It’s just after your first class and the students are filing out of the room and you happen to be standing near enough to catch a few of their comments. You only get snippets of the conversations, but you hear…
In a face-to-face class, your presence is partly defined by your demeanor, persona and actions while in front of the class.
An intro, to let students know what will happen in the class; a highlight, to capture the meaning of the subject; a heads-up, on what to expect; and maybe, a rationale, for the format in which the course is delivered.
To accomplish all of these in a quick and engaging way takes more than a syllabus or a course homepage. It requires condensing the course description and combining the presentation with multimedia or special effects…like a movie trailer.
According to a report by the Chronical of Higher Education, course trailers have become increasingly popular with the growing use of social media. The report cited Harvard University as an early adopter of course trailers because students there spend the first week of the semester “shopping” for courses they may want to take. So course trailers are a big help for boosting student interest and attendance.
Here is a course trailer for CS50 at Harvard University, a course that focuses on an introduction to the intellectual enterprises of computer science and the art of programming:
If you haven’t ever had a virtual reality experience before, you probably will in the next twelve months.
Virtual reality is coming online in a big way. VR headsets for high-end gaming PCs started shipping this past spring. This fall, Sony is launching a VR headset for its PlayStation 4 game console. Beyond gaming, Google has been experimenting with VR for two years, using phones and a cardboard holder. The low-tech, low-cost solution was designed to get VR into the hands of as many people as possible, and Google has already managed to get many developers on board with cardboard, creating games, simulations, and more. Google has created K12-focused Expeditions, where users can get the full 3D and 360-degree experience of being somewhere very few could ever go–like the Great Wall of China, the Great Barrier Reef, and even the surface of Mars. YouTube is also filling up with 360-degree 3D videos that are meant to be consumed with virtual reality devices. But VR isn’t always just consumptive–apps like Tilt Brush allow users to create 3D paintings in midair. And Google is getting ready to launch a more sophisticated VR platform with its next Android release in a few months, to build on and enhance their Cardboard platform. 2016 is the year of virtual reality.
As an instructional technologist, my natural tendency is to get excited about new technology and its potential in higher education. My instinct is to imagine all the possibilities that the next big thing affords for our classes and to push for the rapid adoption of the latest and greatest tech. But in the case of virtual reality, I’m a little skeptical that it’s going to be a true transformative technology for a couple reasons.
Technology is changing how we do everything. Gone are the days of classroom strategies that focus solely on using static content to engage students. Thanks to high-definition (HD) video ubiquity in mobile devices, tablets, laptops, etc., engaging in real-time (instantaneous) with folks across the globe without leaving home is feasible and affordable. To take it a step further, video conferencing, or as some may describe as web conferencing, webinars (web seminars), or webcasts, enables online collaboration with limitless implications for student engagement, in the US and abroad.
The formal definition of video conferencing, as defined by Merriam Webster, is:
While there are a number of solutions that exist to host virtual meetings, it’s important that standard features embedded in these systems are easy to use and work seamlessly during an online session. Some of the more common features include the ability to stream HD video, instant chat, screen sharing, recording, and the use of a whiteboard to jot down important points during the meeting. While nothing compares to face-to-face interaction, these tools help connect users in ways that a teleconference (see definition) are incapable of doing.
Some of the usual suspects—Skype, Webex, Gotomeeting, Zoom, Google Hangouts, Adobe Connect, Avaya Scopia, Blue Jeans, Polycom, etc.—have worked tirelessly to create user interfaces that are intuitive and function with minimal to no latency issues. In order to make an informed decision, it’s important to develop and prioritize the functionality that’s paramount to a successful implementation for “you.”
Voicethread is a tool that FITS has recommended to faculty for several years. For the past two years we’ve had a site license, giving all of our faculty and students access to the pro features, but we’ve been shy of promoting it too widely. While it’s a great tool, there were some oddities to the workflow of using it, which meant that we were more comfortable helping faculty use it while working closely with a FITS consultant rather than putting some resources online and hoping that instructors would figure it out on their own. It was on “the secret menu,” one might say.
Recently, Voicethread has provided some updates that might make it a little better for a wider audience, but it still has its quirks. For those instructors who may have been introduced to Voicethread in the past and decided it wasn’t right for you, I offer this review of the new version of Voicethread.
“What then, is the Singlularity? It’s a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself.” –Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, p.1. Penguin Group, 2005
Ray Kurzweil predicts that this Singularity will occur sometime in the first half of the 21st century. I don’t think I am really ready for it! I have enough trouble keeping up with the simple changes in educational technologies that impact my institution and my work on a daily basis. These rapid changes affect me in a couple of ways. First, I need a strategy to stay abreast of the latest and greatest tools. Second, I need a reasonably quick way to assess these emerging technologies and determine if further investigation is worthwhile. Unfortunately, I am easily distracted by bright, shiny things and sometimes will go down the rabbit hole and consume inordinate amounts of time trying new things without any regard to their usefulness and impact, simply because they are new. While I don’t have any really good answers to my dilemma, I can share a couple of recent activities that may help formulate a mini-strategy for dealing with technological change. Continue reading
For years, faculty have asked me to recommend a tool that would make it easy for them to conduct online video conferences with students. Every time I tried to answer this question, I felt like one of those announcers selling an experimental drug with dangerous side effects. “Do not use Connexium™ if your students are unable to install Java 10.2.9.3 on their computers. Do not operate on low-bandwidth connections or enable video sharing with more than two participants while using Connexium. Connexium is not a virtual whiteboard replacement and cannot be used to record meetings. Ask your instructional designer if Connexium is right for you.”
That all changed when I started using Zoom. Zoom provides the key features most faculty ask for with almost none of the unpleasant side effects that come with other tools I’ve tried. Here are a few examples.
I love technology! I am always one of the early adopters. I must have the newest and shiniest gadget or software that is still in beta. Right now, I have a preorder in for the Leap Motion Controller, an input controller that senses your individual hand and finger movements so you can interact directly with your computer. How do I plan to use it? I have no idea, but it looks “cool.” Such is my relationship with technology. Cool is good.
This obsession with the latest and greatest technology sometimes clashes with either practicality or, more importantly, common sense. As instructional designers, we are always looking for ways to help our faculty be more productive in designing and implementing blended and online courses. Likewise, we are always seeking creative and innovative approaches to improve student engagement. Continue reading
“Television, kinescopes, and in-service education.” How can you resist a chapter title like that?
As a latent historian, digging around among old library books is a favorite pastime of mine. (Remember: books, too, are a “technology!”)
A Guide to Instructional Television (1964), edited by Dr. Robert M. Diamond, McGraw-Hill, caught my eye not too long ago. Here’s what I learned:
Kinescopes work well for in-service teacher training, says William Hansen of the Union School District, Cambrian Park, California, because presentations on live TV made at great expense could be captured and distributed widely to be reshown at any time and the price was minimal. A Kinescope, by the way, was a movie camera set up to record a live television program (pre-videotape).
Dr. George E. Bair of the South Carolina Educational TV Center reports that rural students taught algebra and geometry via TV were tested using a nationally standardized test. Mean results for the rural-television-taught students were consistently equal to or greater than mean results for the non-television students in metropolitan systems.
Dr. Diamond, in his summary chapter on the potential for instructional television reports, “Often in the comparisons of televised instruction with standard teaching techniques the teacher has simply been moved into the television studio with a minimum of change. Unless the techniques that make television teaching more effective are used… and unless enough time is devoted to lesson preparation, the true effectiveness of the medium will remain unknown.” (p. 250).
Change a few words, and these findings could be as valid today as they were in 1964!
Kiinescope – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope
As a realist (read: former high school teacher), I know that introducing new technology for student assessment needs to be done with a healthy mix of sound pedagogical practice and efficiency. And, sometimes—particularly around, ahem, week ten of the quarter—efficiency can take precedence.
With those two qualifications in mind, I tried giving audio feedback to my students last year. I teach in the First Year Writing program, so I had students turn in texts to me via the D2L Dropbox, and for those assignments, I still used Microsoft Word’s track-changes feature to give them feedback.
But when it came time to look at the ePortfolios they were building in Digication, I felt like I needed to do something different, for a few reasons:
Functionality: Digication doesn’t yet have a feature for instructors to give in-line feedback on ePortfolios, though it’s something they’re working on. In the meantime, though, my first method was opening a Word document and typing into it as I read the student’s ePortfolio. This sort of worked, but I felt like I was spending more time describing what part of the ePortfolio I was looking at than I was actually giving feedback.
Genre Appropriateness: When students turn in texts, it makes sense for me to respond to them in text—I can make grammar/usage corrections easily, and if I want to show a student how to reorganize a sentence or paragraph for clarity, I can easily copy and paste that content to show changes. With ePortfolio content, which typically includes multimodal elements, it just seemed goofy for me to write up a reaction to the images and videos that the students had put in their portfolios.
Depth: As an early graduate of the Mario Teaches Typing school, I can produce a few paragraphs of feedback for students pretty quickly. But my swift fingers are no match for my talking skills (note how I avoided the phrase “hot air” there). And, there’s no law against combining some text feedback with audio, which is really easy to do in D2L with the Record Audio feature (see page 5 here).
Feelings and Stuff: Please don’t throw stones at me for saying this, but on occasion, I enjoy grading. This aberration usually occurs when I see the improvement/hard work/excellence/etc. in what a student has turned in. I do a little happy dance, and then I try to put that happy dance in text, and using ten exclamation marks just doesn’t seem to do it (and it probably weirds out students). A voice recording, where the student can hear how jazzed he or she just made me, comes much closer.
So, with all of these sound pedagogical reasons in hand, I gave it a try, and guess what? It also conveniently took much less time, and I still felt like I had given quality feedback to my students.
I did some digging to see if other instructors were trying this method, and I found Mary Lourdes Silva’s “Camtasia in the Classroom: Student Attitudes and Preferences for Video Commentary or Microsoft Word Comments During the Revision Process.” In her writing course for engineering majors, Silva gave students both Microsoft Word comments and screencasted feedback (capturing both voice and the student’s paper on the screen).
Silva reports that “…several students found the video commentaries more personable because they assumed that I spend more time on the video commentaries that on the Microsoft Word comments, although the Microsoft Word comments, on average, took 10 minutes longer per student per essay (10 pages in length).”
Also, of the sixteen students who watched the video, four students replayed the entire video twice, and eleven replayed parts two to four times. Silva also surveyed students, and of the seventeen who responded, eight preferred the video commentary, and six found a combination of the Microsoft Word comments and video to be most helpful.
The biggest obstacle Silva faced was video file size, which is the reason I still just record audio, which is a smaller file size. The problem is that I have to count on my students to open their ePortfolios and follow along while they listen to my feedback.
I’ve continued to give audio feedback in subsequent classes, and my students anecdotally report feelings similar to Silva’s students—the combination of some Word commenting and some audio works for them.
I’ve also gotten better at recording audio: I speak more slowly, ramble less, and give clearer direction to students to let them know exactly what I’m looking at.
Audio feedback won’t work for every assignment, but evidence suggests that it’s a worthwhile option for some assignments, from both the instructor and student perspectives. At the very least, nothing beats the look on someone’s face when they knock on your office door, expecting to interrupt a meeting, and find that it’s just you talking to your computer.