HigherEd BlogCon » teaching

Welcome to HigherEd BlogCon

Dan Karleen — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 21:00:26 +0000

Welcome to the HigherEd BlogCon. During April 2006, participants from around the world posted more than 40 articles, screencasts, videos, and mp3’s on new media in academia. Join us via Skypecast each Friday where we discuss, debate, remix, and raise new issues.

Here’s an easy way to access the presentations and conversations posted here during April.
Week of April 3, 2006

>> Teaching Master Index

Week of April 10, 2006

>> Blogging in Libraries
>> Podcasting in Libraries
>> Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies
>> Issues in Libraries
>> Making Information Work Harder

Week of April 17, 2006

>> Admissions, Alumni Relations, and Communications and Marketing Master Index

Week of April 24, 2006

>> Websites and Web Development Master Index

HigherEd BlogCon sponsored Skypecast

Dan Karleen — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 19:56:54 +0000

Here’s the mp3 of the May 26, 2006 Skypecast series entitled Conversation Strategies in Higher Education, a free-ranging open-mic call, this time exploring the need for social media in the world of non-profits. Participants included Bob Robertson-Boyd, Elaine Nelson, Kevin Guidry, Dimitri Glazkov, Karine Joly, Paul Baker, David Phillips, Dan Karleen and others as the meeting went along. Paul was live-blogging it.

Here’s the list of future Skypecasts on similar topics. We’re doing one tomorrow at 1 pm ET, 17:00 GMT. Here is a time converter in case you need one.

HigherEd BlogCon Next Steps

Dan Karleen — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:33:53 +0000

HigherEd BlogCon 2006 has ended. Our thanks again to our section chairs and presenters for an enlightening look at major issues and opportunities posed to higher education by the rapid move to “social computing.”

In the end, we posted 41 screencasts, podcasts and papers by 51 presenters. More than 12,000 visitors attended the month-long event on the Web, and an additional 1300 attended the two teleconferences hosted by CASE.

We now begin a process of evaluation and planning for HigherEd BlogCon 2007.

Among our questions:

– What key issues emerged that clearly merit further exploration?

– What steps might we take to increase the amount of direct interaction among presenters and attendees?

– How should next year’s event be organized?

To support a discussion of these issues, we’ve created a page in the HigherEd BlogCon wiki where all are invited to share ideas and observations. That’s at http://higheredblogcon.editme.com/.

Also, we’re inviting all section chairs and presenters to join a live online discussion the subject Friday, May 5th at 1 p.m. EDT.

If you’d like to participate in a long-running discussion of this topic with full access to the full transcript, please contact Dan Forbush at dan.forbush@profnet.com and he’ll add you to the BlogCon chat area as a member.

If you’d like to participate only in Friday’s live chat, you may join as a guest at https://blogcon.campfirenow.com/24c45.

Tags: higheredblogcon

Special: Links to More Applications of New Media in Higher Education

Dan Karleen — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 12:02:11 +0000

Many thanks to those of you who have written to tell us about your new media resources or applications. Today we are highlighting a few of these on this page. Feel free to share more applications by leaving a comment below.

Communications and Alumni

Advanced Organizational Communication is a team blog by Walter Carl’s class at Northeastern University. This semester, the class is collaborating with John Cass from Backbone Media to better understand the reasons, conditions and factors it takes to make a successful corporate blog. Student involvement consists of helping to design questions for the interview protocol, conducting interviews with corporate bloggers, transcribing the interviews, performing a thematic analysis of the interviews, and contributing posts to the class blog that articulate the initial findings and what they learned from the project. Blog and description submitted by Dr.Walter J. Carl.
“What’s hAPPening!” is the blog of the Appalachian Alumni Association (Appalachian State University) consisting of links to news articles, photos, alumni profiles, campus news and other information relevant to our alumni base. Submitted by Rob Robertson.

Library and Information Resources

The FLICC/FEDLINK Environmental Scan wiki is a collaborative project to describe external trends and issues that could affect FLICC/FEDLINK’s strategic planning. We describe, annotate and link to societal, information use, library, publishing and government library trends that will help set the stage for a Business Plan being created by FLICC/FEDLINK, a Library of Congress-sponsored consortium of federal library and information centers (http://www.loc.gov/flicc/). Site and description submitted by Cindy Boeke.

Teaching and Learning

The collegiate education experience becoming increasingly reliant on technology. Yet our high schools and universities have failed to educate their students with the means to take full advantage of the tools available. College v2 aims to arm students with the tricks, tips, and knowledge to put them ahead of the pack. College v2 will also post an occasional news story or photograph that will help you in you everyday life. My aim is to help you take over the world, or at least get out of taking 18 credits alive, and intact. Site and description submitted by Sean Blanda.
Jason Heath, bass instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Trinity Intenational University, maintains Jason Heath’s Bass Page, a blog for players and enthusiasts of the double bass and electric bass as a way to communicate with both both personal students and for the Chicago bass community in general, providing double bass concert news, lesson schedules, recommended repertoire, lesson summaries and assignments, and the like.
Skate of the Web highlights new tools for learning by Dr. Antonio Vantaggiato at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón.

The Impact of New Tools on Teaching

JeanClaude — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:05:31 +0000

April 3-7, 2006

Many thanks and congratulations to the presenters who helped get this week’s dialogue going, and to Jean-Claude Bradley of Drexel University and his team for their work in organizing the week. A huge thanks, as well, to those who have offered comments for presenters and blogged about the event. If you enjoyed these presentations, you won’t want to miss the screencasts and articles that will be part of the Library and Information Resources track starting April 10, 2006. -DK

Presentations posted this week
>>Monday, April 3, 2006: Podcasting and Screencasting
>>Tuesday, April 4, 2006: Blogging Examples
>>Wednesday, April 5, 2006: Blogging Studies
>>Thursday, April 6, 2006: New Approaches to Teacher and Curriculum Development
>>Friday, April 7, 2006: New Approaches to the Learner

Blogs as personal learning environments

Dan Karleen — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 09:49:05 +0000

James Farmer
Deakin University
Incsub.org

This presentation examines the potential and existing applications of blogs as Personal Learning Environments (PLEs).

As digital natives have begun to enter our higher educational institutions and non-digitally native staff have increasingly begun to engage with teaching and learning through the web, existing Learning and Courseware Management Systems (LCMSs) have failed to meet the expectations of either party. However, in the decentralised technological corners of institutions staff have been exploring new possibilities of teaching and learning online that not only significantly improve upon those offered through institutional systems but also match their socially constructivist pedagogical beliefs.

This presentation contrasts social and ‘anti-social’ software in its current use in higher education, explores existing applications of these technologies in teaching and learning online and proposes a future model of a PLE based upon blogs, aggregation and associated technologies.

View the screencast (12:03); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

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Tags: Blogging, Personal Learning Environments, RSS, higheredblogcon

Teaching information literacy: Who’s teaching the teachers?

Dan Karleen — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 08:12:27 +0000

Ewan McIntosh
University of Stirling, Scotland
http://edu.blogs.com

For many educators, “information literacy” is just another buzzword with little meaning for their day-to-day teaching and the learning of their students. So far, it’s fallen to IT departments and librarians to teach students the intricacies of university email systems or library catalogs.

Information literacy in the 21st century, however, is less about technicalities and more about the way we teach. Students learn in the classroom and outside it.

Social software has created new ways to seek information. Less relevant today is the official reading list and the subsequent frustration when paper books and journals are not in stock. Far more relevant are the decisions formerly taken by the educator but now transferred to the students to make. It this viable information I’m looking at? How can I turn it into useful knowledge? How can I gain a greater wisdom in my subject? Knowing where to find knowledge and how to interpret it is where information literacy comes in.

This screencast will explore some of the reasons why these skills are not being taught as well or as often as perhaps they should be. If taught, and not just caught, skills in exploiting social software can help student and teachers make better judgement on information and opinion and turn this into valuable knowledge. If caught, and caught wrongly, social software can lead to false information, narrow scope and less rigor.

View the screencast (59:36); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

Download the enhanced podcast (59:36, m4a, 30M); requires Quicktime, iTunes.

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Tags: Blogging, Information literacy, RSS, higheredblogcon

The Science of Spectroscopy: Collaborative curriculum development using a Wiki

Dan Karleen — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 07:29:33 +0000

Stewart Mader
Brown University

A Wiki can be thought of as a combination of a Web site and a Word document. At its simplest, it can be read just like any other web site, with no access privileges necessary, but its real power lies in the fact that groups can collaboratively work on the content of the site using nothing but a standard web browser. The Wiki is gaining traction in education, as an ideal tool for the increasing amount of collaborative work done by both students and teachers. Students might use a wiki to collaborate on a group report, compile data or share the results of their research, while faculty might use the wiki to collaboratively author the structure and curriculum of a course, and the wiki can then serve as part of each person’s course materials.

As The Science of Spectroscopy, a well-known educational web site, has grown in popularity, we needed an efficient way to include the growing number of suggestions and additons coming from our users. Editing a static website based on emailed feedback was inefficient as we had to balance it with competing demands on our time. The website was converted into a wiki, so that the growing number of readers can now become writers and collaboratively build a richer and more useful tool.

View the screencast (28:59); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

Download the Quicktime version (.mov, 35M).

Get the full paper (PDF).
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Visit the web site and wiki: The Science of Spectroscopy

Using Wiki in Education - my blog which includes a list of wiki tools, ideas and example uses, interviews with people using and developing wiki tools, and a wiki where you can submit your ideas and examples.

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Tags: Wikis, Teaching, higheredblogcon

Nomadic desktops: What? How? Why?

Dan Karleen — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 10:00:08 +0000

Owen James
International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan

Professional blog

http://elpdigitall.blogspot.com/

Class blogs

This presentation focuses on how to develop, use, and apply a nomadic desktop (http://okoj.suprglu.com/) to daily teacher tasks and to ongoing, personal professional development anywhere the teacher is online.

View the presentation (HTML; will open in a new window).

An empirical test of blogging in the classroom

Dan Karleen — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 10:00:22 +0000

Nicole Ellison
Telecommunications, Information Studies, & Media, Michigan State University
http://tc.msu.edu/people/faculty/393

Yuehua Wu
Telecommunications, Information Studies, & Media, Michigan State University

Blogs are exciting to many educators, who argue that they can be integrated into learning activities to achieve a variety of pedagogical goals. For instance, Oravec (2002) argues that weblogs can reduce plagiarism and can help students critically assess online sources and develop a unique writing voice. Others argue that collaborative workspaces such as “wikis” and blogs enrich the learning experience in that they encourage students to revisit, revise and comment upon concepts and to evaluate and respond to the thinking of others. Because the format of blogs encourages students to engage with positions divergent from their own, blogging can potentially enhance analytic and critical thinking skills. Perhaps most importantly, the participatory and decentralized structure of these technologies discourages the “sage on the stage” approach to teaching and instead recalibrates communication patterns so that knowledge-sharing is increasingly student-to-student and student-to-instructor. Finally, incorporating online tools into curricula has the potential to shift learning from a time and space-bound activity that occurs only in the classroom within a specified period of time to an activity that is diffuse, ubiquitous, and concretely embedded in real world issues and events. Hybrid and purely online courses also can benefit from these active forms of Internet-based writing and discussion.

However, while there is much discussion about the potential benefits of these tools, more work is needed to assess their impacts and identify best teaching practices. This presentation will report findings from one of the first empirical studies exploring whether online writing offers a true pedagogical advantage over traditional writing projects submitted on paper. In Spring, 2005 a pilot study testing the effectiveness of blogs as compared to traditional papers in the classroom was conducted by the two authors. Over the course of a semester, students enrolled in an undergraduate course at a large Midwestern university participated in six short writing assignments. Half of these assignments were submitted as traditional, analog papers; the other half were posted online. For two of these online assignments, students posted comments on one another’s blogs. Although data analysis is still ongoing, preliminary analysis suggests that students particularly enjoyed the “commenting” feature of the blogs and felt blogging to be a useful and fresh approach to learning. Open-ended comments made by the student suggest that they saw the primary value of the online assignments to be the interaction with their peers. Findings from the study are reported, with an emphasis on practical as well as theoretical implications.

View the screencast (23:08); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

Blogs for Learning: A case study

Dan Karleen — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 09:46:14 +0000

Ethan Watrall
Telecommunications, Information Studies, & Media, Michigan State University
http://www.captainprimate.com

Nicole Ellison
Telecommunications, Information Studies, & Media, Michigan State University

Blogging in an academic setting is starting to receive significant attention as a tool for increasing student engagement, active learning, and peer-to-peer learning. However, significant barriers exist, primarily technical. The goal of Blogs for Learning is to support instructors and students who wish to engage in academic blogging. Blogs for Learning will be a comprehensive online resources providing information about the technical, pedagogical, and policy aspects of educational blogging.

View the screencast (40:47); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

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Tags: Blogging, Teaching, higheredblogcon

International marketing: Chinese and American students learn from each other

Dan Karleen — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 09:05:26 +0000

Tyler Magee
Saint Martin’s University and
Wuhan University of Technology
http://www.tylertravels.com

In three weeks how do you get Chinese International Trade Juniors at Wuhan University of Technology in China—who had never had a marketing course before—to successfully select/adjust and approach marketing a Chinese product in America? A blog seemed a good solution, so I developed this class using it as a core to student learnings and assignments.

View the screencast (19:47); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

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Tags: Blogging, Marketing, higheredblogcon

How the integrated use of blogs and Blackboard can improve a university public relations class: A case study

Dan Karleen — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 08:05:57 +0000

Ric Jensen, PhD
Instructor, Journalism Department
Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana
http://www.ricjensen.blogspot.com

This case study discusses how the integrated use of blogs and Blackboard can improve a distance learning-based public relations class taught through Northwestern State University. In addition to scheduled web chats and message board discussions within Blackboard, students are provided supplemental information in a blog, which has the added benefit of exposing the instructor’s thoughts to a wider audience. This presentation describes how presenting information about blogging is essential to public relations students, since blogs are becoming increasingly recognized as a new public relations medium. At the same time, students will need to know the skills needed to succcessfully develop and implement blogs as part of their public relations toolkits, since many clients will want blogs created as part of PR campaigns.

View the screencast (21:22); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

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Tags: Blogging, PR, Public Relations, higheredblogcon

Giving the students what they want: Short, to-the-point e-lectures

Dan Karleen — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 05:26:45 +0000

Mark E. Ott
Jackson Community College
http://www.docott.com

This presentation discusses two methods of web lecturing: podcasting and screencasting. What are the pros and cons of each? What is the best approach for students? Podcasting is starting to catch on as a way to deliver class lectures, but screencasts containing slides, onscreen examples, and an audio track covering the core lecture material may be more helpful for students as a way to reinforce the classroom experience.

View the screencast (14:49); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

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Tags: Podcasting, Screencasting, higheredblogcon

Legal issues in podcasting the traditional classroom

Dan Karleen — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 05:01:30 +0000

Elizabeth Townsend Gard
London School of Economics, Stanford Law School
http://academiccopyright.typepad.com

Colette Vogele
Stanford Law School
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blogs/vogele

Colette Vogele and Elizabeth Townsend Gard will explore the legal aspects of podcasting in teaching and higher education. Colette is the author of the new Podcasting Legal Guide (soon to be available at Creative Commons and the Center for Internet and Society) and Elizabeth focuses her research on copyright in an academic environment. Colette will explain legal basics surrounding podcasting, and Elizabeth will focus on the higher education environment, particularly podcasting the traditional classroom. The presentation will address copyright, trademark, and right of publicity/privacy questions that arise in the context of podcasting in the teaching scenario. Copyright questions have to do primarily with third-party materials that are used in the podcast, and the rights under which the podcasting teacher wishes to distribute her content. Traditional licensing, Creative Commons licensing, and public domain dedications would be addressed. Questions about ownership of the podcast content (e.g., the institution vs. the teacher?) would also be discussed.

Elizabeth will focus the second part on “What questions should we ask when we podcast the traditional classroom?” This will look at at the specifics of Section 110 of the Copyright Act , which includes both exceptions to using copyrighted materials in the traditional face-to-face classroom teaching and the additional recent exceptions added with the TEACH Act. How does podcasting change classroom choices? What choices do podcasters have when podcasting the classroom? This part will also look at the additional issues of ownership of the podcasted lecture and student work that is podcasted.

View part one (30:59, .mov, 42M); requires Quicktime. Get the PowerPoint for part one.

View part two (25:16, .mov, 46M); requires Quicktime. Get the PowerPoint for part two.
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Tags: Podcasting, higheredblogcon