Category Archives: Tools for Collaboration

Spring Cleaning on Staying Connected

Last week, I was doing some thinking (I know that can be dangerous so stand back).

I’m really, really tiring of facebook. It is cumbersome and often I get nothing edifying from it. It was nice to reconnect with people to know how they are doing, but I’m not really interested in the minute details of life. Okay, I said it! If that makes me a bad person, then I’m guilty as charged.

However, I’m not prepared to completely leave facebook since I like to check in daily to make sure that I know of anything huge that may have happened (marriages, births, graduations, accidents or deaths).

Last week I experimented with a new format. I decided that I’d check in on fb in the morning, that’s it. I would set up notifications to see the big stuff. No more trying to sift through the 95% drivel. Then, I would have my twitter stream up and running all day. Last week was awesome! There were several reasons for this. I didn’t have to pour through the facebook garbage. Most of the people that I follow on twitter have great info which enlightens, inspires, or just plain makes me laugh. I never realized how much of a weight fb was, but I feel lighter without it hanging on me.

I also began thinking about my RSS feeds. I’m often feeling so overwhelmed by the 1000+ feeds that I haven’t read, so I deleted all but 2 feeds since I won’t fall behind on those. Many of those unread feeds are covered by my twitter stream. There is no reason to get redundant information.

Educational Gaming Brownbag: Economics University

I attended the Educational Gaming Brown Bag- March 16, 2012

Two faculty from the College of Economics presented their game made in cooperation with ETS. The faculty are:

The game/simulation Economics University is for ECON 102

It is meant as a capstone experience which provides students an application of the theory taught in the course.

There have been several changes and enhancements since the prototype was created. For instance, when entering the world, there is practice before starting which ends once you have entered the world several times.

Players serve as president of a school

There are several factors that students will need to deal with in the game some are:

  • Choices & uncertainty
  • Cost benefit analysis
  • Demand
  • Utility- provides students opportunity to do complex thinking 
  • Imperfect Information- enough but not too much 
  • Excellent chance for students to fail & start over again rather than having only 1 shot like on an exam
  • Incentive for action over inaction in the game by making very high scores only attainable by making moves in a round
  • Events are random to avoid too much sharing & replication of excellent play

Here are some more characteristics of the game that I noted:

  • Max in # of turns (50)
  • Leaderboards are visible to all levels of rights

Possible changes to be made before implementation:

  • Decrease revenue growth rate 
  • More active role for advisors

Tabs in the game:

  • Buildings
  • Policy
  • Staff
  • History- provides your history during your time in the game
  • Zoom
  • Leaderboard 

Gaming engine is a creation of ETS & reusable 4 other disciplines

The engine is meant to be accessible to programmers & designers

Possible strategy in creating a game for use in a course:

  • Make a prototype
  • pitch to faculty
  • if accepted,
    • build
    • refine
    • Consult with faculty to refine the parameters in order to make the game appropriately difficult

Few questions asked during the session?

Q: Will the game improve students’ performance?

A: Research to be done in the future

Q: Can you see the game becoming the course?

A: This game/sim is in its infancy. We’ll see where this leads (paraphrased by me)

Q: When will the game be introduced?

A: After the 2nd of three exams in the course.- Mateer

Rubric Tool Demo

I’ve been spending time thinking about and adjusting the IST courses peer evaluations. Beginning summer ’12, all of the courses will be run out of OIDI. Up to this point, there has a peer evaluation tool used from World Campus Learning Design. At the time of the transition, it was determined that we would not be using the current tool. I started last semester by trying a form in drupal. There are some short comings to this process. One, the interface is not easy for students to complete the form. It was not clear that students needed to complete a form for each team member. The data collected could be exported into excel, but it can be a laborious process to sort the data and do computations. At the end, all of the grades need to be manually added to ANGEL. Google forms is much easier for students to complete, but the data received is much the same as in drupal. Khusro and a programmer from EMS named Scott have been working on a rubric tool that may be a good start for creating a peer eval tool. Khusro did a thorough explanation of the how the tool works while Scott assisted in demoing the tool. My first impressions are that the tool is user friendly and robust. Currently, it is not set up to be a peer evaluation tool. It is set to allow instructors to grade their students. Melissa Hicks made a nice diagram outlining the current tool and how it would have to be modified to fit this use case. Here is the image:
peer_eval.png

Hopefully, this conversation is the beginning of a move toward a better tool for students university wide.

Adobe Connect Session 2/1/12

  • Attended Adobe connect info session
    • Need to go to https://meeting.psu.edu/ to sign up
    • Training was set up to demo items, but since I only have participant priviledges, I can’t reproduce what the presenter is doing. Nice to see shared content to see what happens. Good to have option for visual learners, but those who are hands on learners are not going to get what they need.
    • Private chats are truly private different than Elluminate Live v 10. In Elluminate allows meeting hosts to see all conversations.
    • Possible to drag and drop to change meeting rights
    • fops accounts come in with asterisks
    • Files pod is for sharing documents
    • Notes pod can be used for announcements and can have shared control on a person by person basis
    • Share pod is for multimedia sharing (ppt, music files, flash). Can collaborate here too
    • Generally good session, but I wish that students would have the ability to create rooms for collaboration in courses. This would push me to switch the undergrad courses from Elluminate Live to Adobe Connect.

Educational Gaming Brownbag: Amazing Race to Geographic Literacy

Attended this today and really enjoyed hearing about the work that was being done to improve geo literacy.

Associate Professor of Earth Science Laura Guertin discussed a version of the Amazing Race game codeveloped with the Educational Gaming Commons. Using a Google Earth API, the game gives students a location and asks them to click on the closest location on the map for points. By presenting a Google Earth interface, it allows students to begin to learn specific locations and understand their geographic relationship.

I see this as a great way of encouraging greater student learning through engagement. Dr. Guertin mentioned that students were more motivated and learned more. The interface was also gamified by placing a leaderboard in. Since this activity was used for learning, it was not formally assessed. But the instructor could learn more about what students were learning and how they accomplished the required task through tracking student movement as they accomplished the task.

There were many requests for the product and many suggestions about how this could be applied to other disciplines like linguistics or history.

Definitely a great session. I’m looking forward to the next brownbag.

Reflection 01/16/12-01/20/12

Accomplishments:

         Started google doc for Summer ’12-based loosely on what John B and I used at wcld

o   Spoke with Amy S and she updated a bit based on what she knew

o   Checked this with Amy G

         Beginning contact and items for Spring ’12 revisions

o   IST 210 (Heberling)

  Sent 1st email about where we are in the process and what we need to do (1/16)

  Met with Gary on Tuesday via skype to put together a plan to propose to the course committee

         Here are a few notes from the meeting:

o   Update to the latest textbook edition (http://www.amazon.com/Database-Systems-Implementation-Management-Bind/dp/1111969604/ref=dp_ob_title_bk) and create online assessments to go along with those to replace the textbook activities

o   Remove the online course content since it’s redundant with the text

o   Remove Discussion Activities and replace with a few labs

o   Rethink about how the Labs should be set up maybe to tie in with team project

o   Spread out the grading to make more manageable for faculty

o   Assessment (1/3 of the grade)

o   Labs (1/3 of the grade)

o   Team Project (1/3 of the grade)

 

o   IST 220 (Bertin)

  Sent 1st email about where we are in the process and what we need to do (1/16)

  Determined that we will use ANGEL to transfer files

  The revision will be based on integrating the learning. Labs will tie to the readings

  The course will be designed for 12 weeks and determined later how to expand to 15

   

o   IST 240 (Smith)

  Answering email about how to proceed with work on the project

         What format he should put his work (html)

         Provided access to IST 331 as an example of good outside resource/internal material balance

o   IST 402 (Cameron) – I’ll be assisting Melissa when needed

o   IST 402 (Saab)

  Sent 1st email about where we are in the process and what we need to do

  Won’t be starting until the beginning of February

o   IST 421 (Hill)

  Need to adjust the course to be 12 weeks from 18.

  Will consider this version the course moving forward

         IST 110 Spring ’12 Section 050: Cliff Maurer

o   Another request for materials from commonwealth campus

o   Imported same materials as for IST 110 WC sections for Spring ’12

o   Moved to supporting materials folder

         IST 301 for Spring ’12 will have a deaf student

o   Dragonfly Dictate is not working as anticipated

  The headphone and adapter that same along with the software for the PC are defective

  The app on the iPhone unexpectedly stops recording before the screenrs are complete

  Sent the videos for captioning to be transcribed manually for now

o   The Harvard Business Review access has been a problem

  The link that we originally got was for educators, not students

  Since staff are not allowed to get into the sight, it is impossible for staff to advise faculty about how to handle student issues

  There is an email that highlights what we need to do to prepare the space for the semester, but this was not shared, only the link

  Need to prepare this better next semester

         IST 402

o   Same issue with Harvard Business Review as described above

         Syllabus link that does not work: http://up.ist.psu.edu/up/up_msdnaa. Found my Bill C, confirmed by John B and myself and sent off to ist helpdesk to fix which they did

         Madison proposal

o   Met on Thursday and Friday to complete the proposal

o   Amy S and I worked on submitting proposal on Monday but ran into an issue of having multiple presenters.

         LD Community Meeting – https://sites.psu.edu/rep129blog/2012/01/13/ld-community-meeting-jan-2012/

          

Ongoing Projects:

         Updating google doc for Summer ’12

         Working on Summer 2012 courses: IST 210, IST 220, IST 240, IST 250, IST 260W, IST 295B, IST 301, IST 302, IST 420, IST 421, IST 440W

         Working on checking courses (content isn’t always there) from WCLD to be placed in Drupal through OIDI task list

Immediate Decisions / Issues:

         I’ve had a few issues with students who are taking resident courses but using online materials (IST 230) who are requesting assistance from the WC and IST Helpdesk. This is because we forgot to update some materials in ANGEL, but it is also because our syllabus includes items like MSDNAA and Vlabs which are only available for UP and WC students. Here are some solutions that I think will work:

o   Remove the items referenced above from the syllabus and place in ANGEL so that those items can be removed more easily later

o   Create individual drupal sections for each ANGEL section so that instructors can customize if necessary

         Would it make most sense to have only content on drupal? The other items seems to be better in ANGEL.

Some things that I learned this week:

         In order for students to review comments from a survey in ANGEL, need to make sure that the feedback options are checked. Here’s the process: access the settings then look at the Review tab (Feedback Options).

Back Burner:

         Gaming, Simulations, and Virtual World Research Committee

Days off / Conferences:     

         January vacation days 24 & 27

         Dental Appt scheduled for 2/24/12 (Plan to take half day in the am)

         March 24 TLT Symposium – thinking of using this opportunity to practice session for Madison Conference

         June 22, 25-29 vacation days

It was decided that WAR reports are not necessary, so I’m changing things up and just using my blog. I really don’t like the mix/match font. Also, it’s a bit redundant to do both.

LD Community Meeting – Jan 2012

I decided to attend this meeting in person since it’s really not that far and a great way to see and touch base with others in the larger LD community.

Here are a new notes:

9:00-9:05 Welcome by Jeff Swain
9:05-9:20 Suzzanne Shaffer discussion on critical thinking

  • http://www.criticalthinking.org/ – great place to dig deeper into what it really means by critical thinking
  • critical thinking is something that must be taught alone and changes based on the content area

9:20-9:40 John Dolan discussion on the use of wikis in a history course

  • Start with a discussion with faculty
  • Provide a prototype for faculty to see
  • Had ITS support
  • ID sets up the wiki
  • Created groups – only those in the group could access
  • Used PSU wikispaces
  • Had some trouble with permissions and restricted pages (one student)
  • Met with faculty to discuss why students weren’t participating early in the semester
  • Removed restrictions to the wiki later in the semester – had to be done manually
  • Used versioning to salvage work that had been deleted by a teammate
  • Prof will use wikis in the future for other classes

9:40-10:00 Matt Meyer on Yammer Experience

  • Best for more global use, rather than with one course
  • Members are added to Yammer – contained
  • Hard to filter comments

Reflection 11/14/11-11/18/11

Accomplishments:

         Continued with IST 331 revision

o   Received emails from Martin about items to update

  Readings (probably to be added to e-reserves)

  Activities and assignments

o   Supposed to have everything by the end of the week

         Gary H submitted for TLT

         Attended Sloan. Here’s my blog about the conference: https://sites.psu.edu/rep129blog/2011/11/08/17th-annual-sloan-consortium-international-conference-on-online-learning/

 

Ongoing Projects:

         Working on Spring 2012 courses: IST 111S, IST 230, IST 295A, IST 331, IST 402, IST 495

         Working on Summer 2012 courses: IST 210, IST 220, IST 240, IST 250, IST 260W, IST 295B, IST 301, IST 302, IST 420, IST 421, IST 440W

         Check for flash and video that doesn’t show up from the WC version.

         Adding peer evals in drupal to courses.

         Working on checking courses (content isn’t always there) from WCLD to be placed in Drupal through OIDI task list

         Updating syllabi & content in drupal, especially MSDNAA & Virtual Labs section

Immediate Decisions / Issues:

         Would like to have a better working knowledge of…

o   Kaltura

o   Jaycut

Some things that I learn this week:

         In drupal to get all of the users in alphabetical order, click on username

         If a user gets an error in my browser for drupal, have them try another to fix

         If the camry doesn’t allow the key to turn, press on the brake and turn the wheel. This unlocks the key to turn. This happens when the wheel is turned to sharply before turning off the vehicle

Back Burner:

         Gaming, Simulations, and Virtual World Research Committee

Days off / Conferences:     

         May be taking vacation on Wednesday (11/23/11)

         Thanksgiving holiday (11/24/11)

         Friday personal holiday (11/25/11)

         March 24 TLT Symposium – thinking of using this opportunity to practice session for Madison Conference

         Dental Appt scheduled for 2/24/12 (Plan to take half day in the am)

Welcomed a new designer to the IST team, Kent Matsueda.Great to be working with him again. Looking forward to moving the program forward and working with him on many projects to come.

Had staff retreat today at the BJC. Alot of fun and good to connect with colleagues from around IST.

My Explorations of Social Media and Social Media Literacies in Teaching and Learning

My Explorations of Social Media and Social Media Literacies in Teaching and Learning

The final plenary address was a good one. Enjoyed Howard Reingold’s talk.

Reingold quote, “Questions that students ask are more important than the answers to the questions.”

It’s important to listen to students to help inform good teaching.

Reingold coined the term Virtual Communities.

I like Reingold’s suggestion to layout the syllabus in different formats. I also liked his use of mapping tools to see what students have learned.

Here is a link to Reingold’s site: http://socialmediaclassroom.com/. As you will see he uses drupal as the engine.

During the address, Reingold talked about students needing to be able to be good “crap” detectors. Here is a site to elaborate: http://www.infotention.com/.

Best Practices to Promote Learning Through Web Conferencing Resources, Tools, and Teaching Methods

Best Practices to Promote Learning Through Web Conferencing Resources, Tools, and Teaching Methods

Good presentation that involved 3 people in different roles, IT, Instructor, and Instructional Designer. One thing that I was surprised to find out is that it was mandatory for the online courses discussed in the session for students to attend live sessions. Although in implementation this was less strict, it was interesting to hear how well received the live sessions were. The tool that was used was Web Ex.

I really appreciated the Best Practices to Promote Learning through Web Conferencing: Resources Tools and Teaching Methods, which can be found at the link above to the Sloan-C site.