Outlook Scheduling Polls

I’ve started to use Outlook Scheduling Polls more as I’ve started to see others using it. It’s very convenient because it’s embedded within Outlook, but it is very clunky to use. There are a number of reasons why it’s just not living up to my needs.

  • No way to enter descriptions which are critical for me in sharing links to meeting notes, full-range of connection options to Zoom meetings, etc.
  • No easy way to find the polls. I have to search for past emails to find the “view all polls” link.
  • Counter-intuitive creation of events. You have to actually find a time slot to being with and start making a meeting and then select the polling feature for that meeting to initiate the poll.
  • Limited meeting length options. Our College’s defaults are 25- and 50-minute meetings. The polling tool doesn’t allow for these durations
  • Maximum of 4-hour meetings. While not used often, I need more flexibility.

Microsoft, please expand your features and design this for a greater selection of your user base! Microsoft has always been behind the wave of current UX practices.

Hosting a TiddlyWiki

I’ve been working on migrating our guide for learning designers to a tiddlywiki to improve usability and up to now, it was OK if I stored the file on my personal server. We’re getting to the point where it’s best if multiple people have access to editing the file.

Fooling around, I’ve discovered that it is possible to host the page in Canvas!

I’ve tried other options such as OneDrive, SharePoint, and Google Drive but none of those work. I’ve asked our IT group if we could have access to a server and am awaiting word back from them.

Perhaps Canvas is good enough for now. It would be great to get autosaving activated, if that’s even possible. I’m also not sure about multiple people making simultaneous edits. I don’t think that would go well so version tracking would be very valuable.

Return to Campus

Our office is returning to campus in mid-August. Our directors have wisely scheduled time for us to meet to have a chance to work through our transition. It will not be easy and it should not be something to be rushed. The director of our office, Lisa Lenze, shared these two articles with us to consider as we make this transition.

My first post-Covid conference showed me we need to prep for the campus return

  • This article was written by Flower Darby and it’s a great coincidence because she just met with the LDSC 2021 attendees as our keynote speaker!
  • “This has been a taxing time” – and differently for different people. The pandemic has been utterly devastating for some and a relatively minimal impact for others (according to them). While those who have not been affected as seriously as others would probably not be offended if you were to approach them more carefully, it can be a challenge to determine the range and breadth of impacts for an individual.
  • “we must acknowledge the weirdness… acknowledge the trauma”
  • “be prepared to extend abundant compassion and grace” – and for me that includes understanding those who have chosen not to wear protective equipment and are not caring of those that have chosen to do so. In addition, while I held some apprehensions about the vaccines in the early days, I am trying to understand those that still choose not to get the vaccine when there isn’t a pre-existing medical situation.

Return To Work Anxiety? You’re Not Alone.

  • “we have collectively adapted to the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic” – what behaviors have I had to evolve to thrive? Be patient, try to understand, act safely, learn to communicate in different ways, learn to implement technology in new ways.
  • “Create space for processing and sense-making” – this is something I will need to work on.
  • “Don’t ignore warning signs of distress” – this is something else I will need to learn how to do better. I often focus on the work and have to remember the human experience and why that is more important.

2021 UPCEA SOLA+R

I attended my first UPCEA conference. It was the first fully-remote conference I’ve attended since the pandemic started. I’ve joined a couple of other online conferences on an ad hoc basis, but this was the first that I registered for in advance and set aside time for.

The conference was well structured with synchronous Zoom events and pre-recorded presentations with live chat. Both worked great for different reasons. The best pre-recorded presentations were more organic and conversational. The nice thing is that all of the sessions were recorded and published to YouTube. I’ve included a few of the sessions I attended below.

The session I took away the most from was the keynote. There were a lot of great questions for me to reflect on and some new topics to consider moving ahead in my leadership role.

  • “I commit and disagree” is OK, we need to challenge ourselves
  • We need to inspire through creating a personal vision: where do I see myself and my team in 3 years? What is happening around you in this vision?
  • How do you get out of constraint thinking? Project your vision forward. Paint a picture looking back.
  • Humble Inquiry: “It takes discipline and practice to access one’s ignorance” – Schein
  • Directing vs. Engaging
  • Offers: Recipient “I offer to…” What concern of theirs does the offer address?
  • People do not remember what you said or did, but they remember how you made them feel.
  • What do you want others to remember about you?



I didn’t get to watch Annie and Stevie’s presentation during the event and wanted to include it here because I do intend on watching it. They are both awesome, so I’m sure this will be a great presentation.

SharePoint Task Lists for Project Mangement

November 2020 Update: See comments below, I would like to transition to SmartSheet after using Lists for a number of weeks. I’ve conducted a few tests and they were all successful.


I have started to use SharePoint to manage projects. I haven’t used it on a real project yet, but if I prepare it can’t be worse than my last two projects which didn’t really use any kind of PM framework.

SharePoint Tasks Lists are:

  • Accessible to everyone at Penn State. Smartsheet requires accounts to use the platform and while free accounts are available, this is a critical downside because team members will likely not want to log in or download an app to access information about a single project. SharePoint would not be accessible however to people outside of Penn State. I may have to consider Google Sheets in these situations.
  • Robust compared to MS Planner. Planner is quick to learn and has a much nicer interface than SharePoint Lists, but it is very limited and does not allow for nested tasks and custom fields. It does have very nice report views even if they are not customizable.

There is a decent video training series on using SharePoint Task Lists (original post) on LinkedIn Learning.

I was able to create a new Task List for a recurring project that is pretty complex with over 100 tasks and multiple custom fields. I haven’t fully implemented dependencies and timeline views since that will have to wait until we actually start planning for the upcoming event. I was also able to figure out how to clone Task Lists using templates with Ronda’s and IT’s help.

Smartsheet does provide some great, general information about project management on their website. They even have a library of templates that you can use in Smartsheet or Excel.

Truncating text in Smartsheet

I’m trying to figure out how to truncate characters from a cell but am having troubles.

For most of the data, it’s easy.

ex. “13: FA16” with the function

=RIGHT([Launch Semester]@row, 4)

yields “FA16” which is exactly what we’re looking for.

However, some of the cells have additional data like “00: Unknown” and returning the last 4 characters, “nown” isn’t useful.

So, I’ve tried this formula

=RIGHT([Launch Semester]@row, LEN([Launch Semester]@row – 4))

based on this article and I’m getting an error, “INVALID OPERATION.” The problem is, I don’t know if I’m getting this error because I’m using tutorial information for Excel or if it’s because I’ve messed something up.

I believe it is the LEN formula because when I use the formula below, I still get the error

=LEN([Launch Semester]89 – 4)

But when I change it to this, I do get the right number!

=(LEN([Launch Semester]@row)) – 4

And there we go… here’s the working formula:

=RIGHT([Launch Semester]@row, (LEN([Launch Semester]@row)) – 4)

Now, “00: Unknown” returns “Unknown” which is exactly what we’re looking for.

Twine for Authoring Interactive Content

Are you interested in creating interactive, choose-your-own-adventure content?

There are many tools, but I recommend that you consider Twine – an open-source solution that is easy to get up and running with. Twine can be used to deliver text-based or media rich stories/projects or it can be used as a planning tool for projects that are delivered via other platforms.

“Twines” or  your stories/projects are created by building links between various passages. Passages are segments of your narrative that either lead the reader to specific choices they can make or they provide explanations of choices they have previously made.

You do not need to download and install the Twine application, nor do you need an account to use Twine online. My recommendation is to use Twine in the browser because it is fast and works great.

Save and archive your work right from the Story List page to make sure you never lose a thing!

Get started!

  1. Click the “+ Story” button
  2. Name your Twine
  3. Double-click the initial passage to start editing
  4. Enter your beginning narrative
  5. Add links to other passages by using “[[” at the start of your link text and “]]” at the end of your link text, click to view more options
  6. Use the “whiteboard” view to rearrange your passages
  7. Click play to start your Twine
  8. Refer to the Guide for more information about formatting and other features in Twine

Recommendations

  • Save your work often – you can save copies of individual Twines by going to the Story List > click on the gear icon > choose the “Publish to File” menu item; import your work by going to the Story List > click on the “Import From File” link under the main menu
  • Consider starting with just the main narrative from start to finish or perhaps one of the main threads of the narrative if you plan on multiple endings, then work on the various branches or additional narratives
  • Proper planning prevents poor performance – this adage definitely applies to creating branching narratives! Focus on perfecting the architecture of your narrative before adding all of the additional formatting, media and “polish.”

Closing

One possible application of Twine that I’m working on is to help author Analytic Decision Games (ADGs), that our faculty have developed to run in class and for other audiences.

Canvas Change Logs

I’ve just created a new Sway to document my progress on maintaining change logs in our Canvas courses.

The idea is two-fold: document all but the most granular changes (i.e. exclude spelling mistakes and similar edits) in all of our Course Templates and live sections, and as another communication tool with faculty to more efficiently share what has been changed in a live section.

Adoption by faculty and designers is not consistent and for good reason, the process is very manual currently. I’ve stopped documenting changes there over the past year or so with increased work in other areas. We are refocusing efforts right now related to improvements with our tutoring efforts across the college.

VR and AR instead of textbooks?

La Trobe University swaps textbooks for VR and AR

The 12-week pilot aims to help students improve spatial awareness, explorative learning, and accessibility to 3D anatomical images.

I’ll be curious to find out how well these students perform compared to others who learn via more traditional means. On the surface, the use of these technologies make a lot of sense.

I’m trying to think of the faculty here at the College of IST to see if there are any potential applications of xR (or Extended Reality encompassing Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality / Mixed Reality) in our classrooms. Even if there were possible use cases, implementation would be much more difficult since there aren’t likely to be any existing off-the-self options for content. Anatomy has been studied for well over two millennia (source) and has amassed a huge amount of content related pedagogical approaches. Digital technology is growing so quickly that the content rapidly becomes obsolete. We would need to find a solution that would allow for rapid xR development. Apple and others claim that we are now able to do this, but I have yet to research the options.

I think the best use cases would be the introduction complex spacial or virtual concepts. Perhaps being able to “see” how web packets move through the internet while encountering various forms of hardware and software along the way. If that visualization could be contextualize to a desktop computer, for instance, sitting on the desk to include the “cloud” around them would be pretty cool. I think it would be pretty cool to use a virtual Enigma Machine to see how substitution encryption works. One would not only be able to change the rotors and encrypt / decrypt messages, but be able to disassemble the machine to see how it worked.

One possible piece of almost-existing content that might be incorporated could be an xR version of a working Minecraft computer. We don’t teach computer sciences courses here, but how awesome is this project?!

Moving way outside of our subject matter area, I would think that astronomy classes might be the next frontier to pilot this kind of pedagogical approach – replacing textbooks with xR technologies.

…there are plans to expand the technology to be used for all anatomy courses, including physiotherapy, podiatry, and speech pathology at all La Trobe university campuses…

Digital Fluency Symposium

I attended the Digital Fluency Symposium yesterday at the Penn State Hintz Family Alumni Center. It was an all-day event that featured a variety of speakers from Penn State and beyond.

  • Peck:
    • We are good analyzing some forms of data compared to others
    • Data is personal and some falsely believe data is objective
    • Who is your algorithm bad for?
  • Klippel:
    • VR helps lower level achievers do better
  • Yarger & Gamrat:
    • How can we give everyone a place so that they can see their dreams a reality?
  • Gutsche:
    • Story is vital for social cohesion and contestation
  • Trice:
    • Even accomplished people suffer from impostor syndrome
    • The 4th wave is coming in 15 years!
      • Computers
      • Internet
      • Mobile devices
      • ??, but it will require cross-disciplinary collaboration between developers, coders, designers, educators – all of us!
  • I picked up on some personal sharing related to struggle and vulnerability from multiple presenters
  • Trying to figure out how all these threads weave together and what is the future? Growth, problem-solving, collaboration

Kyle Bowen kicked off the event in place of Jennifer Sparrow. He actually led a facilitated discussion later in the day as well. In both cases, I was impressed with his ability to start with a look at various threads recognizable from popular culture and weave them together into a foundation for his talks. I’m also curious about his use of graphics. Some of them were so specific (a hand holding a miniaturized version of Connect Four), it made me wonder if he did the graphic design himself or had someone create custom vector graphics for his presentations.

The other presentations for the most part did a great job showing different facets of digital fluency. I will be interested in next steps and what the future will be for building digital fluency at Penn State.