AACE Conference in Vegas

I will share my notes taken in this session. I hope they make sense!

Title: Intersections:Face to Face and Online presented by Dr Susan Miller, an Art Prof at SUNY

• discussed the transition from face to face to online, especailly in an ART course!!!!
• generally there is much resistance in this discipline, she said.
• students upload their artwork for class discusssion
• class participates via virtual discussion in Bb
• would students develop the competencies needed with tools such as digital camera, scanners, microphones?
• would they understand lighting issues so their work would show well (electronically)?
• will they learn to use art media appropriately ("when I am not there to watch them")?

Susan showed about 10 pieces of these students' work---beautiful ! We saw the actual pieces and the same pieces photographed digitally and uploaded to Bb. She said that it is easy for the prof to know if the student did as requested, used marker vs pencil vs charcoal vs water color.....

Someone asked, "How do you know they are doing their own work?

A: "They submit a portfolio at the end with all of the same pieces they have uploaded. The portfolio is 25% of the grade!

Susan provides online handouts (posted to Bb). The handouts are on content and how-to's. Students are encouraged to print these out. They do online exercises from these. They turn these exercises in as components of the portfolio. They also do online critiques of art, narrated powerpoints, use Wimba voice tool, and use streamed video clips to demonstrate techniques.

Dr miller reported that the discussions online are much more honest and rich. Students don't hold back the same way they do in the classroom.

She says that the posted assignments, notes, and other info, allows for repetition. Many students learn better because they now have the opportunity to see the info again (and again).

They use a certain software that alerts them to plagiarized work.

Her paper is among the compendium of papers on the conference papers CD, which I have. If you want it pls let me know.

Joanne Chesley

Technologies to enhance higher education regardless economic crisis

I had the opportunity to attend to e-Learn 2008, the World Conference on e-Learning in Corporate, Government. Healthcare, & Higher Education, organized by AACE (Las Vegas, Nov 17-21, 2008). It was a great experience, let me share with you my notes on Mark David’s remarks on seven elements that educators should consider dealing with multiple generations of learners simultaneously.

Beyond the need to consider multidimensional blending (online/onsite, portal/campus, LMS/classroom, repositories/lecturing, e-office/office hours, web 2.0 tools/books, open dialogue/open space) as a departure point to provide an appropriate scenario for each participating generation, Dr. David highlighted the need to enhance higher education settings with the utilization of mobile technologies (e.g., cellphones) as means to bring learners together, with the integration of new type of games (e.g., WII) to support new kind of learning (e.g, kinesthetic / performance based learning), with the intensive use of social networking tools (e.g., blogs, wikis, RSS feeds) to foster learning communities, with the inclusion of engagement technologies (e.g., holograms) to bring together co-learners, with the integration of analytic and diagnostic technologies (e.g., modeling tools) to support evidence-based education, all of these with social intelligence, that is, with involvement of co-learners in strategic decisions.

The question to solve is if we should wait for the economic crisis to be gone to start dealing with these issues in higher education, or if we should be creative and aggressive dealing with them in spite of the crisis. Let's be proactive.

Alvaro H Galvis,
Director CETL

2008 E-Learning World Conference, Las Vegas, NV

Experience at 2008 E-Learning World Conference, Las Vegas, NV
November 18-22, 2008 – Dr. Janice Witt Smith, SPHR,

Associate Professor of Management, Dept. of Management and Marketing

Thanks very much for the opportunity to participate in this conference. I had never been to Las Vegas or to an e-learning conference, so I was very excited about both. I left less excited about Las Vegas but certainly very excited about the possibilities in distance learning. I am in the process of creating six DL Human Resource Management courses under a grant and was looking forward to new, innovative ideas that would enhance learning. I was pleasantly surprised and grateful to find that much of what I needed had already been provided at WSSU, particularly through the GOAL course and my interactions with Drs. Galvis and Anderson.

The primary reinforcement that I received was that distance learning tools should enhance the course by supporting (and not replacing) pedagogy and good instructional design. The technology should not drive content, it should support it and enable the faculty member to reach the instructional objectives for the course. The GOAL course at WSSU certainly kept this as its tenet, and I was glad to hear it reinforced over and over again. Additionally, in a number of the workshops, I found faculty from other campuses both domestically and internationally talking about things that we have been doing for the past several years. Many of their universities are just getting into the DL arena. In addition, there were DL directors and the like whose universities were light years ahead of us as well.

Several important concepts and ideas emerged for me:

(1) A team teaching approach could be beneficial to our students in the face-to-face classroom. A group from State Farm Insurance talked about their use of team teaching in delivering webinars through State Farm. They demonstrated the technique and provided and opportunity for us to engage in role plays related to it. While not immediately applicable in my current environment, it reinforced what had been intuition for me when I tried this in 1998 with a faculty member from another business area. Having us either (a) tag team approach where both facilitators are subject-matter experts and decide which portions of the content they will cover; (b) student advocate approach – one facilitator takes the role of the student who does not understand as much, summarizes, pulling along from subject to subject as if asking FAQs from student perspective; and (c) “morning drive” – this is like one of the morning radio shows which have a conversational tone and viewers can call in. Both facilitators are experts and they need to be able to respond to viewer inquiries quickly. They may have different opinions which surface during the exchange. The presenters equated interactivity with engagement, and that the facilitators needed to ensure that they provide personal stories that enhance the content and help them to build credibility with their audience. Because this is a corporate environment, they did not deal with issues such as ownership of content, workload distribution, etc.

(2) A second major “aha” was concerning the movement for open access education and several major repositories of academic content that is available to the world. The focal content was around (i) liberating textbooks and not have them bound but web-available, where faculty can pick and choose the modules they want and print on demand. (ii) Inviting participation in content development from a wide audience. Examples were MITopencourseware, wikipedia, and Public Library of Science.

The analogy was used to think of the music industry in which they (1) create, (2) rip; (3) mix; and (4) burn. Create – anyone can become an author and add to the content; Rip – anyone can translate or customize a course. Mix – the ability to rapidly configure own webcourse or textbook – to assemble a textbook. This is available in Connexions (Rice University Project) in 2009. Burn – anyone can print their own textbook – the print on demand capability, control the quality for themselves, use software such as Lenses and de.li.cious to filer, etc.

There is a push to get NSF to open its archives so that more people have access to research information and there would be a reduction in the funding of a number of proposals looking at the same things. Some discussion about the use of linux 6.2 software which would help with publication, etc. Some of the key challenges with open access – (a) interplay between open education and open access – scholarly articles; (b)impact on promotion and tenure; (c) integration with intelligent e-learning systems; and (d) roadblocks – fragmentation of IP and technology. For more information on open education access, go to http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/.

Another workshop focused on: E-learning has the capacity to transform the university – on-line design and tools can create a mindset for evolvement. Introduction of discussion boards, chats, cell phones, blogs and wikis created a major shift at Abilene Christian University from teacher-controlled/learning managed environment to teacher-controlled open-ended environment. The university formed partnership with Embanet and had UVCMS who did a lot of their development. What came out of it was interactive e-portfolio. They shifted over to MOODLE from Blackboard because of the collaborative development. In the capstone class described, students had to demonstrate mastery over both course content and program outcomes. This focus required an extensive rubric system embedded in e-portfolios. http://test.uvcms.com/proddemos/user-demo

Melissa Engleman’s paper on increasing student engagement linked MBTI type and student learning style. In her study, 60% of the students had sensing learning styles in which they want direct communication; hands-on experience; moderate to high degree of structure; linear, sequential learning, and often need to know why. She suggested that students have difficulty with complex concepts; low tolerance for ambiguity; less independence in thought and judgment; and more dependent on ideas of those in authority. They are dependent on immediate gratification and exhibit more difficulty with basic academics such as reading and writing.

Other random thoughts and learnings – One presenter talked about use of HorizaWimba for synchronous learning environment. Another encouraged the increased use of avatars (animated characters) to guide the process. One presenter talked about the ADA compliance issues with which we should be concerned, particularly as it relates to hearing and visually impaired individuals. We cannot use only one technique thinking that we are reaching all of the students. We have to change the way we present material, having modules and well-defined syllabi, making everything transparent to the learner, and not assuming anything in terms of computer skills, knowledge of software, and the like.

Finally, I need to find more exciting, meaningful and engaging ways of using powerpoint. One workshop talked about ways to structure powerpoint, going beyond bulleted lists to linked powerpoints and provided research that suggested that this made a difference in learning outcome. The high tech component is an enabler, an enhancer, and has to be utilized by someone who knows the content. By itself, technology can do very little. All it can do is to present and enhance core information in the content. The presenter talked about neural learning facilitation, where today’s students require visual input – if they don’t see it, they cannot connect the dots. The presenter argued that virtuosity draws the student into visual learning situation. Tools suggested: foreground/background contrasts – dealing with perceptions; bright colors; use of text and sound; animations; digital scans; concept maps; and videoclips.

Implementation of improved powerpoint techniques requires one or more visual strategies to: illustrate, associate, demonstrate, concretize, identify, describe, initial discussion, link, connect, introduce, and integrate. The key is to decide how and where you create something to assist the learning.

e-Learning 2008

I attended the E-Learn 2008 Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada from November 17-21. It was quite an enjoyable experience. In addition to presenting a paper on “Virtualization as a Means of Augmenting the Computing Laboratory Budget,” and mediating a session, I was able to sit in on a number of informative sessions.

The opening keynote address by Dr. Richard Baraniuk of Rice University was a very insightful presentation. Dr. Baraniuk discussed the changing nature of publishing with particular focus on text books. He noted the static nature of traditional text books, how expensive they are, and how difficult it is to recall mistakes, which are often found in them. Dr. Baraniuk advocated in favor of more dynamic and open access tools, such as Wikepedia and Creative Commons. He gave helpful examples of individuals who have pioneered the process of making their materials available around the world through the super text book process, and who have benefitted financially and by contributing to the body of information in their fields.

Other helpful sessions included one titled, “Faculty Acceptance of Graduates of Online Learning Programs for Faculty Positions in Higher Education: An Ethical Dilemma, by Dr. Larry Tinnerman of Indiana State University. This presentation addressed the other side of most of the other presentations which strongly advocated the benefits of E-Learning. Dr. Tinnerman on the other hand, pointed out that even though many institutions are pressing to put their courses online, many are reluctant to hire faculty with online degrees, and many businesses are just as reluctant.

There were other sessions I found very helpful, especially the keynote speakers, as well as sessions which dealt with Use of Web 2.0 tools, Virtual Classrooms, Second Life, and Assessment Strategies, but I have shared those which made a difference for me and which will guide some of my scholarly activities in the near future.

Educause Conference

I recently attended Educause 2008 in Orlando Florida. The theme this year was "Interaction, Ideas and Inspiration". I attended several Teaching and Learning sessions. One very good one was by Charles Sorcabl a mathematics professor at Mt. San Antonio College. His topic was A complete Online Class: Course Management, Live Web Conferencing, and Teacher -Made Streaming Movies. He gave several strategies and tools on how to create links in BlackBoard to improve student retention and how to make your class as personal as possible.

Another good session was on having students create their own mashups to personalize their lecture.

Effective Observers

One of the events at the POD conference discussed Faculty/Student evaluations of teaching. One of the discussions looked at ways of being an effective observer. Much can be learned from observation in the classroom (or through the campus for that matter). However, often observations are skewed by our vantage point or by the fact that individuals change behaviors when they know that they are being observed. Below is a list of characteristics of an effective observer which may increase the value of observations in the classroom.

• Observation must be focused
• Distinguish descriptive from judgmental
• Get to class early; position self for best observation (back of room, for instance)
• Note environment, physical layout of class, atmosphere of class, mood of students
• Take notes on process, not content
• Quantify as much as possible
• Note facial expressions, body language of faculty and students
• Watch how class disperses – what do they do? (rush out, crowd around faculty to talk, talk in groups)
• Offer some positive reinforcement to faculty at end
• Make appointment to go over observations later in detail
• Be aware of own biases and limitations
• Know if field has distinct ways of teaching
• Know something about students (all majors, mixed, etc.)
  

(Information posted through the sharing of notes and discussions with other POD members. We all took notes and continue to share our experience at the conference via e-mail. Thanks to those willingly to continue to share the conference after the lectures have ceased.)

POD Website; (http://www.podnetwork.org/)

Marketing Suggestions from POD - That anyone in education could use!

I had the pleasure of attending my first POD (Professional and Organizational Development). It was a GREAT experience and I enjoyed meeting others who work with faculty to assist them with common problems and issues.

One common thread between all the attendees was how to market services offered. Even though not everyone reading this Blog will have a need to market CETL much of the discussion would benefit any individual marketing any educational programs for faculty or students.

Marketing Strategies Utilized by Other Centers:

• Faculty E-mails
• Department Chair Involvement – design a program for the Department Chairs. If the Chair backs the program will gain more support.
• Liaison/Advisory Committee
• Save the Date Sections – send an e-mail out to advice to save the date.
• Go to all Faculty Events – make sure that you are seen at campus wide and other faculty events. If Faculty know you they are more likely to seek your services. Visibility is everything.
• Logo – Have one - Good way to involve students.
• Slogan – Develop a slogan that can be utilized. One center using the slogan “For faculty – By faculty” - Good way to involve students.
• Attend and participate in Campus marketing events.
• Survey – Have individual interviews with faculty
• Information gathering is marketing
• Send personal invitations - Target groups: 1st year faculty and 1 year veterans
• Newsletters – Monthly advising of CETL events
• Sponsor Faculty Groups outside of Teaching and Learning. This helps develop communities which will help develop support for the center. i.e. Faculty Women, Faculty Moms , Faculty Dinner or Breakfast Club, Community Groups off campus. i.e. Faculty may live in an area and not know that they live close to each other. Target those groups.
• Offer 1 on 1 session for faculty that cannot attend regularly scheduled events.
• Use Outlook E-vits. When you use Outlook e-vits individuals have to decline the invitation!
• Pipeline – Develop a pipeline of information.
• Market to Alumni for funding for the Center
• Market to Administration - Invite Provost to come to an event to speak.
  If you invite Administration to come to an event have them come at the end of the event verses coming to the beginning. If they are there at the end they are more likely to talk with satisfied customers and learn about the value of the program.
• Databases – start a database of individuals who have attended, not attended, responded etc.
• Put an easel out in front of the door when hosting an event. That way others will see the event whether they attend or not.
• Pair Disciplines together for events and projects.
• Look at areas of high tutoring request as a possible target group for services.
• “Think Tanks” – Get students involved by discussing their learning concerns.
• Legacy Program – Ask faculty to develop their “last” lecture. What would they want to say if they knew it would be their last lecture? Helps them focus on what they might want to improve.

If you are marketing to students you can easily replace "faculty" with "student".

POD Website; (http://www.podnetwork.org/)

Learner-centered teaching and effective faculty professional development

At the 2008 Joint Conference POD/NCSPOD conference (Reno, Nevada, October 22-25, 2008) learner-centered teaching and effective FPD were central topics. Let me share with you how this relationship was explored from different perspectives .

Learner-centered teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Dennis C Jacobs shared in a plenary his ideas about "learning as a community endeavor". He illustrated how he has exploited collaborative learning and the use of clicker technology to simultaneously engage 200 students in making scientific predictions and defending their ideas; he shared research findings demonstrating that collaborative learning pedagogy led to greater student success and engagement among students at risk. He also shared his experience concerning learner-centered scholarship of teaching and learning, which has fine tuned tenure track requirements with effective teaching initiatives.

Learner-centered new faculty orientation. Networking is an outstanding resource, as you know; at the POD conference I was able to meet with different people interested in new faculty orientation. My conversations with Bonnie Mullinix from The TLT Group helped me realizing that the POD innovation award 2006 was given to Edward Nuhfer for his "Interactive Engagement Model for New Faculty Orientation" initiative which contrasts with content-centered new faculty orientation programs.

Learner-centered preparation of TA--teaching assistants. A Topical Interest Group on "Graduate Student Professional Development"--GSPD--at the POD conference brought my attention to the importance of helping TA assume their role having students' learning as the focus of their efforts. Based on feedback from TA and faculty members attending to open forums about their participation in their GSPD program, one higher education institution reported that efforts focused on helping TA acquire instructional skills were considered less effective to prepare prospective faculty members as learning facilitators than their active participation in reflective communities of practice among TA and mentors around student-centered learning problems. In the first case TA were required to attend to at least 70% of periodic teaching and learning sessions where they reflected on the topic of the day; in the second case TA were immersed in the preparation, implementation and evaluation of learning activities in collaboration with their mentors, as well as in the documentation of their learning process with a teaching portfolio. This institution considered that moving from a preservice content-centered to an inservice learner-centered GSPD model produced a significant change in TA preparation for teaching and that is worth doing, regardless it is demanding and difficult to sustain.

Learner-centered academic development. Tom Angelo shared his ideas about seven key concepts that he considers powerful "levers" to transform our thinking and practice to improve student learning. It is interesting his advocacy of "academic development" (AD), which includes both organizational development and FPD, since it recognizes the importance of aligning institutional strategies with FPD strategies; also it is interesting his focus on becoming scholarly learning communities both at the organizational level and at the classroom level. Reviewing his contributions I found two previous papers that will help exploring in more detail his thoughts: Angelo_1999, and Angelo_2000.

How do we know a Faculty Professional Development program is effective?

Lessons learned from a one-day workshop, by Alvaro H Galvis, director CETL at WSSU.

I had the opportunity to participate in a NCSPOD/POD 2008 pre-conference workshop on evaluation of professional development efforts, co-facilitated by Dr. Cindra Smith and Michelle DeVol, coauthors of the Evaluating Staff and Organizational Development (2003, retrieved October 24, 2008) handbook. I got the following three key ideas:

1. Not every professional development program requires the same level of evaluation. Using Kickpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation model (1994, retrieved October 24, 2008) Smith and DeVol suggested to collect always data on reactions to the program (level 1) and to move into deeper levels of evaluation (level 2 = learning, level 3 = transfer, level 4 = results) when the professional development effort merits that. For instance, a brownbag lunch is worth knowing who came and whether s/he liked what s/he heard, but a summer institute with fall and spring follow up merits knowing also what people learned, how are they applying it, and what is the impact on students’ learning.
2. Professional development program evaluation should start with its design (“start with the end in mind” they say), as long as a clear understanding of why it is convenient / necessary to offer the program will lead to a clear definition of outcomes and strategies to evaluate whether they have been achieved.
3. Evaluation reports serve several purposes, being the most usual to demonstrate or justify what was done. Smith and DeVol have found “portraits of engagement”, i.e., one-page executive summaries are the most important dissemination piece of evaluation reports, since in many cases that is what people read from a report and what motivates (or not) further reading.
   

Workshop facilitators suggested complementary resources for professional development program evaluators, such as the following:

• E-Lead. Evaluating professional development programs (retrieved October 24, 2008)
• Guskey, Thomas R. "Does it Make a Difference? Evaluating Professional Development." Educational Leadership v. 59 no6 (Mar. 2002) p. 45–51.
• Michigan State University, Faculty and Organizational Development Office (2005). Instructional development needs assessment. Executive summary and instrument. (retrieved October 24, 2008)
• Walvoord, Barbara (2004). Assessment Clear and Simple: A Practical Guide for Institutions, Departments, and General Education. Jossey-Bass.

2008 IACIS Conference

I attended and presented at the 2008 International Association for Computer Information Systems (IACIS) in Savannah, GA Oct 1 - 4, 2008. The conference was very informative and I along with Dr. Sylvia Bembry got several good ideas on how to improve the Microcomputer Application class that she teaches. Several of the sessions dealt with improving the entry level business course. The common thread was adding audio and video and keeping students engaged.

Kenneth Kaiser, Vice President of Corporate Systems Development, Target Corporation was the first keynote speaker. He explained how employees at Target stay connected by using SharePoint, Wikis, and virtual spaces. These are the skills that we need to teach our students so that they can compete in the workplace.

Michael J. Lynch, Manager, IT Advanced Personal and Workgroup Solutions, 3M was the second keynote speaker. He emphasised how 3M works electronically across time zones by using social networking, podcasts, audio/video and smartphones. He explained how Do It Yourself (DIY) videos were used to train the sales and technical forces.

A copy of the program and proceedings can be found at http://www.iacis.org/pdf/2008_Program.pdf. The paper I copresented with Dr. Bembry is on page 65.