MeyerViews

Using Camtasia for the Mac to Communicate with Team

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:31:10 -0500

Showing Something Today to Someone is already at Tomorrow

My team is currently in the heavy development phase for the Bio12 project. On top of that, our subject matter expert, Tyrone Ridgway, has recently moved back to Australia where he is 15 hours ahead of EST. So, while it is 4:00 pm here, he is having coffee at 7:00 am tomorrow. That in itself is a bit weird. With that huge time/space continuum issue to deal with, demonstrating something to him during either of our decent brain functioning hours has become a significant challenge. Sharing documents is one thing, but actually demonstrating is quite another.

Need: Signoff on ANGEL course structure

This week, we started to create the course structure in ANGEL for Bio12. I created some sample folders/links/assessments for him to see and then provide feedback/approval on so that we can create the remaining structure. A month ago, I would have done this with him in person during a meeting. With that option off the table, I decided to use Camtasia for Mac to record a screen cast and then edit it afterwards to add some callouts and cut some of my 'deadtime' (which is different than TechSmith's free version of the recording product 'Jing'; Jing offers no post-capture editing). In this screen cast I would show him what we've done so far accompanied by my verbal explanation and questions for him (warning: my voice is bad due to current fight with bronchitis).

Sharing with Camtasia to Screencast.com

After editing and adding a few very basic visuals from within the Camtasia editing suite, you can 'Share' the file straight up to iTunes, YouTube or to their own online hosting offering, Screencast.com. I selected to upload to screencast.com where I opened a free account that starts me with 2 GB of space to work with. Upon it's upload, you can either copy the link or the embed code of the file. Yes, it is very much a push button publish function.

Here's the Result(s)

Weblink version: screen cast of our ANGEL build idea.

Embeded Version of the file:

Tyrone was able to see this and he immediately went in to ANGEL to do some edits himself. He then sent a quick email to confirm what he changed and we were off and running.

Effective AND Efficient as a Communication Tool

While I had originally gotten Camtasia to be a media production tool for actual learning content, we were able to use it as a communications tool. I couldn't imagine having to take a screen shot and accompany it with tons of text in an email, document or dumping it into a powerpoint and having it be more effective than this was. In fact, I'm sure the screen shot with text explanations would have taken much longer to produce AND it may not have been as clear. If you want to give it whirl, try their 30-day free trial version and see what you think.

Don't cost nuthin'.

Project Management...in the Open

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:53:57 -0500

Let's Open it Up

Since I've arrived here at Penn State to enter the world of higher education 10 months ago, probably the most recurring theme I've run across is that of "openness". Open courses, open courseware, open source, open sesame, etc. So, in the interest of all this openness, I'm now unveiling my first attempt at project management "in the open". It is for the Phase 2 of the Biology 12 project, where we are now converting the entire Biology 12 course from the lab to self-paced e-learning.

The idea for this was really just a natural progression in the thought of openness as well as the total use of web-based applications and tools to create the work products for the course. The first time around (phase 1 of this project), I used BaseCamp as the PM tool. I really, really liked BaseCamp. If I'd had this tool the last 7 years in my old job, I would have been all over it. It's main limitation, however, is that it's not...well...it's just not open. If you didn't have a paid account license for it, then you get no free peek at the project. Plain and simple. So I decided I wanted to try something different in order to make the project open to anyone who cared to check it out. That has lead to the Blogs at PSU generated Biology 12 Project Status site.

First, let me walk you through some of the elements that make this approach possible. For a quick rundown of what and how we are doing things, check it out:

Google Docs for all design documents. From the outset, we have used Google Docs for all design documentation (. I won't spend too much time here on the advantages because a) anyone reading already knows about it and b) I would need to devote an entire post to it anyway. The ability to share and link documents via the internet has been even more important. So, for openness, whenever we needed to include a new resource or just give someone a view of our stuff, we simply share a folder with them.

Blogs at PSU for development and delivery. I know I've covered this before but again, because it's this platform, the content we create is open and immediately sharable. During development, we included links to our google docs and scripts into our blog content pages. This has been more helpful than I first imagined. It has allowed us to design and script in one place (google docs) and then visualize it's end state better when these docs are easily linked in the content page during development.

OmniPlan project planning tool. Admittedly, this is the weakest aspect of the toolset so far but that's only because I have not focused much on it. I was hoping to find an online tool that would be easy to use but I haven't. Also, I'm only using the free version of OmniPlan because, well, I thought I'd find a comparable free web-based version. The free version only let me create 20 tasks for a project BUT, it does let me create an html version of the plan so I am able to share the plan (as you will see). If you are reading this and see what I'm looking for here, I'm all ears (eyes, really).

With all these tools and functions of the web available to us for this project, I decided to create a website that would be the project status 'hub'. For now, it contains the basics of a project (design, status, project plan) but the platforms we are using also allows us to share 'work in progress'. The latter portion worries me to a great degree because in all my years of e-learning development, it has always been messy when showing a project in progress. Especially to outside eyes looking in. Explaining why something isn't working yet and what will eventually be there is time consuming. But, hell, it's a new, transparent world out there and this is my first real skin in the game.

If Your Just Scanning This Post, the Link You Want is Here

Without further adieu, here is the link to to the Biology 12 Project Status site.

P.S. Now that I have seen Google Sites, I may not be developing any further Project Status sites in the Blogs platform. Things move quick around here, you see...

Attending Survival Skills for New Supervisors

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:37:32 -0500

Yesterday, I attended the "Survival Skills for New Supervisors" training over in the Elliot building. It's a one-day crash-course for new supervisors here at Penn State. As it turns out, almost all of the attendees (about 9 of us) were not really "new" to supervising OR new to Penn State. When it was all said and done, I think this was an opportunity for many to 'refresh' on some things. And, believe it or not, I think that is exactly what it did.

Do not get us sued....

The morning was spent in a session with Linda Pierce, Human Resources Manager here at PSU. The focus of her discussion, which was actually much more of an open discussion forum, was the Fair Labor Standards Act and, much more specifically, rules for non-exempt employees. That particular topic went on for over an hour. I basically learned that non-exempt employees require an incredible amount of knowledge and awareness in order to properly manage due to the federal regulations about their time on the job rules. An example of the detail:

If an non-exempt employee travels for work on a Sunday and they do the travel between their normal work hours (let's say those hours are 9-4 each day), they must be paid for that travel time. So if they travel from 9-4 on that Sunday, they are to be paid for that time. If they travel before or after that time, they do not have to be paid. So if this non-exempt employee travels after 4:00 on Sunday, they don't have to be paid for their travel time. I think....

Even though Linda had no idea of the percentage of exempt and non-exempt employees at Penn State, it was clear that HR here at PSU wants everyone to be WELL aware of these rules. The bottom line seemed to be: if you're not sure, call HR. OK, got it and will do.

Identifying my Preferred Leadership Style

The best part of the training day came next in that we all filled out a questionnaire and then plotted the results in a chart to determine what our 'preferred leadership style' was. I have provided a quick VoiceThread below to discuss my results:

A cool part of this exercise is that we were plotting our info in the graph before our facilitator, Diane Brown, explained what each quadrant represented. She further explained that this only represents our 'base' preferred leadership style. In other words, it's the style we revert to when we need to be comfortable in our job.

We then went on to discuss the idea of 'situational leadership', where we will shift our style according the current situation we are in. This made a lot sense to me based upon my experiences in managing teams and projects over the years. The easiest example for me to relate to is when projects "go sideways" near the deadline. This is when some unforeseen event has put the project at risk of failure. For me, like many other managers, I will move into the "authoritative" mode where there is less room for support and consensus building and only room for task and execution. I don't actually mind that mode all that much, I just don't enjoy being in it for long periods of time. For me and my style, if I end up there too often, I'm not leading or managing properly over the long haul.

I really enjoyed these reflective exercises and discussions, especially with the other folks that were in the training with me. We all had a number of war stories to share and, for me, that is an engaging way to learn things.

Tips for Being a Leader/Supervisor/Manager

The afternoon consisted of a panel discussion (again, open discussion format) with:

Mitch Kirsch, Director of Admin. Services in the Schreyer Honors College
Lenny Pollack, Manager, Human Resources Development Center
Diane Brown, Asst. Director Human Resources Development Center

Mitch (real name Michele) and Lenny provided their own list of 'tips' for supervisors. They were fairly straightforward and I had hear many of them before. However, both Mitch and Lenny identified something I'd never really thought about before. They both said it was important for each of us to "figure out what your reward is for supervising". Not from a compensation standpoint, of course, but from an intrinsic viewpoint. Even as I write this, I'm still not totally clear on this issue personally. I know I enjoy it and seem to have been in such a role for a long time now, but I've never really reflected on what it is that 'rewards' me about it. My gut tells me this is something I should reflect on and be able to discuss; almost as if it's more important for me right now than many of the other tips we got ("learn from a mentor", "don't be afraid to make tough decisions", etc.)

Overall, there was a lot to cover in this class and we didn't have time to get to all of it. This was fine with me because I felt that we got a lot of quality out of the material that we did cover. Now I just need to think about what is so rewarding to me as a leader/manager/supervisor.

CIC CIO Presentation: Blog Platform as E-Learning Authoring Platform

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:14:02 -0500

On October 6, 2009 I was part of a presentation on the Blogs at Penn State web publishing platform at the CIC CIO Tech Forum at Michigan State University. I presented with Brad Kozlek and Erin Long.

Our approach was this (and in this order):

Brad presented on the Blog platform in general. He gave a broad overview of the platform, including the tracked history of it's rollout and user data to show how it's growing adoption among Penn State faculty, staff and students.
Erin demonstrated examples of instructional uses of the platform in English 202C (technical writing class) where students are using the platform to publish their assignments on the web, create their resumes and develop broader reaching e-portfolios that contain showcases of their work throughout their academic career at Penn State.
My presentation shifted gears and showed how the Blogs at Penn State was used as e-learning authoring tool to develop a Biology 12 lab as an open courseware deliverable.

Being that the conferences audience was mainly IT folk, I wasn't sure I'd get much interest in a presentation more geared for instructional designers or e-learning developers. In fact, to being my part of the presentation, I asked the group (about 17 people) if anyone had any experience putting instructional material online. Three people fully raised their hands and one put their hand up kind of half-way. 3 out of 17 was sure better than a big fat ZERO! So, I had myself some people who may indeed be interested in my portion of the presentation. That was important as I was nervous about presenting to a group uninterested in the topic.

My presentation is here:

Results?

Overall, the entire presentation went well. I think the concept of the broad overview followed by two very different learning applications from it made sense to our audience. Brad was immediately approached by some folks from the University of Illinois who seemed to be very interested in this platform. In fact, his discussions with these people began after the presentation and went through dinner that evening. I consider that a measurable result.

FYI- no one has contacted me about authoring e-learning content in an open web publishing platform. For now, I'll chalk it up to the audience and not the presenter as an ego massaging measure.

Brad Kozlek published all 3 of our presentations together if you are interested in seeing the entire presentation.

Time to Develop One Hour of Training: More Accurate Data?

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:00:16 -0500

Recent Survey Shows...

It's that time again. Time to debate the age-old question of "how many hours does it take to develop one hour of training?" This has always been one of the more interesting questions in training development, e-learning in particular. It came up while going through my subscriptions and came upon the blog of a colleague in the field, Robin Defelice. Her blog, DishingDesign, is an excellent source of information for the true, waist-in-the-deep-muddy instructional designer. I first got to know Robin a few years ago when, in my previous role as Director of E-learning development at Infologix, I hired her to be a sub-contractor ID. She was marvelous. She was a tremendous asset to our team and I adopted some of her approaches to our collective process along the way. I'll also mention that she's way cool, a trait that never gets enough credit professionally.

A few months ago, she reached out to me to fill out a survey about hours to develop training. I still had the metrics in my head from my previous job so I was happy to oblige. She worked on this survey with Dr. Karl Kapp, another contact of mine at Bloomsburg University's Institute for Interactive Technology. Karl's resume in the business is impressive and he has done a lot of work recently in the gaming area. I highly recommend subscribing to Karl's blog.

Here are the Results

Their results were just recently published on ASTD's Learning Circuits website. I've taken the survey results and placed them here (Robin is not sure why the editors at Learning Circuits went with this color scheme either). Karl had administered this survey 6 years ago so results are compared to that 2003 data. Give this a quick look:

Type of Training per 1 hour	Low Hours Per hour of Instruction (2009)	High Hours Per Hour of Instruction (2009)	Low Hours Per hour of Instruction (2003)	High Hours Per Hour of Instruction (2003)
Stand-up training (classroom)	43	185	20	70
Self-instructional print	40	93	80	125
Instructor-led, Web-based training delivery (using software such as Centra, Adobe Connect, or WebEx-two-way live audio with PowerPoint)	49	89	30	80
E-learning Developed without a Template
Text-only; limited interactivity; no animations	93	152	100	150
Moderate interactivity; limited animations	122	186	250	400
High interactivity; multiple animations	154	243	400	600
E-learning Developed within a Template
Limited interactivity; no animations (using software such as Lectora, Captivate, ToolBook, TrainerSoft)	118	365	40	100
Moderate interactivity; limited animations (using software such as Lectora, Captivate, ToolBook, TrainerSoft)	90	240	150	200
High interactivity; multiple animations (using software such as Lectora, Captivate, ToolBook, TrainerSoft)	136	324	60	300
Limited interactivity; no animations (using software such as Articulate)	73	116	NA	NA
Moderate interactivity; limited animations (using software such as Articulate)	97	154	NA	NA
High interactivity; multiple animations (using software such as Articulate)	132	214	NA	NA
Simulations
Equipment or hardware (equipment emulation)	949	1743	600	1000
Softskills (sales, leadership, ethics, diversity, etc.)	320	731	NA	NA

I notice a number of things here but these two stand out to me:

The 2009 numbers seem much more 'averagy' (yes, I just used that word). The 2003 numbers are all rounded nicely, almost as if a sales person was providing a 'range' of hours estimates to a client.
In a number of important 'sweet' spots of development, the number of hours has actually gone up in the past 6 years.

So Why is This?

Based upon my experience in 17 years in this 'business' of instructional technology/design/e-learning development or whatever else we call it these days, I believe the 2009 numbers are fairly accurate to each category.

I think the reason these numbers are more accurate is that training development organizations are putting more effort and resources into actually tracking true development related hours per project. I figured you might might ask me some question to back this assertion up so here are my answers to those perceived questions:

But haven't training development resources been doing hours tracking for a long time now?

Yes. Sort of. Hours tracking in our business has sort of an odd history. Way back in the day (early 90's), hours tracking for e-learning (back then called CBT or TBT) development was done under an organization's more formal hours tracking system. These systems did not easily conform to the unique needs of e-learning development but it wasn't that important. For e-learning teams within bigger organizations,if tracking was done, it was to ensure we had 40 hours on our timesheet. It was a requirement to get paid. Whether it was detailed to a project was important, but not critical. As long as you had 40 in there, you were good. If you were only at 35 hours for the week, you simply sprinkled 5 hours on a few different projects and you were good to go. Who would really know? Or care?
If e-learning leaders wanted more realistic data, they would have their own separate system so they could a) give more realistic price quotes for future projects and b) prove how efficient they were in the 'time to develop one hour of training' metric. Part b was particularly troublesome because you could change assumptions on your numbers to come up with absurdly low ratios that showed how "awesome" you were. Bottom line: tracking was done to get Paid, determine Price and ego-massaging Pride.

So why have training developers become more precise in the past six years?

I'll boil it down to one key event: Enron. The Enron scandal exposed the failure of the somewhat self-regulatory nature of how companies did their accounting, most notably how they recognize revenue. Companies would 'accelerate' revenue recognition in order to make the next quarter look good. Some companies, like Enron, took this to outlandish boundaries. To illustrate with an e-learning example:

Let's say Enron (all these years later, it's still OK to pick on them) had an e-learning division and that team landed a project that was signed on April 1 and was expected to take 6 months to complete. The contract value was worth $100,000. If Enron wanted their second quarter revenues to look good (quarter ending June 30), they would just recognize the full $100,000 of the contract as revenue for that quarter, justifying it by saying they landed it in second quarter. But by that time, barely half of the project would actually be 'done'. You see the problem. And so did Congress. Thus, Sarbannes-Oxley (SOX) was born. And this is where the project tracking science picks up.

OK, I sort of follow. But why did Sarbannes-Oxley force more accurate project tracking?

Three words this time: "Fear Of Noncompliance". (Note: I will tell you right now, I'm not qualified to discuss Sarbannes-Oxley. What I am relating is my experience at Infologix with SOX's impact). While SOX was to only impact public companies, many private companies re-evaluated their own accounting practices and adjusted "just in case". At Infologix, like many companies, the CFO's role became critical in defining and enforcing financial responsibility all the way down the chain. Infologix had just gone public so the need to "do it the right way" was VERY important because now regulators were watching carefully. One end result was the implementation of an organization-wide project tracking system that tied directly into the financials system at many levels. For Finance, this meant that at any time, they could see the relation between budgeted hours burned vs. revenue recognized on any project. Sales people and executives naturally hated this but this is a new era in accountability and transparency.

So SOX makes everyone be 'compliant'. But do bean counters really care about enforcing rules on e-learning development?

The finance function is more powerful than ever in this new environment. But if it was just finance telling e-learning developers to stay the course, it wouldn't be enough. The key driver to the furthering exact science of hours tracking is executive leadership. Yes, the big bosses. Why? Because it has a direct, immediate impact on revenue. In this new world, executives have a direct interest in how many hours an e-learning (or any other of course) project will use and how many have been 'burned' at any given point. Here's the bottom line on that: on any given day now, a project manager or even director must be ready to explain that's days status of hours burned and revenue recognized. That 'motivator' has spurred this more exact science in. The world has demanded more transparency and accountability on a daily basis and e-learning developers are included.

OK, Matt, I get the financial accountability thing. But why are so many of the 2009 hours higher than 2003? Were previous estimates really that far off? Why?

Yes, previous estimates were off. I personally feel the main reason was the under-reporting of hours from two main resources: graphics/media development and programming. In my opinion, both of these disciplines are highly creative but in different obvious ways. These disciplines have also chronically under-estimated how long something will take them to do and also under-reported how long something did take them to do. Why? These are fiercely proud folks and also competitive within their disciplines. For example, when asking a flash developer or a programmer how long something will take to create, they are typically very aggressive in their estimates, meaning they give a low estimate. Let's say the person said "4 hours". He or she is not low-balling; it is what they believe. More often than not, it takes longer to do than they thought. Let's say it took 8 hours. When they report back how long it took, they might budge and say, "mmm, about 6 hours". Now that financial accountability has spread to the front lines, these resources spend more time ensuring accuracy and not worrying about the pride factor related to time.
Outsourcing has also contributed to more accurate hours tracking. As increasing numbers of organizations rely on the outsourcing model for development, the eye is out for 'over-billing' constantly. If you know how many hours a task should take, say 40, and a sub-contractor give you an invoice for 60 hours, you are all over that. You would investigate heavily before agreeing to pay for 20 more hours than you expect something to take.

So, there you have my first thoughts on this recent study. In case you want the correct answer to the question "How much time does it take to develop one hour of training" the CORRECT answer is, "It depends".

A New Biology 12 Design Begins

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:31:35 -0500

I've spent the last couple of weeks working with Tyrone Ridgway on the next phase of the Biology 12 project. He returned from a rather exciting month or so back in Australia conducting classes from a boat where he took students snorkeling and scuba diving to pick up specimens, bring them on the boat and then conduct various activities that included using the scientific method to analyze what they had found. I'm not sure a class gets any cooler than that from a design and delivery perspective!

While we won't be scheduling any boat runs for the new Biology 12 course, we will be building upon our successful Biology 12 work from this spring when we redesigned one of the labs and delivered it as an e-learning module to students via the Blogs at Penn State web publishing platform. I am very excited about this project because we are taking the design model we used and really trying to expand it. There are three main strategies for the new Biology 12 redesign and they include:

A total re-creation of the course content based on more focused and related learning objectives
Re-use of technologies and processes from the first project
Utilization of new tools and technologies to utilize in the online learning modules.

Each of these three areas are described below:

All New Content

All current labs and exercises in the Biology 12 course are being thrown out. Most importantly, students will no longer be in the overcrowded labs to perform series' of mostly unrelated lab exercises. In it's place will be an online set of 'labs' that carry a more comprehensive curriculum that build toward a student's ability to perform and appreciate the scientific method. As we did for the Flowering Plant Reproduction lab, Tyrone will develop content that is within a relevant context for today's students. For example, he used the declining bee population issue to teach how flowers reproduce and therefore the impacts of fewer bees on the planet to assist with this part of nature. Look for more of that approach in the new course

What we will Re-use (and hopefully expand)

Blogs at Penn State: Again, we plan to use the Blogs at Penn State's web publishing platform as the content delivery mechanism. In addition to the reasons we used it in the past, we have also begun to think about how this course will 'live' beyond this initial development for future faculty that are responsible for it. The Blogs platform is again a great choice because everyone at Penn State has access to and can (and should) be utilizing. So, for example, in two years when Tyrone is gone and I've moved on to another project, the Biology department will have access to the content and the ability to make changes to it themselves. They won't need to outsource it or re-engineer it to another platform.

ANGEL: We plan to employ the same strategy as before where students will sign-in to ANGEL to access the learning content and assorted other materials.

Custom Content Development: We will, when appropriate, develop custom Flash animations and interactions (exercises) for students, just as we did the for the Flowering Plant Reproduction lab.

Google Docs: We used Google Docs to capture QA/QC feedback for the previous effort and we plan to use it again. However, we may look to use more capabilities of Google Docs as well. For example, Tyrone would like students to see the effect of changing data on graphical representations in order to make assumptions. We may look into creating interactive Google Doc spreadsheets to do this (Note: anyone reading this who has some expertise on this, please step forward!)

New Stuff we are Planning to Use

Among the new technologies and tools we plan to develop content with are:

VoiceThread: I'm sure anyone reading my blogs has read enough about VoiceThread already (if not, check out a previous post on this tool). We are planning to create content with VoiceThread and embed it within the content web pages of the course. We will design an exercise early in the course where students will be required to add a comment so that they get a feel for how VoiceThread works. This exercise will establish a foundation for later uses of this technology throughout the semester.

Kaltura Produced Videos: Tyrone attended the Learning Design Summer Camp this year and participated in the pre-conference workshop on Developing Literacies for Student Digital Media. In this workshop, they used Kaltura, a free and open source web-based video editing platform to create compelling videos. Tyrone would like to use this tool to create some content elements of the course. We will attempt to use this platform, as opposed to the more established iMovie, because it can easily be used by future content owners of this course (it's totally web-based and free). For now, we have no plans to give students an assignment where they would use Kaltura to create a video but it is something that we will keep in the back of our minds.

Blogging: Ironically, we did not employ the blogging function of the Blogs at Penn State platform for the project this past spring. We are designing to change that for the new Biology 12 course. We are planning to include assignments where students will need to write blog entries at different points throughout the semester. We expect to use this as another way to get students engaged in the course and to spark conversation.

Looking Forward to This

There is no doubt that this is an exciting project. How can a total content recreation and utilization of some of the leading-edge learning technologies not be? No doubt there will be a number of obstacles we encounter (will students handle log-ins for ANGEL and VoiceThread seamlessly?) but ETS has the brainpower necessary to overcome most anything we will encounter. I look forward to this project and sharing the experience as we progress.

VoiceThread Adoption: That was Easy!!

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:22:42 -0500

Implementing VoiceThread in an Online Class..in 2 Days!

About a week after we released our Hot Team white paper on VoiceThread, I received a request from a faculty member, Evelyn Thomchick, in the Smeal College of Business about it. She has been teaching an online Supply Chain Master's Program course and had recently assigned her class a Negotiations exercise. She had created 12 teams of 4 to engage in a negotiation where each team represented either 'Raymark' or 'Sentor'. She gave basic case study information about each company, including scenarios for each. She paired the teams off so that Team A negotiated with Team B, Team C negotiated with Team D, etc. In all, there were 6 total negotiations.

The Negotiation Post Hoc Analysis Assignment

By the time Evelyn had contacted me, the students had completed the negotiation exercise (the students used negotiation forums and chats within ANGEL). She had asked each team to submit a 3-4 slide powerpoint presentation that provided an ad-hoc analysis that covered:

Did your team meet your objective(s)?
Did you follow your strategy? If not, how did it change as you proceeded?
Why did you reach a successful out come or why did you not reach a successful outcome?

She was receiving each team's powerpoint when she reached out to me about possibly using VoiceThread. Her original thought was to have an Adobe Connect session with each team but she was realizing the major scheduling issues for a synchronous meeting for students in this online class. It was at this point she read about VoiceThread reached out to me. She primarily liked the idea that feedback could be provided in an asynchronous environment within a presentation user interface.

How She Used VoiceThread for the Assignment

On a Wednesday, we met at Starbucks to discuss her assignment and the possibility of using VoiceThread. Evelyn quickly grasped how VoiceThread would work and the advantages of it for this particular assignment. By the end of the meeting, she had decided she would do this:

She would take the powerpoint slides from each of the teams that negotiated with each other and put them in one VoiceThread presentation. To illustrate, she had Team A and B negotiate with each other. Team A and B sent their ppt slide to Evelyn and she then uploaded the 4 slides from A and 4 slides from B into one VoiceThread.
One this 8 slide presentation was set up, she assigned the 4 individuals from Team A and the 4 from Team B to that particular VoiceThread. This way, each team could read the other team's post hoc analysis.
She would then give each of the 8 total individuals three days to review the combined analysis and make comments in VoiceThread.
In all, she had 6 pairs of teams so she ended up creating 6 separate VoiceThreads

As I said, we met on a Wednesday. Later that week (Friday), Evelyn had uploaded all ppts and assigned them to students. By Monday, students were adding comments. I asked her to give me access to the VoiceThreads just so I could see how this assignment went. I didn't think much about it until I realized that Evelyn had decided on a completely new technology tool to handle an important class assignment only 4 days before it needed to be up and working!

Results

For the most part, students were also able quickly able to get into VoiceThead, review the slides and make comments. Most of the comments were in text, especially the first day or so. Later, other students started making audio comments via microphone. The bottom line is that the students did indeed engage in conversations via VoiceThread and the feedback was meaningful. There were a couple of small hiccups with some student's access to VoiceThread but they were quickly resolved.

Overall, I think this experience demonstrated the ease of implementing and using VoiceThread, both for faculty and students. Evelyn felt comfortable enough with it to make the decision to use it over the course of a one hour discussion at Starbucks (no, I did not use my P-Card). Even more impressive is that she was up and running 2 days later. And she did this with little to no input from me for getting things set up beyond our initial meeting at Starbucks!

Example VoiceThread from the Assignment

I've embedded one of the VoiceThreads from her assignment so that you can get an idea of how this assignment ended up functioning. If you do not yet have a VoiceThread account, click Register! to create a quick account for free. This should take you less than 30 seconds (VoiceThread does not require a lot of profile information to start).

Coincidence? ELI Releases Their White Paper on VoiceThread

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:13:19 -0500

My last two blogs were all about our exciting work completing the VoiceThread white paper, "7 Things you Need to Know about VoiceThread." With a nice feeling of accomplishment and pride, I felt good about the quality and uniqueness of our work. Until this past Tuesday. It just so happens that the Educause Learning Initiative released their version of a white paper on VoiceThread. Initially, I felt a bit of the wind come out of my sails at this strange coincidence. But then I realized that we were the ones who accompanied our white paper with a real VoiceThread! So yes, ours is officially cooler because of that alone.

I'll let you decide for yourself on which is 'best' but I think this coincidence underscores some of the momentum of VoiceThread in education.

PS- Vote for ours.

Hot Team Experience in Creating VoiceThread White Paper- Part II

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:31:25 -0500

As I mentioned in Part I of this blog, this was my first experience leading a hot team. I thought I'd share some thoughts on the team, a bit of our process and some interesting 'extra' information that I thought I'd share.

Our Hot Team

Luckily, I was made a part of an excellent team for this project that was engaged and worked well together. Just as a recap, our Hot Team consisted of:

Dan Berman
Cathy Holsing
Chris Stubbs
Kim Winck

Dan was, until Tuesday, an associate professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (CAMS) at Penn State. Dan is leaving Penn State for a new position at Temple University. Dan was on the team because he had actually taken the great leap and used VoiceThread for his online Roman archaeology course. As far as I know (which often isn't much), he is the only instructor to use VoiceThead so far here at PSU. It was great getting to know Dan during this project and I hope to stay in contact with him. Even though I am new to State College, it turned out he and I have a common contact in Garrett Fagan, another associate professor in the CAMS department. Ironically, Garrett is my next door neighbor. But since Dan is moving, I guess I won't see him at the cookouts this summer!

Cathy is a Senior Instructional Designer in Outreach and Online Education for the College of the Liberal Arts. I met Cathy on the Grassroots video Hot Team and she had worked with Dan to setup his VoiceThread for the Roman archaeology class. In fact, it was Cathy who had presented VoiceThead at an ID meeting earlier this year that gave birth to the idea of doing the VoiceThread hot team. Cathy is wonderful to work with and since we've been on two teams together, I may request her for all hot teams that I participate in.

Chris is a resident instructional technologist here in ETS. At least, I believe that is the title he should have right now. Chris was the 'technology guy' in our group and helped us seek out the critical technical information during our research period.

Kim is in Video Production and Design for the Digital Commons. I first worked with Kim during the Biology 12 project this spring and was glad to have her expertise on hand. Kim really put VoiceThread "through the ringer" from a usability and content creation viewpoint.

A Bit about Process

The team met once a week for almost two months. We explored with the tool as well as researched what others were doing with it. We kept all notes and documents in Google Docs, which works fabulously for such a collaborative writing project. As interesting as that part of the process was, the project became a lot more fun when we started contacting external resources for information (see below). These conversations were key to a deeper understanding of the tool and, perhaps more importantly, allowed us to build some nice relationships.

Obviously, the most unique part of this project was our hot team creating its own VoiceThread, or as we called it, a 'Hot Thread'. While most of us have written a paper, how many can say they created a VoiceThread? We had limited time to develop it but the creative process was still fun and definitely helped keep the team motivated toward the end of the hot team process.

Speaking with Sources: University of North Carolina and VoiceThread co-founder

In researching VoiceThread, we were able to make some great contacts at the University of North Carolina where they have integrated VoiceThread into their technical infrastructure. Kathleen Kyzer and Suzanne Caldwell were our points of contact and they couldn't have been more pleasant and open to talk with. They are in the ITS Teaching and Learning Center Center at UNC. We provided them with a list of questions in Google Docs and shared it with them. They replied into that document and then joined us for an hour-long conference call for further discussions. That conversation was very insightful for all of us on the hot team. Here is the document we shared with them if you are interested.

We also got in contact with one of the cofounders of VoiceThread, Steve Muth. He was great, responding to our requests almost immediately. Take a look at his direct answers to our questions. I found him very approachable and forthcoming with information. Dan had been in direct contact with Steve when he was developing his VoiceThreads and he remembered Dan quite well (for good reasons, mind you). He had also worked closely with our contacts at UNC during their VoiceThread custom implementation.

If we need to dig deeper into the use of VoiceThread in the future, you can bet we will be contacting Kathleen, Suzanne and Steve!

One last artifact: If anyone has seen enough of the VoiceThread information to be interested enough to try it out, we found this well done Educator's Guide to VoiceThread. It's from Michelle Pacansky-Brock, Director of Online and Hybrid Support Center at California State University. She was an enthusiastic early adopter and user of VoiceThread. It's a very good 'Getting Started' guide for anyone ready to give VoiceThread a real try within a course.

Hot Team Experience in Creating VoiceThread White Paper- Part I

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:59:26 -0500

I have just completed my first experience being a Hot Team lead for developing a white paper here at ETS. As I blogged back in May, our topic is VoiceThread and we have finally completed the white paper titled "7 Things you Need to Know about VoiceThread". I hope you blog readers will give it a quick read (it's only 2 pages) to learn about this unique new tool.

If you would rather go right to the fun stuff, we also started our own VoiceThread that gives you a real sense of how it works and what you can do with it. We called it our "HotThread". I have embedded the VoiceThread here on this page for you to enjoy- simply click on it to begin. I invite you to make a comment in this VoiceThread to get a real sense of this tool's ease of use.

OR, if you prefer, you can view the full screen version from this VoiceThread webpage.

The VoiceThread Hot Team's "HotThread"

If you find VoiceThead interesting, I suggest visiting VoiceThread and learning more about it.

In Part II, I will provide some details of the Hot Team experience as well as some additional background information on VoiceThread.

The Iowegians are Coming!

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:36:56 -0500

As some of you know by now, I am originally from Iowa, the state at the far western end of the Big Ten Conference. I still have a lot of family there I take my clan out each year when I can. I was out there last week for a family vacation and had a fantastic time. My sons got the chance to play with their cousins (ok, technically they are all second cousins) as well as go fishing for the first time, play with tadpoles, canoe and assorted other "farm country" activities.

During the week, it was clear that practically everyone at the large number of community functions we seem to have attended was aware I am now living in State College. In small communities, that's not too hard to comprehend, of course. What may be a little harder to comprehend is that it seems they are all coming to visit State College the weekend of September 26th. This football season, Iowa visits Penn State on September 26th.

Let me explain: it turns out that a lot of Iowa fans in the community are excited about making the road trip to Penn State and it's NOT just because they know I live here (my ego will survive). Over the past 15 years, the State College road trip, while definitely their longest in conference (at least a 12 hour drive), is quickly becoming one of Iowa fans' favorite trips. The consensus of those I talked to is that State College offers a beautiful setting, is a fun town AND the weather will still be good that time of year. They also enjoy getting to know Penn State fans so what's not to like?

The wee-bitty problem I have now is that there are potentially dozens of visitors finding my house that weekend. My uncle was sure to pass on my address to friends and by the end of our vacation, it seemed everyone I talked to was "looking forward to seeing you out in State College, Matty!"

So for all you Penn State fans, I just wanted to warn you: The Iowegians are indeed coming. And, apparently, many will be stopping by my place. So how does a guy go about getting tickets in this town, anyway??

Ripping off the Swim Vests

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:29:10 -0500

Just taking the kids swimming

This past weekend, I took my two sons to the university pool for a couple of hours of swimming and splashing around with them. Since we have moved here, my wife has been taking them for swim lessons twice a week but since they are still just 5 and just-turned 4, it's not like they are swimming freestyle comfortably yet. Everything they do in their swim class is very basic and closely supervised. So, heading to the pool, I packed their swimming vests as we have always done the past few summers for them. Swimming vests are the best thing for parents of young ones: kids are comfortable in them, they can go anywhere in the pool and most importantly, they never let the wearer go below the surface of the water for more than a second (no matter how hard they try sometimes).

"What do you kids think you're doing?"

Upon arrival, I put the vests on them and proceeded to play with them in the water as we have done in the past. After about 30 minutes, a sudden change in my comfort level began to unfold. My oldest son (5) sat on the side of the pool and started to remove his vest. First, I didn't even know he was able to remove it himself (it's a zipper and a clip combo). I moved over to tell him "no, no, you need to leave that on". As quickly as I was losing that battle, my youngest son (just turned 4) was five feet away ripping off his vest. This was no good. They were a good five feet apart and I think was on purpose: they seemed very aware that I couldn't stop both of them at once. As I verbally failed to convince them to leave them on, I also realized there wasn't much I could do at that point without physically manhandling them in front of the leisurely Sunday crowd there at the pool. The facts were now this: these boys were done with these swim vests and I now had to figure out how I was going to manage them. The wheels were coming off in a hurry...

What do I do now?

Plan A was to mostly hold them up and keep them within arms length at all times. That was a poorly thought out plan. They're bigger than last year and require more of their own space. Plan B was my only option: let them try what they want but be ready to be quick. Before you know it, both kids jump in toward me and I'm just thinking, 'catch them for they know not what they are unable to do!' Before long, I was observing that were indeed 'swimming' without the vests. And going under the water and back up with ease. I didn't even need to catch them when they jumped in anymore- in fact, with their little frames unencumbered by the vests, they were able to jump further with more force than before. So instead of worrying about catching them, I was just trying to dodge them now. And they were handling it themselves. As the day went on, they became a little more daring in how far they could go out before swimming back. After a while, I sat on the side of the pool and they did their thing which was mostly competitions of who could jump out the furthest, swim back to the wall the fastest and who could do the best cannonball. By the end of the day, I was, of course, proud but I was mostly still dizzy from the amount of change I had just endured.

I realize that all parents go through these type of moments countless times during the child rearing years but I started to critically think about it on the way home. Basically, I was comfortable in how things had been for a while: put on the swim vests so the kids can't drown, swim with them a little or hang in a nice shady spot and watch them go, nice and safe. When they ripped off their swim vests, they tore me from my comfort zone of how things had been. But they, naturally, have changed since the last time we swam together. I, naturally, had not changed because I'm old and set in my ways. In only a few moments, the entire paradigm had shifted for me. The facts had dramatically changed and I need to find a new way to manage them. I will need to figure out the best way to adapt and take advantage of this 'next level' of skill and confidence they have. How will I help them do more with what they now have? How will I keep up? I have some thoughts on all that but no concrete answers. I just know I have to do something.

When the vests come off- in education

Aside from the obvious parenting lesson, I see this episode as a kind of metaphor in education in general. Since coming on board in January, I'm learning how TLT, and my group, ETS, are constantly trying to explore ways to help faculty be ready for moments when they realize their student audiences have 'ripped off the swim vests' and are not ready to go back to the old way of doing things. Instances such as:

Like 25 years ago when students began arriving on campus and putting PC's in their dorm rooms. Just how was that going to help them?
Or 10-15 years ago, students started arriving on campus with their own laptops. And then they started bringing them to class! Why would they do that?
Or today, students show up here with established online identities, communities and any number of social media involvements. How do educators tap into the students expectations and abilities from this phenomenon to turn up the educational experience for them?

You can see from the first two examples above just how there was no going back from the shift that occurred. Students expectation had changed in that regard and there was no going back. Educators had to adapt to the new assumptions and expectations and derive solutions that would not just keep up with these changes, but also broaden and deepen the scholarship experience. I'm sure the jury is still out on the success of these efforts but there's no doubt this is how we should face these challenges- as opportunities to advance the experience.

At the same time, I will try to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with 2 kids who don't want swim vests on any more AND don't want to come out of the pool. All I know is, I won't be able sit comfortably in the shade anymore.

Education, Innovation and the Economic Future

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:16:25 -0500

One of my favorite blogs is that of Robert Reich. Reich is a professor of Public Policy at the University of California but is most famous for serving as the Secretary of Labor under President Clinton during the mid 1990's. I'm able to connect with his views and thinking on most issues and he writes his blogs so clearly that even I feel I have some public policy 'expertise' afterwards. He still occasionally makes the rounds on the political shows, providing his views on any number of issues. One of his longest running policy stances is that of the future of the American and global economies, especially in regards to the growing gap between the "haves" and "have nots" in the US due to the steady decline of manufacturing jobs here.

Reich's Blog Posts This Week

This week, Reich has written 2 (of an eventual 3) posts on the issue in the wake of the GM bankruptcy. In Part I, Reich surmises that rates of productivity and technology will continue to decrease the amount of "routine jobs" in our economy (he points out this is a global, not just US issue). What the economy needs are workers who can fulfill the 'new' jobs that are emerging, which he calls "symbolic analytic" work (yes, you'll need to read Part I if you want to learn what that really means). While routine jobs (read: manufacturing) are the jobs being lost in the economy, the symbolic analytic jobs are the jobs being added to the economy.

Role of Education

While you may disagree with some of his views, I point out his section on education, located in Part II, particularly on the importance in the future for our youth to get some type of education post-high school. He doesn't dwell too long on this issue, but his argument is enough (if you dare to read his posts) to make me think critically about the important missions we take on here in ETS. These posts really confirm that the type of educational innovation we strive for here are part of the macro shift that our economy requires moving forward.

Relating to Leadership at Penn State

The Reich posts also resonates with Kevin Morooney's presentation at the TLT staff meeting last week, where he discussed, at the ITS level, 'shedding old services and creating new ones'. To execute this type of plan, he needs resources (people) to 'turn over 1/3 of your relevant skill set every three years'. Its seems to me that Kevin and Robert Reich are on same page with that assessment.

VoiceThread: Using it as a Blog for a Digital Conversation

Thu, 28 May 2009 10:55:00 -0500

Since I'm right in the middle of the VoiceThread Hot Team project, I thought I'd try a unique experiment this week with my blog. Below is an embedded VoiceThread I have started. The short, short version of what VoiceThread does is allow you to comment on media slides with your voice (or text or webcam) very easily.

Quick instructions:

Click on image below to begin playing.
When you wish to make a comment, click the Comment button below the slide image.
If you do not have an account with VoiceThread, you will be prompted for email and password. Enter that info and submit it. It only takes a minute to get registered.
Once registered, you will see icons to make a comment via phone, webcam, microphone, type audio file. I recommend selecting microphone to make a comment.

You can now add comment to each of the 4 slides! I'm hoping your experience gets your brain juices flowing on the possibilities for the use of VoiceThread.

NOTE: I have 4 slides in this VoiceThread. Use the forward button to see each one and try to add a comment to each slide

So comment away and build this VoiceThread!

Brain Rules: Taking Advantage of How the Brain Works

Thu, 14 May 2009 09:16:43 -0500

Ok, so follow me here: I'm writing this blog about someone else's blog. And that someone else's blog is about someone else's book. I'm 4 months into this blogging experience and one thing I've picked up is that it is ok to blog about a blog. After all, isn't this blogging stuff all about sharing and connectedness? Well, here goes.

This morning, I was going through my RSS feeds and surfed into a blog post from Clive Sheppard, [an e-learning guru]. Clive is currently offering his Cliff's Notes version of a new book, "Brain Rules" from John Medina. The book covers 10 rules about the brain and Clive is posting a blog each week on each brain rule. Clive gives his version of the brain rule and then he offers his key takeaways from those rules. Now, as far as I know, it's ok for Clive to do this, legally-copyright wise and all that. At least Clive is comfortable doing this so I'm offering this to you.

This week, Clive took on Brain Rule #6: "Remember to repeat". In any event, I suggest reading Clive's blog on Rule #6 and then come on back here.

My Takeaway from Clive's Takeaway...

All this connectedness and blogging of blogs is starting to make me dizzy but one of Clive's takeaway's stood out to me. It is his bullet #3 takeaway:

"Provide opportunities for reflection and/or discussion immediately following new learning."

Surely, Clive's list of takeaways (including the one above) are almost common sense to the modern instructional designer but the biggest connection for me was this one.

...And Here's Why

I personally feel that immediate reflection after new learning is critical. Why? Extensive research and profound analysis of empirical data? I wish, but, uh no. It strikes a chord with me because for one semester as a freshman (about 42 years ago, I think), I employed this strategy. Result: 4.0. Before you think I'm bragging about my intelligence levels, let me offer a few disclaimers about that semester:

a) I only carried 13 credits
b) 6 of those credits were history classes and I love history (Turns out I was one credit shy of a minor in it so, to my apathetic, chain-smoking advisor: a big FAIL to you!)
c) My one-credit course was "College Study Skills". Yes, a credited class on how to take other classes.

In essence, the academic stars were all in alignment for me to excel and REALLY impress my parents.

What I Did

Specifically, the strategy I employed was to go to a class, listen and take lots of notes. After the class, I would immediately go somewhere and completely re-write those same notes in a more organized manner. At the end of my "New" notes, I would write a summary of that day's lecture, based on my notes. This method of study had been given to me by one of my high school coaches who, at the time, was just a year into his first real job. It turns out that this was a common 'study method' at the the time. He didn't explain exactly why it was effective, just that it was and that I should do it. So I tried it and found it very effective!

(Note: This method was so effective at improving my grades that I subsequently never employed it again. The most likely culprit was that I was at that part of life when you're pretty sure you've 'got it all figured out'. Oye...)

Mapping Brain Rules and Education Technology

With all that being said, you can see how I quickly mapped that particular Brain Rule #6 takeaway to the Blogs at Penn State platform. After all, the blogs are about "Create, Reflect and Connect", right? While some of the projects that our group here in ETS have involved working with faculty to use blogs in the classroom, I think we have only begun to scratch the surface of what can be done with this platform. These are just a few examples of what has been done with the blog platform so far:

English 202: Students write and submit their compositions in blogs
Philosophy: Students write their thoughts on issues to share with other students and other online readers
Biology 12 : Blog platform used to develop e-learning content

I'm imagining ways in which faculty can continue to incorporate the use of blogs for students to 'reflect' immediately after new learning. And blogs allow not just the reflection element but also the 'discussion' element through comments and trackbacks. These two elements alone help new learning sink in. From an instructional design perspective, there is more to innovate here based our collective ability to use learning technology to take advantage of these Brain Rules.

I'll continue to read Clive's blog posts about John's book...and then blog about it. I also think back to that spring in 1987 and what it would have been like to re-write my notes in a blog. And then share these notes with classmates and have online discussions on the topics, based on our reflections. The bad news is that I'm pretty sure they would have had one word to describe this in 1987: "cheating". I'm glad we've come a long way, baby.