Center for Technology-Enhanced Learning

CTEL's Blog has moved

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 11:57:00 -0400

CTEL's blog has moved. You can find us at http://blogs.usm.maine.edu/ctel/

Having students write Wikipedia articles

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Wed, 26 May 2010 10:53:00 -0400

Fabulous example of using real world writing as a class assignment:

Have Students Build Articles
In the Spring of 2008, Professor Jon Beasley-Murray at University of British Columbia had the students in his class "Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation" create articles for Wikipedia on the books that they read. He transformed his students from learners to teachers, which improves outcomes. Plus, creating public work improves motivation as well as performance.
Importantly, the students were instructed to make contact with the Wikipedia editors—called the “FA Team”—to receive feedback on their work for revisions. The instructor had effectively enlisted outside academics as reviewers for his class. Wikipedia also has a quality ranking system that assigns “Good Article” or “Featured Article” status to exceptionally good works. About 1 in 800 articles reach Good Article status, while 1 in 1,200 reach Featured Article status. The instructor guaranteed his students an “A” for Good Articles, and an A+ for Featured Articles.
The results? The students, who worked in groups of two or three, produced three Featured Articles and eight Good Articles, an exceptional result given how few articles achieve these levels. These articles receive thousands of hits per month, demonstrating to students the value of their work. Now more than 20 universities have projects in Wikipedia.

From Faculty Focus.

Course Redesign Grants

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:34:00 -0400

The Center for Technology Enhanced Learning supports the update and redesign of online and blended courses at the University of Southern Maine.

As part of this support, CTEL offers Course Redesign Grants (CRGs) for faculty, including adjuncts and part-timers, to significantly update and redesign existing online or blended courses. Faculty must have taught the course in this format at least three semesters over at least two years to be eligible. Redesigned courses may be taught in the same format or redesigned for the other (a blended course becoming full online or vice versa).

20 awards of $500 each are available for online or blended courses offered in Fall 10. Faculty must have a clear plan for significant redesign to improve student learning. Redesign could include content changes, assignment revision, and addition of new technologies. Priority will be given to faculty who have not received a Course Development Grant in the past.

Complete grants details are on the CTEL website.

If you have any questions, contact

Dr. AnnMarie Johnson, Director
Center for Technology-Enhanced Learning
amjohnson@usm.maine.edu
780-4540

Lenny guest blogger about Discussions at IGI Global

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:55:00 -0400

Communications professor Lenny Shedlesky has a guest post at the IGI Global blog, How Can We Make Our Discussions Better? which he hopes will be just the beginning of a wide ranging discussion on online discussion. If you've participated in (or haven't been able to make but wish you could have) Lenny's Russel Chair roundtables, this is an extension of those conversations. Hope you join in!

Pumping Up Your Course With Web 2.0

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:54:00 -0400

Here is the Elluminate recording of the latest NCLC Faculty Forum presentation, "Pumping Up Your Course With Web 2.0"

An alternate method to reach the recording is to log onto the NCLC website, and follow this path: Archives - Faculty Forums - 4/8/10 Pumping Up, etc.

Student using technology to get an internship

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Tue, 6 Apr 2010 09:26:00 -0400

USM student Monique Lefebvre is seeking a summer internship with the Sierra Club, using social networking to promote the Club. The application process includes a video posted on YouTube; the more views and comments she gets,the more likely she is to get the internship. Here's more info in her own words:

*******************

I have recently applied for a summer long internship with a well known organization; the Sierra Club. The internship will require me to travel, all expenses paid, to Sierra Club events in order to "video-blog" about what I am participating in. In addition to being paid to travel, the winner will receive a $2,500 stipend and $2,000 worth of gear from the North Face company. Needless to say, it is a very exciting opportunity. To apply for the internship, I was required to develop a 90 second video and submit it via YouTube. My video can be found at the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3_qfmYYdEo

I am reaching out to you in hopes that you will help me raise the amount of views, comments, and ratings that my video receives. The Sierra Club judges are heavily watching what videos are seeing traffic in order to determine who has social networking skills and who would be able to really develop and maintain an interesting blog about traveling with their organization. So, please watch the video, comment on it, rate it, and please, please, please pass it along to your friends and family! The more people who see it, the more likely my video is moved closer to the front when searched for in YouTube and the more likely I will be considered for a finalist position. I implore you - please help me!

Monique Lefebvre

Class of 2010

*******************

Another reason to introduce emerging technologies in your teaching--they really can help your students get a job in the real world!

Tech Review: 3M MPro 120 Pocket Projector

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Mon, 5 Apr 2010 11:06:00 -0400

Pocket projectors are an emerging technology - small, portable video projectors that fit in your pocket. They can run for up to a couple of hours on battery power for true portability.

I've only seen two of these, and only had one to truly evaluate. My impressions are that they all suffer the same weaknesses, and unfortunately, they have relatively few strengths.

- These are low resolution displays. The 3M projector tops out at 1024x768.

- You need to be able to control the lighting of the room, it has to be dark.

- The picture size is limited, with the image blurring and washing out over the size of a large desktop display

- Reading text on these is generally not a pleasing experience

Playback of video clips seems to be the area in which these devices shine, but then, it's easier and clearer to huddle around a laptop display than to project a small image in a darkened room. If, however, you have a portable video device (a video camera, an iPod, etc.) and want to display playback to a few people in a controlled environment, these could be useful products.

The 3M MPro 120 Pocket Projector projects at 12 lumens, and includes a VGA adaptor for laptops and a composite adaptor for AV sources. You will need an additional video out kit for use with an iPod or iPhone.

This is still a new class of product, and I expect to see improvements in the months to come.

The projector is priced at $350.

Future Tense podcast

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:06:00 -0400

The geekier readers among you may be interested in one of my favorite podcasts, American Public Media's Future Tense. Topics have ranged from password security to Ida Lovelace, free movies online (which I mentioned last week), online identity and many, many more. Most podcasts are less than five minutes, so are quick and easy to include in your course, as well.

To v. or not to v.?

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:53:00 -0400

The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses whether More Professors Could Share Lectures Online. But Should They? Be sure to read the comments following the article for further debate on the pros and cons of putting videos of lectures online. The issues are complex--ranging from costs to copyright to being made fun of to being misquoted to who benefits and more.

Using Rubrics to Evaluate Online Projects

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:57:00 -0400

Here is the Elluminate recording of the latest NCLC Faculty Forum presentation, "Using Rubrics to Evaluate Online Projects."

An alternate method to reach the recording (and to link directly to the accompanying powerpoint) is to log onto the NCLC website, and follow this path: Archives - Faculty Forums - 3/11/10 Using Rubrics, etc.

Best Practices in Online Teaching: Don’t Assume

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:19:00 -0400

"Best Practices in Online Teaching: Don’t Assume" shares four things to not assume about your students as you start up a new online semester. Their short ideas can be easily implemented and should help your students, especially those new to online, get off on the right foot.

Thanks to Scott for sharing this article with a faculty member and me today.

Common mistakes made by first-time online faculty

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:17:00 -0400

Glenn LeBlanc, Instructional Designer at University College (Maine), shares the following 20 common mistakes made by first-time online faculty, wisdom he's gained over years of working with faculty:

Thinking that you have to reply to every posting in every discussion forum (and that students have to do the same).
Not being clear about what students have to do in order to submit their assignments (save their documents in a specific format that you can open, how to submit using whatever method you use, how to name their files, keep a copy just in case…)
Loading the course with so many resources that students get overwhelmed, and not distinguishing between what's critical and what’s “nice to know.”
Not reminding students to set up mail forwarding so they can get e-mail sent from Blackboard. You don’t want to have to keep track of non-UMS e-mail addresses like “catlover@roadrunner.com.”
Not starting far enough ahead to design the course. (This becomes a BIG issue when you use materials that require copyright approval. If it doesn’t work out, you need time for “Plan B.”)
Posting PowerPoint slides from your on-campus lectures and calling it an online course.
Using technology for its own sake. Do you really need the webcam talking head in your screencast? Keep it simple – especially your first time!
Failing to establish reasonable expectations for turnaround time to grade and give feedback on written assignments. (Just because students can submit with a click, you can’t grade this way!)
Failing to give very clear guidelines on posting to discussion board forums, including such things as: Post as a Thread /Reply to help keep forums organized, netiquette, maximum post length, timeliness (don’t post at the last minute), relevance, assertions supported by evidence, posts must build on previous discussion, etc.
Not spending enough time to become familiar with the technology you will use. (Especially tools in Blackboard.)
Not thinking through the setup of the Grade Center before you start recording grades. Faculty have sometimes begun with one approach only to learn that calculating grades the way they want to will require making major changes.
Not making your course site “Available” far enough in advance. Course sites have to be made Available before the program that adds your students can do its thing.
Not posting an announcement during the week before your course starts that welcomes students, and reminds them of the starting date.
Making technical support your responsibility. Give your students the Technical Support contact information they need.
Using online testing for a major portion of the course grade. While there are safeguards to help reduce cheating, having multiple methods of assessing students can minimize the risk and help to validate test scores.
Not using regular assignments to make sure students stay on track and are ready to participate when required.
Establishing unsustainable grading and feedback policies that can burn you out over time.
Expecting to respond individually to every student all the time. (You can give generic feedback in Blackboard and limit your comments to unique issues on a student-by-student basis.)
Forgetting that your students are adults, and, as such, have to be responsible for reading instructions, asking when they need help, and completing assignments on time. Forgetting that as adults, students also have important family and job responsibilities that may require you to sometimes be flexible. (The challenge of finding a good balance.)
Assuming that free time and weekends are things of the past because you have to be present in your course site all the time. Assuming that you now have all the free time in the world because your students are “self-directed learners.” (Find a level of engagement that works for you and supports your students without supplanting their own cognitive strategies.)

Watching movies online

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:15:00 -0400

Do you want to show a movie to your online class? I heard a short podcast this morning from Future Tense with some ways to legally watch free movies online (links to the show are near the top in a variety of formats, about 4 minutes long). At Open Culture, find a list of 100 classic movies to watch followed further down the page with a list of sites to find 100s more free, ranging from classics, European, indie, Australian, B-movies, documentaries, and many, many more.

Find a movie you want to use in your class, and just provide a link and any site-specific instructions to your students.

If you find video content on a site like GoogleVideo or YouTube, be absolutely certain the entity who uploaded the video has the rights to put it out there before you ask your students to watch it. Otherwise, you are encouraging copyright violation.

If you a Univ of Main System faculty or staff member and you want to use a movie you can't find in these resources, you can get assistance in getting copyright clearance from Donna Bancroft, Off-Campus Library Services, 800-339-7323, donnaban@maine.edu. If your class will be watching a lot of movies, consider including a NetFlix subscription as a required item for the class. However, if the movies aren't current or popular, be sure to give flexible viewing dates. NetFlix cannot get 30 copies of the same old movie to Maine on the same night (or maybe even within the same week).

These can be resources for personal use, too! I can't wait to find some great classic sci-fi B movies now!

7 Things You Should Know About eReaders

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:38:00 -0400

EDUCAUSE has an excellent series of 2-page quick reads/handouts called 7 Things You Should Know About.... We'll be sharing a number of these in the blog in the coming weeks and months.

eReaders put books, newspapers, magazines, and other materials in a book-sized device that holds thousands of pages. I never thought I'd like digital books until I installed the Kindle app on my iPhone and discovered how much easier it is to hold than a book and how handy it is to have a book everywhere I go. eReaders aren't generally as small as an iPhone, but they are still more portable than carrying dozens of books at once. 7 Things You Should Know About E-Readers (PDF) will give you some technical details about eReaders along with how they are and can be used in education. This quick to read 2-page guide covers what it is, how it works, who's doing it (including textbook publishers), why eReaders are a significant technology, what the downsides are, where it's going, and what the implications are for teaching and learning.

Possibly the most popular, or at least the most well-known eReader is Amazon's Kindle. If you'd like to see what it's like, we have a Kindle DX at CTEL. Just contact a course designer or David Vardeman (vardeman@usm.maine.edu) to check it out. We're particularly interested in what you think of reading a textbook on an eReader, so if you use a textbook that has a Kindle edition, let us know!

For additional related reading, Knowledge@Wharton delves into the economics of digital textbooks and The New York Times reports on the ability for profs to create their own or change existing digital textbooks.

YouTube plans to caption most videos automatically

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 09:53:00 -0500

"YouTube said Thursday that it will start automatically captioning videos on its site, opening up a huge share of its content to people who are hearing-impaired, and a first step in creating a network of videos that could be subtitled between many languages."
This heralds a huge benefit for people with auditory deficits as well as ESOL learners.

Wordle: Words as an image

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:49:00 -0500

This month's NEA Higher Education Advocate featured a short bit about using "tag clouds" or "word clouds" as a way to visualize text, especially a student's own writing. In Best Practices: Words as Images the authors describe the use of Wordle, which creates an image of pasted text in which the size of each word is proportional to the amount its used in the text. Using them can help students see the primary themes or topics they use--perhaps in order to focus or refocus their writing. I'm looking forward to using this in Research Methods literature reviews--my students often struggle with recognizing the major themes and flit from topic to topic and back again. Perhaps this will help some of them focus and recognize areas they need to spend more time on.

Here is the Wordle I created from the Course Development Grant RFP (select the picture to it larger at Wordle):

Perhaps "technology" should feature a bit more in such a grant request?

Here is the US Constitution:

The applet has many options for font, color, arrangement, number of words, etc. You can't save the image except by publishing it to their public gallery, although you can print without publishing. (You could save it by doing a screenshot as well.)

Possible uses:

Assess the student's own writing
Compare and contrast two texts
Compare and contrast related news articles from different publication
Analyze course notes
Create a study guide
Create art
Analyze a speech
Create a visual display of important course topics (you can force words to be smaller or larger either by entering them more or using advanced techniques)
Find more ideas at Top 20 Uses for Wordle or by searching for "educational uses for Wordle" or "educational uses for word clouds"

Elluminate Link, Digital Measures

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:58:00 -0500

Here is the link to the Elluminate recording of the NCLC Faculty Forum from February 11, "Digital Measures: Online Faculty Portfolios."

http://alturl.com/c8fu

USM is a member of NCLC, the New Century Learning Consortium. The Consortium, composed of 7 economically and geographically diverse member institutions, is funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Other members include University of Illinois-Springfield, California State University-East Bay, Louisiana Tech University, Oakland University (MI), Southern Oregon University, and Chicago State University.

Instrutors must be engaged in small group discussions

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:17:00 -0500

Betty Robinson shared a piece from the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT): Using the Online Learning Environment to Develop Real-Life Collaboration and Knowledge-Sharing Skills: A Theoretical Discussion and Framework for Online Course Design by Lisl Zach and Denise E. Agosto. (Emphasis added by Betty and me):

"The most commonly mentioned key instructor behavior was participation/engagement. Students agreed that the more active the instructor was during the course and the more interested she appeared to be in both the topics of study and in student learning, the more they learned. As one student wrote: “[I learned the most when] the instructor engaged with both the individual and groups.” Another wrote that “[The instructor’s] level of engagement in the discussions, including in the small group forum, was invaluable. This is not something every professor attempts, and in my opinion, those classes really suffer.” Students stressed not just the amount of instructor participation in the course but also the quality of instructor interaction with students as key to increasing their learning: “[The instructor’s] attention to interacting with the class on the discussion board [was] outstanding and really [did] make a difference.”

Next, students tied the instructor’s personalization of the course to increasing their own engagement. Personalization methods included the student introduction forum at the beginning of each course, as well as other techniques designed to help students think of their peers and the instructor as real people, despite never meeting them in person. "

As an online instructor for a graduate course on research methods for a college of education, I know how difficult it can be to stay highly engaged in the discussion boards, particularly the first time teaching and then when it starts to get routine. But this is where the students really get to know and "see" YOU, the prof and feel like this is a real course and not a correspondence course nor an independent study.

If you use small groups (which I highly recommend for any class over 10), you don't have to be highly engaged in every group every week. Don't overwhelm yourself trying to do that! Be sure to post at least once a week in every group, and then select 1 or more (depending on the number of groups) each week to spend more time with. Be sure to join in throughout the week, just like you expect the students to do. Posting 5 times in an hour may look like you are active, but students will see it was all at once and feel just like you do when grading students--that's just popping in not active engagement in a discussion over time.

Full abstract:

Previous research has suggested that effective collaboration and knowledge-sharing skills are crucial for successful employment in the modern economy where much professional work is now done in teams. Many of these teams involve participants who are not co-located geographically and who communicate with each other through online media. If current faculty are to prepare students to enter this modern workplace, they must prepare them to succeed at online collaboration and knowledge sharing. This article examines the theoretical basis for using collaborative online learning techniques to teach library and information (LIS) students. It provides examples from a newly-designed three-course online Competitive Intelligence and Knowledge Management (CI/KM) concentration to demonstrate that the online environment is well suited for developing collaboration and knowledge-sharing skills and to illustrate how a number of collaborative techniques can be used in a real online class to develop a sense of community among students. The examples indicate that collaboration and knowledge sharing, while not always easy to achieve, are fostered in the online learning environment and that students become more comfortable with collaborative techniques over time. The article also presents a framework for online course design that maximizes the benefits of collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Divided Attention: Multitasking in the Classroom?

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:48:00 -0500

David Glenn has an interesting article in The Chronicle Review, Divided Attention, that summarizes recent (and some far past) research about multitasking and mobile devices, and its effect in the classroom. Nothing dramatically new, but some interesting points are made, particularly at the end:

"One of the deepest questions in this field," Nass says, "is whether media multitasking is driven by a desire for new information or by an avoidance of existing information. Are people in these settings multitasking because the other media are alluring—that is, they're really dying to play Freecell or read Facebook or shop on eBay—or is it just an aversion to the task at hand?"

I hope in your classes the students aren't averse to the topic at hand! But yet, I find myself jumping to fun apps this all the time now that I have an iPhone (but never at work, of course!). I probably never would have in class, but I can see how easy it would be to use them instead of taking notes or listening to a lecture.

One faculty member completely bans laptops and other devices, including for taking notes. His perspective is that technology makes it so easy to provide materials (notes, outlines, lecture podcasts, etc.) to students before or after class that during class, they should being paying attention to him and to other students. Even taking notes is multitasking.

(If you are a USM instructor, contact CTEL for help providing materials via BlackBoard, podcasting, and other technology options.)

NCLC Faculty Forum: "Digital Measures"

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Mon, 1 Feb 2010 10:35:00 -0500

The next NCLC Faculty Forum online via Elluminate with be Thursday, February 11, 2:00 pm EST.

Melvin Corley from Louisiana Tech University will present "Digital Measures: Capturing Faculty Efforts Online."

Digital Measures is an online service allowing faculty to easily maintain an up-to-date portfolio. In addition, various reports, including a nicely formatted professional resume, can be generated from the resulting database by individual faculty members as well as by administrators. At Louisiana Tech University, the Digital Measures system is also used for faculty activity and workload reporting. In this session Mr. Corley will cover some of the recent uses Louisiana Tech has made of the Digital Measures system for regular and ad hoc reporting.

Please join the session (with this link: http://bit.ly/StudentUISvClassroom4) at 1:30 p.m. Eastern to make sure you are able to get connected. Once you have joined, please chat with other NCLC members to find ways we can work together in online education. The presentation begins at 2 p.m. Eastern.

Educause Horizons Report for 2010

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:12:00 -0500

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, a qualitative research project established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning or creative inquiry on college and university campuses within the next five years.

Find links to the past 4 years of this report here.

Benefits of Moving to Moodle - Recording

clarey@usm.maine.edu (Ann Clarey) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:28:00 -0500

Here is the link to the Elluminate recording of the January 14th NCLC presentation, "The Benefits of Moving to Moodle":

http://alturl.com/ewue

NCLC, the New Century Learning Consortium is composed of 7 economically and geographically diverse member institutions. It is funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Members include the University of Southern Maine, University of Illinois-Springfield, California State University-East Bay, Louisiana Tech University, Oakland University (MI), Southern Oregon University, and Chicago State University.