak.]

One argument cites this research on the eye movement of online viewers: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/video.html If the article research is true that watching is a passive mode, then we should think hard about whether the presence of the speaker’s talking head creates a passive response instead of an active engagement with the presentation content. Of course, if the presentation is recorded, we have to work hard to make it interactive, but at the least, taking notes during the presentation, even if the slides are being copied, is active.

Anecdotally, I have, myself, been mesmerized by a talking head in a recorded presentation and missed some slide material, having to go back once I shook off the trance.

The counterargument refers to lecturers whose dynamic presence positively influences learning, but are we capturing that kind of presence with only a small talking head in a corner module? One post cites Richard Mayer’s The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (2005) as supporting little effect from the small head image. Another post cites and attaches one of Mayer’s articles, “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning” (Educational Psychologist 38(1): 43-52. © 2003, Erlbaum.), which discusses the possibility of cognitive overload in processing material in multimedia environments.

What do you think about all this as you struggle to create presentations? I’m wondering if we can have the talking head come in at appropriate moments–those moments when we might pause in the material and ask viewers a question to make them stop and think. In a recorded session, this could be during a poll or quiz. Or it could be a moment when you ask viewers to write a short response, one of several, all to be submitted to you after the entire presentation.

I’m not ready to say “off with their heads” yet, but neither do I think we should use them without due consideration of their effect.

Filed under: cognition, communication, education, pedagogy, student-centered learning, technology

yes, yes, of course, the desk!

I’ve mentioned many times in this blog that the traditional classroom technology configuration offers a glorified show and tell for the instructor. Generally, there is a computer and projector, maybe a smart board, a DVD player at the head of the classroom in the instructor’s control. The layout of the classroom is still by and large in the old lecture-format layout: rows of desks facing the instructor. So, now instructors can visit website content in class in addition to showing films; they can open documents for whatever reason, perhaps to mark them up as examples of writing; if they have a document camera, they can show details of objects. Where are the students? Still sitting at desks watching the instructor interact with content, still taking notes or dozing off.

I often try to imagine the classroom of the future, and I see moveable desks and chairs, modular arrangements of computers and projection screens, video conferencing equipment that allows for live communication with distant resources. It’s a flexible and changing vision of a classroom.

The Chronicle reports on an innovation I hadn’t envisioned: smart desks! Yes, of course, interactive desks with interactive screens ready to receive tasks for collaborative work. Great idea in the search for effective learning environments.

Some say the classroom of the future is not a physical space at all, but the concept of anytime, anywhere education writ large–it’s everywhere. I see that as a viable concept, but also don’t think that physical space is going away anytime soon. For a while, I think we will be trying to adapt physical spaces to this new world through trial and error, letting in the new and moving around the desks and changing the content of the classroom experience.

In the meantime, if you are dealing with a teacher-centered arrangement of tools, think about how you can collaborate with students, creating tasks that get them up to the front, alone or in groups, to run the show and tell for a while.

Filed under: Web 2.0, collaboration, innovation, student-centered learning, technology

cartoons in higher ed? what’s the world coming to? Updated!

At ToonDoo you can create your own cartoon, as here:

I’m impressed. What I like about a cartoon is that you need to create both a visual scene and an idea (hopefully a funny idea) in a few words and images [this sentence structure was not parallel and really bugged me]. A terrific experience in a writing class, I’d say.

Here’s my second cartoon in the series (I’m a little hooked):

Filed under: digital literacy, student-centered learning

subway lines and random paths of meaning

Don’t know how long this interactive map of subway ends-of-line images will be up on the NYTimes online, so go see it soon.

I find this to be a perfect example of setting up material–in this case images of what you would find at the ends of subway lines in New York–that does not suggest sequential choices, but allows the user to choose random paths in the content, and allows for revisiting the material as desired. One of my interests is in how users make meaning out of content this way and how they reinforce their interpretations based on the paths they choose. For example, does it make a difference to one’s constructed meaning whether one image is viewed before another, and so on? In another example, does it make a difference in what order one reads about historical events to how one determines larger meanings and attitudes about history?

In what sort of controlled environment could we study such questions?

Filed under: cognition, collaboration, communication, computers, digital literacy, hypertext, student-centered learning, technology

what principles drive your use of technology?

Having been an assistant professor or instructor for many years before moving into instructional technology, I am guided by the same principles that guided my instructional pedagogy in the classroom. Here’s what motivated my technology-enabled teaching projects:

• understanding that my role as guide or facilitator would redirect the center of the class toward students
• wanting to shift the work responsibility and choices of action to students through collaborative design
• appreciating the power of ownership students could achieve in their work
• incorporating moments for reflection and feedback
• getting students out of their comfort zones–which is generally the tired research essay
• providing new tools and situations in which students could apply knowledge
• providing projects that were directed at real audiences of readers or users
• respecting and valuing students’ self-evaluation

This is not a new revelation to me, and perhaps not to you; I just wanted to state it. By pigeon-holing instructional technology off in some corner as an unnecessary bells-and-whistles office, institutions stifle innovative pedagogy.

What I hope you see in this list is that we all have the same goals in education, whether teaching face-to-face or online, whether we use technology in the classroom, or out of the classroom, or not at all.

Filed under: Web 2.0, collaboration, education, pedagogy, student-centered learning