Recently in Reports Category

Something I failed to mention in my reflection post was the release of the 2009 NMC Horizon Report. Each year NMC and ELI team up to publish an annual look into the crystal ball of emerging teaching and learning trends ... I always look forward to the release of this publication and it typically has several items in it that we are looking at or that are on our radar ... it also does a great job of giving us new directions for where we are headed in the future.

The big difference this year is that I was invited to be a member of the advisory board and let me say it was an honor working with so many smart and talented people in our field. You can read the finished report on your own, so I won't get too far into it ... but the section on the Personal Web was a place I lobbied hard to make sure it appeared.

What I found fascinating was the process the NMC took to gather the items for the report. We were given wiki space, a collection of tags, and some heavy duty deadlines to make sure we contributed. Each step of the process was well regulated and kept us all pushing each other to not only dream, but to provide evidence that our dreams could come true. If you are interested in a well formed collaborative process for publication take a look at the Horizon wiki.

While at ELI, they formally released the report to the community in a session. It should be required reading for all of us! Grab a copy and take a look.

I was asked to share some interesting statistics about what is going on here at PSU and on a National level with technology. Here are some points I thought could resonate. I didn't editorialize too much, but here are my basic thoughts:

40% of online teens watch TV on devices other than a TV. This is a real trend hitting our campus. I gave two guests lectures in freshman classes last week and all but a handful of them said that is what they do. This has big implications for the kinds of networks we provide and the amount of bandwidth we allocate.

Nearly a third of all PSU students created a rich media piece last year. Half of them did it for a class which means faculty are beginning to accept digital media as evidence of learning. That means the other half did it just for fun. Looks like the move towards rethinking our lab spaces is a good move.

Nationally approximately 80% of college students are in Facebook. This is growing as Facebook continues to open to younger and more diverse audiences. At PSU, last November, the number was at 83%.

The most interesting statistics are that 60% log in daily, 80% update their profiles several times a month, and that 23% of our students spend more than 5 hours a week in social environments (FB and MySpace).

According to Pew Internet and American Life Project nearly 50% of online teens are sharing content online. This isn't file sharing, it is sharing pictures, text, and other forms of their media. 64% engage in at least one form of content creation. Girls dominate most elements of online content creation and sharing with 35% of teen girls blogging, and 54% sharing photos. Compared with 20% of boys blog and 40% share pictures. Boys are nearly twice as likely to share their videos online.

Why is this the case? 89% of them report that people comment on them some of the time. Most of them use their social networks to control access -- Facebook is the number one photo sharing site on the Internet.

We know they use all sorts of modes to communicate, but they use modes differently with different groups of people. Text messages are used to connect with peers, while email is "for old people."

Digital video is explosive at the moment. It is empowering new types of conversations across the web. Visit youtube and notice not only the number of views on videos, but the number of comments and video responses. It is stunning.

Internet users watched 10 billion videos online in December 2007.

73% of adults own cell phones, 63% of teens own them, and at PSU 93% of students own a cell phone.

Nearly 90% of PSU students own MP3 players. iPod is the majority.

I will be working to round out these lists during the TLT retreat tomorrow ...

10 things we should be paying attention to in TLT:

1. ANGEL is by far the most widely used technology supporting teaching and learning. A focus on managing its growth will continue to be critical.
2. 7% download podcasts, while over 61% say they would if more were available.
3. Both undergraduate (40%) and graduate students (56%) both report sharing documents to complete coursework.
4. Wireless printing is a critical direction
5. 17% report creating video for a class while 15% report creating a video for personal reasons ... this provides evidence that we are well positioned with the Digital Commons, but pushes me to continue to think about how to make the service more obvious. Only 2% report using the DC resources.
6. Storage for DC will become a challenge as students' creation of digital media continues to grow.
7. The growth of gaming on campus indicates strong need to better understand how to manage both console and PC-based games on our network
8. Blogs as note-taking tools -- only 4% of students currently use their laptops to take notes and 36% of faculty say they allow students to take notes with their laptops.
9. True hybrid course design is an opportunity to reduce the number of f2f meetings (4% reporting that as course design)

10 things we should be paying attention to in ITS:

1. ANGEL is by far the most widely used technology supporting teaching and learning. A focus on managing its growth will continue to be critical.
2. If podcasting becomes more important, decisions will need to be made related to the diffusion of iTunes U vs. podcasting from the Blogs at PSU.
3. The need to create better online tools to enable sharing of documents -- more focus should be applied towards creating and managing ongoing team edits of documents than simply exchanging files. Google Docs comes to mind as an example.
4. Online testing/quizzing is a critical piece to the resident education puzzle. With the emergence of the Testing Center we have an opportunity to shift the approach to eTesting, but managing the growth in use in the physical environment may prove difficult.
5. Sudents report that they prefer email. This is a current state that may be due in large part to familiarity. Over time we'll need to find new ways to move this towards RSS and other push-like technologies.
6. Wireless printing is a critical direction
7. Storage for PASS will become a greater challenge as students' creation of digital media continues to grow
8. Greater flexibility for roaming access for guests of the University -- non-VPN based access
9. Communicating with our audiences about our services in a cohesive fashion. Building stronger awareness across all of our connected activities continues to be a challenge

10 things we should be paying attention to at PSU:

1. Digital Identity and Identity Management will pose greater challenges going forward ... this is not just related to managing multiple online identities, but extends into awareness for better understanding of how students should represent themselves online.
2. Security of networked computers as it relates to malware
3. Better physical environments to support the use of laptops across campus (power)
4. Resident Hall flexibility to manage multiple IP devices -- game consoles and other networked devices
5. Greater flexibility for roaming access for guests of the University -- non-VPN based access
6. Faculty development as a core value across all disciplines
7. Potential support for the use of external applications for mail and calendar
8. The utilization of FaceBook for new forms of communicating with the PSU community.

Here is the first draft of the ETS Podcasting report for Fall 2006. Download the PDF file.