Author: Clint Lalonde

by Clint Lalonde on Social Networks, Teaching & Learning

Using Twitter to make you a more credible instructor

Just reading a piece of research by Kirsten A. Johnson from the Department of Communication at Elizabethtown College titled The effect of Twitter posts on students’ perception of instructor credibility (academic paywall) which illustrates some of the positive teaching benefits of not only using an open social network like Twitter, but using it in a very personal way.

Building on results of previous studies that show that instructors perceived as highly credible can have a positive impact on student learning, this study looked at the impact using Twitter might have on an instructors perceived credibility with students.

One of the factors that can increase the credibility of an instructor with learners is self-disclosure of personal information. You straddle a fine line with personal information. Too much or the wrong type and you can hurt your credibility (the phrase creepy treehouse just popped into my head as I wrote this). And indeed, many of the participants in this study expressed concerns about the appropriateness of instructors using social networks:

When participants in the study were asked why it is not appropriate for teachers to have social networking site accounts, many worried that they would not post appropriate information, thereby causing possible awkwardness in the student–teacher relationship. This feeling among participants supports previous findings that show it is important for teachers to disclose only appropriate information.

But as this research shows, when you hit that sweet spot, social media can help you make some very real connections with your learners, which can translate into improved learning.

The research looks at three different Twitter scenarios and how each influences a students perception of the instructors credibility.

  1. The instructor posts nothing but social information on Twitter
  2. The instructor posts nothing but scholarly information on Twitter
  3. The instructor posts both social and scholarly information on Twitter

120 undergrads from a small US college participated in the study. Interestingly, 81% of the respondents were female while only 17% were male and while the gender balance of the institution where the research was conducted did skew female (64%-36%), the author does acknowledge that this imbalance may alter the generalizability of the study.

The students were divided into three groups. One saw only tweets that were social, one group saw scholarly tweets, and one group a combination of scholarly and social tweets.

The results showed that the students who saw only the social tweets of the instructor rated that instructor as more credible than the group that saw only the scholarly tweets. Interestingly, there was no differences found between the group that saw the combination social-scholarly tweets and the other two groups, which runs counter to how I think Twitter should be used by College level educators since so much of an instructors credibility with students at this level is tied directly to their subject-matter expertise.  The authors of the study were also surprised by this result.

It was surprising that there was no significant difference between the scholarly group and the social + scholarly group. Since the dimensions used to measure credibility have both a caring and a competence component, it was interesting to note that the scholarly tweets, which were included in the study to raise the teacher’s level of perceived competence, did not significantly raise competence ratings in the groups that saw the scholarly posts. This could be an indication that caring, not competence, is the most important dimension when it comes to assessing perceived credibility on social networking sites.

The researchers conclude that:

No longer do teachers need to use class time to reveal bits of personal information about themselves: instead, this revelation of information can take place outside of class in a forum where students can choose whether to look at it. The nature of Twitter with its short updates, options to share pictures, and to easily post links may make it the ideal place to share information and carry on conversations with students outside of class. The use of social networking sites allows conversations to continue and can enrich a student’s perception of the teacher. As previous studies show, this personal communication can develop trust and lead to a productive learning environment

One of the bits about this research that I wasn’t keen about was that the fake instructor Twitter accounts did not contain a photo of a person, or even an avatar, but rather a generic photo of a sunset. I understand that the research didn’t want to bias the results of the study based on physical appearance, but to me if you are going to examine the issue of credibility on social networks, then not having a photo could very well flip the bias to the other end of the scale.

Ah well, at least it wasn’t Old Twitter default avatar

 
by Clint Lalonde on All the rest

Privacy and cloud based apps – a background paper from BCcampus

Descending Clouds

Ahead of their province wide conference on Privacy and Cloud-Based Educational Technology happening on April 4th, BCcampus has released a background white paper on Privacy and Cloud-Based Educational Technology in British Columbia (PDF).

The report is based on questionnaires and interviews conducted by BCcampus with a cross section of institutional stakeholders (instructors, teaching and learning centres and IT administrators) at 9 BC post-secondary institutions (25 were contacted) in the Fall of 2010.

The paper highlights some of the concerns and benefits post-sec institutions in BC are grappling with when considering using cloud-based applications and services (specifically those hosted in the US), and illustrates some examples of how BC post-sec’s have addressed these issues within their institutions.

Some institutions are afraid to authorize any “web 2.0” technologies because of privacy concerns, some have used workarounds, and some have just gone ahead and implemented institution-wide technologies to the best of their ability.

If you are involved in IT or EdTech in BC, this report is well worth the read and provides some real-life examples of how post-sec institutions in BC are addressing the ambiguous issues inherent with the big elephant in the room. As the report notes:

All (post-secondary institutions) have one thing in common: the need for clarity around what is or is not aligned with B.C.’s privacy legislation.

This ambiguity is reflected in one of the questions raised by Vancouver Island University:

Getting clear-cut responses from the Office of the BC Privacy Commissioner is important to  enabling post-secondary administrators to provide correct advice and guidance on FIPPA  related questions. What can the BC government ministry [responsible for FIPPA] do to  facilitate this?

Gina Bennett from the College of the Rockies also reflects this clarity concern.

According to Gina Bennett at COTR, FIPPA requirements aren’t well understood. “[Postsecondary institutions] use extreme caution, they don’t act -out of fear– or they fly under the  radar,” when they consider using cloud-based services or social media.

But my favorite Gina Bennett quote has to be this one, which nicely encapsulates one of the big picture issue that are at stake here.

“I wish we could have ‘openness people’ rather than ‘privacy people” at institutions. We  should be all about sharing. What is the purpose of the academy if not for sharing ideas?”

Hear, hear.

Photo: Descending Clouds by Gary Hayes used under Creative Commons license

 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech

A couple of upcoming events for BC EdTechies

ETUG Mosiac

I want to give a heads up to BC IT/EdTechie types about a couple of upcoming events some of my colleagues are busy organizing and that you may be interested in attending.

The first is the Vancouver Island Higher Education Information Technology Day (VIHET) being held next Wednesday, March 30th at Royal Roads University. I’m looking forward to the day and the opportunity to connect with my island colleagues from Camosun, UVic, VIU and North Island. The theme is Global Connections: International Trends in Educational Technologies. David Porter from BCcampus is the keynote speaker. I always enjoy seeing David present. He is one of the most progressive voices in our field in this province, and his recent excursion to Mongolia will no doubt provide him with some rich material for the theme at hand.

The second is the upcoming Educational Technology User Group (ETUG) spring workshop, being hosted by Selkirk College in Nelson, BC.  My colleagues Tracy Roberts and Amanda Coolidge are part of the organizing comittee this year and are planning a great conference built around the theme of Open4Learning. Think open professional development, OER’s, open courses (MOOC’s perhaps?), open source software & some of the non-teaching & learning issues (privacy) related to being open. Personally, I’m hoping Grant Potter does a bit on open radio & show us all how he set up & manages ds106radio, but I know he’s on the organizing committee & will have his hands full as it is. Call for proposals is on now until April 8th for the event on June 2 & 3.

Photo: ETUG Mosaic by Sylvia Currie used under Creative Commons license.

 
by Clint Lalonde on Camosun

Camaraderie can be potent

I love this phrase “coaxing serendipity” as a way to describe the process that results when a loosely structured informal social environment of like minded people occurs. I’ve experienced this kind of serendipity in my own learning as a result of the loose connections I make using social networks.

I don’t think these informal salons are something that are necessarily exclusive to the domain of artists or cultural creatives, but rather any type of CoP or NoP where a common practice occurs. Same thing with the tip on making it ridiculous – not something I think is crucial, but I agree that loose and fun will win out at the end of the day.

via Chris Lott http://sparkies.chrislott.org/post/3833957282/coaxing-serendipity

Amplify’d from the99percent.com
The establishment of informal “salons” or “circles” of artists or cultural creatives dates back to the Ancient Greeks and is a common feature of several touchstone cultural movements from impressionism to abstract expressionism to beat poetry.  The free-flowing exchange of ideas in a social setting serves to encourage deeper thinking, challenge assumptions, and expand resources – crucial aspects of any creative career. 

Furthermore, a consistent regular forum for discussion acts as a method to “coax serendipity” or encourage chance overlaps that lead to something exceptional: an idea that turns into a novel, the mention of a name that turns into a mentor, an acquaintance that becomes a star client.
A few tips on coaxing serendipity
1. Gather the right people.
2. Don’t dwell on making history.
3. Keep the agenda loose and social.
4. Establish consistency.
5. Keep it ridiculous.
Camaraderie can be potent.

Read more at the99percent.com
 
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bu505

 
by Clint Lalonde on Camosun

Tools for distributed learning research

Article from The Guardian about new research done on an MA level distance program and how some specific technology tools were incorporated into the program. Specifically, e-readers, Second Life and audio. Interesting that Second Life was being used as an asynchronous resource instead of a synchronous meeting space, which is how I usually read about Second Life being used. I also liked that students enjoyed & appreciated the audio feedback from other students & their tutor and appeared to pay more attention to comments received via audio than text. There is something appealing to me in the linear presentation of audio feedback that might make learners less likely to skim through feedback.

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

Research carried out recently among a group of students enrolled on a distance MA Tesol course at Leicester University offers a glimpse into a not-too-distant future when learners distributed around the world but linked via the internet will be able to enhance their learning experience with the use of some simple and low-cost digital tools.
with a simple voice recording program and headphone-and-mic sets it is possible for students to add audio clips to these message board postings
as part of the trial students and teachers were encouraged to post feedback about their work and exchange messages.

“It was incredibly successful,” Witthaus said. “Audio feedback gives the students the sense of their tutor as a real human being.”

She says tutors began to create a more effective, time-saving combination of text and audio. “They found they could write quick little annotations on students’ essays and then elaborate more in the audio feedback.”

The research also revealed that students appeared more willing to listen to feedback via audio than to commit time to reading written comments.
One other interesting result of the research was how communication could still be effective when it was asynchronous, particularly for study groups spread across different times zones.

This was most apparent with the use of Second Life. Instead of attempting to get student to congregate, in their avatar personas, in some part of the vast virtual world at the same time, the teaching staff identified where language learning was going on in SL and instructed students to carry out observations of what was happening in these virtual classrooms.

“The e-readers fitted into their lives. They didn’t necessarily replace print or their laptops or smartphones, it just fitted in. They used them in contexts where it worked for them.”

Read more at www.guardian.co.uk
 
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/btnpd

 
by Clint Lalonde on Camosun

ICT’s: Complement or Substitute to F2F?

Something I have been noticing in my own virtual connections is that, whether on Facebook or Twitter, I am conversing more and more with people I associate with IRL. I’ve been wondering why this is, and I think it has to do with the mainstreaming of these two social networks. When I began using FB in 2007 and Twitter in 2008, they were still the domains of early adopters, who tended to be geographically dispersed. However, as these social networks have moved into the mainstream, there are many more people who I associated with face to face on a regular basis that I also communicate with in these forums. ICT’s have always been a great way to geographically shrink the world, and I certainly do still have strong connections with people on the other side of the world that I have never met f2f. But increasingly my inner trusted virtual circle – the people who I have the most interactive discussions with – are people who I am in fairly close physical proximity to.

Amplify’d from economix.blogs.nytimes.com
In the language of economics, the core question is whether face-to-face interactions and electronic connections are substitutes or complements
In our original paper, we argued that the number of human interactions was hardly a zero-sum game, and more electronic interactions didn’t have to mean fewer meetings face-to-face.

If the new media increased the number of relationships – the connectedness of the world – more than it decreased personal meetings within any given relationship, then better electronic communications could increase the number of face-to-face meetings.

In later research and in my book “Triumph of the City” (The Penguin Press, 2011), I emphasized a slightly different idea: electronic connections and face-to-face connections are complements because new technologies increase the returns to innovation.

Better electronic interactions make it easier to produce new ideas in low-cost areas (think New York fashion designers’ ideas that are manufactured in China) or to sell creativity worldwide (think the global success of “Avatar”), and that means bigger returns to innovation.

As long as interpersonal contact – the sharing of knowledge at close quarters – remains an important ingredient in innovation (as it seemed to be in Facebook), then better electronic connections can make face-to-face contact, and innovation-assisting cities, more important.

We also cited earlier research that found that people tended to call people who were physically close: in the 1970s, more than 40 percent of phone calls connected places less than two miles apart. More recent data from Japan confirmed that proximity and phoning seemed to complement each other.

It shouldn’t be surprising that people both call and meet with their friends, and that suggests a certain kind of complementarity.

Another piece of evidence suggesting that information technology and face-to-face contact are complements is the geographic concentration of the tech cluster. America’s cutting-edge computer scientists have access to the best electronic means of long-distance connection, yet they have come together to form the world’s most famous industrial cluster: Silicon Valley.

A similar cluster exists in Bangalore.

In my own industry as well, there is little evidence that long-distance learning is eliminating demand for the high-intensity in-person education that places like Princeton and Yale provide. Anyone who teaches knows that good lecturing is far more than proclaiming wisdom from on high.

The teacher constantly struggles to understand what is getting across, and that’s far easier at close quarters. The more complex the idea, the more you need to rely on the rich cues that humans have evolved for signaling confusion or comprehension.

Humanity is a profoundly social species, with a deep ability to learn from people nearby. I believe that the future will only make that asset more important.

Read more at economix.blogs.nytimes.com
 
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bsvdp

 
by Clint Lalonde on All the rest

A very emotional week

For reasons that will soon become apparent, this blog post covers both ends of the emotional spectrum.  My wife coined the term “congrolences” to describe the past 10 days. Feel free to use it as you read my story.

On Tuesday, February 8th at 10pm, I received a phone call from my Dad saying my Mom had a heart attack and passed away. Her health had been in decline for the past 2 years and, even though these things are never expected, part of me had been preparing for this moment since that rushed Christmas trip to Saskatchewan 2 years ago.  At that time, I remember being shocked when I walked into her hospital room and seeing that my Mom had gray hair. Weekly trips to the hairdresser for a bright red or orange rinse had been on Mom’s appointment calendar since 1982. I had never seen my Mom with her natural hair colour. At that moment I knew things had changed and that the phone call I received from my Dad Tuesday night was inevitable.

Last Wednesday morning at 10am found my sister and myself in the Calgary airport, waiting for a connecting flight to Regina to begin the terrible task of planning a funeral for a parent. I checked my email and discovered a message from Mary Burgess, Director of the Centre for Teaching and Educational Technology at Royal Roads University. She was offering me the newly created position of Manager of Learning Technologies. Less than 12 hours after hearing that my Mom had died, I was being offered a dream job with one of the premiere post-secondary distance learning institutions in the country.

Congrolences: a phrase said to someone when two life-chaging events at opposite ends of the emotional scale occur in a short period of time. I think I need to add that to Wikipedia. Or, at the very least, the urban dictionary.

I accepted the position. Since then, the knowledge that I am joining such a wonderful group of people in CTET at RRU has carried me through some of the darker periods of the past week. Already the reception I have received from Mary, Tracy and others at CTET & RRU during an especially difficult time has served to underscore the fact that this is truly a wonderful group of people working on an equally wonderful slate of projects in one of the most beautiful spots in the world.

There is another set of emotions at play here as well, as I prepare to leave Camosun College, a place that I have been associated with (on and off) for over 15 years. I have some very deep, long term relationships with this institution and the people here. From my time in the Applied Communication Program, to my stint as the station manager of Village 900 radio, to my work in Distributed Education, I have worked with a number of very talented, generous and wonderful people. I will miss them greatly, but take solace in the fact that I am a 5 minute walk from my home to campus and to many of the friends I have here, and many of those friendships spill over outside of the institution. Those will continue.

But right now, I do feel incredibly fortunate to have this new opportunity in front of me. And I know that, somewhere at this moment, my Mom is feeling pretty proud of her son.

 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech, Teaching & Learning

Google Body and Art

Two resources created by Google have popped onto my radar screen this week that will certainly be valuable for educators; Google Body and Google Art Project.

Google Art Project is a series of interactive virtual tours of some of the worlds top art galleries built using the same technology that powers Google Maps. You can take virtual tours of the Museum of Modern Art and view works of art like van Gogh’s The Starry Night in incredible detail. Here are some screen captures I took of a close up of this work.

Now, I am no Art student, but even I can see the inherent value for a student  to have access to this level of detail as they understand the techniques of the masters. How much pressure did they use? How did they mix the paint to achieve those colours? What brush did they use to achieve this or that effect? You just can’t get this type of perspective by viewing the work from behind a rope 15 feet away from it.

The second resource is Google Body, an interactive 3d model of the human body (this one requires Google Chrome, Firefox 4, or another browser that currently support WebGL to get the full effect). This is an immersive 3d body simulation that looks to me like it was built using similar technologies to Google Earth. You can fly around and into the body at different angles, strip away layers and examine the body from it’s various system perspectives. If you don’t have a browser capable of viewing, here is a short video of the technology in action (there is no audio with the video):

 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech, Social Networks

3 research studies on potential advantages of using Twitter in the classroom

Three academic studies are cited in this article about Twitter, and how it can increase student engagement, enhance social presence, and help develop peer support models among students through the formation of personal learning networks.

Amplify’d from spotlight.macfound.org
A small but impressive study of students at Lockhaven University in Pennsylvania found that those who used Twitter to continue class discussions and complete assignments were more engaged in their classwork than students who did not.

Four sections (70 students) were given assignments and discussions that incorporated Twitter, such as tweeting about their experiences on a job shadow day or commenting on class readings. Three sections (55 students) did the same assignments and had access to the same information, but didn’t use Twitter.

In addition to showing more than twice the improvement in engagement than the control group, the students who used Twitter also achieved on average a .5 point increase in their overall GPA for the semester.
An earlier study [pdf] by Joanna C. Dunlap and Patrick R. Lowenthal from the University of Colorado at Denver found that Twitter was able to “enhance social presence” and produce other instructional benefits in an online course.

Another experiment into the use of social media at the University of Leicester found that tweeting helps to develop peer support among students and personal learning networks and can be used as a data collection tool. Read a more detailed description of the experiment here. [via Faculty Focus]

Read more at spotlight.macfound.org
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/aoc7q
 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech, Teaching & Learning

On social software & student ownership of their own tools

Two points from this article. First, social software enables learning conversations to occur outside of the classroom, not only between students, but also between students and the larger community. Second, when students taking ownership of their own tools, they are set up to become lifelong learners. My take is that this requires flexibility on the part of educators in that they have to be willing to go where the learners are and let the learner decide where they want these conversations to occur.

Amplify’d from campustechnology.com

But, most importantly, their learning experiences often involve a conversation, a process, and this conversation can include teachers and others with knowledge in their field. The skills students gain in the process are those they need to join a wider community and succeed in today’s economy.

Colleges and universities need to do more to incorporate social software into their courses and methodologies. I hear from faculty and administrators regularly about transformations of entire programs to the social/conversational/active learning paradigm of today.

This extension of the learning conversation online (with blogs, wikis, e-mail, texting, chat, conferencing systems, portfolios, and so on), helps students develop online literacy skills. Though it is dependent on technology, it represents a return to the roots of human learning. Learning has always involved conversation. In fact, knowledge results from, or increasingly is, consensus-building through conversation.
To the extent that students are engaged in that conversation using their own–literally their own–Web and Internet applications, some of them have a chance to become independent, life-long learners and enjoy a better chance to develop their own expertise

Read more at campustechnology.com
 
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/ao21x

 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech, Teaching & Learning

Using a wiki to collaboratively create course curriculum

I like this case study. It’s not from post-sec, but K-12, and the interview with the educators was done by Wikispaces so they have an interest in promoting wiki technology in a positive light. However, that said, it is still a great example of how educators living at a distance used a wiki to collaborate and develop an OER based on the Grade 6 social studies curriculum in Ontario. It also illustrates the benefits of being open, as the teachers involved sent out a tweet about their final result, which was picked up by the Wikispaces staff, who then interviewed the teachers and hilighted their wiki on their site – which was read by me, and is now being sent out to my network. Their work gets pushed around various networks and amplified, based on a single tweet that they sent.

Amplify’d from www.wikispaces.com
However, as we began to work on the project, we needed a way to share ideas, and work on pulling the assignment together without meeting in person as we all lived a distance away from each other.
We wanted to reach more educators than only those in our faculty and within the first week of our unit being posted, we had other universities’ and your own recognition!
Rachel: As part of our IT course, we were all required to open Twitter accounts and we were encouraged to use it as a way to connect and collaborate with other educators. We were all very excited about our completed wiki so we decided to “tweet” about it. The fact that you found us through Twitter demonstrates first-hand the power of Web 2.0 tools and how effective they are for connecting and sharing with others around the globe.
Marsha: We learned so much for this experience beyond just how to create a unit of study. By jumping right in and being willing to try new things, we really discovered the value of technology in education and one’s own professional development. Now that we have each had experience with creating Wikispaces, we have been able to implement them in a practical way in the classroom and have experimented with its many uses.
Not having integrated vast amounts of technology before, we have realized its potential as educators through the power of collaboration and its use for professional development and its power for our students and their continued learning.
It becomes really difficult when the school isn’t equipped with technology and when— if you’re in a community that is accepting of the idea of integrating technology, I think that that just allows so much growth for your students.
And I think, too, with traditional education, when you think of online games and Web tools and, you know, doing things like this with technology, that it’s not “educational,” and that it’s more just fun, and you’re playing online. But we learned that there are tons of games and tools and resources online, and even just different technological tools that you can use in you classroom that are educational, depending on how you use them and what you want the kids to get out of it.
So if you’re learning from it and enjoying it, then imagine what the students will get from it.
you don’t know if it’s going to work until you’ve tried.
And don’t expect it to be the same experience that someone else had, because you go in, and it’s all trial and error. Does this work, and does that work, and we found that the best way to learn was to play with things ourselves instead of having the instructor sit beside us and set everything up for us, it was so much more, “See what works for you.”

Read more at www.wikispaces.com
 
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/any7o

 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech

Sematic web and information processing

Qwiki looks like a very interesting platform. It’s like Wikipedia in that it is like an encyclopedia of general knowledge, only instead of the knowledge being constructed primarily by contributors, it is created by machines, pulling all these little bits and pieces of content from other spots on the web. It does this on the fly using semantic web technologies. There is a way that users can participate, by suggesting sources of information that might improve a Qwiki, but the heavy lifting is primarily done by machines. And it looks very pretty. The UI is slick.

In taking a look at Qwiki, I came across this blog post from Gregory Roekens in which he connects semantic web technologies with a theory of knowledge creation and information processing called mental space theory, which, in turn, is based on something called a DIKW (data, information, knowledge and wisdom) hierarchy. DIKW illustrates a hierarchical relationship in that data and information lead to knowledge, which leads to wisdom. I haven’t come across this term or theory before, but it is intriguing.

Amplify’d from tell.posterous.com

Qwiki is one of those emerging platform leveraging the semantic web. I often used the Ackoff’s allocation of mental space theory to explain the importance of Semantic Web and its huge potential. This theory is based on the DIKW hierarchy.

In a nutshell and using the diagrams below, our brain is using 40% of mental space to process data into information, a further 30% to process information into knowledge, 20% to process knowledge into Wisdom and only the remaining 10% is used to process Wisdom into Vision (see diagram 1).

In his work Scott Carpenter explains that thanks to data-handling technology (think excel spreadsheet, charts and dashboard) it allows the human cognitive energy to shift upward and produce information out of data (see diagram 2). Without these technologies the cognitive is locked down by mundane and time consuming effort to process the data into information.

What’s really exciting in Scott’s theory is that with the Semantic Web and its semantic processing power cognitive allocation can shift to Wisdom and Vision with the machine effectively delivering the Knowledge (see diagram 3).

Read more at tell.posterous.com
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/anrsf

Qwiki via Stephen Downes

 
by Clint Lalonde on Social Networks, Teaching & Learning

What Do Students Learn Through Discussion?

I went through asynch discussion burnout during my Masters. 5 courses back to back where the main tool of interaction with classmates was an asynchronous discussion board. Some tips that I appreciated as a student – faculty limiting us to postings of no more than 200 words, and breaking us into smaller groups to keep the conversation more manageable. I also appreciated having those groups mixed up during the course to keep it fresh and to introduce new ideas and ways of thinking into our discussion.

Amplify’d from www.facultyfocus.com

What Do Students Learn Through Discussion?

Using a qualitative design, researchers identified four different ways students reported they were using discussion to promote learning.
  • To challenge ideas – both their own and others with the goal of arriving at a more complete understanding
  • To develop ideas – using the ideas of others to improve their own thinking
  • To acquire ideas – using discussion as a way of collecting ideas
  • To check ideas – making sure that their ideas were the right ones; that they were learning the right things

The researchers identify the first two approaches as deep learning methods and the last two as more typical of surface learning approaches.

The researchers also point out that students don’t always see the potential for learning through discussion—it’s just another one of those things some teachers have them do. You think the reason for having discussions is obvious to students? I’d encourage you to test that assumption. Next time you’ve had a discussion, ask students why you had them discuss the topic rather than simply lecturing on it or have them read about it in the text. If I had to guess, I’d say that question will first be met with silence, followed by some glib answers, “You didn’t have time to prepare a lecture,” followed by other answers, none still very insightful, “It’s a way to keep us awake.”

Read more at www.facultyfocus.com
 
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/ano0r

 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech

Why SCORM is bad for elearning

This post is in regards to the recent $2 billion dollars that the US gov’t has set aside for the creation of Open Educational Resources. A significant shot in the arm for OER’s, except for on small glitch – the content has to be developed to be SCORM compliant. This post rips apart how that little gotcha puts the whole idea of resuability at risk. A good trashing of the SCORM standard. It should be noted that the trashing is being done by a person who is involved in creating a competing standard, but these remain valid concerns with SCORM. But really, what about just developing to web standards and be done with it?

Amplify’d from www.imsglobal.org
1. SCORM is severely outdated and narrow in scope. The model upon which it is based is 15 years old and very focused on one specific need: self-paced computer-based training (CBT). It is also old in terms of the technology used to implement it. It is not web friendly. It was even kind of outdated when it first came into the market. Now it is ancient.
. SCORM does not provide reliable interoperability or reuse. SCORM is very complex and notorious for providing inconsistent interoperability even among products achieving the SCORM certification.
3. SCORM was not designed for and has NOT typically been used for cohort-based educational courses with teacher and professors involved.
4. SCORM is especially bad for customizing and remixing by regular teachers and professors. SCORM objects are generally a “black box.” They require complex authoring tools to create and edit SCORM content. Therefore, remixing and republishing by the users is extremely complex
5. SCORM has no concept of or support for assessment. At best SCORM can be set up to provide short quizzes or individual questions that are a black box.
6. SCORM has no concept of protecting access to content with license codes or any other protection mechanism.
7. SCORM has no concept of or support for existing in a wider Information Technology (IT) infrastructure in which there are administrative student systems. This means that SCORM does not think through how access to various content and resources is restricted to certain individuals, including cohorts of students for collaborative activities and courses, or how data gathered from the learning is reported to administrative systems
it is very difficult to find even a single higher education course that has been reused as a result of SCORM
So, why is SCORM a poor fit for education? SCORM may be part of the solution, but at best it only addresses 10% of the requirements, and unfortunately based on very outdated technology.
Social learning, collaborative learning? These were never even contemplated with SCORM.

Read more at www.imsglobal.org
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/ank97

 

 
by Clint Lalonde on EdTech, Teaching & Learning

Wikipedia to build an OER platform

Good move by Wikipedia to help develop tools educators can use. By engaging the academic & teaching community, Wikipedia could actually become a much more substantive and “credible” resource. Plus by engaging educators in the act of editing Wikipedia and using them to introduce Wikipedia to their students as contributors and not just users, I can see these resources expanding the Wikipedia contributor user base as more students and educators become engaged in not only using, but contributing, to Wikipedia.

Amplify’d from chronicle.com

As Wikipedia hits its 10th year of operation, it is making efforts to involve academics more closely in its process. The latest is a new plan to build an “open educational resource platform” that will gather tools about teaching with Wikipedia in the classroom.

Rodney Dunican, education programs manager for Wikimedia, Wikipedia’s parent company, is part of the team working to build the platform, which he said will highlight the ways in which Wikipedia can be used to improve student learning.

“We don’t want them to cite Wikipedia,” he said of students. “What we really want them to do is understand how to use and critically evaluate the articles on Wikipedia and then learn how to contribute to make those articles better.”

Read more at chronicle.com
 
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bmg5r

 
by Clint Lalonde on Social Networks

The brain and social connections

Research on how a larger amygdala region in the brain may make it easier for some people to maintain a large social network.

Amplify’d from www.theglobeandmail.com

People with large, highly complex social networks tend to have larger amygdala regions than those with fewer friends, according to a study published in Nature Neuroscience.

It’s the first study to demonstrate a link between amygdala volume and social network characteristics within a single species.

They found that the gregarious types, those who reported having regular contact with comparatively large numbers of people from a variety of social groups, tend to have larger amygdala volumes.

Read more at www.theglobeandmail.com
 
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bm27i

 
by Clint Lalonde on Desire2Learn, EdTech

Add comments to a D2L content page using Disqus

I am working with an Instructor on a project in Desire2Learn in which she wants to give students the ability to comment and respond to any piece of content in the course, similar to a blog commenting system.

D2L does have the ability to allow students to leave feedback on content pages, but this content is only visible to the Instructor. This particular Instructor felt it was important for all students to see each others comments as it may be the spark that gets other students to engage and discuss the content. She also wanted to have the conversation start and continue at the place where the content lived, rather than forcing the students to click on over and navigate to the discussion boards.

I really like the way this Instructor thinks. I think there is a lot of value in not only encouraging and make possible spontaneous dialouge in a course, but also reduce the cognitive load on the students by having the comment system on the same page as the content, as is becoming commonplace around the web.

So, in order to do this, we needed to figure out a system that was a bit more robust and transparent than the default D2L star rating system.

In the past few years, a number of third party blog commenting systems have appeared. Haloscan was one of the first (now called Echo). I use one called Intense Debate on this blog, and I am aware of another popular system called Disqus. Most of these third party commenting systems operate as a blog plugin, but I decided to poke around and see if one of these three had the option to work on stand alone HTML pages.

As it turns out, Disqus has some universal Javascript code that allows you to add the Disqus comment box to any static HTML page. Perfect. So I signed up for a free Disqus account, grabbed the universal code and hopped into my play course in D2L.

I didn’t hold out a lot of hope as D2L doesn’t tend to play well with Javascript, but, lo and behold, when I opened up the content page, switched into HTML view, popped in the JS code and hit save, the Disqus comment box popped up on the page.

Comments in D2L

I added a comment and hit submit. A Disqus popup appeared asking me to enter in a name and email address (it also gave me the option to sign in with a Twitter, Disqus, Yahoo or Open ID account)

Disqus Login

I added in my email and name, hit post comment and up popped the comment in all it’s AJAX-y goodness right underneath the comment box. Seamless. And the student stays right on the page they comment on the entire time.

So far so good.

I started replying to my comments using a new email address and name for each comment. I was pleasently surprised to see that, not only were comments nested, but if I included a link to a YouTube video, it would attach to the comment and, when I clicked on the attachment, the video would pop up right there, in context, within D2L. So, not only could students include video in their comments, they could view that video right there without leaving the learning environment.

YouTube, Disqus and D2L

Very slick.

In addition to leaving a comment, a student can simply like or dislike the content as Disqus includes a thumbs up/down option. And students can subscribe to the comments using either RSS or email, so they can be notified outside of D2L if someone comments on their comments, and there is a Community button that will show stats about the comments begin left not only on this content, but on comments being left across the courses.

Community in Disqus

All this information about the learning community right there on the same page and in a very unobtrusive way. I think Disqus has done a bang up job of making a usable interface that looks generic enough that, out of the box, it does not look like an out of place element within D2L.

All this is making me feel all social learning gooey good.

There are compromises, of course, with using a third party tool in this way. The obvious one is that students are prompted to enter in an email address and name when they post a comment. Not a huge deal, but some of them will be faced with a moment of “why, if I am logged into a system, am I being asked to enter in my name and email address?” moment. But that is a problem that some well worded instructions could fix. And I still need to check out the privacy of the comments. So far it looks like all the comments are stored away on the Disqus site in a password protected admin area, which is good.

I should stress that I have only been playing with this for a few hours, and have not subjected it to heavy lifting. I am still not sure how well it will work out when I roll it out over a number of pages within the course. There are some configuration variables that I will need to muck around with, but so far this looks like a promising way to add comments to any static content page in D2L.

 
by Clint Lalonde on Desire2Learn

Is Desire2Learn search really this ineffective?

I was reading Jacob Nielson’s new research on how College students use the web and this little tidbit popped out at me.

Students are strongly search dominant and turn to search at the smallest provocation in terms of difficult navigation.

Now there is no doubt that students turn to search on Google a lot. However, research byAlison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg (pdf) of the University of Washington’s Information School show that, while Google and Wikipedia are important sources of information for students, many will begin their search with the resources given to them by their instructor.

Almost every student in the sample turned to course readings—not Google—first  for course-related research assignments.

Students are turning first to the content given to them by their instructors. As more instructors at our institution use the LMS as a content management system for their course notes and presentations, it seems logical to assume that students are turning to the search function in the LMS to find the content they need.

This got me thinking about search in our LMS, Desire2Learn. To be honest, I haven’t really paid much attention to the content search in D2L. When we work with faculty on course content, we spend time talking about how to structure content in modules and topics, but not a lot of time considering how to design our content to be search friendly within the LMS. But according to both the Neilson and Head & Eisenberg studies, perhaps we should be paying more attention to designing for search.

Or so I thought, until I dug in under the hood and checked out search in D2L.


Turns out, we really can’t do much to make content search friendly in D2L because the D2L search only searches for content based on the title of the content. Search does not look within the body of content to find search terms. I could forgive D2L if it looked only in the body of HTML documents and didn’t index the content of other document types, like PDF, Word or Powerpoint files (in which case I would have another fine piece of ammo to use to rally against using those types of file formats in the first place), but to not even search the content of an HTML document makes the search engine useless.

I may be missing something here. Perhaps there is some setting that can be tweaked to enable a full text search in D2L (and please, if you know of anything like that, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments), but this seems like a pretty big piece of underdeveloped functionality. If students really do rely on search to the degree that research suggests, then a robust search function that will scour the course content for the exact piece of information a student is looking for should be an important feature of the LMS.

 
by Clint Lalonde on Camosun, Social Networks, Teaching & Learning

There’s something happening here

Something happening here

Something is happening at my institution. I seem to be connecting with more of our faculty on Facebook and Twitter. Interest in blogging among faculty is growing, and every week I am hearing of another faculty person starting to blog or tweet.

What is both interesting and encouraging is the topic of conversation in these spaces. They are talking about teaching and learning. They are sharing links and resources. They are connecting with each other and talking about their craft. They are developing their PLN’s, and it is very cool to see happening.

One striking example of what I am seeing occurred recently where I took part in a conversation on Facebook with an instructor who posted the following status update:

How do I measure student engagement in my classroom? How would I evaluate them if I decide not to use exams anymore?

There was a great response from his colleagues and a rich discussion ensued. But then something interesting happened. It wasn’t just other faculty who were responding. There were staff, his friends, his Dean — and students. Students who he was FB friends with weighed in with their opinions on what kind of strategies they thought would engage them. His students were responding to his question, and posting their responses to what others were suggesting.  Talk about a rich formative evaluation, done completely informally and naturally, prompted by a simple question posted as a status update.

I am not sure what is going on. Perhaps we are reaching a tipping point where there are enough people now engaged with social networks that  where this type of interaction is possible. Perhaps it is because we have a new Dean in Arts and Science. He blogs. He tweets. He connects with his faculty in Facebook. And I think he is setting the tone for his School. Perhaps his presence in these social spaces, talking about both professional and personal things, is making it somehow more inviting for his faculty. I’m not sure. But whatever the reasons, it is great to see and be able to take part in these conversations without having to wait for a once a year conference, or a chance hallway encounter.

 
by Clint Lalonde on Teaching & Learning

What is a MOOC?

MOOC is an acronym for Massive Open Online Course, and it seems like there are more popping up these day, primarily aimed at educators. Which is one of the reasons why I think Jim Groom’s DS 106 course on Digital Storytelling is an important evolution in the MOOC trail, blazed by people like Alec Corous, George Siemens, David Wiley, and the recent PLENK 2010 course run by George Siemens, Dave Cormier and Stephen Downes. Jim’s course is pushing the MOOC beyond educators and towards a more general audience in that the subject matter is not specifically related to the process of networked learning or educational technology.

If you are not familiar with the MOOC model of online learning, Dave Cormier (who, along with Bryan Alexander coined the term) has created a great primer video on MOOC’s. I think this is an important video as it clearly articulates, in less than 5 minutes, what a MOOC is, how it works, and how it is different than other types of online courses. I think it provides a great introductory gateway to the concepts of networked learning for those unfamiliar with the terrain.

Update: About 30 minutes after I published this article I read a post by George Siemens entitled What’s Wrong with (M) OOC’s in which he hilights three concerns he has with MOOC”s, which are the high drop out rate, degree of technical skill required by both participants and facilitators, and learner disorientation. I am guilty of the first one – dropping out of PLENK. I started strong, but couldn’t finish. This was due mostly to the other commitments I have going right now (my Masters research). It was too easy to not participate, which is reflected in another concern with MOOC’s which Alan Levine brings up in his comment to Georges post:

To me a missing piece is the challenge of creating the stake that a learner has in a MOOC- not paying for a course, not working with a grade or credit as incentive, it falls completely on an individual’s own internal drive to participate, and to do so fully.

One thing is clear – the MOOC model is emerging and there are people who are working hard at figuring out all the bits and pieces. And they are doing it out in the open for all of us to see and participate in.