All posts by Jean Bryan

Sunday Comics, Digital Values

I’m all about asking the big questions. And the one on my mind recently has been: how do we model conscientious use of digital tools for our students?

Last week I was reintroduced to a YouTube video, “A Vision of Students Today,” which focuses on the tensions between current education and the current global, digital world. Well, that piece, by a Kansas State University class in digital ethnography, continues to blow my colloquial, late-twentieth-century American mind. And then… there’s the Sunday comics.

Zits, a strip about a teenage boy and his family, is one of my favorites. In last Sunday’s strip (3/8/09), Jeremy’s friend comes by to pick up a book, use the bathroom, and eat a snack. Through the entire visit, they communicate only through texting. The mother is, of course, appalled at the missed chance for real communication.

No, I’m not going to answer my own question. Big questions are more important to ask than to answer. The two images provided here, however, provide some grist for lively discussions on what is of value and how to line up the “things” around us to reflect those values.

In terms of modeling conscientious use to our students: What are our values as educators? And, how do we employ or line up the digital “things” in our digital tool box to reflect those values? That would be a place to start.

Three Things I Learned at SLATE

The annual SLATE conference was held on Thursday and Friday of last week (October 9 and 10). SLATE is the Blackboard users group for the Chicagoland area. This conference has been growing every year; this year I found participants from as far away as Kansas, Nebraska, and the St. Louis area. While a few vendors attend—primarily those providing Building Blocks for Blackboard—the conference provides a balance between technology and pedagogy (how to employ the technology to achieve learning objectives).

Here are three things I took away from this year’s SLATE conference:

  1. READI—an online test to measure a student’s readiness for online learning. This tool was presented by North Park University, where it has been employed both for their online students and as a faculty-development tool. READI, short for Readiness for Education At a Distance Indicator, provides the student with a report about his or her learning style, individual attributes, technical knowledge and competency, reading speed and comprehension, and typing speed and accuracy. In addition to the report—which also shows students how they compare to others who have taken the test—students are provided with links to helpful online resources.
  2. EQUELLA—a learning-object repository that can be used with multiple types of content management systems. Southern New Hampshire University presented on how Equella is being used for its online courses.
  3. Blogs and Wikis for Writing—Heath Tuttle from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln gave this informative presentation. While he is currently able to use the learning-objects Building Block in Blackboard, he started using Blogs and Wikis for his writing classes before that was available.

Notes from the 24th Annual Distance Learning Conference, Madison, Wisconsin

Ironic that those of us in the trenches of online learning—instructional designers, flash developers, leading-edge online instructors and administrators—enjoy a face-to-face gathering periodically. Just this past week, some eighteen of us from DePaul found ourselves at the 24th annual Distance Learning Conference sponsored by the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

For me, the three keynote addresses tied the conference together: Curtis Bonk (known as Curt once you’ve shared a drink with him) charged the group with his ever-present enthusiasm for all things online. Those of us from DePaul were delighted to find that Curt—who is the pure definition of a “connector” personality type—now includes in his presentation a reference to and photo of our own James Moore’s blog about the Pulse electronic writing tool. And here is James’ blog about that event.

Speaking of connections, George Siemens (University of Manitoba), in his keynote address, presented a new theory of learning—connectivism—based on the realities of the Web 2.0 world, where “learning is the act of building a network and moving through that network in a meaningful manner.”

The final keynoter, Marilyn Moats Kennedy (a former DePaul instructor, by the way) amused the audience with her insights into the defining characteristics of five generations of employees and how to manage them. (As a “boomer,” I’m delighted to know that those who manage me will do almost anything to keep me!) Her engaging approach harbored some interesting observations about the younger generations and provided some interesting perspectives on how we (boomers) can view and assess our students, what motivates them to learn, and how they relate to the workplace. For example, a generation that experienced their boomer parents being laid off is not likely to be a generation that exhibits loyalty to “the company.” They will move around; they expect to move around.

There were multiple opportunities to hear about case studies, rules for assessment, guidelines for designing for critical learning, and issues on institutional policies and support structures. These are the to-do lists we carry back home from such a conference: learn more about Pulse pens, look up this Web site, find out how much it would cost to get a site license for this or that application. The blinders go on—as they need to—and we focus once again on our own institution, our own job description, our own unique set of challenges. And yet, we are fed in some small way by this connection, this face-to-face time to exchange lessons learned, hear new ideas, place our piece of the puzzle into the bigger picture.

And next year… some of us will return to celebrate this opportunity’s quarter of century mark!

Online Tools to Aid Design of Your Course

Here are a few templates and tools that can be used by a faculty member who either does not have the resources of an instructional designer at hand or merely chooses not to work with an instructional designer. The core standard for a well-designed course is the alignment of the objectives with the course assessments, learning activities and learning materials.

The central pieces of course are the learning objectives. That is where course design begins and against which course outcomes are measured.

This location is interactive and can actually help you build measurable learning objectives for your course based on Bloom’s Taxonomy! www.radiojames.com/ObjectivesBuilder

Mager’s Tips on Learning Objectives. This site includes my favorite “cheat sheet” for writing objectives: the list of observable verbs! There are two lists: one for the cognitive domain and one for the affective domain:
www2.gsu.edu/~mstmbs/CrsTools/Magerobj.html

Once the Learning Objectives are clearly written and measurable, it is amazing how the remaining course design elements will fall into place. In our training sessions designed to prepare faculty members to teach online, we’ve used several templates as guides for faculty to aid in aligning assessments and activities with objectives. Our current version is available here. As a synthesis of many other templates from across the U.S., it may very well look familiar!

DePaul Teaching Commons—It’s a Launch!

IDD is pleased to announce the launch of the DePaul Teaching Commons, DePaul’s virtual teaching and learning center. Designed to address teaching issues at multiple levels, this website provides a single location for information about teaching at DePaul.

It is hoped this website will grow to become a collaborative space where DePaul faculty members can share their teaching practices and explore new tools and ideas. Do you notice anything missing? Do you want to contribute a sample syllabus or assignment? The site contains many links requesting faculty suggestions, resources, and comments, making it easy for instructors to contribute and fill in any gaps.

The DePaul Teaching Commons expresses the unique nature of DePaul. Collaboration among fourteen departments and committees contributed to the website’s extensive content. For examples of how similar sites have been developed at other institutions, view the sites listed below.

I think the DePaul Teaching Commons beats ‘em all, hands down!

Why Come to Class?

During a recent consulting session with an instructor about her upcoming blended-delivery course, our discussion turned toward which learning activities would best serve students when delivered online vs. those that would best serve students when delivered in the classroom.

It’s an interesting question: What unique learning attributes are contained in a room that—for a period of time—contains one instructor and a group of students?

When I ask faculty what they do in the classroom, the answer I most often receive first is that they “lecture” or “talk about the content” or “present information.” When pressed further faculty refer to other activities. “I watch students to see if they are paying attention,” or “I ask questions to see if they understand the material.” And then I begin to hear yet another group of activities that includes the following:

  • “We discuss the material.”
  • “Students meet in their project groups and I spend time with each group.”
  • “We do practice problems on the board.”
  • “We review the homework assignment.”

So, here are three things that happen in a face-to-face classroom: delivery of content, assessment of student engagement with the material, and guidance of student learning and performance.

Interestingly, when I ask faculty what they like most about teaching, rarely have I ever heard lecturing top the list. In fact, I’ve never heard that answer. What I usually hear are answers related to that last task. “I enjoy guiding students through the work of learning,” or “watching students get it,” or “seeing the ‘ah-ha’ moments.” I would guess that if we asked students what they enjoy most about learning, these moments would be high on their lists as well.

What if one could actually structure a course to include more of these teaching moments—these moments of guiding student learning?

Barbara Walvoord reported on this type of course in 2003. “I wanted to use my time not to deliver information, but to engage in discussion with students and respond to their writing, encouraging their development of sophisticated analytical skills and creativity.”

To accomplish this, she basically re-created her Shakespeare class as a hybrid course. Information and ideas were delivered via readings and by videos already owned by the library. The rather large course was broken up into several groups of approximately 18 students. Each group met with the instructor once a week for an hour of discussion. Students were held accountable for their weekly short assignments, notes on readings and the video presentations, and on their participation in discussion.

Every student spoke in class every week, wrote every week, and received personalized feedback from the instructor on drafts of essays. The drop rate for this section of the class was the same as that for other sections. All measures indicated a successful and rigorous learning experience for the students.

Walvoord’s framework may have been “faculty productivity”—a term that sets an educator’s teeth on edge, much like nails across a chalkboard. Yet, her process does result in that central joy of instruction. So, what is it that the instructor can uniquely bring to the classroom? Herself? Her feedback? Her ability to guide discussion?

Well, that is actually a large part of what happens when a course is re-designed for hybrid/blended delivery. Faculty time is focused on providing immediate feedback on performance and practice, engaging students in discussions around concepts and ideas, asking guiding questions about group or individual projects, and listening and responding to student presentations.

For more information, see the following resources:

Walvoord, B. (2003). New Modes of Productivity for Student Learning. New Directions for Higher Education, No. 121. 35-49.

Teaching and Learning: Directions in Technology Research

My colleagues have contributed some very practical discussions of tools and theories for teaching and learning. My entry—which I hope will stimulate some conversation—takes a slightly different direction: research in technology and learning.

The Clark/Kozma delivery truck debate1 shifted the focus of educational technology research away from comparing media or delivery systems (i.e. is using a video lecture better than a face-to-face lecture?) to a more systems-based agenda. This approach recognizes that technologies do not stand on their own, but rather teaching strategy, context, and technology/media each play their part in the learning process. This holistic form of analysis encourages educational researchers to address the following questions:

  • What are the particular strengths of a particular tool when used in a particular context to support particular teaching strategies?
  • Conversely, what are the strengths of particular teaching strategies to support students in a particular instructional context, such as an online learning context?

As an example, Roblyer and Knezek (2003) suggest one research focus might be on ways to increase the learning impact of technologies already in common use. PowerPoint is an existing, commonly used technology. How might one examine the instructional benefits of PowerPoint in a particular learning situation?

We start—as always—with the learning objective: what will the students know, or be able to do? Consider the following example: “Students will be able to describe the overall concept behind and components of the Kreb’s cycle.” To assess this objective, we create standardized grading guidelines (a.k.a. rubrics) for an essay question assessment. Armed with a rubric and a specific assessment method, we can attempt to determine which of the following approaches will best help students grasp this concept quickly and retain it longer.

  1. The concept is described by the instructor in a classroom lecture using a text-only PowerPoint that is then placed on Blackboard for 24/7 access.
  2. The concept is described by the instructor in the classroom using a graphical PowerPoint that is then placed on Blackboard for 24/7 access.
  3. Students collaborate to create a graphical PowerPoint describing the cycle and share it on Blackboard 24/7 with their fellow students.

In each case, the PowerPoint is posted on Blackboard. However, there are differences in the media—one is textual, one is graphical—between instances 1 and 2. The difference between these two cases and case three is, of course, the active-learning instructional strategy of having students collaboratively create the PowerPoint representation of their learning.

I’d be interested in knowing your thoughts on directions in research on teaching, learning and technology. What technologies and teaching strategies work well in your disciplinary context? Let’s start a conversation!

1Roblyer, M.D. (2003). New millennium research for educational technology: A call for a national research agenda. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 36(1) 60-1.