Tag: conferences

InstructureCon 2017 Day 2 Keynote

The second day of the conference started off with a keynote from Sheena Iyengar who spoke about her research on choice. Choice is foundation of inventing. She mentioned that it is essential to limit our choices to make quality decisions.

She stressed the importance of getting quality ideas since they are essential for identifying our choices. She mentioned that while it is important to ask the people that we work with, they are very good at emotional support and some idea generating, but it is even more important to ask those in our network that we haven’t been in contact for three years. These individuals will give us our best ideas. I thought that was awesome and inspiring to contact some of the folks I’ve worked with in the past, but haven’t spoken with in a while.

We only have so much time each day, so it is essential that we spend time on the decisions that are the most important for us. For example, she shared how successful CEOs spent 50% of their time on decisions that took 9 min or less and 12% of their time on decisions that took over 1 hour. She talked about how this 12% is our value-add and we need to be strategic about what decisions those would be.

I wonder if our office has an opportunity to improve by limiting the decisions that we make as a group. I think we could do even better by identifying individuals to take the lead on decision making in certain areas. This would allow others to build leadership skills and reduce the painful-at-times and less-efficient process of getting buy-in.

InstructureCon 2017 Day 1

Today was spent on registering for the conference and meeting up with people. I tried to join the Developing LTI Tools pre-conference session, but I did not realize that I needed a ticket to enter. They wanted more money.

The keynote was entertaining. Josh Coates seems like a character. He did a great job and talked about the choices we make in life and how it creates a path that can be intentional. As a surprise, he invited Jewel up to the stage for an interview. She was thoughtful, funny, and down-to-earth.

It was raining that evening and it made it kind of a bummer to try and have a dry meal for most of us. A lucky few hundred folks were able to eat in the middle of the tent where it was relatively more sheltered. A lot of folks had to take shelter elsewhere and get wet in the process. Well everyone got wet.

Regardless, I finished up the night excited for the conference. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen having only been to educational conferences before.

18th Annual Sloan Consortium Conference on Online Learning: Reflections

Notable sessions Ten Strategies to Enhance Collaborative Learning in an Online Course October 10, 2012 – 3:00pm Lead Presenter: David Wicks (Seattle Pacific University, US) Andrew Lumpe (Seattle Pacific University, US) David Denton (Seattle Pacific University, US)Design appropriate projects -…

Notable sessions

Ten Strategies to Enhance Collaborative Learning in an Online Course
October 10, 2012 – 3:00pm
David Wicks (Seattle Pacific University, US)
Andrew Lumpe (Seattle Pacific University, US)
David Denton (Seattle Pacific University, US)

  1. Design appropriate projects – requires collaboration, length of project, complex or challenging, COI
  2. Suitable collaborative tools
  3. Team planning – student picks, consider requirements, homo/heterogeneous?
  4. Collaborative script – http://tinyurl.com/collab-script
  5. Organized into phases – milestones
  6. Individual & group deadlines – everyone has a voice
  7. Provide training for technology
  8. Reflection on the process
  9. Assess individual and group after each phase, lots of feedback
  10. Assess deliverables after each phase

Democratizing Higher Education
October 11, 2012 – 8:50am
Sebastian Thrun (Udacity, Google, US)

  • mission: education for everyone
  • higher ed in crisis – cost (2x inflation) and debt (next bubble, Penn State #1 borrowing at $160 million last year)
  • knowledge checks embedded in the video
  • Salaman Khan: separate teaching from credentialing
  • 160K classrooms of one
  • $1/student/class
  • adaptive learning – at their own pace, multiple paths, multi-dimensional assessment
  • impact on universities? faculty?

MOOCs: Designing a Quality MOOC for the “Right” Purpose
October 12, 2012 – 10:40am
Ray Schroeder (University of Illinois- Springfield, US)
Karen Vignare (MSUglobal, Michigan State University , US)

  • MOOC in three weeks?
  • success due to: internet, cost of tech, Great Recession
  • lots of new LMSs (Google, iTunesU, etc.)
  • University of the People – $500K from Gates foundation to get accredited
  • Factors by scale: other languages, cultures, distributed engagement, assessment (machine graded or peer review), gather data, look at emerging crediting models (badges)
  • MSU looked to Metropolitan Agriculture – new program opportunity, their specialty, international need
  • Open content was a challenge (Creative Commons Attribution license)
  • Used WordPress, Adobe Connect
  • 160 hours in WordPress with another 2 months

Online and on the Move: Mobile Online Learning
October 10, 2012 – 9:00am
Ray Schroeder (University of Illinois – Springfield, US)
Michele Gribbins (University of Illinois – Springfield, US)
  • no PPT! use webtools like Google Sites – worked OK… navigation and flow were awkward… what about a Google Docs Presentation?
  • while not a workshop… there were some interesting discussions

Mobile Digital Textbooks: How Do They Influence National and International University Students’ Achievement & Motivation?
October 10, 2012 – 12:00pm
Amanda Rockinson-Szapkiw (Liberty University, US)

  • no significant difference between eTexts and traditional texts
  • etext users: exhibited different cognitive strategies, aggregated notes, significant impact on how they studied for the course, liked search features, portability, 6 month loan was a negative, some elements weren’t readable, navigation quality varied text to text, want to see more interactivity


Session topics worthy of mention:

  • Rubrics – holistic vs. analytic, involve students in the creation of rubrics, start with observable and measurable outcomes, 4-8 criteria, use even number 2-6 achievement scales, list high to low, use percentages
  • Simulations – Simwriter authoring software, traditional roles (writers, directors, actors, sound/film crews) can be accomplished with fewer people
  • Gaming – check out Lee Sheldon, start with fun, grading was a hassle, instructor buy-in essential, used both cooperative and competitive games

Overall

  • good use of pollanywhere – however give time to respond and reflect
  • twitter applet to gather questions worked well in the sessions I saw it used
  • QR codes everywhere
  • over 34 Penn staters
  • nice location: Disney World
  • schedule of sessions was unwieldy and outdated – should have used sched.org or something similar
  • initially at least, the electronic evaluations were accessible via QR code only
  • ePoster sessions not well organized – improve with table numbers and list locations in the catalog

2012 TLT Symposium and Crowd Sourcing Projects

This past weekend was the TLT Symposium. I was disappointed that I missed most of the event. My daughter’s second birthday party fell on the same day. I’m going to have to check out Jane’s keynote. I was looking forward…

This past weekend was the TLT Symposium. I was disappointed that I missed most of the event. My daughter’s second birthday party fell on the same day. I’m going to have to check out Jane’s keynote. I was looking forward to that event more than any other this year.

I missed a lot more than Jane’s presentation however. I had the privilege of working on two of the planning committees: the Program Team and the Gamification Team.

I was able to make one of the sessions that I had volunteered for. I spent the last session in the Arcade (room 218) talking with faculty and staff about getting traction with their ideas. While I was there I spoke with:

  • Larry Ragan & Drew
  • Lori Shontz
  • Susana Garcia Prudencio
  • Shivaani Aruna Selvaraj and Chris Stubbs

I definitely want to check back with Lori and Susana about some of their ideas and help them with their next steps. Lori was talking about lower levels of participation in her blended offering of COMM 260W course. Susana was interested in games that would help strengthen vocabulary games for SPAN 001-003.

There’s a lot happening and I can imagine that the Educational Gaming Commons is keeping pretty busy these days. I was talking with Ravi and we came up with some great ideas around creating a crowd-sourcing resource that would help people with ideas get their projects implemented. This web-based resource would match people with certain skills to specific needs of different projects. For example, I might indicated that I had certain competencies with instructional design, project management, and intermediate multimedia development. The website would send me emails when certain projects needed certain forms of support at specific stages. I could choose to pitch in for as much or as little as I was able to. After the project was finished, Ravi had a great idea that everyone involved in the project could get together and reflect. I was just thinking it would be a great time to celebrate as well! We don’t celebrate completed projects enough around PSU it seems… so busy with what’s next 🙂

2011 Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium: Clay Shirky

This past weekend, I attended my second TLT Symposium. The keynote was Clay Shirky. He was very well received.One of the reasons he impressed me was how well constructed his presentation was. He’s obviously been thinking about these topics for…

This past weekend, I attended my second TLT Symposium. The keynote was Clay Shirky. He was very well received.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyaTuG7oVcI?rel=0&w=480&h=390]

One of the reasons he impressed me was how well constructed his presentation was. He’s obviously been thinking about these topics for a long time in a lot of detail.
I did a tweet search from the event and you can find the start of the keynote at: http://bit.ly/gkbW2X
I really wish I took notes at the beginning of his presentation. He mentioned three dynamics that are having an effect in social media today.
He began talking about the individual vs. group I believe. He used the example of Ryerson College vs. a student, Chris Avenir who used Facebook to create a study group (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/309855). It was an example of how antiquated, traditional, institutional oxymorons collide. In the past institutions could broadcast one message, but institute a different code of conduct within their walls. From Ryerson’s perspective, Avenir was using Facebook to cheat. From Avenir’s perspective, they were use Facebook as a virtual study hall. Clay lamented that the settlement was undisclosed. However he was interested in something that wasn’t argued or addressed by the university: given that there were 146 members of this virtual study group, how could anyone regulate the participation? Clay used this as a segue into his next point:
Participation drops off in a power scale and is more dramatic in large groups. He used the Pluto page in Wikipedia as an example (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pluto&action=history). There are over 2,500 contributors to that page, but a disproportionate amount of those edits were made by a relative few and one in particular. Clay said this pattern appears with any example of group participation. The only pedagogical solution was to use small groups for those types of activities.
Clay then warned that our institutions do not reflect the reality of the greater world that we are a part of. He used the Library of Congress to make his point. We are segmenting our knowledge based on the size of a book shelf. Looking at the “D’s” for example (http://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/classification/lcco/lcco_d.pdf), we see some familar countries at the top of the list, but then it lumps Asia and Africa into the same heirarchtical level as the “Romanies” and “Great Britain.”
He concluded with a final example of all three dynamics at play. I have to admit that I kind of lost Clay here. He talked about a mathematical proof N=NP or N≠NP or something like that. The point of his example was that modern publishers didn’t want to couldn’t accept research that had an undefined pool of authors. There were other points he made, but it was an interesting look at how social media is changing and how if our institutions don’t change as well, we’ll be left behind and literally become extinct.
I’ve been reading his latest book: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010) and he talks about how the sitcom has supplanted our free time with enormous amounts of consumption. He claims that the US watches 200 billion hours of TV a year. By comparison, all of wikipedia has taken 100 million hours to develop-that’s equal to how many commercials we watch on TV in a single weekend!
Clay observes that people are social and want to share. TV has displaced the balance between consuming, creating and sharing. The internet and social media has changed the options people have and they are exercising that potential in very new ways.
Going back to the keynote, Clay mentioned a few other interesting points that I don’t really know how to weave into a recollection of his presentation, but even on their own, they are very interesting to think about.
Serious people do silly things and silly people do serious things. His examples were that for every wikipedia, there are a thousand lolcats. People have been using technology to do all sorts of benign and silly things. So much so, that we all ask “who has time to do that?” about almost anything we don’t understand or relate to. Clay used the example of gnarlykitty, a freelance lifestyle writer. She is known for her act of journalism around the relatively recent coup in Thailand. She has an interesting blog post reflecting back on some of her own work (http://gnarlykitty.org/?s=coup). This was an example that we are interacting in ways that traditional media outlets won’t and can’t function. This was an example of what is happening and will continue to grow.
People have to make things happen with the technology we have to support our social values. This kind of goes back to the people will do silly things comment earlier. Clay pointed out that once we had the printing press, people began to publish erotica. It took something like 150 years before the first scientific journal was published. We have to work in a concerted effort to use these tools to support our values.
In the question and answer period, Clay closed with a statement that we should try lots of smaller ideas and avoid the dogma of developing that one big perfect plan or vision. His point was that projects like wikipedia and linux began with very modest calls of action. We never know where the next big idea will come from, but people like Clay are helping us to understand how to best cultivate that potential.
As you can imagine, I’m still just processing the raw data. I’m not sure what all of this means for me, my team, my unit, my organization, my school. But, I kinda don’t have to worry about all of that. The best thing to do is to tear off a small piece, try it out, chuck it if it doesn’t stick and run with anything that looks good.
One of the initial things I’m thinking about is the relationship between cognitive surplus and work. Most of Clay’s examples were extra-curricular. They weren’t related to the workplace. Our bosses can’t make us use our free time to think about work. That statement doesn’t even make sense from Clay’s perspective (not that I can speak for him). Some questions I had about this are:
  • How do these ideas impact developing our workforce?
  • What do I do in my free time that has a greater impact? How am I spending my free time? I have an idea, but how skewed is it based on my subjectiveness and sheer ability to recall. Keep in mind that my daughter just turned one-year old and I still don’t feel like I’m getting enough sleep. David Norloff was the first to warn me that won’t change much as she grows older 🙂
  • How can we foster a culture that acknowledges encourages our innate urges to share and socialize? What kinds of other tensions do these ideas draw out between workplace paradigms?
  • Who would be eligible for contributing to the cognitive surplus? Better stated, how can we, as a country, better use and develop our cognitive surplus? Frankly, I look around the world and see a lot of things that would lead me to believe there’s a cognitive deficit, but I know that Clay isn’t making a value statement as much as drawing our attention to a latent potential that is shaking up the norm and will likely be a growing trend and that it’s really up to us.
I’m sure there are many more questions I want to explore. I’ll have to add them as I go along.
I have an interesting opportunity coming up with a new online Italian series of courses. I think we might be able to use many of these ideas in how we approach things.
How can you best use your cognitive surplus?

A look back at February

It’s been a long month. I really wanted to do weekly reflections, but that just didn’t work out. This post roughly covers topics since my last post, but kind of covers the last 30 days.SPAN 001-003 RevisionsAssessment FeedbackDifferences between SPAN…

It’s been a long month. I really wanted to do weekly reflections, but that just didn’t work out. This post roughly covers topics since my last post, but kind of covers the last 30 days.
SPAN 001-003 Revisions
Assessment Feedback
Differences between SPAN 001 and 003
Roll-over Templates
Audio Files in Assessments
New Instructors don’t touch courses
fixed gradebook
Release Dates and Grades, Early Progress Reports
Editing PDF’s
Fixing Flashcards
M&LD
Deafblind canceled
OL2000 finishes

TLT Videos

ALA Logistics and Planning for March Session
Budget
Gathering Content and Storyboarding
Draft
Future action plan based on these reflections?
  • Take a big breath when working on Spanish. We’ve done an incredible amount of work. Patty has assisted me with the majority of our 110 individual tasks since we began tracking them and that list isn’t fully comprehensive.

Conference Report: Madison DE ’10

–OVERVIEW–This was my first time in Madison. Unfortunately, I fell ill with the flu during the second day of the conference. I missed the afternoon sessions of the second and third days of the conference. Having said that, I enjoyed…

–OVERVIEW–

This was my first time in Madison. Unfortunately, I fell ill with the flu during the second day of the conference. I missed the afternoon sessions of the second and third days of the conference. Having said that, I enjoyed the parts of the conference I was able to see. The location was wonderful and the audience was overall energetic and engaged.

–PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS–

• Using VoiceThread (VT) to improve educational outcomes
– discussion: What is VT? It is a web-based, multimedia-enabled, social-media sharing platform. What does it look like? VT features a main panel that displays images or movies; a control panel below for playback, commenting and navigation; and finally, two panels along the sides that graphically display avatars for the presenter and visitors. How does it work? VT’s roughly playback like movies except that anyone, generally speaking can interject comments along the way. Why is it significant? VT provides a platform for deep interaction between individuals-at-a-distance.
– examples: The examples ranged from internally and externally generated VT’s, and VT’s from the K-12 to the higher ed domains. They provided a valuable look at what can be done and the pedagogical implication of various strategies. VT is a powerful tool to motivate students to design and deliver their own content to the public. VT even integrates with ANGEL and other LMS’s. It would have been nice if the presenters asked us to find VT’s and share them with the group.
– hands-on workshop: We practiced using VT by importing already-existing content into VT. From there we narrated our VT’s using audio and video annotations. It would have been nice if we had time to visit other people’s VT’s and commented on them during the workshop. I think a good way to use VT would have been to publish out a screencast/VT of the didactic portion of the presentation before the workshop. This might have freed time up during the workshop to get our hands dirty using the tool. On the other hand, people rarely come prepared to workshops like this.
URL: https://sites.psu.edu/kent/2010/08/04/madison-10-voicethread-vt-pre-conference-workshop/

• Getting started with casual games: Justification, design, and development
– What is a casual game? They are developed for the average person, they spread like a virus, they are smaller in scope, they are developed around a unique business model (the game is developed, then it is marketed to certain portal sites, advertising pays for the portals that in turn fund the developers after the game has been released)
– development calculator: a simplistic graphing tool to help visualize how much work a particular project may incur.
URL: https://sites.psu.edu/kent/2010/08/04/madison-10-casual-games/

–SESSIONS OF INTEREST–

• Blended courses and higher ed: On mission or off course? An institutional-specific look at how blended learning benefits one particular school. The presenters closed with a 10 min open discussion on the definition of blended learning and it was not surprising how varied some of the responses were. It just goes to show how important it is to be as explicit about how we use the term blended learning or hybrid learning when addressing adult learners.

• Integration of virtual environment, Web 2.0, and cloud computing technologies: A great session that walked through the use of SecondLife in a particular online course. The instructor focused on finding educational and entertaining locations to bring her students to. This was a great look at why it’s important to search for locations like these for potential use in our “Games, Sims, vWorlds” research team pilot.

• Using 3D virtual world models in e-economics instruction: Another interesting look at how SecondLife is being used to create immerse learning environments, in this case for an economics course. It seems possible to import graphics and convert them into 3D models for use in SL.

–MAIN TAKE-AWAY’S–

• VT is a powerful multimedia platform that fits nicely with distance education pedagogy: faculty presence, engagement and motivation, and stimulates higher orders of learning.

• games are best used with learning when the learning outcomes are captured by the game mechanics (see: http://www.its.umn.edu/GridlockBuster/)

• many objects in SecondLife can be copied and are good to keep in your inventory for future building projects

• no one is willing to talk about the entire costs (development time, money, research, resources, hardware, training, etc.) associated with games and virtual worlds, is that because people know the ROI fails to justify these kinds of projects?

–CONTACTS–

• John & LeeAnn Orlando (presenters) – made a personal connection with them as they live in Vermont. We knew people in common. We’ve committed to future networking through a Yahoo! Group social networking site dedicated to developing materials in Voicethread.

• Jon Aleckson (presenter) – Penny and I spoke with Jon and his colleagues about our “Games, Sims, vWorlds” research team and hope to share our findings in the future.

–CLOSING COMMENTS–

It was difficult to take notes on my laptop for many of the sessions because a number of the rooms only offered seats. Thankfully the WiFi worked well for all of the sessions. There were plenty of opportunities to network. In preparing for the conference, I found the digital library associated with this conference and found dozens of articles that will be useful for our “Games, Sims, vWorlds” research team.

Madison ’10: Casual Games

What is a casual game? marketed toward a mass market, found on Kongregate, Yahoo! Games, mobile phones; played in short bursts… etc. see hand outs – goal accessible by as many people as possibleMy Questions? Why do people develop free,…

What is a casual game? marketed toward a mass market, found on Kongregate, Yahoo! Games, mobile phones; played in short bursts… etc. see hand outs – goal accessible by as many people as possible

My Questions
? Why do people develop free, casual games? Marketing? Establishing yourself (to the community)? Loss-leader for future paid games?
? So, what’s the cost of developing these games? $, time, resources, etc.

Some of these projects started as items for courses and then spun off into a casual game

Win-win: sponsor pays developers (link and branding gets added to the game), public gets to play games, website then sells advertising on their websites

In higher ed we can exploit this to advertise vocations, programs, etc. – interesting business model, see “Gridlock Buster”

What’s the process of gamifying a simulation model – adds objectives, goals, rewards, progress through levels that get more difficult (each level adds a new chunk of information), add a narrative and characters, break down information into digestible chunks

Develop with the least number of interface controls, don’t make people start over – allow them to pickup where they last left off

Mochi – online scores, tracking, marketing, reporting

The mechanics of the game (the verb) is supposed to be the educational value… Gridlock Buster is about understanding patterns

Any good game teaches you something… it might not be practical, but you will learn something

The focus is on 2D for cost purposes

Games can be engaging with out being fun… think movies

When developing, begin with the variables that comprise the system you’re trying to get your learners to engage

How do you get started? Find the model, research on the internet

? What does it take to develop a gaming engine?
? How do you scope a game? Game Calculator

Madison ’10: Voicethread (VT) Pre-Conference Workshop

Raw Dump:Presenter Introduction: John Orlando (Norwich University, Vermont) began using VT to solve a problem: he had to cancel a f2f, RI course and decided to use VT to supplant a lecture and create a lecture.John is showing us the…

Raw Dump:

Presenter Introduction: John Orlando (Norwich University, Vermont) began using VT to solve a problem: he had to cancel a f2f, RI course and decided to use VT to supplant a lecture and create a lecture.

John is showing us the interface of VT. He’s using the “Roadrunner” VT example to demonstrate commenting.

LeeAnn: also consider debate, the public arena inspires the students to elevate their performance for a wider audience. Use VT to go deeper into f2f interactions.

My questions:
? Is it possible to export a VT for mobile/off-line viewing? yes, use “Export” but there is a fee for each export!! 🙁
? OAL time display?
? Are there email notifications if someone comments on your VT or a VT you’ve commented on?
? Since VT is Flash-based, can you upload interactive Flash models?
? Do you use a rubric to assess the student’s comments? the same rubrics you’d use in a discussion board?

John: wonderful way to learn, use photos and add your own voice to narrate the story; public vs. private… there are concerns and make your own decisions; FERPA allows us to assign public

Discussion: no ability to Close Captioning capabilities (synchronous captioning)

John: works well within ANGEL and Moodle, opens within the CMS to give the impression that everything is integrated

Discussion: Wacom tablets might be a good option for lots of pen annotations

Example: interactive art (photography) exhibit-Chernobyl

Discussion: code used to “embed” a VT into a website

<frameset rows="100%,*" border="0">
<frame src="http://voicethread.com/share/657268/" frameborder="0" />
<frame frameborder="0" noresize />
</frameset>

Discussion:
? Problems uploading PPT’s? Export slides as pictures.

John: he’s seeing more interaction than he’s gotten in a f2f course; possibility to cluster and reorder comments? hmm…

Example: students like to use VT over traditional discussions and offer more information through non-verbal cues, makes them feel more like they are in a classroom, a greater sense of instructor presence “Voicethreads for Teaching and Learning”

How many comments? “unlimited” but we don’t

Discussion: download VT’s are possible as static movies; there are multiple VT accounts possible – waah, i’ve reached my three free VT limit

LeeAnn: anchor your VT’s in a central question or prompt

John: use Copy to create a Master so that you can reuse it without comments, think future sections of the class

Tip: Use “My Identities” to add additional people to one account!

Dr. Sam Richards LDSC10 Presentation

9:15 Keynote Session: Mind Sparking with 720 Dr. Richards joined us to talk about the possibilities of faculty engagement with huge lecture hall classes. I really enjoyed the presentation as it was a compelling example of a faculty member willing…

9:15 Keynote Session: Mind Sparking with 720

Dr. Richards joined us to talk about the possibilities of faculty engagement with huge lecture hall classes. I really enjoyed the presentation as it was a compelling example of a faculty member willing to take risks to reach out to his students.

One of Sam’s suggestions is to sit down and ask faculty, what is interesting to them? What makes them “come alive” about their course? What excites them? His point is that by asking these questions, the possibility of creating deeper levels of engagement with students becomes possible.

He had an interesting point that most of education isn’t interesting… We should always consider how can we add interesting and “edgy” things into our content. We should always think about pushing the envelope: “let the flag touch the ground”-an anecdote from Sam related to his curiosity as a child/adolescent to test traditional mores. (Personally, I do not advocate letting the flag touch the ground as a matter of respect to what it represents.)

Learning happens on the fringes.
Note to self: Never dare or ask Brian to scratch his balls like Sam did in front of the audience.

The final point I wrote down was a great point to video tape faculty to have them look at themselves and assess what they are doing in class. This is a no brainer. I use video to improve my disc golf throws. What is might be difficult is to get faculty to agree to get themselves on tape.