March 2009 Archives

Bio12: Alpha Complete! Up Next: Beta Version

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 27, 2009 4:51 PM | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Just updating those of you following the Bio12 project.  It's been a very busy week for this effort because we 'unleashed' it to a group of Alpha reviewers.

The first thing we did was integrate the introduction video that Kim Winck produced. It was the last media object we had to develop for this project. It has gotten nice reviews and seems to have hit the mark.  Let's hope the students will agree!

We were also able to include the player controls for the video and animations.  While it looks fine to end-users, we still have some technical challenges remaining in order to get this player control to sit on the server correctly for later re-use of these files.

The Alpha feedback form through Google Docs has worked splendidly.  Reviewers were able to easily enter their comments on each page.  More importantly, their comments were seamlessly tracked from the Google Doc spreadsheet for that form.  This is somewhat groundbreaking in e-learning courseware development because having comments push to a central spreadsheet like this gives the development team an easy way to view and analyze comments from reviewers.  Once in this format, I was able to sort and track the ongoing action on each comment.  In past efforts I've been involved with, getting Alpha (and Beta) review comments consisted of sending an .xls file to each reviewer and hoping they follow instructions on filling it out properly and sending the information. Add in the basic file-sharing function of it and you have a powerful methodology.  Keep in mind that, for this project, we are just using these features at the most basic level.  Imagine what we could do with more thought! Again, the overall strength of this approach is that it is EASY. 

One important edit requested by the stakeholders was to "re-chunk" the content.  They felt it would be better to have the learning content and the corresponding exercise on the same page.  Because we built each component of this project in such a modular fashion, I was able to do this in less than 15 minutes.  So now, we have a page that contains the narrated animation on Plant Structures and now also has the Plant Structures exercise.  In essence, we proved to ourselves one of the very reasons we designed the project in this way. 

The team is now working on the Alpha edits.  We will have the edited animations and exercises next week, but if interested in where we are now, check out the Bio12 Beta in-progress.

Recession Impact told by Students via Grassroots Video

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 23, 2009 8:02 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
This past weekend, I saw a touching story on ABC's "20/20" news program about the impact of the current economic recession on families.  Each element of this story was touching and emotional but there was part of this story that really caught my attention on a number of fronts.

A class of students at Village Academy High School in Pomona, CA was discussing "The Great Gatsby" and the theme of the American Dream.  The teacher asked the students 'who is being effected by the current recession?'  Every hand in his class went up.  He quickly realized that his students were under tremendous stress in their home lives and each had a story to tell.  He asked them to do just that...on a video.  The results were insightful, touching and emotional.  Here is their resulting video, "Is Anybody Listening?": 



Here is the ABC 20/20 link to the quick version of their story.  
And this is the 20/20 link to the full video of that story.  The Village Academy portion of the video starts about 4 minutes into the video.

As a member of the current hot team in ETS reviewing the Grassroots Video movement, I have been trying to keep an eye out for different ways in which video is employed.  As I watched this story on 20/20, I realized that this was a grassroots video project that had an impact which we have not discussed much in our meetings: emotion.  

If you watch the students' video, you clearly see that this is a situation where students writing a paper or blog would never capture the raw emotion that these students are feeling.  To me as a viewer, this also has deeper impact than if I were just reading their words.  As a teacher, I would imagine that seeing your students' emotional outpouring on the topic would lead to an educational opportunity at such a deeper level.  For one, it could it might just change my lesson plan a bit.  It could lead to much deeper conversations where students are so much more engaged.  I also imagine a level of camaraderie that now exists within this group of students.  Such camaraderie can snowball into very productive relationships and outputs.

One particular moment in the 20/20 segment was very revealing for me.  The reporter asked the students in the class, "How many of you know when your family's rent or mortgage is due?".  Every hand went up.  This was stunning to me personally because when I was that age, I had no idea my parents even had a monthly payment for a house.  I don't even know what I thought.  I think I assumed my parents just paid cash for the house and it was ours? My wife and I discussed this question with friends this weekend and we were all the in the same boat: none of us knew when our parents' rent or mortgage was due when we were high-schoolers.  I guarantee I was more self-absorbed about my own situation (getting ready for college, friends, sports) than those students at Village Academy today are.  It shows me that today's kids have way more than their studies and friends on their minds.  It makes me wonder if this is what high-school kids in 1930's Depression America were facing.  These kids are at life's biggest intersection with so much more burden than me and my friends had at that time.  I truly feel for these kids.

I'll leave my thoughts on this at that for now.  Trust me, it led to discussion on other topics (my own kids lives, for example). I think if you watch these videos, you will have your own thoughts to take away.  I hope you share them here.

On a warm note, watch the long video version to see who ended up telling these students that he was indeed listening.


'Pollinating' the Blog Platform...with a Chiropractor

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 21, 2009 12:54 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
As anyone reading my recent blogs knows, I've been on a rapid learning curve with the blogging platform in creating the Bio 12 online lab. While I'm only two months into my experience with blogs, I've certainly seen and done enough to understand some of the impacts and potentials for these platforms.

Late yesterday afternoon, I got an unexpected pleasant surprise visit from a long time friend of mine and his wife.  He lives in the Harrisburg area but was in the Philadelphia area for some arthroscopic surgery on his wrist.  They came over for dinner after his surgery (I had no idea you could simply just 'leave' after an arthroscopic surgery) and we used the 2 hours to discuss a number of topics to facilitate the process of him coming out of his anesthesia.

My friend is a chiropractor and has a successful practice in his area.  As we discussed my new position, we quickly 'connected some dots' to his profession as well as some implications to his current condition with his wrist injury.  It started with him telling me he has started giving talks and presentations the last few weeks to a number of local groups.  His wife (who, ironically, is from Cole's hometown and knows him- yes, small world) had talked about how she thought her husband should have been doing a newsletter for years now, but with 4 kids and multiple properties to manage, he's just never found the time.  She said she just recently thought that perhaps her husband could try a blog. Hmmmmmm......

I'm sure you're guessing where this went from there.  I then went into my experiences and thoughts on the blog platform and how it could relate to what he does and where he is in his career.  It was a great discussion.  He's been a practicing chiropractor for over 13 years and has a wealth of experience to share.  I told him to think of the possibilities of sharing thoughts with other chiropractors, possibly creating small communities of conversation about issues within his profession.  There was a lot of these "you could..." and "imagine if you..." scenarios discussed. A lot of fun.

Being that with his wrist injury, which is quite serious, will keep him from doing actual chiropractic work at his practice,  this could be an opportune time to get started.  He could use this time to do more presentations and combine that with his first efforts into blogging.  It kind of turned into a marketing strategy discussion for him (my B.S. is in marketing after all) and it was very interesting.  My friend has always been open to new things and different way of thinking of things (hence his decision to go into in chiropractic medicine) and the possibilities had our minds turning.  His wife has offered to do the typing.  He's a terrible typer, even with good wrists.  

For me, their visit was satisfying in 3 ways 1) got to see a good friend 2) got to share a possible future direction for him professionally through my current new experiences and 3) he left feeling better than when he arrived.  It definitely made up for only going 9-7 in my NCAA bracket on Friday.

Continuing Development of the Bio 12 Lab

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 18, 2009 2:26 PM | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
For those interested, I just thought I'd give an update to the development of the Bio 12 course we are creating.  For a background on this project and how we are approaching it, read my previous blog. Even as I write this, I am getting constant updates and integrating them. Half the things I was writing in this blog when I started have had to be changed!

We are now at the Alpha stage of this project.  This means that most of the elements are assembled in a 'first draft' for the internal team and stakeholders to review and comment back on.  I still have one programming tweak I need to make on the screen with the narrated animations and hope to have them done soon.

Cool Features
Currently, we have created the first draft of all the flash objects and embedded them in the pages.  These objects look very good and professional.  Even the voice over (thank you, Chris Stubbs) sounds great!

The introduction video is now at first draft but will not be in the Alpha version as of today. I've seen this first draft and it looks very good.  Very professional looking and crisp.  A big thanks to Kim Winck and Pat Besong for producing this!

We have also integrated a unique solution to gathering feedback for the Alpha version of the content.  For this Alpha review, each content screen contains a feedback form at the bottom. This form was created in Google Docs and we simply pulled the embed code from this form and placed it on each content page.  I will be able to manage the Alpha feedback from Google Docs and view and manipulate the data in a basic spreadsheet.  I only ask that each person providing Alpha feedback be sure to enter their name so that I can follow up with you should I have a question.

To have a look at the Lab 12 course in it's Alpha format, here it is: Lab 12 Alpha.

From the ANGEL side, we have created the course and created 4 elements for students:
  1. The link page that launches the blog pages
  2. A link page to a reading assignment (pdf) that students will need to read for the assessment
  3. The word document that contains the assessment questions
  4. The drop box for them to submit their assessment
  5. Course survey to evaluate their experience with the online Lab.
Our hope is that students will find the navigation from ANGEL to the course pages and back to ANGEL relatively seamless.

Current Reflections 
As we have assembled this content, I've recognized some very familiar development characteristics from my previous experiences.  First, this effort is very much like courseware authoring.  The tools are different than in the past but certain elements are the same.  The blog platform is the authoring tool and I feel that it works quite well in this capacity.  However, I have had to reach out for some code help (because I am definitely no coder) when integrating media objects.  It's 'lite' coding but it's still deep enough where someone like me needs help.

Another important task in this effort is asset management (flash files, pdf's or other media).  This has always been important in traditional courseware authoring and using this platform is no different.  It is absolutely critical to name and tag all your assets and support materials (such as scripts) so that they all match.  This reduces the headaches of knowing which asset goes with which page.  For example, all my assets for screen "04 - Relationships of Types of Pollinators and Flowers" have a format name of "04_title_here".  This is basic organization and is essential if someone other than yourself is looking at your work and trying to help develop or troubleshoot.

The third characteristic of this project is the wide collaboration at all levels that occurs.  From working with Tyrone Ridgeway as the subject matter expert, Zac Zidek on media development, Brad Kozlek for programming to Allan and Cole for high level design input, the collaboration involved in this project has been instrumental.  This very much lines up with my past experiences for good courseware development.  Especially for a project like this where we are trying a 'new' approach to something.  With so many moving parts, it can be cumbersome to keep everyone in the loop and providing all with the big picture.  But the folks involved with this project have made this easy. 

As we move from Alpha version to Beta version, I will keep this blog updated!

Blog Platform: Authoring Tool?

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 6, 2009 3:29 PM | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I am currently in the midst of a project where we are redesigning the delivery of a wet-lab for Biology 12.  Specifically, we are taking the lab where students are taught how flowering plants reproduce.  You remember that, right?  If not, here's a quick recap: Flowers produce pollen; bees (and other animals) inadvertently carry the pollen to other plants.  This pollen (like sperm) then travels to the flower's ovary triggering reproduction.  This leads to the development of fruit, and so on.

We are developing a series of Flash learning objects that will demonstrate this process along with a number of objects where students perform exercises to learn more and practice their knowledge.  I've seen the first few flash objects and they look great.  Being that I've just recently come out of the corporate custom e-learning development space, I'm obviously very familiar with this form of learning-object development. 

What I'm not as familiar with in my new job is how this type of learning will be delivered to the end-user (students).  With everything I'm trying to learn and get a handle on, it was never exactly clear to me how such content would be "authored" or pulled together.  I use the term "author" in the 'classic' e-learning development sense whereby learning content is pulled together in an application built specifically for this purpose. Toolbook, Authorware and Lectora are some of the more well-known examples of these. 

After a meeting with Cole earlier this week, the solution to 'authoring' the content was clear: Blogs!  Of course!  Mind you, this is all still in the design phase and we need to prototype this out, but the design is basically this:

  • We will develop the Flash objects (multimedia presentations and interactions).  Then we will create blog pages and embed those flash objects in them.  This will give us an inherent navigation (Topic 01, Topic 02, etc.).  Once that is done, we will go into ANGEL and build a course structure that refers students to these blog URL's.

Sound simple?  OK, well, like I said, we still need to prototype this but there are number of reasons that I am excited about this (besides me getting to explore these technologies more in-depth).

For one, I feel this will enable us to demonstrate the blog platform for the multi-purpose web content and publishing tool that it is.  For classic e-learning developers like me, I can see that the blog platform is another 'authoring' tool.

Another reason is the built-in features of feedback and comments.  I've personally only just begun to grasp what students might be interested in contributing to the content upon go-live.   One thing we've already begun to plan is for students to provide level one assessment feedback on the learning they just took.  A quick discussion revealed so many ways to do this that we had to table it for another meeting. If anyone is reading this, please feel free to comment back to me on your thoughts. 

The third main reason this delivery strategy is so cool is how portable it is.  Because the content will live in a blog environment, it can be published, ported and then edited with incredible ease.  Imagine that when we complete this online lesson, another Biology instructor from a different campus sees it would like to use it to deliver to his or her class.  This instructor could get a 'copy' of the web pages that make up our course, modify it for his/her purpose via the blogging platform and republish it for delivery to the students.  If it works how we think it will work, it could become a prime example of reusable content (learning) objects.

In the next two weeks, I will be asking a lot of questions throughout ETS as we ready this design, bringing it to fruition.  As we develop this content and structure of delivery, I will try to post links in this blog for anyone interested.  As I mentioned earlier, if anyone has thoughts or cool ideas based upon what we are trying to do, please let me know.

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