Category Archives: Learning Design

We learn fast…

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I saw this article on my twitter stream, and it really piqued my interest:

We learn fast…

Quote: “The role of L & D professionals in their background and their present form will disappear soon.”

Reflection: This may be the case, but I think that many will be willing to have others tackle this problem. Those who understand this will be the most successful and stand out.

Quote: “His apprentice-employees need to be nimble and quick in learning new technologies, acquire new flexible and continuously and permanently skills.”

Reflection: This is the part where we fail. I think that we push too much on drill and kill. But it may be necessary to keep some of the drill around, just make sure that it plays a lesser role.

Quote: ” Understanding how the brain learns and how we can optimize our ability to learn pioneers will cause changes in learning and development.”

Reflection: It is interesting that this isn’t more at the core of teaching and learning. We take ideas from teaching and learning more from experience than from physical study.

 

 

 

 

Reflection for 6/1/15 to 6/5/15

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It’s Tuesday, and I’m getting to this for the first time. Yesterday was very busy. I had two meetings with faculty about revisions/developments. It’s good to get those underway. I also received another note showing another development is moving forward. It is always nice to know when progress is being made.

I did forget a meeting in the evening that I said that I would attend. I hate when things like this happen. Obviously, there is a hole in my calendaring system that needs to be fixed.

Twenty-nine emails from the time I left the office Monday until I got into the office on Tuesday. Many are not that important, but it still takes time to filter them. Then I file which I don’t have to do, but it is becoming more and more of an issue.

I got more done with the course that I’m teaching in Fall ’15. There is much to consider concerning all of the revisions/developments and growth. I was glad to sit down with Kent today to talk about his process and am excited to learn/read more to help myself and the group.

Thursday and Friday were busy days and didn’t allow for much reflection. I’m excited to continue forward motion on the developing a process for our group with my colleagues. Hopefully, this allows us to make our job more efficient and effective.

 

 

 

Reflection for 5/4/15 to 5/8/15

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I’m starting this early so that I can keep it going next week. Looking ahead, I can see that this will be a busy week, so I’m hoping that I can keep up.

Monday – I spent quite a bit of time grading this weekend which means I’m a bit spent. My students put in alot of effort and did well. I’m proud of their efforts. I really like using the interactive textbook and plan to do so moving forward.

Most of the courses moving forward are set. I had a meeting about IST 140 and will have a follow up on Thursday. I’m hoping that by then we will be much closer to having things set for the opening next week. I’m reminded that trust is something that develops over time.

In my personal life, I’m hoping to continue to grow and learn more about next steps. If it means staying put, then I’m open. If it means making a change, then I’m open. The one thing that I know is that I’m excited about my employment. Whatever the future brings will have more to do with where I live.

We had our end-of-semester lunch at Chili’s. It was a good time, and I appreciated talking with the students about their view of Happy Valley turning into Silicon Valley. In the conversation, I realized that culture has more to do with success than location. I also realize that this geographical area is not currently ready for change. But it may not have a choice. I’m excited about the potential for change. I wish all of the seniors the best as they pursue the opportunities in their near future.

It’s Monday at 3, and I’m finally going to publish. Friday was a busy and fruitful day. I can see that WAH continues to be a good way to get work done.

Reflection for 4/27/15 to 5/1/15

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This is the last week of Spring ’15. I’m excited to be finishing up another great semester. But I’m also looking forward to completing last steps toward starting Summer ’15.

Monday has been productive in getting EA/UG IST ready. I’m really glad to have the help and support of an IPS in getting this to the opening. I had a chance to take a final pass through the sections that I’m responsible for and send final notes to instructors to make their final updates.

It’s now Friday, and I’m finally getting back to this. In the interim, I’ve been busy getting things ready for Summer ’15. There is only one course, IST 140, that is not done. I’m hoping that the meeting that I have for Monday will be one to tie up loose ends.

I found out about several new developments and revisions for EA. I’m hoping to get more clarity and have a plan to make these successful endeavors.

Today is the last day of Spring ’15 semester. I’m glad for a good semester and am looking forward to a good summer.

The personal items in my life are still up in the air. I’m not sure what I should do to remedy the situation, but I’m counting on things coming clearer before I make any decisions.

Reflection for 3/2/15 to 3/6/15

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I’m starting this on Friday. I’m looking at my upcoming week. It has less meetings for now. I’m hoping to get to some professional development and get other items completed.

Monday was busy with course revision/development work. Mainly, 402 SMO is being revised and completely gutted. I’m hoping that we can get something done for Fall ’15.

Also, there is work to be done on 140. It is slipping away right now. We have a meeting tomorrow to get things back on track.

Finally, there is 220 course project work to be done. I’m seeing momentum which should continue to propel us forward.

This weekend ended the basketball season. We had another dominant outing which I did my best to make sure was not embarrassing for the other team by pulling my best player. We did well this season because of effort and resilience.

My oldest son had a tryout for 9-year old baseball this weekend. There will be two leagues, one competitive and one developmental. This is the first time this is going to happen. I thought that all 9 year olds were developing…

Tisha and I worked on rubrics for 220 today. We are a project document and part 2 rubric away from being done.

Meeting about 140 that hopefully will get us closer to the goal of being ready for Summer ’15. The meeting was during some bad weather, and it was a bit difficult to get through. The bottom line is that we are freezing on writing content. The push is for Steve to get us zyBook information, problem sets, and quizzes. He will set up the first unit. From there, we will replicate and add the rest of the items.

We received another rubric for 220. Tisha and I will meet to get that rubric completed. From there it will be up to the faculty member to write the problem documents for parts 1 & 2. It looks like the approach that the faculty would like to take is to make 3 different documents for different scenarios. That means that we will need 6 documents for the course.

We received a note about 140. Hopefully, some decisions will be made to keep things moving to the goal of the summer ’15 first run of the course.

I decided this week to deactivate my facebook account like I did during Lent last year. This time, I may just leave it deactivated for the year if not longer. I also decided to bring my juicer into the office since I wasn’t using it at home. I did carrot-apple juice (2 apples/4 carrots, both organic). Prep time is minimal, but it does take some time to clean up. All in all, it seems like the type of thing that I should keep up to improve my overall health.

We had a meeting to discuss Summer ’15 rollout. We had a good meeting. I hope to get things moving forward for the courses that I’m responsible for when I get back in the office next Thursday.

 

Reflection for 2/23/15 to 2/27/15

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This is the last week for February 2015. It feels like things are flying. I’ve gone through so much since the new year.

There are alot of things that have suddenly appeared on my plate. Many items require less time and management while other things are going to require my focus in the near future. Hopefully, I can set up a plan that helps me to stay balanced.

Basketball is going well. We won on Sunday. We are currently 4-2-1. I’m proud to see the kids playing with purpose and finishing games. Winning our remaining game would be a nice way to put an exclamation point on the season.

It’s been a good start to the week. I’ve been working on keeping the revisions and developments going forward. So far it is working. I’m hoping that this momentum will keep up.

It was a relatively quiet day. I’m hoping that I can have a few more days like this to stay on top of things. I went to a DMT Video meeting. It was good that we were continuing to talk about how to make video meaningful in courses. It’s so easy to put information out there, but are we really meeting the needs of our students when we do this? To me, video needs to be interactive.

Thursday was a good day in that we continued progress on 220. I’m looking forward to having a project document that we can share with the rest of the faculty. But the rubrics are getting somewhere.

It was another 2-hr delay for my kids today. It has been a delay-filled year. I’m hoping that things will move toward spring soon.

It was a productive day in which I was able to plan for an instructor revision meeting and set up a merged section for Summer ’15.

I’m glad that we are moving to a new model for course set up starting in Summer ’15. It will be nice to focus more on design and less on the details of setting up for the semester. But I’m glad to provide any necessary insights.

It was a good week. I’m hoping for more of the same for next week.

Reflection for 2/9/15 to 2/13/15

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I’m starting this up early so that I can get a quicker start on this for next week. I’m hoping that this allows me to spend more time reflecting.

I spent alot of time on Monday getting back into the revision game. There is alot of juggling going on, and I’m a bit wary of all that is up in the air.

IST 220 is concerning me. There isn’t a faculty champion, and there always seems to be a problem that no one is willing to take responsibility for. I’m wondering if we need to give up on labs in the class if this trend continues.  It’s Tuesday, and I got another reminder of how this course is running without a leader. I’m seriously considering how we can do this course without labs.

It was a rough day today. Micah is sick, so I came in late (half day). But the most difficult thing is that I’m working with instructors who refuse to take ownership over their work. It’s easier to rely on others than to actually take responsibility. I’m not going to take responsibility for others anymore.

I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow.

It’s Wednesday, and I’m working through all the things that seemed to be a problem yesterday. We may be to a solution point in 220, but I’m going to communicate out to everyone teaching in Spring ’15 and will see the result.

I had a chance to go the Penn State forum today. I would call it more of a motivational speech. Susan Russell talked about dignity. I think what she is doing and saying is important. We need to connect. It is easy for humans to separate by nature. Mobile devices are only promoting this separation. One point that she made regarded looking people in the eye. I did a test when I came back on campus. I encountered 11 people. Three looked me in the eye. Of those three, two of them looked down immediately after noticing that I was looking at them. I was also thinking about cultural differences.

All in all, it was a good day with some resolution. I’m hoping that tomorrow the momentum keeps moving forward.

Thursday started off with items from EA. I worked with Shawn Clark in the AM on Blackboard Collaborate. It was a bit disappointing to him that pdf’s, word docs, and excel couldn’t be placed on the whiteboard. It is possible to share the file which is like Adobe Connect. The bottom line is that we can share screens if necessary.

The other issue was that there was a reading that was missing from a course, but simply adding the reading to the course caused a copyright violation. Luckily, I was able to navigate and explain the situation properly. Ultimately, we have a problem with the course in that there are too many readings and activities are not tied to the readings. I’m hoping that a switch to Canvas or whatever LMS allows for a conversation to change the design of this course.

I was also able to get 220 labs fixed. But I’m afraid that we may always have items to fix every semester. I also had a chance to look over the preliminary Master plan for the team project. I was able to go through a few things and am looking forward to the discussion with the team about it for more feedback.

I had a lengthy discussion with Rob Lipton about 220, 402 Cloud Computing, and 402 Digital Forensics. It is good to have someone with so much experience to get feedback and perspective from.

All in all a good day. I’m hoping for more of the same on a busy Friday tomorrow.

I had meetings straight from 9A-1P.

I started with a productive meeting with Mike about 220. We are on a good path to get this project done on time. I’m going to try to get feedback from ID’s and instructors to make the best product. The next deliverables due are rubrics for next Thursday.

We had a succinct and well run meeting for the LDI group next. We even finished early.

Next, we met with Mahir Akgun about 402 SMO revision. I’m hopeful that we can revise the course to make it good and finish by the end of July.

Lastly, we had a Faculty Online Luncheon. We had lower attendance than usual, but I think that is because BB Collaborate worked only in Chrome without issue. It was a good discussion about teams.

All in all a good week I hope for more of the same next week.

Reflection for 02/02/15 to 02/06/15

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It’s been a while since I wrote since I got back from vacation on 1/31/15. After getting back, I coached my oldest son’s basketball team and went to Jury selection. Needless to say, it has been a bit crazy since I left for vacation. That has made me think quite a bit about my efficiencies or lack thereof and how “plugged in” I have become since leaving the classroom and entering the Instructional Design world. It is nearly impossible to let email go for even 1 day. I average from 70-100 emails a day in my work account alone. This does not include my personal email. To unplug completely, I would probably be close to 500-700 emails to get through. I’m not sure how someone is to process all of this data in a coherent way. I hope that the next time that I leave for vacation that I have a better process that allows me to unplug during the time.

Today, I caught up with email from yesterday and was able to get a quite a few things done for the class that I’m teaching. Also, I had a chance to talk with a faculty member regarding an upcoming course development (Summer ’15/Fall ’15 for Spring ’16 implementation). It looks like we will need to touchbase with IT to see if the exercises for the course can be completed in vlabs or VHOL.

Anil and Chris also created a few ideas for John Bagby’s image for Big Data.

I also set up a meeting for Thursday with Mike Manjolovich for a revise on the IST 220 Course Project.

Hopefully, we can get things going and complete all projects on time.

It’s Saturday, and I’m finishing this up since I didn’t have time on Thursday or Friday. The meeting with Mike went well and we have follow-up meetings set for the next three Thursdays.

Unfortunately, we haven’t resolved 220 Cloudshark issue. I’m thinking the faculty have fixed the issue for their courses, but that still doesn’t excuse the person that I trusted to put together the activities for not making fixing this a priority. I guess I learned a lesson about trusting this person for the future.

We had meetings concerning consistency that took up about 2-3 hours this week. I’m glad that we are discussing this, but I’m having a hard time concentrating on all of the details surrounding this. I’m glad to see that we are taking a collaborative approach to making decisions on this matter.

I’m hoping for a week next week that involves more time for me to play with my new computer. It is a Dell Venue Pro 11. I like that it is small and easy to carry around. I have stations for everywhere I go. The question is whether it will have the power for me to do all that I need to do. I’m hopeful the answer is yes.

Reflection for 01/12/15 to 01/16/15

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It’s a new semester, and the first day was a bit busy. I spent about 3/4 of my day on mps. I’m not sure if this is because of the culture which has been created before my taking over the support position or because it is mps. Nothing major, but it makes for more craziness than is necessary.

I went late into the evening working on things which mostly turned out to be minor. I ended up working with Rosalie on BB Collaborate and am pleased that the tool is working well for her. I worked at home this am and am keeping up with emails and requests well. I sent out another announcement to the 230 pilot class about the live session.

Tuesday and Wednesday I worked from home in the AM. It is nice to have the flexibility to do this especially since I find myself working at odd hours like Monday evening to accomplish my tasks.

I was able to see the presentation on Tuesday by Andrew Sears. He is a potential dean candidate for the College of IST. I look forward to see the 2nd candidate and seeing how we will move forward at the college.

On Wednesday, we met with Steve Haynes again about IST 140. We are going in a good direction and at an adequate pace to get the course ready for Summer ’15.

On Thursday, we met with Joe Oakes. It was a good conversation. I hope that he can deliver on materials so that we can run his 402 in Summer ’15.

Tonight is the first live session for my IST 230 course for Spring ’15. I review the material and am ready for the meeting.

The meeting went well albeit there were only 2 students present. When I checked the course announcement, the url to the room was missing. That may have been the issue. I went through the course today and replied to the introduction messages. I also noticed that 15 of the 20 students have purchased the text. Hopefully, all is cleaned up by the weekend.

Fred Fonseca held an online faculty luncheon (minus the lunch). Anna Divinsky talked about MOOCs. It was a robust session, but I’m getting the feeling that instructors are not as interested in MOOCs right now. They are alot of work without much return for the faculty.

It was a busy week, and I’m ready for some R&R. Disney is only a week away, so I’m really excited!

Reflection for 01/05/15 to 01/09/15

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It’s Wednesday, and I’m starting my reflection. It has been nice to have a quiet office before the semester starts tomorrow. I went from 300 emails to 2 at this moment in my inbox. It has been nice to catch up and get a chance to slow down a bit.

Over the break, I checked email so that I wouldn’t have to completely clean things up. Also, I didn’t send one email. When I got back into the office, it was nice to see everyone. I felt like I had been unplugged. I was ready to get back into things. It is a reinforcement that it is important to get away to prevent getting burnt out.

It was great to spend time with my family. I had the chance to get to the gym to play basketball with my sons alot. We are getting back into the season, so I was glad to have an informal, fun time playing. We also had a chance to see live chickens, collect their eggs, and watch my Dad butcher one.

In the sports world, it’s sad to see unfairness in the NFL again. I’m still shocked at the game that lead to the Cowboys moving on in the playoffs. As the father of young children, I don’t know how to explain that certain match-ups bring more money for billionaires. That’s how games are officiated. I thought that we were over those days, but I’m really questioning the leadership of Roger Godell. He has proven to be a buddy to the rich and powerful. It’s a disgrace that true football fans should not have to endure.

It’s Thursday, and the weather is cold. Luckily, I work in doors and don’t have to deal with the temps. We had a quick team meeting. It is nice to get through these relatively quickly and discuss what we need to discuss.

Ronda, Tisha, and I met with an instructor in development of the first course in the design and development option. It looks like we will be using an interactive textbook: https://zybooks.zyante.com/#/catalog/zybook/xPHE2nq7JZ. Getting timely and relevant feedback is important for student motivation and ultimate understanding. I’m looking forward to this as a result of this implementation.

We started a new policy for courses where we open 1 week early so that students could peruse and drop before the first day. It has gone fine so far. I’m looking forward to a great semester.