November 2008 Archives

I just finished watching the trailers for the upcoming Star Trek movie and it started me thinking about how you sell a vision. ST is all about the promise of the human race, along with all it's pitfalls and challenges. The original series was considered a flop of sorts. It was not until the next decade, when other viewing options opened up - an animated series, reruns of the original series, and movies - that the Trek phenomena truly began.

I sometimes feel were still at that early "people just don't get it" stage when it come to education technologies. We need to sell many visions, and do it over a long enough period of time that the visions sink it, take root, and sprout new ways of doing things.

Fortunately, we now have the tools to do that. We have  multi-channel ways to reach our audience, and we are taking advantage of some of them. Yet to cut through the noise of information that bombards us, I wonder if that's enough. We easily reach the innovators and early adopters because they are looking for us.

What about the rest? How do we reach the early majority, the people who probably will try new things with a little convincing? PR campaigns, sponsoring innovative faculty to present to other faculty, etc. are all good, but seem to have limited effectiveness.

What are we missing here? How do we better reach faculty, share a vision, and encourage them to use education technologies to improve teaching and learning? Hollywood has fancy movie trailers and lots of people to sell their vision and reach their audience affectively; higher ed. doesn't, but we are not without some resources and clever people. What are we missing utilizing out of our bag of magic?

Working on a major initiative at Penn State is an exciting challenge. It is also sometimes frustrating. My main peeve? Lack of communication from other people/organizations I have to work with and coordinate schedules. I have to constantly send out reminders, ask for status updates, phone people, etc.

Now some of that is just how it is, and things happen that hamper communication flow, but the bulk of it is because people are either lacking communication skills, or just don't care. Everyone I've working with and talked to cares deeply about their work and PSU, so it must be the former.

After a meeting where all agree that we'll dig up some info and inform the others within a specific time frame, is it too much to expect everyone to honor that agreement?

What can be done here? Good notes during a meeting that indicate what you are to communicate, when, and to whom would help. Share your notes afterwards. Sharing a common time line would help. Pushing these "to-dos" out to your calendar would be a big help.

Lack of communication is always the #1 issue facing organizations today. Let's start using all this wonderful technology to assist us here, reducing the noise between sender and receiver.

BTW - Here is the Shannon-Weaver Communication Model. From 1947 no less. Still seems relevant today!

I had an interesting morning chat with Dave Stong of ETS about the changing nature of e-Portfolios. He asked me what was different about them from the ones that have been around for some time.

My immediate thought was that an e-Port is no longer a one-way communication channel. You can set your e-Portfolio so people can comment on what you post and chat about.

My second thought was that an e-Port can provide a more holistic view on an individual. It's not just about the stuff you produce, it's also the journey you took to get there. You may write about your personal life and how it shapes you.

The ability to show who you are, not just what you can do, and the ability for others to chime in and start conversations are for me the most obvious changes that is happening in this space.

Then our conversation drifted into how e-Ports for students can be domain-specific. Each discipline has a unique set of things they expect to see in an e-Port. How can a unit like ETS possibly hope to know all these domain-specific conventions? We can't. Instead, we need to rely on content experts in a domain to guide students in that domain in the development of their e-Port. ETS is making headway here by testing a simple model out. We're bringing in a grad student, providing the needed technical skills training so he can use and teach others the tools available at PSU for creating e-Ports, then sending him back to his department/college so he can work directly with faculty to diffuse these innovations. I have high hope for success of this model, and hope we can replicate it in many places.

What about involving business and industry here? What do they look for an an e-Port? I don't know what efforts at PSU are underway to assist students so their e-Ports will mesh with prospective employer's expectations, but it is a critical need.

Then another turn in the conversation led to student awareness of how their e-Port might be used to drive college and university agendas forward without their knowledge. For example, a student's e-Port, if in public space, might be used by colleges for accreditation purposes. In this case, would the student even be aware of it? Should they be? The obvious answer for this particular example is "It's in public space." and thus is open for this use. Hopefully we'll soon have a private space option for blogs and students can easily be made aware of the differences between the two spaces, and when they can and should use one versus the other.

There is a larger issue here of university use of student creations/assets without their knowledge. As far as I know PSU policies cover this, but I wonder about the field of higher education in general - who's guarding the door?

So, over the next several weeks I'll be adding to this space, transferring some things from the old site, and adding new things. This ties into a charge from John Harwood, the Senior Director of Teaching and Learning with Technology with Information Technology Services at Penn State to me to update my resume, and a related movement at Education Technology Services for all staff to tie their professional development, in part, to this space.

It should be an interesting journey, and one I invite you to take with me! Help me reinvent Brett Bixler. As I add things here, please take some time to comment on the information I place. Help me clarify things, and position myself as a leader in the field of education technology. I'll be busy here too, posting my thoughts on instructional design, the initiatives I'm working on, etc. Being an effective instructional designer means being humble, so I'll take your good, bad, and ugly comments in stride in an effort to improve my outward appearance. I'm feeling a bit scruffy here - time to polish my act!