All posts by Ian Hall

Bringing Mentorship Online

The Computing and Digital Media (CDM) [School of Computing Research Colloquium] recently hosted Dr. James C. Lester of North Carolina State University, who spoke about what I believe will be the future of online learning, and probably learning in general: “Narrative-Centered Learning Environments.”

Here’s the abstract:

The long-term goal of the intelligent tutoring systems community is to create adaptive learning technologies that bring about fundamental improvements in education. For the past several years our lab has been investigating a family of intelligent tutoring systems that have a dual focus on learning effectiveness and student engagement: narrative-centered learning environments. Narrative-centered learning environments integrate the inferential capabilities of intelligent tutoring systems with the rich gameplay supported by commercial game engines. In this talk we will introduce the principles motivating the design of narrative-centered learning environments, describe their roots in interactive narrative, explore the role of computational models of affect recognition and affect expression in their interactions, and discuss their cognitive and affective impact on students through empirical studies conducted in public school systems.

The abstract sounds promising, and I can attest the presentation was truly stunning. Continue reading →

Final Exams: Drawing and D2L

Executive Summary

Denise Nacu created a pair of multimodal midterm and final exams for her Human-Computer Interaction classes, but the time it took to grade them caused stress for her and her students.

Putting Denise’s exams online was difficult because parts of them required students to physically draw on the exam. We shifted the exams into two-part asynchronous, online-only formats with a D2L quiz for the multiple-choice and short-answer questions, and D2L dropbox with release conditions for submitting the design questions.

This solution saved Denise hours of grading and allowed her to return all final grades to her students within 48 hours of the last student completing their exam—a win for all involved.

Introduction

This post describes how Denise and I moved her midterm and final exams online using Desire2Learn. We’ll cover what the exams looked like at first, how we adjusted the format to a fully online format, and what we learned in the process. Continue reading →

Quick and Easy Curving

Something Happened! — That Sinking Feeling

Sometimes the grade distribution on your exam seems a bit low — maybe even horrifyingly low.

Perhaps there wasn’t enough time to focus on a topic due to a holiday, a bout of illness struck, or maybe there was a question that was ambiguously worded. The assessment might be brand new and still needs some tweaking, or maybe the students just didn’t get it — there was a collective lapse in memory.

Whatever the reason, the grade distribution is low and it feels bad for you and worse for your students.

What Happened? — The Empathy Hat

Now that you’ve identified there is an issue, the next step is to identify the reason for the low scores. Continue reading →

Low-Cost Student Assessment

Student X has done the reading all term, they promise! It just happens they missed [concept covered in reading] and must’ve been [doing a good student-like activity] when you talked about [concept covered in lecture]. Now it’s finals week, Student X has no idea what is going on, and it’s going to hurt to fail them. If only there were a way to ensure they were doing the reading (or at worst, have documentation when the grade challenge comes)…

I have been working with James Riely, who teaches a hybrid Data Structures course in the College of Computing and Digital Media, to develop a series of low-value quizzes so he can painlessly assess student reading, lecture attention, and concept mastery. Not only are these quizzes useful for James, but they also allow students to self-assess their grasp of the concepts so they can reach out if need be. Continue reading →

On Observation

I am working on my masters in Human-Computer Interaction in CDM at DePaul University.

At the moment I’m taking HCI 445: Inquiry Methods and Use Analysis, with Dr. Cynthia Putnam. The class focuses on observing user experience, and though it’s just getting started, so far it has taught me quite a bit about observing how people go about their daily work. One of the really informative exercises we did in class recently involved a visit to the reference desk at a bookstore chain located downtown.

Continue reading →

Techniques to Avoid Plagiarism

The following techniques can be employed to address the issue of plagiarism in an online setting. Some of the techniques are specific to Desire2Learn while some are general guidelines to consider when creating assessments.


From Flickr

Continue reading →

Tools Are Just That

In the DePaul Online Teaching Series (DOTS), the facilitators demo a lot of tools. The number of tools is overwhelming for the facilitators, so it is no surprise that the number of tools is extremely overwhelming for faculty.

As facilitators, we often hear statements like “this tool doesn’t make sense for my class;” “this tool is too complicated;” “there are too many tools being presented;” “it takes too long to make stuff with the tools—I could never use them in every class.”

Fortunately or unfortunately, presenting tools is important. Bringing a traditionally face-to-face course online means some things will need to be done differently. Translating a lecture online requires tools.

The crux of the problem is not the tools, but the perception that using any particular tool is mandatory. We aren’t dictators determining what you have to use to run your class. We’re offering suggestions. Every tool in DOTS is a suggestion.

And we don’t suggest using all, most, some, or any of the tools. It’s up to the faculty to determine how their students will best learn the subject. The facilitators barrage faculty in the hopes that there will be something, somewhere, that might be useful in mitigating some of the challenges of bringing the course online.

As facilitators and instructional designers, we say, “think about your teaching style and choose one tool that fits how you like to teach.” Don’t commit to that tool. Use that one tool to accomplish one thing, in one class, in one module. If the tool works, great! Use it again for another module! If the tool doesn’t work or only works passably, you haven’t committed to it. Try one of the others.

Don’t sweat tech. Tech is just a tool. If a tool is broken or doesn’t work well, don’t use it. Get a new one. A different one. Try again.

To use a horrid cooking analogy, "don’t sweat a bad cheese slicer."

Don’t sweat cheese slicers. Cheese slicers are just a tool. If a cheese slicer is broken or doesn’t work well, don’t use it. Get a new one. A different one. Try again.

You don’t go to the store shouting about how all cheese slicers are wretched tools whose only purpose is to subvert your ability to cut cheese.

You find a better cheese slicer.

Mastering D2L Checklists

In FITS we are big proponents of using the Checklist feature in D2L. Using Checklists gives students an opportunity for self-assessment and eases the pressure on the instructor to answer "when is XYZ due" questions.

But every tool has a cost, and the cost of using the Checklist feature (with dates) is that whenever you copy a past or current course Checklist into an upcoming course, the dates are all out of whack and need to be updated (since dates don’t automatically roll forward in D2L).

In this post I’ll cover:

  1. Modifying Large Numbers of Date-Specific Checklist Items Quickly (Part 1)
  2. Condensing Checklists from 10 Weeks to 5 Weeks (Part 2)

Part 1 – Modifying Large Numbers of Date-Specific Checklist Items Quickly

Now the big secret isn’t really a secret. This process is essentially using Excel to pre-format the dates, keyboard shortcuts to copy/paste, and CMD+Tab (OS X) or ALT+Tab (Win/*nix) to navigate between Excel and Firefox.

First thing you need to do is update the syllabus with the new assignment dates. I recommend to my professors that they update the information on their syllabus first so they have a master list of assignments and dates to pull from.

Now that the syllabus is updated (ha, wasn’t that easy?) open Excel and copy/paste all the tasks/checklist items into Column A and the dates they are due into Column B. Ensure the dates in Column B are formatted as MM/DD/YYYY (for example: Wednesday, July 4, 2012 would become 7/4/2012) since MM/DD/YYY is the format D2L uses. This part, converting the human-readable dates to dates D2L can use, is probably the most time-consuming part of the whole process of updating Checklists.

Now that you’ve got your prettily formatted tasks/checklist items and their dates, go into the Checklist area of the course (https://d2l.depaul.edu/d2l/lms/checklist/checklists.d2l?ou=<whatever the OU is>) and you should see all the Checklists.

  1. Click on the Checklist you’d like to edit.
  2. Check the box at the top of the list of Checklist items (Fig.1, 2).
  3. Click on the double pencil Icon (Fig.1, 3).
  4. You should see a page with the Checklist item information displayed nicely (Fig.2).
  5. Go to Excel and click on the cell in Column B that corresponds with the first Checklist Item.
  6. Press CMD+C or CTRL+C to copy the information in the cell.
  7. Press CMD+Tab or ALT+Tab to go back to Firefox.
  8. Click on the date for the checklist item and press CMD+A or CTRL+A to "Select All" the information in the cell and then press CMD+V or CTRL+V to paste the contents of your clipboard into the cell.
  9. Press CMD+Tab or ALT+Tab to go back to Excel.
  10. Press the down arrow to go to the next cell down in Excel.
  11. Repeat Steps 6-10 for all the Checklist items.
    • Note: The key here is to make sure you are using the shortcuts. Think about the patterns your fingers are making as you CMD+Tab, Down-Arrow, CMD+C, CMD+Tab, Left-Mouse Click, CMD+A, CMD+V, CMD+Tab, etc. It’ll take a while but after 3-5 items your fingers will start to remember the pattern and you’ll get faster.
  12. Once all Checklist items have their dates updated, click SAVE to save the fruits of your labor.

(Fig.1)

(Fig.2)

Congratulations, you are on your way to modifying your enormously long list of Checklist item dates in record time.

Now enjoy your repetitive stress injury.

Part 2 – Condensing Checklists from 10 Weeks to 5 Weeks

If you’re teaching a 10 week course in 5 weeks, instead of spending a considerable amount of effort on condensing two weeks of checklists into one, try renaming each of the weeks into A/B categories as follows:

  • Week 1 becomes Week 1A
  • Week 2 becomes Week 1B
  • Week 3 becomes Week 2A
  • Week 4 becomes Week 2B
  • Week 5 becomes Week 3A
  • Week 6 becomes Week 3B
  • Week 7 becomes Week 4A
  • Week 8 becomes Week 4B
  • Week 9 becomes Week 5A
  • Week 10 becomes Week 5B

Now you have 10 weeks of checklist content condensed down into 5 weeks. This also helps keep your "10 Week Professor" mental-model intact, so there is low or no cost having to re-learn where information is in the checklist (it’s in the same spot, but with a different name).

Now you can start removing or shuffling content from the checklists if necessary and the students have solid cognitive divisions between blocks of content (rather than jamming two weeks of probably-not-totally-related checklist content into one checklist).

Conclusion

You are now a Checklist master.

Get Lazy and Automate

“But being lazy means you aren’t productive, right?”

Lies!

Being lazy is about getting as much done as you can with as little effort as possible. Think “task streamlining” rather than “task avoidance.”

The tasks that take the most time for me are repetitive text-manipulation tasks and responding to email, so those are the two things I’ve worked on automating the most.

The tools I prefer are Autohotkey (free) for Windows or Text Expander ($35) for Mac. Both allow you to set up keyboard macros which will perform longer text-entry tasks. I will not go into incredible depth for either of them, but I will go into the basics of why they’re useful.

What Email Signatures?

We all have to sign our emails; it’s polite.

And it takes a while, especially when you add up the 10 to 20 seconds you spend per email every day. Today I sent fifty-six emails. Fifty-six emails multiplied by 15 seconds to sign the email (on the conservative end) is 840 seconds which is about 14 minutes per day spent signing emails.

But wait, I use signatures!

Well that’s great but it’s not flexible. My signatures vary depending on who I am emailing. I use formal signatures and informal signatures and all sorts in between.

For example, when I type “ssq”, Text Expander types:

If there is anything else I can help with, please let me know.

Regards,
Ian at FITS

This is great! Now I never have to think about how to sign off on an email again. I write what I have to say, type “ssq”, and send it off.

Or I can type “sse”, and Text Expander types:

Regards,
Ian at FITS

“Yeah but that takes no time to type—you must type really slowly.”

Nope!

It took me 4.8 seconds averaged over six attempts at typing it really quickly.

Don’t believe me? You try.

Actual Email Messages

Now think about the longer text you type over and over and over.

Here’s a sample short snippet I type five to fifty times per day:

Greetings,

Your add user request has been completed. Please log in and ensure that the user(s) appear as they should.

It’s a greeting and one line of text all of which takes about 16 seconds to write. So again, lots of time wasted writing the same thing over and over and sometimes I’d misspell things or send the wrong information or whatever further extending the time it takes to write.

The rate most people perform composition typing at is nineteen words per minute (Karat, et. al., 1999). If you compositionally type similar bodies of text regularly you’re wasting time.

Now imagine if that were two paragraphs consisting of three to five sentences typed two times per day. Times four per week (lucky you, working four days a week). Times four weeks per month.

Now let’s take my wonderful body of add-user text above, which is about twenty words. If compositionally you type nineteen words per minute, it will take you one minute to type that sentence, times three sentences per paragraph (low end), so at three minutes per paragraph times two paragraphs, you’re spending six minutes per day composing each email. If you have two students or coworkers a day who ask similar questions, you are spending 12 minutes a day doing unnecessary, repetitive work.

Multiply that by your generous four-day work week, times four weeks per month, and you’re spending 3.5 hours per month writing just that one email over and over. Now if you regularly compose five similar emails, it scales quickly.

Suddenly you are at 15 hours per month wasted.

And knowing you, everything is misspelled, has coffee spilled on it, and the really important bit of information got left out anyway.

Horrifying.

References

Karat, C.M., Halverson, C., Horn, D. and Karat, J. (1999), Patterns of entry and correction in large vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems, CHI 99 Conference Proceedings, 568-575.