Cole Camplese

Don't miss this meet-up for Higher Ed professionals - Saturday, 3/10, 3:30-4:30 p.m., AT&T Conference Hotel, Salon A.

Higher Ed attendance at SXSW continues to grow each year, and we're excited you're here. At this meet up sponsored by The Pennsylvania State University, edu technologists from Penn State invite you to network, share ideas, swap stories, and hear what colleagues from across the academy are accomplishing in the Higher Ed tech space.

Join fellow Higher Ed SXSW attendees ... we'll bring the food, you bring the conversation. See you there!

A couple of years ago I outlined an idea for the staff at Education Technology Services that would allow for mini sabbaticals. The idea was met with lots of nodding and lots of questions -- it was fairly simple ... you share an idea and how much time you need to work on it and I figure out a way to turn you lose with it. The only caveats were that it couldn't be more than a week and you had to come back with a product to share. Lots of people threatened to actually take me up on the offer, but in the end exactly zero people did.

I always wondered why. I still don't know. Maybe it is time to dust off the idea?  I was reminded about it after reading, NPR tries something new: A day to let managers step away and developers play.  I really wonder what would happen if we twisted it so it wasn't about some sort of structured approach and instead something more like what NPR is doing?

NPR is experimenting with something called “Serendipity Day,” wherein everyone on the technology side abandons their day jobs to work on…whatever they want. Bugs that need squashing, scratches that need itching — the ideas that never get to the top of a to-do list. The managers step back, available only if the workers need anything. (I need a designer, I need a room, I need a bagel.) The only rule: In the end, you have to share your work.

“It turns out that that one day of pure, undiluted autonomy has led to a whole array of fixes for existing software, a whole array of ideas for new products, that otherwise had never emerged,” Pink says in the talk. He argues that motivation derives from autonomy, mastery, and purpose: the desire to control one’s own destiny, to get better at something, and to serve a greater good.

(Via NPR tries something new: A day to let managers step away and developers play » Nieman Journalism Lab.)

Clearly we'd have to do some planning, just as NPR has done, but I wonder what kind of participation I would see in my own organization. Seriously, it is a great idea and I wonder if I'd have any takers?

I have been in my role as senior director of Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State since November 15, 2010 and in those nine months I have been working to better understand the organization both in terms of its external requirements and the overall internal dynamics. I feel very lucky across several dimensions in that I have a great leadership team in place that has rolled up its sleeves with me to help explain the various functions inside their own units and who have also embraced this idea that we have a real opportunity to rethink how we work together.  Another critical factor at play here is that I still have access to the person who built this organization and was a huge driving factor in the creation of such a robust teaching and learning with technology ecosystem here at the University.  What that affords me is an opportunity to grow into my role and have people to lean on in all directions -- it has been critical as I work each day to better understand the overall depth and breadth of TLT and its overall role here at the University.

As part of this process I challenged my leadership team to come together and help me rethink the way we work together and present ourselves to both the on and above campus audiences we serve. I've pressed them into the idea that we can no longer do what we need to while being a handful of individual organizations -- we need to think, talk, and act as one TLT. This idea, that we are better together than as separate and vertical organizations is something I believe very strongly in. My push is that we need to see ourselves as a horizontally integrated organization -- an organization where our teams leverage the talents across the lines of the individual groups. I say this because I truly believe TLT has been constructed in a very intelligent and thoughtful way .. we are an organization that has each piece of the puzzle as it relates to envisioning, implementing, and supporting large and small scale technologies that influence teaching and learning.  What I mean is that we have a value chain of sorts in place that allows us to actively investigate new and emerging technologies and practices with an incredible amount of agility in Education Technology Services, we have the ability to install, manage, shape, and support all that activity in both physical and virtual ways through the Classroom and Lab Computing team, have the ability to drive adoption and appropriate use of technology through Training Services, and can work to communicate much of it on the web through standards-based accessible web presences powered by WebLion.  These organizations need to compliment one another as we work to deliver the kinds of services our audiences need and want.  They need to act as One TLT.

This perspective, when implemented, allows for our project teams to organize around successful implementations in ways we may not have considered in the past.  As a recent example, when we set out to replace our student response system, we didn't just turn to one of the organizations to make a technology decision, we assembled a team that included not only purely technical people who focused on the integration issues, but also an instructional designer to investigate and document teaching practice, a trainer to construct training opportunities from the start, and communication people to share progress openly as we drove towards selection and implementation. Sounds simple -- and it is conceptually, but the act of actually making that the new framework in how we do work is the complicated thing.  We can't live in a world where any one of the organizations within TLT does its own thing from end to end -- end to end requires the skills only available when you look across TLT from a horizontal perspective.

This is also true in the way we need to begin to represent ourselves as well. One of the things we have done every year I have been a part of this organization is write an annual report. Typically the responsibility to construct the report would fall directly on the shoulders of the director in each of the primary groups. What this meant was that the report read more like four or five different reports under one cover page. This lead to some strange reporting -- CLC and ETS would both report on projects they were involved in (like the Media Commons) and often times the data shared might be slightly contradictory and tell two different stories. What we set out to do this year was much different -- we wanted the report to represent our thinking as it related to TLT. It honestly took quite a bit longer than I expected to work through the thinking, but in the end I am left very proud of what we developed and I believe it will be the blueprint that much of our work will follow over the next couple of years. Last year's report was nearly 140 pages, this year's report is 23 in total. (What follows is mostly for me, so I can capture the process of creating it while it is still relatively fresh in my head.)

Several months ago I started the conversation about the annual report with the TLT leadership team and we all agreed we wanted something that could more effectively speak to who we were as a collective.  Our first step was to take the 140 page report and break each headline into a blog post. Each post included the title of the section and a short description of the initiative.  The blog gave us a multipage digital representation of a static document.  We fully intended to use that as a platform to allow all of TLT to vote on the most important initiatives to form the basis of the report.

Bu once the blog was in place and we looked at it, something different ended up happening. I walked into my colleague, Derek Gittler's office and he had taken every headline and placed them on sticky notes. He even color coded them based on what I'll call the organizational owner.  We looked at it and were at once shocked at the overlap and the emergence of themes. I was able to easily construct a handful of themes that highlighted what our largest and most impactful initiatives are. Within the hour we had taken the blog built around what should be a hidden org structure from our report and turned it into a thematic representation of TLT.

Once the themes emerged, I was able to assemble a Keynote presentation for the leadership team so we could drive towards consensus as a team. The presentation outlined the themes and how our projects and initiatives come together to tell an amazing story of the organization. A story that allowed us to share short details about how TLT focuses intense energy around:

• Teaching, Learning, and Collaborative Spaces
• Collaborative Platforms for Teaching and Learning
• ANGEL and the Future of the Course Management System
• Enriching the Community
• Engaging the Community
• TLT Events
• TLT Research and Assessment
• The Future of the Web
• Conservation in TLT

The themes turned into a series of wiki pages that the leadership team constructed from the outline from the whiteboard. From there the leadership team took a couple of days to gather the appropriate data from each item and write it up in the wiki. I was able to leverage the wiki and write the final report, with narrative in less than 24 hours. Once the communication team did the editing the report came together remarkably fast -- after the months of preparation and discourse.

I know it seems almost silly, but for the first time I can look at TLT and see how we work together to provide services and opportunities that truly supports our mission to guide the University in the appropriate use of technology to enrich teaching and learning. When you read through the TLT Annual Report for 2010 I hope you can see that what we are attempting to do is provide not only a new way to communicate our accomplishments, but a new willingness to address our own organizational framework to better serve those who depend on us the most. Maybe taking a few months to craft an annual report seems extreme, but in this case I honestly feel the work that we did here will provide the foundation for how we work together going forward. It is something I am very proud of.

Now that I am back from a week acting as faculty in Educause's Learning Technology Leadership Program I have been thinking quite a bit about the things that went on around me. You'd almost think as faculty I wouldn't expect to get much out of the experience. I can say that is so far from the truth. In reality I ended up learning more during the week in a leadership role than I have in quite some time.

One of the things I learned (or was reminded of) was what it was like to be the new person in the group. Out of the seven faculty I was one of only two that hadn't been in that role before. I had forgotten how difficult it was to step into that situation ... I am not used to working so hard to find common ground around things I am experienced with. I'm not saying I was on the outside looking in, but I did need to work harder to establish my voice with the group. Upon reflection it has me thinking quite a bit about how hard I need to work to understand this with regard to other people when they are in that situation. Just something I need to spend extra energy on and intend to.

When it was time to work with the team I was assigned to mentor I made a real effort to engage them where they were. I wanted to find a way to ignite some real opportunities to get into the depth of the conversation with them ... I sort of let go of the perceived power position that an Institute like this creates between faculty and participants. I spent a lot of time working to be available to them -- where, when, and how they wanted me to be. I enjoyed their questions and I really appreciated their approach to a very stressful and demanding experience. The participants are put into teams to create a compelling solution to a large institutional challenge over two and a half days. Needless to say it can create a lot of stress for the teams. I took it on to help alleviate that stress by being available to coach them when they needed it. It lead to an amazing few days of work and discovery with some very smart and engaged people. A real treat!

My Team

What I have figured out over the last couple of days was that I needed to do that to overcome my initial feelings of discomfort with my faculty role. I needed to find a way to deeply engage when I wasn't immediately able to do that in my other role. I need to remind myself that my role in situations like the Educause context (and ones across my job at PSU) is one that exists in many dimensions. Finding ways to engage where I could allowed me to energize myself to participate in a more holistic way. Doing one well, lead to new energy and confidence to go after the other areas.

I believe now more than ever that it is critical to listen to your own complaints and work to overcome them. That was something I said to the participants in a faculty panel where we were asked to talk about the things we've learned as we've grown into our leadership positions. I said that early in my career at the University that I was malcontent quite a bit and it wasn't until I started to find ways to address my own complaints on my own terms was I able to participate more completely. As an example, I used to complain that I never got to work with faculty who were motivated to do great things -- that was true until I started to use down time to discover who they were and work to make meaningful conversations happen. Understanding how to address your own complaints is a skill that I believe to be critical as you move through an environment like higher education.

I'll close by saying that I'd like to find ways to engage with people around here a bit more like we did at the event last week. I loved the opportunity to informally talk to the participants about their work and about my own experiences. I learned quite a bit about myself and those around me ... sort of a shame I had to go to Portland to do it. That doesn't mean I can't do the same back home. With that in mind I'll leave an open invitation to get together and talk -- doesn't have to be formal on any level, just looking to find a way to get closer to this around me. Any takers?

I have been trying some new communication tools for the last several months.  Two in particular that I am finding a great deal of value with are Yammer and Diigo.  While both of these tools are social tools and are very similar to other platforms I take advantage of, they seem to be supporting slightly different kinds of work for me.  This is not a call to arms per se, but it is an attempt to introduce them to a wider audience and to see if having more people in the mix drives more utility for me (and us).

This is really about trying to stay better connected in my new position with those in and around TLT at Penn State.  Not that I am not using these tools with people outside TLT, because I am, it is that I do think there area handful of affordances with these spaces that need to be better understood and explored.  Both of these tools are also things I have been working with my peers at PSU to adopt in our senior leadership team for very similar reasons, but the key reasons are to help our group stay more easily and efficiently connected and aware of daily activity.  I'll try to share a bit about why I am interested in exploring these spaces and would ask for your feedback about how and why you might want or not want to participate.

Yammer

I have had a Yammer account for a couple of years, really from right after they hit the scene. As a very early twitter and facebook adopter the idea of a social stream application made sense to me.  When I first started using yammer what didn't make sense was the need for yet another social network -- a closed one at that.  I just didn't see the value.  My job allowed me to freely write, podcast, broadcast, etc really anything I felt like so hiding updates in a closed network provided zero value.  Since starting in my new position that need has changed for a few reasons.

The first is that I oversee staff in lots of places across PSU -- here at University Park and at various campus locations throughout the Commonwealth. This poses an amplified challenge for me in that I am collocated with less than a third of the staff that makes up TLT.  Whereas when I was director of ETS I could almost yell down the hall and connect with about 85% of the staff, that just isn't in the cards now.  The other, and perhaps bigger reason, is my own temporary need to be more guarded with blog posts about organizational discussions.  This has nothing to do with hiding my thinking out of fear, it has almost everything to do with simply not yet fully understanding the boundaries of my new position.  As it did with ETS, the level of understanding will emerge with time.  Clearly I am still blogging (as this post proves), I am just doing it far less and with less open organizational thinking. Yammer may prove a safe place to test my voice.

At any rate I am giving Yammer a fresh try.  I have created two new private groups -- one for TLT and one for the ITS SLT.  As one might expect with such a new endeavor, I am seeing uneven participation in each but am very encouraged by how it is connecting some important dots for me (especially in the SLT context).  Those that are participating are helping me see the bigger picture each day -- and I have to admit that seeing what they are up to and up against is somehow both very interesting and encouraging.  I get to see short bursts of information throughout the day that helps inform me and keep me pressing towards our shared vision of what our organization is all about.  What I am hoping to arrive at is the right mix of tools that can drive towards a more collaborative and engaged TLT organization over time.  I would love to have everyone in TLT join the PSU TLT group in yammer so we can explore if that goal is attainable in part by taking advantage of this shared online space.

Diigo

I started taking Diigo seriously back in November or December when the much hyped demise of Delicious was leaked across the web.  Again, Diigo was something I have had an account at for years but didn't find enough interest in the environment because it didn't offer anything compelling over the large, connected network that delicious did.  That changed when I invited members of the SLT into a private group and started to see posts show up regularly from my boss.  This allowed me to gain some critical insight into the kinds of things that captures his attention, and with diigo's advanced annotation tools I could see the exact pieces of the articles that he found interesting.

Like yammer I then created a TLT group that I have watched grow in both membership and posts.  What has blown me away has been the depth and substantive nature of conversations that have emerged with diigo itself.  In a lot of ways it has become an active sub-community where we share content, thinking, and ideas related to the things we are collectively exploring.  I like that quite a bit.  Again, what I would love to see are more people asking to join from across TLT so we can open the conversation up to more activity.  I honestly want to know what it looks like when I can stay current with what people across TLT are finding both interesting and relevant enough to annotate, save, and share with their colleagues.

I remain convinced that the easier and more efficient we make it to stay connected and share the stronger an overall organization we can become.  I have been amazed with the collective intelligence of TLT whenever I have a chance to be in a room with members of our group -- the problem is that the realities of time and location keep us from assembling like that very often.  Using both yammer and diigo have given me a new chance to stay engaged, albeit in different ways as before, with people across the University.  It has also allowed me to share things and generate new forms of conversations. It is all very interesting and exciting to me.  Anyone else feel like joining in?

The infographic below has been making the rounds and I thought it was worth sharing it and a couple of quick thoughts. Now that the weather is starting to shift into sunnier days I wanted to think about a simple way to create an even slightly healthier workplace by doing two simple things -- walking and standing meetings.

I visited the WebLion team a couple of months ago to be a part of their staff meeting and was struck by a couple of things -- the efficiency of the meeting and that no one was sitting down. I know they are related, but I hadn't been part of something like that before and I really liked it. Figuring our how to pull this off more often would be an interesting move forward.

The other notion is that of the walking meeting. Why on earth do we all live in our offices through every single one of our meetings? I did quite a few walking meetings last summer and will be starting them back up. These are especially effective in small numbers -- typically one on one meetings. When you add simple tools like an Android or iPhone with apps that record you can be active, get things done, and have a record of the conversation.

At any rate, the graphic below has me thinking that we need to think more about how we can take advantage of opportunities to move our bodies as we do the work of the University. Are people doing this now and have success stories?

The 2011 Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology was held Friday and Saturday, March 25-26, 2011. On the 25th, our keynote speaker, Clay Shirky, met with several Penn State faculty members from the colleges of Communications, Liberal Arts, and IST, as well as the University Libraries. This was a casual conversation among peers on the topic of community engagement.

Also on the 25th, the Media Commons held a seminar on transmedia and education. Evening activities included a dinner in honor of the keynote at the Carnegie House as well as several "food for thought" casual dinners around town.

The Symposium took place on Saturday, March 26, at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. Vice President and Dean of Undergraduate Education, Rob Pangborn, introduced our keynote speaker, Clay Shirky. Approximately 410 faculty, staff, and students attended the event. The day featured 23 faculty-led presentations, four roundtable discussions, and a packed panel on student and faculty expectations of technology and education. Additional activities included "birds of a feather" lunch tables, a hands-on demonstration area, and a publisher demonstration room featuring Barnes & Noble, Cengage, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson. Several sessions are available on the TLT YouTube page.

We experienced a phenomenal amount of back-channel conversation. Attendees at the event, and from other locations, contributed to the dynamic discussion by posting comments on Twitter, pictures on Flickr, blog posts, etc. by using the Symposium tag, tltsym11.

We will continue to update the Symposium site (http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/) throughout the year with session recordings, the keynote address, and the student panel. The 2012 Symposium will take place on March 24 and will once again be held at the Penn Stater. Erin Long remains the overall chairperson for the 2012 event. Hannah Inzko will be the new program chair.

Highlights

• EVERY Penn State campus AND college was represented in attendance figures!
  First time this has happened!


• More attendees than ever before remained throughout the day


• So much so that the last session was well over capacity and break area packed


• The student panel at the end of the day was very well received


• The break area was crowded and a constant hot spot for informal conversations and networking opportunities


• The hands-on demonstration area drew a constant crowd

Hands On Area

• One-Button Studio
• VoiceThread
• University Libraries Search Tool
• CMS
• NBC Learn
• iPod/Location App

Social Media Use

• Several blog posts on Blogs@PSU platform. See Penn State Voices page with tag "tltsym11"


• Over 400 photos tagged and shared. See Flickr photos tagged "tltsym11"


• Constant Twitter stream and backchannel communication

Survey Highlights

• 129 responses


• Keynote speaker, Clay Shirky was very well received (4.5/5)


• Student panel was second highest rated (4.2/5)


• The pocket guide scored well rather than a full printed guide and folder combo. This was a green effort that many people noted their appreciation of.


• 53% of respondents used the tltsym11 tag to view/share content


• 43% used Twitter to stay connected


• 33% wrote blog entries


• While not a choice, several others responded that they posted to Facebook and YouTube to stay connected throughout the day

From Dave Test related to Lynda.com at PSU:

I just thought I'd add that the free lynda.com iOS apps also work with our site agreement with Lynda. On iPad, launch the app, tap "web portal login," type psu.edu in the URL field, and tap submit. When WebAccess appears, login with your access account. On iPhone, launch the app, tap "log in," tap "web portal access," type psu.edu, in the url field and hit the Go button on the iPhone keyboard. When WebAccess appears, login with your access account. Lynda.com looks particularly good on the iPad screen, and with video mirroring on the iPad 2, you can output the content to a monitor or projector.

I watched Dave do this the other day and couldn't help but think about the future of training.

I was doing some morning reading and came across this post illustrating just how much things can change over a period of ten years. I can only imagine what the next ten years will bring for us a global society.

In my own life there has also been huge change in the last ten years. If I take a few minutes to reflect on it I am a bit astonished by it all. Both of my children were born during the past decade ... That in an of itself has been beyond transformative. My personal life has been enriched by new friends and colleagues. My wife and I have had a wild ride trying to come to terms with parenthood and we are stronger today then we were ten years ago.

I've worked at Penn State for all ten of those years, and have tried to make the most of the environment by building my own research agenda, learning how to manage organizations, and teaching both undergraduates and graduate courses. I've had several jobs over that time, moving to the College of IST right before 2000 where I eventually became the director of the IST Solutions Institute. In 2005 I left IST to become the director of Education Technology Services where I learned how complex, demanding, and humbling it is to try to run a large group at a big University. And just this past November I became Senior Director of Teaching and Learning with Technology for Penn State. I count myself as truly blessed for the opportunities I have had here at the University.

I'm not much for resolutions, but I will try to resolve to write more, spend more time with my amazing family, and keep pushing myself to be better at what I do and who I want to be. That includes getting back on the treadmill -- as soon as vacation is over.

Location:Grace Ct,State College,United States

I spent Tuesday to Friday of last week in Anaheim, CA attending the 2010 Educause conference. I've been to Educause before, but felt this was honestly the best one I have attended. It is hard to put my finger on why it resonated so positively with me, but I think it felt like the level of the overall conversations at the event were moved to a new level. I didn't hear the same old rhetoric of Educauses past pointing at the reasons why we can't do the things we talk about doing. I heard so fewer instances of divisive talk related to any sort of "us versus them" perceived gap between education technologists, learning designers, and faculty. That was perhaps the most pleasant surprise.

Other than the general attitude I was able to attend a number of very good sessions and instead of reflecting on all of them I'll try to highlight the few really great take aways that I was able to grab. Many of the sessions I attended looked at organizational issues, decision making, and leadership approaches. These are the things I am more interested in thinking about at the moment and I was happy to see several sessions that focused energy on them.

Sessions

I attended five sessions at Educause and instead of listing all of them here I will simply say that each one offered something to take away. In a session with Elon College I really got inspired to rethink some of the ways we not only do our work, but also how we should position ourselves to the rest of campus. Several sessions really inspired me to think bigger than I have in quite some time and that is a first for sessions at Educause. The last thing I will mention is how impressed I was that people were searching for higher order conversations -- and I didn't hear the moaning and negative thoughts from previous years. If anyone is interested in deeper reflections, just let me know.

Venders

I spent an inordinate amount of time talking with venders from various companies. I've never really done that in the past like this year and I did enjoy taking time to get to know some products and services better. The two sets of people I spent the most time with were Pearson and NBC Learn.

I had not been fully aware Pearson's wealth of offerings and walked away very impressed with not just those products but with the people I met there and the leadership I had a chance to talk with. Their LMS product, eCollege, was very impressive and approached the LMS from a different perspective that resonated with me -- it is modeled after more of a social flow approach. So much to think about across their product lines ... I'll be digging deeper into some of their solutions.

NBC Learn is a very unique service that provides online access to up to date and archived NBC news programming. I had taken a look at it on my own a couple of months ago, but was really impressed seeing it for myself while hanging out in their booth. There are some really smart design elements built into the toolset that I think could really benefit lots of faculty. We'll be talking more to them.

Educause Learning Technologies Leadership Faculty

Earlier this year I was asked to become a member of the Educause Learning Technologies Leadership Faculty. I was asked last year and didn't feel like I had the cycles to give it the focus and energy it deserved, so I declined. This year I felt like I needed a new challenge and accepted the invite. While at Educause I spent half of Thursday in a planning meeting with the other members of the faculty. It was a packed afternoon that showed me just how intense the Leadership Academy will be for both us as faculty and the folks attending.

The Academy is designed to help staff who are looking at taking the next step in their careers. It isn't necessarily geared towards managers per se, but instead focuses lots of energy on helping people learn how to lead from where they are. I think there are a few people at PSU who could benefit from attending. I will be leading two new modules as well as designing the reflective writing components of the Academy.

The last thing I will mention here is how much more carefully we as an organization need to pay attention to the continuum of professional development opportunities Educause has to offer. It was an eye opener to me listening to Julie Little, Vice President of Educause, talk to us about their approach to PD. Really impressive and I will be making sure my managers know about their more targeted offerings.