Web 2.0, Gaming and Mobile Computing

(Joel’s notes disclaimer: even though we may have been sitting together, I might have not been at the same presentation )

Session summary: featured presentation that described the growing “virtual” world of distributed, social, and collaborative sharing, education, work, and play.

Main take-aways: the world-wide web is not, in fact, world-wide (yet), and, for it to succeed as a connecting mechanism, it needs to be. As things accelerate, they become smaller (“micro-content”), and perhaps we need to guard our ability to slow down so we don’t lose the “big picture.” The conceit of technology is that it works; the wonder of technology is that it works. This new model of distributed, collaborative production requires new negotiations around how we survive (could it be time for another conversation about socialism and capitalism?).

Shared resources: http://www.nitle.org/, http://www.nitle.org/www/site/staff/bryan_alexander, http://b2e.nitle.org/

“Using Faculty Learning Community to Support Collaborative Online Course Development”

Session summary:  presenters described a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) created with a 6-faculty Nursing Dept.

Main take-aways: 

• programmatic development vs. course development — is this an even better idea as we’re trying to build collaborative communities of practice, increase adoption and ownership (buy-in), and use our resources more efficiently?
• sooner rather than later, we should gather student feedback on what they would like to see offered online, how it should be offered, and other questions to help us address their wants and needs
• we should seriously consider explicitly involving librarians in course development (and certainly in programmatic development) — in addition to finding resources, perhaps they could help with organization, media, and copyright clearance?
• best predictors of success seemed to be setting clear goals, creating a good timeline, having regular and relatively frequent check-ins, and working with goal-oriented community members
• could we fund programmatic development more easily? Grants? Professional development funds?  Dept. budget?  (I know, the only real possibility there is “Grants”
• idea that faculty didn’t want to “be students” and wanted, instead, to particpate in a collaborative community of learners — Faculty Learning Community > Learning Community — same consideration needed for students

Resources: Articulate, Center of Online Learning, Miami University, Beth Dietz-Uhler and Andrea Han

“Fulfilling the Need for Real-Time Interaction in the Online Environment”

Session summary:  group of instructors from PCC demonstrated their success with Elluminate.

Main take-aways: 

• the time has come to offer tech tool support via Connect/Elluminate/etc.
• online meeting rooms can be a student-to-student resource, as well as a resource for instructors (assuming student interaction is logged)
• Elluminate may deal with slower connections (56k) better than Connect

Resources: http://www.slideshare.net/secret/sDBUAQbQqC3HK

“Herding Faculty Toward Online Standards”

I’m sitting in on a session titled “Herding Faculty Toward Online Standards” and simultaneously trying to write a blog post about it. I started out typing bulleted notes (by the way, apparently there are reasons to do this) but can’t figure out how to nest them, so, instead, I’ll try to write a “normal” (in quotes because I don’t know what’s normal in blogging) post.

The first point made that really resonated with me was that folks helping faculty teach online should really be teaching online themselves. Duh, I know, but I’m not currently doing so, and I think I need to be to better help the faculty I work with. Our DL department could be offering a number of online courses, including:

• online course development
• online student orientation and study skills
• tech literacy (educational/professional portfolio creation — blogs?)
• “cross-over” subjects, such as learning/teaching on the web, writing online, etc. (toe-stepping alert, so we’d procede carefully, of course)

Incentivizing professional development.. can we afford to do this (or to not do this)? I think our best bet will be to build in immediate rewards for instructors who partake in our workshops and peer-review processes, specifically a quality course that’s ready to teach. There will need to be a discussion, I think, about this investment by faculty, and we’ll need to ensure that the time we spend results in resources that can be helpful for everyone. How can we build into the course development process products that can feed back into the course development process for other faculty?

What about team-teaching for all first-time online instructors? First term, you co-teach with another, more experienced instructor. The next term you’re on your own. The third (fourth? fifth?) term you mentor another, less experienced instructor. The feedback loop is completed, and you’re free to get back to work

(I better post this now to make sure I’m proceeding as I should. I’ll hopefully open this up for editing later. Okay, I’m back!)

These presenters have built in, perhaps as an extension to their faculty development model, an online student tutorial system. We’ve talked awhile in DL about how student support and faculty support should inform each other (reciprocity ftw!), so this could be a way to connect the two more clearly.

It seems evident to me that there is a lot of subjectivity involved in course design, especially while we’re still in the web-page-design phase (eventually students will be choosing designs for themselves, while we just provide the content and course-work structure… right?). I think the best approach continues to be, “I’m here to help you do what you want, and, if you don’t have something in mind, here is a tool set for your consideration.”

www.yc.edu/tels

I’m kind of coming around full-circle here, but I’m hearing (imagining?) too much “getting faculty to do what we want,” which I see as similar to too much “getting students to do what we want.” As was mentioned in this morning’s session, respect is fundamental if this endeavor is going to work.

(Interesting [to me] thought that has reoccurred this week: everyone is very interested in URLs and tool-names. Isn’t this an outmoded way of thinking? Shouldn’t we just get the general idea, or at most write down the name, and then, if we want, go Google it or find this on the ITC site?)

 

 

“Successful Community College Online Faculty”

We started with reminders of how much time and effort online education takes, for both teachers and students.

Online faculty training and certification: 4 hour Bb training followed by 3 week Online Pedagogy course followed by 7 week “shadowing” a current online course. There would be certainly be concern if we tried to “implement” this — it would have to be faculty driven. Has this been the non-starter at our school?

Support services for presenters organization include 24/7 tech support, ongoing tech training, cool tips (job aides, 3 per semester) for faculty, hot tips for students, f2f tech help on campus, handbook, online faculty lounge (Connect), online student center (Connect), proctoring services (for those “who feel they need to hold on to the exam”)… whatever faculty asks for.

Idea that we can find a model for a successful online instructor/course by interviewing college instructors. Perhaps we need to first ask who faculty at our school would recommend, and go from there? Successful faculty + QM-type process = college training program? Presenter shared some of the responses they gathered (is this available online? I’ll include if I find).

It occurs to me that there is difficulty (that always comes with standardizing evaluation?) in collecting data on what works online, but we have to try. I’m going to try to remember to ask folks who have more experience than I do about this.

It’s people! It’s made out of people!

These ideas of open-source, social networking, folksonomy, and student-centered learning make me think that the classroom model – both virtual and traditional – are no longer necessary. Perhaps it’s not because we had school campuses and structures that we succeeded in developing relationships with our instructors, other students, and the content, perhaps it’s despite having school campuses and structures these relationships occurred. Are these relationships fundamental, maybe even the most important part of education? If not, then what? If content is no longer king (and of course, like the English, we still give content deferential treatment and have furnished it with some nice palaces), then what rules? Let’s hope we do.

So, anyway, what if we gave each student and each instructor a Moodle shell to do with as she pleases? Rather than a shell-per-class, instructors could create groups within their shell and run all their courses in the same instructor-based site. Students could copy-and-paste resources from instructor sites into their own sites, and even serve as a resource for instructors (if they wanted) on finding resources and using them in an online environment. This is really the portal idea all over again, but we don’t have a portal, and we don’t have an easy way of linking to our database to synchronize user accounts yet. I think it is fundamental to education that the tools we provide students are as inexpensive as possible, since an assumption is that most people don’t have a lot of money (is that right?). This leads to open-source, which also immediately challenges the distinction between producer and consumer, which I think is a healthy thing after having grown up in a consumer-culture.

Hmmmm.

“Cool Idea, But How Did It Really Work?”

Session summary: Gill Creel, English Instructor and Director of eLearning at his organization, showed us his progression in online education. He maintains a site which can be found by entering “Gill Creel” into Google (or checking the reference link below). On his site he lists the tools he uses, along with notes on settings and tips he’s found most useful.

Main take-aways:

• Gill no longer writes responses on student papers, he records his feedback as a sound file and makes that available to each student. His argument for doing this was that, while students can read faster than they can listen, he can talk faster than he can write, and he has hundreds of papers to grade!
• Another take-away was that web-design may be shrinking in relevance, since we’re more interested in gathering, organizing, and sharing information than we are figuring out how best to present it. Compelling, but do we need to be wary of divorcing form and function as we move ahead with distributed content generation?
• Suggested that online chat be limited to 30 minutes, both because it’s more manageable and because it’s better to leave students wanting more (the students could continue on without you too, if you left the chat room open).
• Funny student comment: “I knew this was an online course, but I didn’t know it was going to be this online!”
• Finally, Gill has given up on Diigo as a tool he’s going to use with students. It sounds like the WWW isn’t quite ready for it (bummer).

Resources: http://home.minneapolis.edu/~creelgi/

“Creating Video… Don’t Be Blinded By the FLASH!”

Session summary:  Prof. Steve Anderson, USC Sumter, shared his process for creating screen-capture video with narration. 

Main take-aways: 

• a free online tool called “JING” that acts like Snagit and Camtasia. 
• pausing before speaking, between transitions, and after mistakes helps when later editing out the errors
• sometimes Steve will use a “talking head” for an intro, but quickly removes it (or forgoes it altogether) because it’s distracting from content and people stop watching it
• PowerPoint markup via “start inking” — ramifications for math?

Resources:   JING, Techsmith, stevea@sc.edu