February 2011 Archives

One more post from an Educause Learning Initiative session - I had to save this one in Evernote instead of posting right to the blog because the room I was in didn't have a good network connection.

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Duke is hosted an ExperienceIT session about the iPad.  They have had a program since May where faculty and students can borrow an iPad for a week.  They also have a small pool of six iPads for one-off class loans (students share them in teams), some cases where they loan out an iPad for a semester, and two cases where they have permanently granted some iPads to their Global Health and Environmental Sciences program. For faculty, they had some accessory to loans as well, including keyboards and VGA adapters.

The semester-long loans are for purposes like writing in foreign languages, grading papers, programming for the iPad, mind mapping, and studying musical scores.  They tried to accommodate as many requests as they could, but turned down some proposals where the proposed use was the same as a request from someone else.

Each of the week-loaner iPads are loaded from a central laptop with a common set of apps.  They were able to manage this with a single computer since they only had four iPads in the loaner pool.  The semester-long loans come with no apps with the assumption that faculty will want to connect them to their own laptops and load their own apps.

This is an exploratory program with faculty who are used to exploring things, so they didn't have a huge support structure in place.  However, they did form an iPad Users Group that are organized by the IT staff and held on a monthly basis.  They also had an informational page on their IT site and a blog about ongoing experiences using iPads in education.  There were no student training sessions, but there are tutorials on Lynda.com that students could access.  When surveyed, most of the faculty didn't need any support.  A few talked to a local IT consultant, checked the Lynda.com tutorial, or looked up what they needed online.

Here are some of the results of their evaluation: Some of the most common apps were DoodleBuddy, Dropbox, Evernote, iAnnotate, GoodReader, GoogleDocs, Keynote, and Pages.  There is also an attendance app that helps faculty track attendance - that might be useful based on some of the discussions that we've been having with Sherry Robinson about tracking tokens that students can use to skip a class, extend a paper deadline, etc...

Faculty like that it's so portable, using it to read for pleasure, its ease of accessing the Internet, quick on/off, and full-screen access to an app (no distractions).  The dislikes were that they didn't like how complicated it was to load documents, typing, and issues with projection.  Using a document camera is one way of getting around the projection issues.

The people who were most disappointed were the ones who assumed that the iPad is a tiny laptop.  A few commented that they were hesitant about exploring it completely or buying apps because the device is on loan and would have to be given back.  In class, being able to view media and documents and essentially pass those around by handing over the device was a popular use.  It seems like it would be much easier to do this on an iPad than on a laptop.

iAnnotate is a pretty cool app for reading and marking up PDF files for research or grading purposes. Some of their faculty were using specialty apps such as ForScore (Music) and Modality (Medicine).  DoodleBuddy was used to help students practice writing foreign characters, but it could also be used for sketching practically anything. 

In one case, they had two sections of a class, one with iPads and one without.  They found that students with the iPads were more likely to have their materials with them, including drafts of their papers.  Both sections did mind mapping as part of their note taking activity, but those with the iPads were more likely to incorporate the mind maps into their writing.

They have a link for other examples of how faculty have been using their iPads:
http://tinyurl.com/ipad-examples

Great session.  Lots of ideas here about discipline-specific apps and uses of iPads and other mobile devices/tablets. 

Here is a list of the apps that were installed on the loaner iPads.  Some of these have real potential. We may need to catalog a list of apps and example uses in a wiki.

• Dragon Dictation
• eClicker
• iThoughtsHD
• Mendeley
• ForScore
• Doodle Buddy
• Mind Meister
• Noterize
• TeamViewer
• Wolfram
• Sound Recorder Pro
• Sound Note
• TeamViewerHD
• ShareBoard

His central point is that innovations like the Web are disruptive by definition (or else they wouldn't be innovations). Changes like these often cause folk panics that are blamed on folk devils: faceless Others who are "evildoers" that plot to disrupt society. In this case, the folk devils are pirates who are trying to weaken copyright law. If they accomplish that goal, creative work will stop because the financial incentive to create new intellectual works will disappear. He feels that this view is typified by a new article called "Would the Bard Have Survived the Web?", which proposes that Shakespeare and other playwrights of his time created what they did because people build theaters and began charging for entry.

Patry points out that Shakespeare actually borrowed most of the plots, characters, and language from existing works and modified them for his own purposes. As such, most modern lawyers would classify his writing as being derivative works.

Patry proposes that copyright laws have been written from a faith-based initiative. It assumes that people consider things like their control over their work for their lifetime plus 70 years before they decide to produce something. The evidence is to the contrary - creative works appear to be limited by the restrictions that are created by copyright law, whether or not that is the intent of the person who creates the work. [This is one of the reasons that I'm a big advocate for Creative Commons and release the stuff that I create under a Creative Commons license.]

Interesting bit of history: the EU synchronized their copyright laws to a uniform standard of life+70 years, but US law was still life+50 years, so the EU said that they would protect US authors' works to life+70 if we also protected EU writers to that standard. At that point, the US media companies lobbied for the increase to life+70 years.

In any case, most of this is preaching to the choir for me, but then again, we had Lawrence Lessig come to campus to present at the Symposium and I set up the copyright.psu.edu site.

I'm at a session that covers three educational mobility initiatives.

Ohio State is going first.  Their university marketing group has been involved with mobility for a while, starting in 2005 with an old WML service.  Now, they have a mobile web interface for campus information (m.osu.edu) as well as an O-H-I-O app, which helps people take and upload pictures related to their grassroots marketing campaign.  Their Student Life group has been slow to go mobile, primarily because of "analysis paralysis" - web or app, which devices, etc...  instead of just jumping in like their marketing group has done.

Students are involved with their development efforts including doing research, user testing, and participating in design.  To create their app, they are using <a href="http://www.appcelerator.com/"> titanium</a> (converts JavaScript to native code for iOS and Android).

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Abeline Christian University is starting with the idea of maximizing the time that you spend with students in class.  It's like a GPS system - enter the directions at the beginning and then only pay attention to it when prompted.  

They created the Heads Up app.  It helps randomly assign groups and give students prompts for the topic and type of perspective they should take on it, for example "Healthcare Reform" is the topic for the whole class, a perspective like "A Social Ill" or "A Utopian Vision" for the group, and individuals are told what "hat" they are wearing - something like if you have the white hat, you should focus on facts and figures in a logical way, but if you have the yellow hat, you are supposed to approach the topic from an emotional perspective.  At the end of the discussion, there is a quick thumbs up/down feedback mechanism for how the group discussion went.

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Purdue is the final group presenting.  They created Mixable, which is a Facebook app with connections to DropBox, Twitter, YouTube, and Vimeo.  Mixable figures out and sorts what you are trying to share: status updates, photos, links to YouTube videos, etc... Links to online resources become bookmarks that can be seen within a course or across all of your courses.  Students can see a list of their courses and can opt out of a course or decide to follow it and receive all of the course updates.

They set up a site for all of us to use and give this a try:
http://tinyurl.com/elimixable

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Overall, these were great quick-hitting sessions.  We didn't get to go into any of the topics in depth, but at least we have some good leads on some new approaches that we could try.  Seeing all of this work going on makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.  I want it all! 

If I had to pick one of these to try first, I'd probably go for Heads Up.  I think a lot of our faculty would do more peer interaction in classrooms if it were easier to manage in large courses.

This is a session specifically about the Next Generation Learning Challenges program, which is focused on increasing student preparedness for college and their completion rates. They also want to prepare a new generation of people to enter the workforce with the kinds of skills that employers are looking for, including communication skills, problem solving, creativity, how to find and evaluate information, and work in teams. Educause leads this initiative with several other partners, including funding from the Hewlett Foundation and the Gates Foundation.

Wave 1 focused on building blocks for college completion such as open courseware, blended learning, deeper learning and engagement, and learner analytics. They have received over 600 proposals and have gone down to 50 finalists who are working on their final proposals.

Wave 2 launched in January and is still open. Its will be about college readiness for students in grades 7-9 in math and literacy core competency state standards.

Wave 3 is TBD.

They would like anything that is funded as part of the project should be open and available under a Creative Commons license so it can be adopted by others. The other key criterion is assessment to measure success.

One of their key challenges will be figuring out how to disseminate the resulting resources in a way that is discoverable, transferable, and useful to other institutions. I've seen a lot of grant-based projects that are put in the open when they're done, but never go anywhere because there isn't any momentum behind them.

It's an interesting program. I don't know if there is a match between the program and TLT strategy, but I'm definitely interested in looking at what is produced and seeing if there is a match or collaboration opportunity.

GWU is presenting what they have done with lecture capture and the way they deliver their Masters in Project Management program. That program is mainly composed of adults with 16 years of professional work. 60% of their students are taking the course at a distance and about 40% are taking the same courses on campus. [A small portion are taking a combination.]

When they started in 1998, they decided that they didn't want to do annotated PowerPoint because they would lose the faculty's body language, so they started doing studio-based recordings (expensive), then video self-recording (awkward), and finally lecture capture.

Both the on-campus and the distance education students like the lecture capture system and are quick to let the university know if there is a problem with a recording or if something isn't uploaded and available when they expect it. Their system is integrated with iTunesU. Blackboard is used for the typical assignments and communication mechanisms. They also use Elluminate Live to have regular chat sessions that typically happen two days after the lecture is available - which gives the online students enough time to have seen the lecture and come up with questions. Students using Elluminate are required to use a camera and headset so faculty can see the students and students can see each other. These sessions are optional and attended by more online students (80%) than on-campus students (50%).

The seamless integration of Echo360 into their courses is a big plus for them. Faculty don't need to do anything to do the recording or post it online. Their classroom facilities staff don't come to the rooms to work the technology, but they can monitor each room live to make sure that there aren't any technical issues. Generally, faculty don't edit their recordings. Those who want to do it try for a semester and then go back to not reviewing. The one exception is when someone asks the faculty a question during break that is intended to be confidential.

They have pressure-sensitive pads installed on the floors that control the cameras in the room, so if faculty move from one area of the room to another, the two-four room cameras know where they are, can switch to the best video source, and can focus in. They have microphones set up around the room, in the ceilings, so any student speaking can be heard. They ask students to sign a notice so they know that they are being recorded.

Currently, they are set up in five classrooms with plans to expand. They tried doing the personal capture, but students didn't like that as much since it didn't feel like being in the classroom (they had gotten used to seeing the full room). It could be different if a student saw the personal capture version first and had different expectations.

An image from a white board doesn't come across well on the video. They've found that both the online and on-campus students prefer a document camera since the image is a lot clearer.

While I knew a lot about Echo 360 going into this session, it was helpful to see how a real implementation is structured and integrated into other classroom and university-wide technologies.

Edward Gehringer from NC State has been using the Expertiza system and a wiki to have his students collaboratively write their textbook. He made a good point - for profit textbooks are sold based on reviewer testimonials instead of scientific data on the effectiveness of a certain textbook on student learning. He pointed to a study that said that in a certain course, students who bought the textbook did no better than those who didn't. On the other hand, there is a growing body of research stating that students who use a wiki to create their own textbook learn more because of their engagement in the writing process.

The administrative issues involved with students writing their own wiki-based textbook are an issue. The chapters need to be ordered so the foundation materials are ready before the subsequent chapters. Students may need to be assigned to chapters so everyone gets an equal chance of writing essential content instead of being able to choose their topics. Multiple deadlines need to be managed: choosing a topic, submitting a draft, review, etc... Finally, there should be a double-blind review process to eliminate awkward peer interaction.

He had us try Expertiza to sign up for a topic. We had some technical issues logging in, but once we got in, it was an nice system for having students sign up for the topics that they wanted to write about. Expertiza also handles feedback from the instructor, TA, and anonymous peers as well as providing information on how much team members contributed to a project.

When the students actually do the writing, they are editing unique wiki pages in a Mediawiki system, so there is much less likelihood of a problem with simultaneous editing even though he has up to 120 students in his course.

Edward is a professor in Computer Science. One of his courses had a fairly good textbook on parallel computing, but it was thin in some areas and didn't have any information about developments in the field that happened after the publication date. So he had his students write what was essentially a supplemental textbook. At first, students were a little confused about the process. They often found information that was outdated by sticking to the first few results in a Google search. Also, they sometimes wrote about materials that were covered in later chapters of the textbook.

Survey results from the students indicated that they were proud of the work they put into the wiki and understood the topic that they were asked to write upon in greater depth. Students generally thought that the content written by other students was good and the feedback they received from other students was fair. However, they also fel that there was too much rating required in the process.

Some additional thoughts on working with student authors: He did find that plagiarism was an issue, but recommends that you put that into the rating system so it's more likely to be caught and corrected. Students often organize the content of their chapters to parallel the sources that they found, which isn't very helpful since someone might as well read the original source. They get students permission to share their work online and openly so they don't run into legal issues down the road.

The sign-up process is very useful for managing large numbers of students and topics. If you don't have a complete list of topics, you can have students suggest some of their own. He has also used social bookmarking (Delicious.com) to have students track their sources as well as suggest resources for other students.

So overall, some interesting thoughts on managing the construction of a course resource with a large number of students. We may want to look into Expertiza and see if it would be a useful tool for managing student collaboration assignments in large courses. Edward and his team created Expertiza - he said that we can use their instance or download the code and run our own.

I won't summarize Wiley's presentation completely. He has been a speaker at the TLT Symposium in the past and much of what he is saying is related to the conflict between openness in education and copyright law.

He proposes that openness is the only means of education: sharing ideas, giving feedback, getting students to know what you know. I don't completely agree with this characterization of education as a transfer of information, but let's leave that alone for now. The magical thing about ideas is that you can give them away without losing them. This now applies to electronic resources as well. I can share digital copies of anything with anyone (or everyone) without losing it and at no cost.

Some examples of Open Educational Resources:
- OER Commons catalogs open educational resources
- Connections
- Stanford University and iTunes U

Open Courseware (content only):
- MIT
- Utah State
- Johns Hopkins
- Notre Dame

Open Courses (complete with assessment):
- Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative
- BYU Independent Study
- Open High School of Utah

Open Textbooks:
- flatworld knowledge
- CK-12

In most of these cases, there is no teaching program organized around these materials. However, Western Governor's University offers no courses, but high-quality assessments for credit so someone could prove that they know what they need to know and assemble a degree. At University of the People, students take courses together with a lot of peer support and then pay to take an exam when they're ready, the cost of which is on a sliding scale based on an economic measure such as the Gross Domestic Product of their country.

On to the topic of student analytics. Most industries (grocery stores, Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc...) spend a lot of time analyzing the behavior of their users so they can make business decisions and recommendations to their users of the "users who bought this item also bought...". We don't typically do that in higher education despite the user activity information that could be gathered from course management systems.

He showed some examples of tracking student use patterns inside a course management system (daily measures of time spent in the system) and then sorted by their final grade in the course. Visualizing the data that way is a good way to demonstrate the connection between the two. In this case, it is clear that poor students do not log in often and do not spend much time in the system.

There are two things that student analytics would lead to. At the course level, we would be able to see patterns of content use and identify areas that need improvement. On the student level, we could more easily identify students who are falling into failure patterns and intervene early instead of waiting for a failing grade on an assignment.

In the Q&A session, the point came up of giving students access to their own analytic data so they can see how they compare. Good idea, but we'd have to be careful that students don't behave according to the analytics. In this case, we wouldn't want students to log into the course management system and stay logged in just to boost their numbers.

This is just an open discussion of space design - who are we designing for, what do we want people to do in their spaces, how do we want people to feel, etc... Some of their research on what we want to create in 21st century innovators are things like:

• A sense of playfulness


• Creativity


• Flexibility


• Willingness to go against norms


• T-Shaped people: with a depth of specialization in some areas, but a breadth of more general knowledge and skills

It's interesting that you could apply these characteristics to spaces as well as people. I'm reminded of a discussion that I've been having with Cole and Brad about the office space in Zappos and how that relates to their outstanding level of customer service.

One of the interesting things that they have come up with is that learning spaces need to include the ability for students to have time alone. This goes back to the cafe-style design that we discussed during the informal learning spaces group that I ran a couple of years ago - spaces for people to work together at tables in the open, spaces for individuals to work at a kind of bar by themselves, quiet group spaces for private collaboration and practicing group presentations.

Elements of creative environments from "The Creating Brain", which is about about neuroscience and examples of creative environments:

• Freedom, novelty, and a sense of being at the edge


• A critical mass of creative people


• A competitive atmosphere


• Mentors and patrons

Again, an interesting thought with implications for hiring, management, space design, and incorporation of game-like elements in courses and projects. We had some time for discussion at our tables and I mentioned the difference in feel between one of our conference rooms and the faculty fellows lounge. The conference room is great for discussing several operational issues, but if I need to brainstorm or start a new partnership, my preference is for the faculty fellows lounge.

University of Maryland was interested in exploring how students used mobile devices to enhance their educational experience with a specific focus on teaching and learning. They also wanted to see how mobile support could be raised to the enterprise level - which is something we're interested in exploring as well.

In Fall 2008, they recruited a group of 175 students who owned iPhones and iPod Touches (40/60% split). They started with campus navigation, clicker uses, and mobile access to Blackboard. In the second year, they had a set of loaner devices that they loaned out for use to 10 faculty fellows who had submitted proposals on how they expected to use them in their courses. In the third year, they added a Digital Cultures and Creativity program with 55 students in an existing community of students who have classes together (interesting approach that may related to something like our Paterno Scholars). They also added a mobile app programming competition.

Overall, they have had fairly low student participation in ongoing meetings to discuss their use of mobile devices. They are thinking of revising the program to be a 1-credit honors course to put more of a structure around the program and more of an incentive for ongoing participation.

In one of courses, "Information 3.0", (either in year 2 or 3) that integrated iPod Touches into their course, students were asked to maintain a blog on a topic of their choice and use the iPods to record interviews with people who have expertise in that area to post to the blog. They also had to explore different mobile apps. A final project was to explore the use of mobile devices by their peers and report on those results to the rest of the class.

They have a class specific app that aggregates feeds from the university, feeds from the local zip code, class-related tweets, technology-related news, a mobile-friendly HTML page with links to assignments and such, class videos, etc... Very interesting - I could see doing something like this with the globalization program within the Schreyer Honors College instead of creating a web interface for aggregating information about different regions of the world (okay - that was a bit cryptic, but it will serve more as a mental note for myself and Cole will understand what I mean). Ron said that he would be happy to share the code for his app and let other people modify it - WOOT!

URL of the Information 3.0 course:
http://info3pt0.blogspot.com

As part of the Digital Cultures and Creativity project, all of the students got iPads that they use in multiple classes. They were asked to do things like spend 15 minutes researching a topic like "jailbreaking the iPad" and then having a debate about it by the end of class. The student presenter (Victoria Lai) is using multiple e-Reader apps and online periodicals like the Wall Street Journal that the class was asked to read throughout the semester. She also uses a variety of to-do and reminder apps. Interesting - she has a net book as well, but finds herself reaching for the iPad when she needs quick information or to read because it is quicker and more convenient. She is part of a group that is working on a new web site for honors students. She uses her iPad for design meetings as well as to test how the site will look on mobile devices. She is a computer science student who is currently working with a group of students on a project for the mobility contents where they are creating floor plans for university buildings. Overall, VERY interesting to see how use changes when a student is going to keep a mobile device (versus having it on loan), is using it in multiple classes, and is using it along with others in a cohort who have them as well. This may have implications for the iPad project that the Hazleton campus is working on with its honors students.

A few more details about this program. Ron Yaros is the faculty member in charge of the Digital Cultures and Creativity project. It is a two-year project with a focus on people who are doing innovative things online: artists, musicians, game designers, bloggers, etc... Students are asked to bring iPads with them to class. Students are only asked to download free apps. Although students were originally expected to program their own apps, but that is more difficult than originally thought because of the requirements. However, it's a good idea for something like a university-wide mobility contest that would involve a team of writers, programmers, artists, musicians, testers, etc... Ron has found that the iPad is a great common artifact since it lends itself easily to discussions of a broad range of topics from copyright and intellectual property, history, and science.

There has been some negative student media coverage around this project because the university spent money on providing iPads to a select group of students. Students are responsible for replacing the iPad if they lose or break it. If they complete the two-year DCC program, the iPad is theirs to keep. If they leave the program early, they need to either return it or pay for it. There are some technical limitations on the device because it doesn't have a camera or real GPS. However, none of these issues compare to the kind of educational explorations that they've been able to do.

More on the Digital Cultures and Creativity Project:
http://dcc.umd.edu

Although they are Apple-specific now, it appears that all of their pedagogical applications would work on a wide variety of devices such as Android-based tablets. They are planning to extend this program to include all honors students (1000 students) and expect that this program will go away in 3 years as mobile devices become ubiquitous.

Best source for links to all of their mobility information:
http://mobility.umd.edu

Just as a side-note, I'm seeing more people actively using iPads at this conference than their laptops. Considering that they are one year old and the budget issues, that's an amazing indication of penetration, at least within the educational technology mental space.

Eric Mazur, a physics professor, kicked off the annual ELI meeting by discussing the evolution of his teaching practice from lecturer to where he is now, focused on engagement, peer instruction, and synthesis.

He is the author of Peer Instruction: A User's Manual

His process involves the following:

• Brief Presentation


• Concept Test


• Clicker Poll 1


• If the % correct is over 70%, he discusses the answer and moves on to repeat the process


• If the % correct is 30-70%, he has the students talk with their peers and discuss their answers and try to convince them that their answer is correct - after which, he has found that most students figure out the correct answer


• If under 30%, then there is a lack of understanding, so he goes over the concept and gives an easier question

This is a great model that we could definitely try out as part of the clicker pilot. He's using the Turning Technologies clicker. He's modeling this behavior by talking about projectile trajectories in a way that non-physics people can understand - he showed the path of two coins being thrown and asked which coin would hit the ground first. We all answered the question individually and about half got the right answer (although we didn't find out which answer was correct). He had us discuss our answers with someone who disagreed and then answer the question again. In this case, there was still a split, but it definitely got our attention.

He ran through another example about whether it is better to have faculty cover surface details, deep concepts, a balance between the two, or a custom balance based on the course. It really got us engaged in discussion again - after which he said that there was no correct answer - but it didn't matter.

The final question was a factual question about which airway request that passengers use the bathroom before flying to reduce fuel costs. In this case, there is little possible engagement because it is just a fact. He pointed out that this is how clickers have been adopted broadly, but it is probably the worst use for them.

His proof for the impact on learning is interesting. He used to administer the Force Concept Inventory test before and after his introductory physics course with no change before trying the peer interaction model. After implementation, he noticed a marked increase in scores and has been able to repeat this many times over the last 20 years.

His final thought is that it's not the clickers that matter, it's how you use them. I couldn't agree more.

I thought this was interesting.  According to this Pew Internet and American Life report, individual blogging activity among teens has dropped from 28% to 14% - probably because of the rise of social networking sites like Facebook.  It makes me think more about our discussions of asking students to create and maintain their individual blogs instead of participating in collective blogs.

To me, online activities that aren't connected to a social network feel a bit like a computer that is not connected to the Internet.  [In this case, I know this is an individual blog, but I also know that other people are going to read it - plus notes here get reposted to Facebook.]

I haven't blogged much recently because of changes in my work life, but I thought it would be better to get in the habit of making quick posts than not posting at all.  In any case...

We've been talking a lot about the videos we produce and how to make them more accessible.  This video is a funny way to illustrate why you can't simply rely on automated captioning services: