Wednesday, June 16, 2010

TWISA Honorable Mentions Presentation

TWISA is the "Teaching with Sakai Innovation Awards." There are more awards and information here: http://openedpractices.org/twsia

Joshua Danish - Indiana University Bloomington
Computational Technologies in Educational Ecosystems

Karen Swenson - Virginia Tech
Introduction to Science Fiction and Fantasy

Kate Ellis - Indiana University presented the winners.

Abstract:
Joshua Danish's Course: Computational Technologies in Educational Ecosystems Indiana University Bloomington In his graduate course on Computational Technologies in Educational Ecosystems, Dr. Joshua Danish used Sakai as a hub to help extend class conversations beyond the classroom and even into other courses. He used Sakai wikis and blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, to help meaningfully position students’ online conversations in order to promote rich reflection and discussion. One of the central activities of the course was a modeling activity in which students created visual models of the course content and iteratively refined their models throughout the semester, while posting reflections to the course website about the manner in which they adjusted their models in response to course readings and peer feedback.

Extending the Conversation

Using Sakai to Promote the Ongoing Reflection.

He used Sakai, Twitter, Wordpress, and Blogger as the primary technologies.

He designs courses around activity theory (Engestrom 1987).

This was a graduate level survey course to look at the ways that technology can be used in education. There were 11 students with MA and Phd students drawing from a number of different disciplines. There were a wide range of tech abilities represented.

The course objectives included helping students develop a personally meaningful model of how tech can be implemented in educational contexts.

Activities included discussions from experience and reading for the "obvious" connections. The purpose was to develop a model of how technology fits in education (Lesh 2003).

The students created a preliminary model and tracked how the readings and discussions changed or evolved their model.

He created a page that grouped everyone's blogs together in Sakai.

Students collaboratively created the assessment rubric for the course.

The students were required to post definitions to the course wiki dictionary. The students had a set number of postings to this wiki for the course.

He used Twitter to extend the course conversations - 8 out of 10 were already on Twitter. He created a hash tag for the course. Course Twitter feed aggregated into a page in Sakai.

Image via Wikipedia

Karen Swenson's Course: Introduction to Science Fiction and Fantasy

Dr. Karen Swenson used the Sakai wiki in her Science Fiction and Fantasy course to create a community of practice that moved students from being peripheral receivers of information and content to becoming expert creators of information and content. The course allowed students the flexibility to choose what, how, and when they would contribute to the ever-growing body of Science Fiction and Fantasy knowledge. Students actively participated in an on-going dialogue within the Chat Room to discuss their contributions and to ask questions. Forums were used to let students discuss and debate ideas, including controversial and especially thought-provoking topics. Participating in their own education in this manner "gives students a sense of ownership,” says Swenson.

Karen's course was very popular with English majors, engineers, and science majors.

The course was developed collaboratively by many people.

Her course goals include using collaborative work to help make the world a better place.

She used multiple wikis for different purposes. She used them to present images of science fiction and for interactive postings.

She used videos to communicate with her class. Virgina Tech uses a "Principles of Community."

The class used polls to create community.

The quizzes were timed (50 mins) and open-book with 25 questions. They were basically reading quizzes.

The forum was only used to support the weekly summaries of what the students did. She also used a chat room.

Seven Principles for Cultivating a Community of Practice was integral to her instructional design.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Messages & Forums 2.7, Not What You Were Expecting

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Bryan Holladay has been a developer at Indiana University for the past four years. Bryan has assisted with the Matrix tool enhancements for ePortfolio, is the project co-lead for Sakai's Messages & Forums tool, created Oncourse's mobile portal for MobileIU and redesigned the synoptic tool for Messages & Forums. He has his B.S. in Computer Science from Indiana University and will complete his M.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University in August 2010. Bryan enjoys android programming and sailing the lakes of Indiana in his free time.

Megan May - Indiana University
Megan is a Quality Assurance Team Lead / Project Planning Coordinator within University Information Technology Services (UITS) at Indiana University and was the Quality Assurance (QA) Director for the Sakai Foundation for just under 3 years. Over the years Megan has been responsible for leading a global QA effort, as well as directed the testing and implementation effort of IU's migration from the legacy CMS to Sakai. She has also been responsible for the communication, coordination, data analysis, design, documentation and tier 2 support. Megan earned her B.S. in Business from IU's Kelley School of Business with concentrations in information systems, operations management and process management.

Gonzalo Silverio - University of Michigan
Gonzalo Silverio is a Sakai/Ctools front end developer at the University of Michigan, focused on constructing usable and accessible user experiences.

Abstract:
Introducing the faster, sleeker, and improved Messages & Forums tool for Sakai 2.7. This showcase will go over the improvements made to the Messages & Forums tool, including the UI makeover, the new synoptic tool, the many performance improvements and the extra features added for the user. We will also go over the process of becoming an independently released tool.

Meagan gave a short history of the forums and messaging feature in Sakai.

Forums Facelift

UI Makeover - complex tool and unique needs

Deep hierarchical structure
need for context and detail
But there is no Sakai idiom for dealing with these issues.

Changes in the Forums

Color coding
Threaded view
Single message view
New flags that tell you what you have read
Navigation tools
Clarifying permissions
Complete accessibility review
Word counts

Forums: What's new in 2.7.0

New synoptic tool (shows unread messages)
Performance improvements
Direct pinking to Forum posts
Mark all as "read" when displaying all messages
Site participant notification
Displays # of users who read post
view all postings by in individual
Option to display and sort by last and recent activity
Option to pre-populated default forum and topic
Read by feature
Statistics page - able to click on posting and retrieve thread

Is the synoptic tool faster? A piece of chart junk was used to illustrate the faster speed. We were asked to ignore the numbers and just think of them as percentages - this guy has a future at NASA :-) To be fair, I am just not sure what his numbers mean apart from fast=good.

It is interesting to listen to programmers try to talk to faculty. All of the sorting and tagging options are not as nearly as useful as programmers think they are because they are dependent on what computer one is using when.

The thread view seems much clearer. This is going to be good news for our faculty.

Indie Tool Release

Development platform for building tools for Sakai.

Independently released from Sakai.

Using Maven Release plug-in

Kaltura Video in Sakai

Image via CrunchBase

Unicon's Aaron Zeckoski is a software engineer and open source software developer. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in the Sakai open source collaborative learning environment. His nine years of experience include work both as part of a university team and as an independent consultant. An experienced systems architect, Aaron has demonstrated his programming expertise in all aspects of web application development. He is also experienced and interested in technical documentation, programmer tools development, and developer training.

Abstract:
This is a presentation on the integration of Kaltura Video into Sakai. We will discuss the use cases for the project and why it was developed. We will also present results of the pilot at UVA. There will be a demonstration of using the Media Gallery tool to create a media collection and using the Sakai Rich Text Editor integration to capture, edit, and embed video into various other parts of Sakai.

Kaltura is an open source video transcoding system to put content into Sakai. It is like YouTube except it is siloed. I am not sure if this is a good thing but for student privacy or some copyright issues this may be important.

The users will create collections of media. The processing and coding of video is done on Kaltura's servers. It is holding content and delivered through Sakai. The beta has been released first production in the Fall. Can be installed in Sakai 2.5-2.7

Instructors can create collections and site libraries. Content can go in the library and then the instructor can create a collection for a course or an assignment.

Instructors and students are able to tag the videos and write descriptions.

There are institutions using Kaltura for lecture capture.

There is a "Media Gallery" link in his course that becomes available to the students for their courses.

They are working on integrating with HTML5 so it will work on iPhones.

I was afraid of this presentation at first because I thought it would be too technical but this was clearly presented. It was a good over-view of the tools.

Sakai: SMS, Q&A, and Course Evaluations

Image by kiwanja via Flickr

This presentation was by Stephen Marquard of the University of Cape Town where he is the Learning Technologies Co-ordinator at the University of Cape Town. He is also responsible for the University's popular Sakai deployment known as Vula. Stephen is a previous Sakai Fellow and a current member of the Sakai Product Council and Sakai Board.

Abstract:
Find out more about how to send SMS messages from Sakai and integrate incoming SMS messages with Sakai tools and service. Questions and Answers is a contrib tool for asking and answering questions. Course Evaluations provides an easy and powerful way to deliver online course evaluations and other surveys in Sakai. This is a full presentation is a companion to the tech demo covering these tools.

SMS Tool

This is interesting because SMS is tying Sakai to mobile phones. His presentation covers three tools available to the Sakai community.

They are not in a Sakai release but you can have them put in.

The SMS tool is for pushing information out to people. There are some limited two-way uses. There is more information at Confluence.

The outgoing SMS cam be targeted to particular users.

Incoming SMS allows you to send messages in and to take surveys. Other possible uses are chat, polls, glossaries, etc.

They used it to get through placement offers for the college and got back 200 responses in 10 minutes. Students were asked to send student # and accept/decline in the message.

You need a service provider with an SMPP gateway (e.g. http://www.clickatell.com). What destination networks/countries are supported and at what cost per message.

In South Africa, the receiver pays for the messages. They paid a bulk rate to the company.

Privacy Issues

They allow the students to opt in and out. No one gets students mobile numbers if they use it. Less than 5% have opted out.

They have limited experience in running live polls as a "clicker" system.

He thinks of it as a back-channel. You can schedule how messages go out.

Q&A Overview

A tool that supports question driven interactions.

The tool bubbles up the most frequently asked questions. Allows for anonymous answers. Students answer one another's questions. It can be set up for instructor led or peer collaboration. You can set up the questions in categories. It tracks the number of views of the questions. Instructors can screen answers from students.

This tool is often used as a knowledge base. It is minimally connected to SMS. You can text in a question and you will get texted back when there is an answer.

This tool does not require SMS.

Course Evaluation Tool

A tool for delivering course evaluations or surveys.

How you use this tool depends on how a college does its course evaluations. These are very political questions.

Response rates are higher face-to-face but students write more feedback - better qualitative feedback. Online evaluation is more popular with students. Studies have showed that the different media does not skew the responses.

Students will respond when they feel that the responses are important to the institution. There are concerns about what happens to the results.

He reviewed the different ways that the tool is used on his campus. "Direct, relevant, and targeted." This tool is integrated into his institution, I think, because the instructor gets to make a lot of decisions in the evaluation process. There is not a lot of pressure institutionally around course evals. The evaluations tend to stay in the dept.

The tool really breaks things down visually with graphs.

Audience Concerns:

How do you control the release of information?

By default the instructor sets the global configurations for the release date.

There is no way to see the results in progress. One has to close the eval and reopen it to see progress.

Teaching Basic Physiology and Anatomy Lab Courses Using Sakai

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This is a presentation by Joan Esterline Lafuze who is a professor of biology at Indiana University East. I am particularly interested in this session because teaching online labs seems to be such an issue for so many science instructor and colleges. Interestingly enough, there is a lot of actual science that is practiced via the internet (e.g., gathering and sharing data). I see a disconnect between the teaching of science and the practice of science.

These courses are primarily for nursing students. They use:

Streaming video (live demonstrations)
Modules (Melete Tool in Sakai)
Assignments II
Forums
Original Test & Survey to Samigo
Wiki & ePortfolio

Two strategies:

Only use tools in their most simplified form (on tip-toes)

Don't overwhelm students with tech

Course background

Traditional course for pre-nursing and nursing students
National, international, and rural students
Issues: access to technology
Benefits to having this course online
Attendance/Live streaming element (there are attendance points)

Benefits include

being able to meet individual students needs;
able to teach deployed military;
gasoline shortage;
caregivers

The instructor puts materials on thumbdrives.

Organs are sent in the mail and the students dissect along with the class during a live stream - although this is not a requirement for the class.

The students watch the dissections on line via live streaming. They meet the outcomes of the course and do not require dissection. She believes that there are a few courses where someone would be required to come in and work in a lab.

The course is taught multimodally - face-to-face and online.

I like the fact that she actually incorporates meetings with actual practicing scientists in the course.

Course utilizes a "course manager" - a TA.

Activity Awareness in Sakai

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These are my notes from Jim Laffey's presentation "Activity awareness in Sakai: Improving the social nature of learning." The social nature of online learning; context-aware activity notification system (CANS); lessons learned.

Dr. James Laffey is a Professor in the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri and a former researcher and systems developer at Apple Computer, Inc. Dr. Laffey has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has won awards for the design of innovative, media-based computer systems. He currently teaches graduate level courses on development of systems to optimize HCI and learning. He is the principal investigator for a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to study activity awareness in learning systems.

Abstract: The Context-aware Activity Notification System (CANS) integrates with Sakai to monitor and provide notification of member activity. CANS observes when members log in, post to discussion boards, upload resources, etc. and can then provide customized email, widgets or web-based notifications to members of what is going on in a class or work group. CANS allows instructors and students, to create custom notifiers to enable activity awareness and impact the social nature of online learning. For example an instructor might ask for daily reports of student activity related to a specific unit in a course, or setup notifiers to keep students aware of activity within a project team. The presentation will demonstrate the innovative ways that activity data can be used to impact teaching and learning in Sakai as well as what we have learned about the value and potential of activity awareness for supporting instruction. The presentation will also be an opportunity to discuss how to support and improve the social experience of online learning. CANS has been used at the University of Missouri over the last 2 years as part of our Sakai implementation with a small set of courses. In the Spring of 2010 we hope to have some levels of testing and usage of CANS at the University of Michigan and Rice University. We are also soliciting other Universities and partners who may wish to try CANS for the summer and fall of 2010.

How do we use this in our installation of Sakai?

CANS is a tool they are developing.

They have not solved the problem but as they learn more about the problem, they find more questions.

He is not looking for better discussion tools but for more information for the students and the instructors. Administrators can use this information to help instructors do better jobs and to understand how resources are being used.

What concerns and complications would we have with a tool like this?

Three big ideas have fed this project: 1) Rapid advances in technology, 2) Dramatic changes in our understanding in how people learn, 3) Social nature of education.

We always underestimate the power of the technology coming and its impact. We are moving from occasional and supplemental to frequent and integral.

University of Missouri faculty are using immersive worlds to help socialize autistic children.

Laffey's understanding of learning has gone from behavioral, to cognitive, to situated. He as turned to social learning. Human beings are wired to be social. Our brains have evolved to be social processors - a social engine. It must be part of our design framework as instructors.

Key ideas:

Four places of collaborative learning (Dillenbourg)

Classes are complex, engineered ecosystems

Structure for productive social interaction

Effort towards shared understanding

Act becomes artifact - interaction is a substance

Developers and designers have the engineering task of maximizing the social interaction in Sakai.

Activity Awareness to impact the social experience of the class. Technology is a mediation for our social behavior. A sense of place encourages accountability.

Context-Aware Activity Notificaion System (CANS)

Captures events and the context of the events (when someone posts, for instance). CANS server sits outside of Sakai. It records what happens in a class and the instructor subscribes to the information - gets emails. There is then an "activity analysis" that includes graphs and charts.

Tries to measure salience and meaningfulness - it records the social activity - collaboration, coordination, and cooperation. They are attempting to fit the world of the multitasker. They are seeking to move from thin communication to argumentation/discussion.

Customization and Contextualization

Users can set up how they want to get the data and decide what will be useful and relevant. Instructors can interact with the data.

The tool is called the "Activity Monitor." It will post information to an email digest, a course widget, or to a web page. You can select students - Activity Monitor II will allow you to select by group and more flexibility in date ranges. This is similar to a "Activity Meter" tool currently under development by a group in California. This Activity Monitor is a more robust version of Angel's "Activity at a glance" widget. These tools act like reminder tools for the students. This is interesting because in the past, students were only held accountable for the content of a course (a student could take a class at UC Berkeley by reading the notes and coming to the midterm and final).

Social network analysis will drive further research.

There was a Fall 09 study on four courses using this tool.

Invitation to participate http://www.cansaware.com (possible stipends)

laffey@missouri.edu

Kamentz at the Sakai Conference

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These are my notes from this morning's keynote at the Sakai Conference. This is not a transcript but notes that highlight my interest in her work. Anya Kamenetz, author of "Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education" was the keynote speaker at the Sakai conference.

She said that she sees herself as a reporter of generation "Y" and a reporter; a member of the print journalism industry. She gets her "revolutionary cred" from her Yale father who got in to Yale on the strength of his SAT scores.

The revolution in education is being fueled by the growth in the demand in education - there is not enough money to meet that demand. The United States is no longer #1 in education but #10. Will our model translate internationally? No one believes that college is really affordable anymore. The cost of education is outstripping medical care. There is an unprecedented melt-down in access to education. States have defunded education and raising tuition.

She mentions the social problem - "The dumbest rich kids are more likely to attend college than the smartest poor kids." She brought up "Speak: The Miseducation of College Students"

Question: I think she referred to herself as an "outsider." How does graduating from Yale and having two faculty members for parents make one an outsider?

She sees Walmart U and Khan Academy as disruptive technology and included some of the counter-arguments to her book. She does not seem to like online learning much - it has to be hybrid for "socialization" reasons.

She asks about how those who create content are meant to get paid for their work; there is a value in "live performances" that the ipod will not replace.

Currently students cannot get credit for experience, prior learning, or what they know. She thinks that portfolio based assessment is a solution. We still have the problem that employers still consider degrees.

She gave examples of sites like "Koda: The Opportunity Community" - a reputation based network.

We no longer have a linear path through education.

She was at the OER conference in Yale where the Hewlitt Foundation announced their priorities in funding open education projects and access to college.

I like the attention that she is able to give to alternative and collaborative education.

The material in her book is not news to many of those who have been working in education for years. The real news is that this book is coming out of the mainstream press from a writer from an ivy league college. Someone could comfortably read the Chronicle of Higher Education and never really address these questions.

The mark that some kind of transformation has been made will be when the "edupunks" and autodidacts are given the same level of access to the media as those who have followed more traditional and conservative paths.

Friday, June 04, 2010

What I Mean When I Say the iPad Isn't It.

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I have been looking at ebook readers and netbooks for the k-20 market. The iPad has been suggested as a solution to that in a few places. Those who know me know that I have been a big proponent of Apple in the past. I think a college really loses something when they do not support multiple platforms: they lose out on innovation, creativity, and ultimately, money. I have said in a couple of places that I can't consider the iPad as a platform for elearning. I am saying this not just because I am an advocate for open source: I have always had an iMac at home, my jobs generally insist on PCs, and I am currently travelling with a netbook that uses Linux-based Jolicloud (which I enthusiastically recommend to anyone who will sit still long enough to listen to me rant). So I am basically trilingual. I try to make a difference where I can and I am currently working towards opening up education in an area with little infrastructure, virtually no money, with widely dispersed population of about 9000 students with a potential 3 or 4 thousand more.

The iPad is a great platform for consuming content. But if you define education as more than the consumption of content - the problems come in:

1. No Camera
The quality of web cams on netbooks is increasing and their prices are going down. Early in this decade, cameras cost a thousand dollars a megapixel. Now you can get a 12 megapixel camera for $200. Seeing someone's face and making a human connection in distance learning is an important consideration.

2. Connectivity
As of my last look, the iPad does not support 3G Skype calls "due to contractual obligations with ATT." The platform of choice can't be tied to a phone contract. It has to work well with any VOIP program and Google Voice. This really ties in with the first one: computers should be essentially tools for connecting with others, interacting with content, remixing, and sharing. This is much easier to do on a netbook.

3. Censorship in the App Store
I read a story last week about an artist who altered his work (a comic book based on James Joyce's Ulysses) so it would be acceptable to the app store. It was cartoon nudity!

4. No Flash

Many web 2.0 sites rely (for good or ill) on Flash. I am not saying that every site out there that uses Flash is great, I just don't want anyone to be limited right out of the box with content they can't access.

5. The Price
What I really want for our students is a $100 netbook. We are almost there. I want the students to be able to connect with one another, subject matter experts, their instructors, course content, and access ANY etext or content (unfiltered by commercial interests). On top of that, I want them to be able to use Open Office or any other open source tool to create and share content. I want all of this in one machine for under $200. And yes, I will get it. I have already bought a used netbook for that price and the On Laptop Per Child program has inspired others such as the Marvell Moby.

I am sure all of this will change in the future, but until then, in a time of economic hardship, another closed platform, expensive tablet is not an answer to for students and educators.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Diversity in the Sciences: Is it as difficult as it appears?

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I am still digesting my notes from the Institute for Diversity in Learning and Teaching that was held at Humboldt State University on May 20th and 19th. Our Thursday morning keynote speaker was Dr. Tuajuanda C. Jordan. Jordan has devoted much of her professional career mentoring students and working with programs designed to retain underrepresented minorities in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) disciplines. She talked about Xavier University and how why are #1 at getting African American students into medical school. Students have to not only learn to be students but learn to see a career in the sciences as a viable option. She stressed that instructors have to present the human side to science and scientists.

She showed us some real problems in science education in America. There is only a small percentage of students in the U.S. is graduating the 12th grade at the "proficient" level in science (able to conduct simple experiments and draw conclusions). And no minorities are graduating at the "basic" level.

Minorities are underrepresented in the sciences and without differing viewpoints in science we miss new ways of looking at problems. We stifle creativity and innovation. We need a broader-based pool of potential scientists. Minority students tend to come from disadvantaged teachers. Students need more than remedial classes - they need to be non-stigmatized and they need a curriculum that has real science research and experimentation built into it - not "cookbook" science classes where all the experiments succeed. Jordan has started programs that incorporate real research along with committed passionate teachers.

Jordan says that the k-12 schools need to foster the "scientific temper," minds that are creative, rational, open, and tolerant. They need to be taught problem-solving, thinking, and communication skills. Students need to meet real scientists early on in their education - they need outreach, mentoring, and counseling. We need to improve teacher training and not let people who do not care about the practice of science become teachers.

She asked that we increase access to college: it needs to be more affordable; we need transition programs that teach study skills and basics like how to talk to a professor. She discussed peer-led study groups and strong, persistent, consistent, and visible leadership on campuses.

Her presentation dove-tailed nicely into the universal design presentation from the day before. At College of the Redwoods, each online class has a visible link to our 24/7 online tutorial services. I think there is more that we can do here at C of R to promote study groups and peer mentoring.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Applying Universal Design to Large Classrooms

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In another session at the Humboldt State University's Institute for Diversity in Learning & Teaching, Dr. Janye McGuire gave a very useful and informative presentation called "Applying Universal Design for Learning in Large Classrooms." I was immediately attracted to this presentation because sometimes there seems to be nothing larger than an online class, yet at other times, nothing more intimate. Those who have taught online no what I mean. I seemed to have known more about my online students' children, interests, and pets than in my face-to-face classes. In the online class, students tend to communicate with a consistency and persistence that in lacking in face-to-face classes - especially large classes. And yet, online classes seem to share some of the same problems as face-to-face classes.

"Universal Design" was defined as integrating accommodation, multiple learning modalities, engagement and interaction into course materials as the course is developed instead of as a tacked on after thought. She gave the analogy of architecture: there are architects who build in accessibility into their buildings and make really elegant, beautiful, and functional designs. And then there are buildings that are retrofitted with a ramp in the back.

One of the things that I appreciate about Universal Design is that it does not get bogged down with learning theory: it is a very practical approach that makes no claims to the secret inner workings of consciousness and how the mind supposedly works. I have found a lot of value and usefulness from learning styles and developing materials with an eye on learning styles. Universal Design addresses these issues and allows me to side-step the objections of Behavioralists or other "-ists" and "-isms" that have some ax to grind from pedagogy that does not match up with their pet epistemology. As an instructional designer, I already want and try to do all the things that Universal Design asks - I want to make my courses accessible, multi-modal (e.g. visual and audio), and to increase the interactivity and engagement of the course.

As a former English teacher, I was always asking myself why English teachers only had one way of assessing a students' ability to organize thought and communicate (the paper) when we were moving into a world where they would be asked to do so much more (presentations, multimedia, Skype, etc.). The media is changing and the discipline is not.

She discussed the seven principles of Universal Design:

Equitable Use
Flexible Curriculum
Simple and Intuitive Instruction
Multiple Means of Presentation
Success-Oriented Curriculum
Appropriate Level of Student Effort
Appropriate Environment for Learning

All of the examples that she gave were very appropriate for the online class as well as the large classroom. She applied these principles to promote multiple means to interact with the material, fellow students, and the instructor. She uses these principles to build community. I also liked that she removes the reliance on tests and exams in her online courses - this ties in nicely to the ideas of Bain and Deep Learning - if your learning is tied to tests, students tend to learn for the tests rather than learn the material in a deep and meaningful way (see previous post).

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Deep Learning

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Over the next couple of days I am at the Institute for Diversity in Learning and Teaching at Humboldt State University. This is an incredible resource. They are offering this free and in this time of some pretty savage budget cuts, this is a great opportunity. The opening keynote was Dr. Ken Bain who talked about the question "What Do the Best College Teachers Do to Foster Deep Learning?" Ironically, he could not make it out to Humboldt and was on live via teleconference link which is what we should be doing more of anyway. Bain distinguishes the "surface learner" from the "strategic learner" and the "deep learner." The surface and strategic learners are those who have basically figured out how to get by. They meet the requirements of the course without gaining any understanding of the subject matter. It is a really fascinating phenomena that he backs up with research into how physics students understand motion. It seems that most students have a decidedly Aristotelian approach in their understanding of physics - the problem with that is that it is absolutely wrong. Students are quizzed before and after their physics classes and they are shown to basically take the new information and wrap it around the old understanding of how motion works. In other words, they take the new information, combine it with the old world-view, and come up with the wrong idea about how things move. The classes that they took did not ask them to change the way they looked at the world. They could take these classes and not change a thousands year-old vision of how the universe works. It is really frightening.

According to Bain, deep learning only occurs when students are confronted with questions that are important, intriguing, or beautiful. There has to be some direct, personal application to the new information.

The students have been creating models about the world based on sensory input since they were born. Students have to construct a new reality based on new input. Teaching has to be more than passing multiple choice tests, competition, high stakes testing, and hierarchical learning in order to change these world views. Students can pass these tests with an "A" and still not make a shift in their basic understanding of the world.

Bain asks that courses be framed around essential questions that change a student's world-view.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Open Textbooks, Open Doors

Steacie Science and Engineering Library at Yor...

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On May 6th, from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM in College of the Redwood's Lakeview Room, I held a workshop on open texts called "Open Textbooks, Open Doors." There were seats for 30 and we filled 20 of them. We had a mix of faculty, students, library and bookstore folks. There were great examples of open texts right here on our campus with Dave Arnold's Math textbooks. We also had people from Humboldt State University attend.

I have included our agenda and discussion questions in this posting. This is a link to the resource page for the presentation along with a link to the powerpoint presentation which I based on information from Student PIRG and other sources (it is the slideshare called "Open Textbooks, Open Doors"): http://geoffcain.wikispaces.com/OER

Open Textbooks Agenda

10:00 AM
1. Introductions
2. What is a textbook and why are they so expensive?
3. Copyright, Public Domain, and Creative Commons

10:30 AM
4. The Open Source Concept
5. What is an Open Text?
6. Some Examples
7. Organizations for Open Texts

11:00 AM
~Break~
8. Advantages of Open Texts
9. Disadvantages
10. Vetting and Reviewing
11. Alternative Business Models

11:30 AM
12. Example: Dave Arnold's Math Text

12:00 PM
~Lunch~

1:00 PM
13. Finding Your Text
14. Collaborating with Others

Open Textbooks, Open Doors
Discussion Questions

1. What do you consider to be the main benefit to open texts?

2. What do you see as the greatest drawback?

3. What are some barriers to adoption on your campus or in your dept.?

4. What are some strategies to overcoming those barriers?

5. There is a resource page at http://geoffcain.wikispaces.com/oer for this workshop,
What resources (subject matter, adoption strategies, rubrics, etc.) would you find useful?

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Open Access Research

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Open Research

In these days of budget cuts, free, open access to academic research is more important than ever. Cable Green put up a link to a video that I want to share here as well along with some resources and tips for accessing open research. College of the Redwoods had to cut some journal databases from their library budget. Publishers need to know that this is going to basically backfire on them. Technology is changing the way that we access information and there is no room in education for profiteers! Why aren't we boycotting? The students need to get involved in this: they are paying more and more for education and getting less and less.

Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo.

Open Research Organizations

Right to Research
SPARC

Open Research Journals, Repostories, and Search Tools

Journals
- The Directory of Open Access Journals lists more than 2,800 journals that provide free access to the full text of their articles. You can search for a specific journal or browse by subject area.
- The SPARC Publisher Partner Program features non-profit organizations that are pursuing innovative business models to provide affordable, if not open access, to peer-reviewed research.
Subject repositories: These archives provide open access to articles by scholars in particular fields. Some only include articles with free, full-text access, while others also include articles with only an abstract. They may also include theses, conference presentations, working papers, or other types of scholarly content. This is a sample list.
- openDOAR: an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents. http://www.opendoar.org/
- arXiv: Physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics.http://arxiv.org/
- CogPrints: Cognitive sciences, especially psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics.http://cogprints.org/
- ERIC (Education Resources Information Center): Education. http://www.eric.ed.gov/
- PubMed Central: Biomedical and life sciences. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/
- SSRN (Social Science Research Network): Social sciences, especially law, political science, economics, and business. http://www.ssrn.com/
Search tools
- OAIster is a tool to search archives compliant with the Open Archives Initiative metadata standard. This can include open-access journals, institutional and subject repositories, as well as other digital archives, which may include educational or historical content in addition to scholarly journal articles.http://www.oaister.org/
- The Directory of Open Access Journals also includes a tool to search the content of some journals listed. http://www.doaj.org/

Monday, April 26, 2010

The Art of Describing

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There are often connections between my artistic life and my work in education that are surprising. I am reading a book called "The Art of Describing" by Svetlana Alpers. It is a book about Dutch art in the 17th century and it feels pretty far removed from my work in instructional design and distance education. It is not a new book but I am giving myself a crash course in art history and criticism to work out some ideas that are important to the current novel I am writing. Additionally, I am just interested in art in general. My current novel hinges on ideas of art, identity and authorship. In her book, Alpers talks about Dutch art as descriptive rather than being a narrative art like the Italians (she gives notable exceptions, of course) and in the second chapter, talks about how lenses and the camera obscura began to change how the Dutch defined art, seeing, and knowing. There are two important terms describing art for the 17th cent. Dutch - "naer het leven" (after life e.g. painting from a live subject) and "nyt den geest" (from the mind). Alpers writes "while naer het leven refers to everything visible in the world, nyt den geest refers to images of the world as they are stored mnemonically in the mind" (p.40). This is pretty exciting territory for me because there is an intersection here between this work I am doing for my art (fiction) and the work I am doing in instructional design, which involves visual pedagogy. The 17th century was an important turning point in science and art because the inventions of the lens and the camera obscura were changing how we understood optics and images. Kepler wrote about optics Alpers sums up Kepler's arguments when she writes "To understand our view of the sun, or moon, or world, we must understand the instrument with which we view it..." This is very radical. It implies that there is no concrete "actual" image out there - just a view of the world that is an interpretation by an instrument which could be a lens, a camera obscura, or the eye itself. I think this was a common view of all technology back then. It comes from a fundamental mistrust of the senses and an understanding that all tools for observation are really tools of interpretation and the tool you choose shapes that interpretation.

The lense we are looking through now is the series of connected databases, documents, images, texts and people that make up the internet. Understanding how the technology determines our interpretation of knowledge on the internet is critical. I believe that we are only going to be able to fully understand how we can do that by looking at how we processed technical innovations in the past.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Open Education Resources at College of the Redwoods

I sent this invitation out to our faculty:

Are you concerned about the high cost of education for your students?

Have you ever wished that there was something that you could do to bring down that cost?

One of the ways you can do that is to consider choosing an “open” textbook for your class. Open textbooks are free electronically or available to students for the printing cost. These textbooks have been written by instructors but have been released to other educators through public domain, Creative Commons, or other means of flexible copyright. In this presentation, we will look at collections of open source textbooks that have been created by instructors and subject matter experts and made available to schools right here in California and across the country. We will learn about organizations who vet these books for the state of California. We will look at new business models that provide free and low-cost textbooks to students and still manage to compensate instructors for their work.

I was delighted to find that two of our faculty, Dave Arnold and Bruce Wagner, are way ahead of the curve here and have written two Math textbooks (with contributions from other instructors).

Intermediate Algebra & Pre-Algebra

From what I understand, this was an individual as well as a dept. effort. I plan on interviewing them and putting that up here in the near future.

We have another faculty member interested in a music theory textbook and a couple who are interested in psychology. This is going to be a good year for the students!

Monday, April 19, 2010

Sven Birkerts in the Digital Age

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Sven Birkerts wrote an article in the American Scholar called "Reading in a Digital Age" where the tagline claims that his essay discusses "why the novel and the Internet are opposites and why the latter undermines the former and makes it more necessary." My meditation here begs to differ. The novel and the internet are not opposites; one informs the other and makes both necessary. There are things I like about Birkerts; he is a careful and thoughtful reader of books. I appreciate what he reads. I appreciate his reveries about books, binding, and paper. I like his reading lists. He reads authors that matter. That said, I would not turn to him to understand the internet, hypertext, or what is happening in social media and its connection to writing.

His arguments tend to be false dichotomies. It is not either/or. The internet is used for one thing and novels are used for another. How is one the opposite? Is a sailboat the opposite of a car? Information on the internet tends not to invite sustained meditation and reading on a linear level. It is organized as a series of connections, and this is how most people read. The mind links information, previous readings and experiences into a reading of the text. A lovely old leather bound book is still, in the end, a hypertext in the mind of the reader - even if that process is slow, thoughtful, and meditative. With that said, I can find the complete works of Dickens on the internet, download them and read them in a slow and thoughtful way.

Birkerts also indulges in the "digital natives" argument about technology - that young people get it (and are therefore cyber-addled cretins) and older people don't (and are therefore thoughtful and meditative). The problem with this argument is obvious to anyone not working in the Ivy Leagues - it is a class issue. I have many students in the community colleges who have had a limited exposure to technology. Their lack of critical thinking skills comes an education system that has seriously failed them and from the teachers who have forgot to keep up in their field who are supposed to teach them those skills. Students are stuck with teachers who think the only way to transmit information is through a two year old, $140 textbook. If a student can get though a class while surfing the internet, that curriculum needs to be revised.

I am currently using the internet to write a novel. It is not a book of postmodern fractured narrative (although I appreciate that approach) but a thoughtful examination of identity, projection and art. I am using Wikimedia to research examples of art that I am exploring, Google Docs as my word processor, and an online concept map program to outline the work. I don't do this because I am trying to use the latest technology (cool factor) but because I have a full-time job and have to be able to write and work anywhere on a moments notice; time spent at home, a break at work, a fleeting moment in a cafe, or an hour in the public library. Technology allows me to merge those moments fairly seamlessly. Yes, I would like a room of my own or an office somewhere, but that will have to wait for another lifetime. My room of my own exists virtually and asynchronously.

I know plenty of people who are proficient in the world of novels and the world of technology and the internet. I can show you hundreds of examples in Facebook - a community where hundreds of authors share information, announce readings, and despair of their vocation. A friend of mine who I consider highly proficient in technology (one of the first people in our little state college to work with researchers abroad via modem) is also a man who is in the middle of reading all of Balzac's novels. This represents nearly a hundred and twenty volumes of text.

What I find interesting about Birkerts' writing style is that all of the novels, magazine articles and movies that that he names feel like mere name dropping: they do not move his argument forward, support his argument, or at least, they do not tell us exactly why novels are the opposite of the internet. The article that he mentions on neuroscience is a single article and not a sustained argument based on even a casual review of the literature. I want to read those books and articles, but for now, they seem to be a distraction, like so many blips and beeps on the screen. In the end, he admits that he reads for entertainment - he doesn't say it that way - he uses words like "resonance."

So why is the novel the opposite of the internet? Is it because one is easier to read lying down?

The same human mind that came up with La Comédie humaine also came up with the internet. The connections between the novels and the internet are more important than the differences. Humans are connective thinkers. A direct example of this kind of thinking is in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Each sentence requires a knowledge of Medieval and Renaissance medical history, religious lore, literary history, and Latin - all in the same sentence! How can you read one paragraph of that book and not know that Wikipedia was inevitable?

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Ning is Our Wake-Up Call

Ning just recently announced that they will no longer support free sites. I belong to a lot of Ning sites. Ironically, the Open Textbook Advocate Trainers website is a Ning site. That site is (was?) dedicated to open source textbooks. It really makes you rethink exactly what tools you use and why. I have a lot of materials in Google Docs that I think I am going to be backing up at home more often. I used to use Flickr a lot until I one day they emailed me to say that I was over the limit and they down-graded my account so I could not upload anymore or see pictures in full resolution until I sent them some money. This "premiumware" happens when something is free to drum up a customer base and then they "offer" you an "upgrade." Very effective when the company is holding your files and network hostage. Google does say they have a commitment to education but we will see what the economy dictates here. George Siemens warned about this too.

I use a lot of "free" online tools but I have some redundancy in there in case one fails - for instance, I use Slideshare and Slideboom for my online presentations. I use Google Docs and I use Scribd. I decided this early on in case someone's server was on the fritz and I was travelling. Now this redundancy is especially important when companies are looking to "monetize their assets." It is amazing how short-sited business people can be. How do you monetize a network? What do you charge for the learning and connections that happen? All of the great work that people did in these networks is swept away to "capture a big opportunity." Why not partner with education institutions, UNESCO, and other governments to harness those networks for everyone's benefit? That would be a far greater opportunity (and maybe even more lucrative) than any current business model could conceive.

In the meantime, we should be pushing more for open source tools, platforms, and public hosting of those open source tools.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Surviving Campus Politics

Here is something that they do not teach you in grad school. What do you do when you are at a campus that is in turmoil? I have not completely lived up to these verses, but they are certainly a goal and my better days are informed by them.

The Eight Verses of Thought Transformation
By His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala, India 1981Published in 2005 in the LYWA publication Teachings From Tibet.
1. Determined to obtain the greatest possible benefit for all sentient beings, who are more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel, I shall hold them most dear at all times.
The first thing we need to do is to remember our purpose. Think about why you got involved in education in the first place. There was some moment in your life when you got why all of this is important. Remember that and let it be the center of your day.

2. When in the company of others, I shall always consider myself the lowest of all, and from the depths of my heart hold others dear and supreme.

Graduate school does not teach humility. Remember that you are coming from a position of privilege. St. Luke wrote "and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." Teaching is a vocation of service; you are here for others.

3. Vigilant, the moment a delusion appears in my mind, endangering myself and others, I shall confront and avert it without delay.

There are many delusions that arise on a college campus. Some might be: my program is the most important thing going; things will never change; if things do change, all change is bad; this president is the worse one (or the last one and certainly the one after), my feelings, dignity, salary, benefits (insert attachment here) matter more than teaching.

4. Whenever I see beings that are wicked in nature and overwhelmed by violent negative actions and suffering, I shall hold such rare ones dear, as if I had found a precious treasure.

No matter what someone says to you, no matter how personally hateful - they speak from a place of suffering; the same suffering you feel or have known.

5. When, out of envy, others mistreat me with abuse, insults or the like, I shall accept defeat and offer the victory to others.
I am still learning from this one. The turn the other cheek bit is hard and if you ever doubt the existence of your own ego wait for someone else to take credit for your work or to slander you behind your back. You will find out just how attached you are to your ego. I find myself returning to #4 an awful lot.

6. When somebody whom I have benefited and in whom I have great hopes gives me terrible harm, I shall regard that person as my holy guru.

Isn't that wonderful? You didn't know there were so many gurus around did you?

7. In short, both directly and indirectly, I offer every happiness and benefit to all my mothers. I shall secretly take upon myself all their harmful actions and suffering.

So if we are aware of the sufferings of others we can act from compassion and make a difference. It is one thing to be aware and another to act - if you are going to complain, ask yourself "how will complaining make a difference?" Maybe you feel like you need to raise other's awareness of a problem, but how will you ease the sufferings of others? As Ghandi said "be the change you want to see in the world."

8. Undefiled by the stains of the superstitions of the eight worldly concerns, may I, by perceiving all phenomena as illusory, be released from the bondage of attachment.

The important thing here is the "all phenomena as illusory" bit. Kissinger once said that "university politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." Things do change - politics, budgets, and programs, and each day is an opportunity to participate in ways that will make a positive difference in the lives of others. Nothing in the college is more important than teaching and serving the students.