I spent most of last week at the annual Educause conference, my second time attending this event.  This time was in the City of Brotherly Love, which was great because it made the travel a lot easier.  I actually took the Megabus there (for $10!) and other than being about 90 minutes late due to some seriously cautious driving, it worked out very well for everyone, except for the young lady who realized once we were in Harrisburg that this was a bus going to Philadelphia, not Pittsburgh. 

I went down on Monday, as I was leading a pre-conference workshop with two colleagues on Tuesday morning.  "Teaching and Learning with Digital & Social Media in Higher Education" went off without a hitch (at least I think so-- I haven't seen the evaluations yet) and we received lots of positive comments from those who attended. 

The conference kicked off on Wednesday and was, as expected, gigantic and the convention center is a sight to behold.  The sessions I attended were informative.  In particular, I enjoyed the keynotes of Seth Godin and danah boyd.  Seth in particular is a master presenter, as shown by his immediate bounceback after his computer almost crashed mid-talk.  I aspire to be like that.  As a marketer myself, much of his content was stuff I already knew, but he was able to share his thoughts and insights in a very entertaining and engaging manner. His remarks resonated well with this IT audience--"we are all weird"-- and though there were a few tweeters who wondered what all this had to do with higher ed, most posts were very positive.  danah boyd, while not quite the dynamo that Seth Godin is, did a great job as well, discussing the notion of privacy and what it means to today's youth in the 'pics or it didn't happen' world in which we now live.  Knowing the Twitter crucifixion (Twitifixion?) she endured after (and during) another large conference keynote in the recent past, I admire her for continuing to get back up to the plate and sharing her important work.

In addition to they keynotes, I enjoyed learning the results of the latest Undergraduate Students and Information Technology study, but was alarmed that "a projector" was included as one of the "technologies" that students rated their professors' proficiency in using.  I also appreciated hearing the results of the iPad study that the University of San Francisco had conducted, as it is very similar to the to the one we have going here.  I don't believe I had even heard of the University of San Francisco before.  Seems like they have some great things going on there.

Another takeaway for me was just the sheer volume of institutions of higher learning that are out there.  In our pre-conference workshop, we had people representing colleges and universities from not just across the U.S. but also from France, Australia, Sweden, Egypt and Colombia, among others. In general, I was pleased to see that our work at Penn State around the marriage of IT and pedagogy appears to be on par or ahead of many of our peers at other institutions around the world.

Oh, and in spite of what you may have heard on the FX channel, it rained.  False advertising!

One great thing about working at a university is that sometimes the really cool conferences come to you, instead of the other way around.  Such was the case last week when I had the great fortune to make my first appearance at the Penn State Web Conference, which was held at the Penn Stater Conference Center over the course of two days.  This conference has been around for several years, but I believe this year was the first time that it was opened to attendees from other colleges and universities, and it was great to meet and see so many new faces among the "usual suspects" who work in the web space here at Penn State. 

Though the content was aimed most at those who are responsible for managing websites for their institutions (which is not my job), there was enough material in associated topics that made it relevant and interesting for me, especially when the discussion focused on social media.  I came away with a lot from this conference but a few of the key takeaways were:

So THAT'S what those are for!  Before this conference, I had a very limited understanding as to the utility of the funky QR code, but now I get it!  It made me wonder if it will limit the demand for vanity URLs.  If you can just share a QR code that brings someone to your website, why do we care what the URL is anymore?  As a result of this conference,  I was able to suggest that we incorporate them into our digital sign that will be mounted in the hallway outside of my office as part of our communication strategy as well, and our awesome IT staff was able to do it. 

Size Matters:  I learned about how to consider content in terms of mobile devices, that screens are getting both much smaller and much larger at the same time, and so those things need to be considered when creating web content.  People aren't interacting with web content with a mouse so much anymore as they are with their own fingers.  Makes sense, of course, but I hadn't thought about it that way.

Apparently, Not Everyone is Mobile:  In spite of the fact that this was a web conference, I was surprised to see how many people in this audience who were taking notes on paper.  With a pen.

All this, and on top of that, one of my comments in one of the sessions was tweeted out by another participant, and I felt all kinds of proud of that. 

I must have really enjoyed it, because earlier this week, I found myself writing an email to the conference chair asking to be included in the planning committee for next year's conference.  Volunteer for a conference planning committee?  A rare occurrence, in my experience!

When I received my MBA in the go-go mid-90's and joined a Fortune 100 company in their marketing department, I was asked during my orientation if I would be interested in having a Franklin Planner, apparently a perq for us new management hires. 

My older siblings who worked in business all had them, and so I of course accepted the offer, and chose the compact size, with a nice rich brown leather cover.  In honor of the "Franklin Planner" brand, I named him "Frank".  (My wife has one also, and hers is named "Francine".  Aren't we nauseating?)

15 years and six jobs later, I still have it.  Frank has traveled with me from Atlanta to D.C. to Pennsylvania.  Early on, Frank and I were inseparable.  I used him to his fullest extent, managing projects and tasks, calendaring, bringing him to business meetings both in the office and at client locations, and keeping copious notes about my wheelings and dealings in its pages.  I carefully retained each month's worth of calendar pages, just in case I might need to reference them sometime, though I resisted purchasing the "archive" system that the Franklin Planner people were only too happy to sell me.  A manilla envelope labeled by year was good enough.

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point, I stopped bringing Frank with me to meetings.  Frank simply sat on my desk, and I used him as basically a big fat to-do list for projects that I work on.  I would occasionally update the task list, and add family obligations to the calendar, but from a professional standpoint, I was neglecting him.

As anyone who has used one of these systems knows, you can hop into their planner refill cycles at a few pre-determined times during the year.  Some start in January, some start in April, and some in July, like mine.  Even though my engagement with Frank has waned over the years, out of habit I suppose, I dutifully ordered my refills year after year.  This year, as I noted that it was getting to be about that time, I started to get ready to reorder again.  And then, I stopped and realized, what was I doing?  I had an iPad now, which I did not have last summer.  And as the iPad has changed many things for me, including the way I read books, engage in social media, shop, manage my research, so has it changed the way I manage my work. 

And so, Frank, I think we need to talk.  We have been together a long, long time and have really had some wonderful experiences together.  However, I'm afraid that we're not a good match anymore.  It's not you, it's me.  I've changed.  I have new interests and new pursuits that I couldn't possibly expect you to understand.   You are great for what you are, and I have no intention of asking you to change.  It's best if we just simply agree that our relationship has run its course, and that I am moving on.  

And so you don't hear it from anyone else, I should let you know that I have downloaded an app on my iPad called Todo, which will help me with many of the things that you did so well for so long. I don't know that Todo and I will have the same connection that you and I have, but I won't know unless I try.  Please don't judge.

And please don't worry.  You are not headed for the trash heap.  I will put you away for safekeeping, and will bring you out on occasion to reminisce about what I was doing in 2011 (and 2010, 2009, 2008, etc., etc. )  You are an archive in and of yourself of my professional career, and as such are irreplaceable.  I thank you for your years of service, and I wish you all the best.

All I ask, Frank, is that, years from now, when you talk about this, and you will, be kind.

Thanks to a study conducted by Pearson Learning Solutions, Converseon and Babson College, we have some more hard data to show how social media is being used in higher education across the country.

In this study, just under 2,000 full-time faculty members from colleges and universities all over the United States shared their thoughts and opinions about the impact that social media has had in their teaching.  They also indicated how they themselves use it in their day-to-day activities, both personally and professionally. 

Some of the key takeaways are:

• 38% of respondents agree or strongly agree that educators should use social media to reach students where they are, while 24% disagree or strongly disagree.  To me, the fact that 39% rated this item as "neutral" says that many faculty are still trying to figure this out. 

• 58% agree or strongly agree that social media can be a valuable tool for collaborative learning, and 70% believe video, podcasts, blogs and wikis are valuable tools for teaching.

• 80% of faculty reported that they were using social media in some aspect of a course that they are teaching. 

• A smaller number of respondents felt Facebook and Twitter had value in the classroom, though it was interesting to see that they rated Facebook as a tool that they use personally (57%) and professionally (45%) outside of class. 
  

The statistic that really blew me away was the fact that 91% of faculty use social media either for professional purposes or in their classes, or both, and a similar study conducted by McKinsey of workplaces showed only 47% used it.  Are faculty in higher education more cutting edge than they are given credit for?  This statistic seems to indicate that. 

Still, not everything is rosy with regard to faculty perceptions and use of social media.  Respondents cite privacy concerns, time commitments, lack of training, lack of integration and institutional support as barriers to the use of social media in class.  The privacy concern is a real one and raises the larger issue of how privacy is defined and if its importance is changing for this generation of learners. However, I believe the time commitment concern is perhaps more of a perception than a reality.  As social media becomes more pervasive, I believe it will be seen as simply another channel, another means of collaborating and building community.  I hope that my role here in the College will help to address the concerns about the lack of training, integration and institutional support. 

I would be interested in hearing any thoughts or reactions to this study.  In particular, how do these results compare with the reality here in the College of the Liberal Arts or at Penn State in general? 

 

In preparation for tomorrow's Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium, I thought it might be a good idea to read Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus, since he is the keynote, and I wanted to be ready to have some good small talk just in case we bump into each other in the buffet line or something.  Once I read that he freely admitted to organizing his childhood activities around the viewing of episodes of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island, I knew I liked him. (He also mentioned Charlie's Angels, but I wasn't allowed to watch that.)

The book is very interesting, and brings up some compelling ideas, too numerous to go into here in the time I have to write this post.  Though he didn't really focus on higher education in this book, I saw an interesting parallel in some of the examples that he used that demonstrated how drastic changes in behavior were the result of changes in technology. 

For example, he talked about how, at one point in our not too distant past, if we wanted to watch something on TV, we had to be in front of the TV at a certain time to do so.  If we wanted to call someone, we had to find a telephone and know the number of the person we wanted to reach.  If we wanted to share our vacation photos with our friends from work, we had to have them developed, and then bring them with us to work to pass around.  Now, of course, we know all of these things have changed.  Due to DVRs and sites like hulu.com, we can watch our shows whenever we want.  Thanks to cell phones, we only need to get someone's number once, and from then on, never remember it again (unless we lose our phone or it crashes...not that I have personal experience with that).  With photo features on Facebook, and sites like Flickr, we can share our photos with everyone without ever actually "developing" anything.  These activities would have been unthinkable at one time.  And yet, here we are.

He talks about our reliance on ancient assumptions, and I can see that in our own environment here, too.  Think about the telephone.  I'm sure that it would be inconceivable to whoever was in charge of installing individual phones into each dorm room at Penn State many years ago to imagine that there would be a day, as in 2009, that they would all be removed. It makes me wonder about what our "ancient assumptions" are today?  What are the characteristics about the way the teachers teach and learners learn in higher education today that we assume will always be the case, and yet perhaps one day, just like the phones in the dorm rooms, will not be?  Will our grandchildren be asking us to tell them what it was like to have to use a keyboard and a monitor to do our work?  Will they want to hear the story again about the projector that was built into the ceiling to show an image on a big screen in front of a classroom?  Will they roll their eyes when we say "In my day, we had to carry our iPads and laptop computers to class, uphill, both ways!" 

Even with the amazing affordances technology provides us with regard to teaching and learning, I can't help but recognize that everything we use today will be viewed as "ancient" somewhere down the road.   I hope we can keep our perspective and continue to search for and build new and innovative tools and methods for the future.

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Educause Learning Initiative in D.C.  It was my first appearance at this event, though I had attended the main Educause conference in Los Angeles in the fall.  The ELI event, as it is known, is geared much more toward the pedagogy of technology, and the sessions were geared much more toward faculty and teaching & learning than more technical issues like data centers and VoIP. 

One technology that was discussed in a couple of different sessions, including a keynote by Eric Mazur, was the use of clickers and web-based polling in class. Dr. Mazur, a physics professor from Harvard, discussed his use of clickers in a course and how it impacted engagement and learning outcomes.  He was able to demonstrate in his talk how this could be used to check for understanding, and also to facilitate peer-to-peer learning.  He showed a video of students in his course who were given a multiple choice question to answer using the clickers.  They were then asked to find someone sitting nearby who had a different answer, and then try to illustrate why the answer chosen was the correct one.  It showed some real illumination among the students as they discussed with one another--the often-mentioned but rarely seen "light bulb" going off as students talked.  He was, obviously, a big fan of the clicker, and was able to present the outcomes of its use in an engaging and illustrative manner.

There are other tools that are web-based that allow for the same kind of interactivity.  In addition to clickers, some web-based tools like Poll Everywhere are being experimented with on our campus as well.  This allows students to respond to questions and prompts using their smart phones, as well as through the web on a laptop.  I think it's terrific how technology like this allows for students to engage in a way that they would not have had the opportunity to before.  I think if we had more of this in the classrooms in our campus, we'd have less of this in the classroom.

As I was looking at my calendar for something today, I realized that it was six months ago today that I started in my new job in the College of the Liberal Arts.  In some ways, that's difficult to believe, as it seems like I just got here.  In other ways, as I look outside at our February landscape and think back to the hazy days of August when I first arrived, it seems like a long, long time ago.

I still feel in many ways that I am just getting started, but am pleased at some concrete evidence of my work here in the College in the time that I've been here.  I've met with literally dozens of faculty and department heads.  I've created new committees and forums and launched new research.  I've written conference proposals that have been accepted.  I've formed an advisory board and led departmental presentations.  I've launched a series of workshops on teaching with technology.  I've presented at the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Council. Above all, I've had a great time while doing all of it.   I feel like I am making a difference here, and I am learning something new every day.  The environment here is inspirational, and the people here are just phenomenal. I am very lucky to count myself among them.  I know that six months from now, I'll have even more to show for it. But for now, happy half-birthday to me.  

We all fall down.  No one knows this better than the person who tweets on behalf of Kenneth Cole, the clothing company.  Earlier this week, a tweet appeared from Kenneth Cole that said this:

I found this article from yesterday's insidehighered.com very interesting.  It talked about some professors who have instituted a policy that says that if they feel the students are not paying attention, or are not on task, the professor will simply walk out.   It reminded me of the stereotypical response of a parent to rambunctious children on a car ride: "Don't make me stop this car."  (And I say stereotypical, because of course, my children are either reading quietly during our car trips or making interesting observations about the passing scenery.) 

In the cases that were mentioned in the article, the faculty clearly felt they were driving, and that the students needed to sit quietly and come along for the ride, or suffer the consequences.  I felt sorry for these instructors, because they obviously have had very frustrating experiences in the classroom.  I have been teaching at Penn State for almost nine years and thankfully have not been where they've been.

What was more troubling about the article was that some of the infractions included social networking and texting during class.  This raises a question that has come up a lot with me recently in my new role.  How can we encourage the use of digital and social media in the classroom, and yet ensure that these tools are only used for their intended purpose?  Recently, I discussed the use of a web-based classroom polling tool with one faculty member, in which students would use their smart phones to text responses to multiple choice questions posed on a screen by the professor as a check for understanding of new concepts.  Kind of like "Ask the Audience" feature in the  "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" game show, or the "clickers" that have been used on this campus from time to time.  This professor liked the concept, but was concerned.  Once he would ask the students to use their phones to vote, how could he make them put them away after that?

My question is, should he?   There were several responses to the article were from faculty who were proud of the fact that they insisted on no electronics in the classroom.  Certainly, there are circumstances and cases that warrant certain restrictions.  However, I believe that we as faculty may be doing our students a disservice by doing so.  Students today multi-task more than ever, for better or for worse.  It's the way they think, live and breath.  Should we be fighting that, judging that?  And with so many campuses, including Penn State, instituting text messaging as a means of communicating emergency information, it seems risky to demand that students turn off their phones during class.   

As my class has a strong emphasis on writing, many instructors choose to teach this class in a computer lab,  to allow students to practice their writing as part of the class time.  My perspective was that I would rather not teach in a lab.  I prefer to use the class time to discuss and have dialogue about the concepts presented.  I felt that having the monitors blocking faces would inhibit discussion.  Plus, I did not want to spend my time watching my students type.  When it got down to it, though, what I was really concerned about was the temptation of having access to the Internet coming between the students and me, and that students would stray into off-task activity online.  I was worried about what that would say about me as an instructor.

However, times have changed, and I need to get over myself.  One of the takeaways I have had from this change in classroom dynamic is this:  I've got to step my game up.   I have to redesign my course so that students are more engaged than ever.   I will find new opportunities for them to utilize technology during the class time, and not forbid its use.  I will grow accustomed to the use of laptops or phones in class.  This doesn't mean I am moving to a computer lab, because I still don't want to watch my students type, but I do want to know what they are thinking.  In the past, I've only been able to guess at that by studying expressions.  Going forward, perhaps I'll be able to do so  through a tweet or a vote.

I would love to bring this article back out in ten, or even five years, and show it to an incoming freshman class.  If technology continues to evolve as quickly as it has in the last ten years, they will likely be baffled by the restrictions placed in the classrooms of the early 2000's.  I can only imagine their reactions, one of which would likely be: 

"What the hell is a 'tweet'?"

I was pleased to see the results of Rey Junco's research getting some attention on the web today.  If you haven't seen the study, it illustrates how Junco, a Lock Haven University professor (just down the road!), studied the impact of Twitter on students enrolled in a first year seminar.  In his study, some groups of students were given assignments that featured Twitter in the deliverables and some were given the same assignments, but without the Twitter component.  The results showed that the Twitter groups were demonstrably more engaged and that those students showed an average of .5 increase in their GPAs during that semester.  Is this realistic? 

From my perspective, yes.  As some of you may know, I was fortunate to be part of a pilot course in the Spring of 2008, called  CI597C: Disruptive Technologies in Teaching and Learning, led by Cole Camplese of Penn State's Education Technology Services and the College of Education's Scott McDonald.  (A podcast that I was part of with these two can be found here.)  In this course, we examined several new media that could have application for teaching and learning, such as podcasts, YouTube, wikis, Facebook, and a rather new tool at the time called Twitter.  Twitter was the tool that ended up rising to the top for most of us, and I can personally attest to the fact that it led to stronger engagement for those of us who used it, both inside and outside of class. Those of us who engaged with Twitter during that semester shared not only interesting insights about class, but also provided glimpses into our personal lives as well.  Some shared news of family deaths and illnesses, some shared funny stories of pets or children, some asked technical questions, and some shared what they had for dinner.  During that year's Teaching and Learning with Technology symposium, which many of us attended, "tweeting" was a grand experiment for me, in that it allowed me to be a fly on the wall on breakout sessions where I wasn't physically able to be, and allowed me to share my insights and comments with my classmates without having to be physically with them, or even lean over to whisper. I felt that it absolutely resulted in my feeling more engaged with my classmates, my instructors and the material than any other class I had prior (or since, actually).  It also extended the conversation far beyond the once a week face to face meeting we had.  Tweets after class, evenings, weekends, early mornings, and even the occasional "I'm stuck on the Loop and will be late" tweets from classmates during class were common.  It made a huge difference, and was a strong contributor to my selection of my dissertation research and ultimately led me to this job here in the College of the Liberal Arts.  

So, some might say that I was an early adopter of Twitter in the classroom, and I have encouraged its use in the classes that I have taught since then.  Twitter has great potential to be used for informal polling of a class using a hashtag, and can be used to share resources and also gather questions from those who otherwise might be too intimidated or shy to do so in the traditional way.  However, I recognize that this may not be a fit for everyone.  Even in our class in 2008 that was studying technology, we had a few who chose not to get on board, and I imagine if our instructors had not been supportive of it, we as a class would certainly have been less engaged with it as well.

The latest data for Liberal Arts students show that just 17% of them have a Twitter account. However, 17% still represents about 600 of our students, and I have to imagine that this number is only going to increase, (especially once the news about the increase to the GPA gets out!)  This says to me that it will be important for us in the College to be able to engage our students in this way, even if not to the same degree or manner that it was employed at Lock Haven.  So, in 140 characters or less, what do YOU think?  What are your thoughts about Twitter, both inside and outside of the classroom?  You can reply here, or, hey--here's an idea:  follow me on Twitter!  @dolanatpsu