About this site
Webb's Learning with New Media is my collection of projects and reflections related to instructional design, assessment, learning, and instructional technology. I am an instructional designer with a PhD in Instructional Technology from the University of Virginia. Designing effective and engaging learning for face-to-face, hybrid, and online is my constant passion.
In a networked world, opportunities for learning have shifted to any time, anywhere. How do we design, manage, and assess learning in this context? What opportunities are there to leverage collaboration tools and new media into the instructional process in a meaningful way?
The views reflected in this blog are my own. They do not represent the views of any current or previous employers.
Non-linear visuals with Prezi
Prezi has been hot for a while in the design community. After playing around with its interface for designing a presentation, I can understand why. At first glance, though, it is little "jerky" in presentation mode. Careful attention to how one is flipping and aligning text is particularly necessary.
The neat thing about this tool is that it requires one to think visually about what one wants to present and create a narrative and visuals accordingly. The tool design lends itself to non-linear exploration of ideas. Being able to embed video and images seamlessly is another asset.
A neat series of Prezi-tations are Derek Bruff @ Vanderbilt:
Visual Thinking in University Teaching
and a follow-up annotation to that: Takeaways from VT
As tools such as Prezi enter the mainstream, hopefully more presenters will be inspired to innovate in organizing their presentation materials.
Stickie Wiki – Linoit for a post-it interface
Collaborating with a faculty member on a paper focused on a project-based pedagogical approach for her business law course, the conversation quickly turned to the current semester. Her current section of the class was rather large, and the project-based approach that we were documenting seemed unwieldy.
We started brainstorming about ways to make the project work with major constraints in terms of class time and the number of students. I suggested that if some of the work were synthesized outside of class, the face-to-face time in class could be devoted to rich discussion. The best tool for the job seemed to be a wiki. And then the instructor raised the bar. She wanted a visually appealing wiki--and one that simulated the post-it note format she used in class.
Linoit was the tool that we decided to use. With the group feature, there is access to history tracking, just like you'd have with a typical wiki. The interface is really neat, if you are looking to simulate a corkboard. Different colored "stickies" are available and you can modify the text and "stickie" size, as well as "pin down" finalized notes.
Technology Education and Educational Technology: Two Fields, Very Different Representations of Women
Short Description:
The fields of educational technology and technology education have arisen out of differing socio-historical and cultural contexts, which has impacted the gender parity of each domain differently. This research study will compare the characteristics of these two types of programs as they relate to gender parity. This analysis will offer insight into the cultural-historical perspectives that resulted in different gender parity, and recommend strategies for attracting women across technology-oriented domains.
Slices and Hotspots
This Screenr tutorial was created in Fall 2009 for a just-in-time clarification of different approaches slices and hotspots creation. The students in the class had the benefit of more context than the casual viewer, as they also have the complete Fireworks files of the projects described in the tutorial.
Strategies for Team-Based Learning
This short screencast on Team-Based Learning is an example of visually driven content for mobile learning. This was created for the professional development I prepared with @nantana for Penn State Instructional Designers. The content was inspired by a tip from 147 Practical Tips for Teaching Online Groups by Hanna et al.
>
Assessment in Blackboard
I developed these training materials for assessment in Blackboard 8. The training includes building tests and quizzes from question pools and in-depth exploration of the Grade Center. I was hoping to include details about Self-Assessment and Peer Assessment but those features aren't available in our installation.
Design Visually Rich Learning Workshop
The focus of this hands-on workshop was integrating visual communication activities into distance and technology-rich learning environments.
The agenda for the three hour workshop was:
- Introduction and rationale for integrating visually rich assignment, including rubrics and technical guidelines for mobile learning (mlearning).
- Examples of strategies for enhancing visuals in instructional materials
- Development of a visual presentation for PDA screen in groups.
The learning objectives for the audience were:
- Define mobile learning
- Identify challenges and strategies for designing mobile learning
- Recognize approaches to designing effective visual content
- Create one short visual presentation for a 480 x 320 screen resolution using Jing
Here is the entire presentation from the workshop conducted at the Annual Conference of Distance Teaching and Learning in August 2009.
Sustainable Course Design: Think Like an Assessor
This workshop portion was part of a three-hour workshop titled "Sustainable Course Design" at Academy of Management, Chicago, IL, August 2009. This portion of the presentation emphasized backwards design (Wiggins & McTighe) and encouraged participants to envision designing learning in their own courses that is authentic and performance-based as well as planning opportunities for formative assessment.
Is sharing always cheating? When is it just sharing?
A faculty member forwarded me an article about del.icio.us as a mechanism for cheating among students. The argument at the center of the article is that tools of collaboration can be used for cheating. That really isn't all that shocking. I'm surprised there aren't articles that focus on the thesis that "the voice" can be used for cheating. Some teachers are catching students helping each other with answers to problems.
It seems that in the scenario, the biology teacher must NOT have assigned the students to use del.icio.us, because had the teacher assigned its use, one would think that s/he would recognize that within the concept of "SOCIAL" bookmarking, students might share resources accordingly. So we have three students, who of their own accord are proactively using software to manage their resources. That sounds great!!!
But then the bad cheating student peaked at their resources and used some of the same.
This is where I'm confused. The only way I could see this as cheating is if the entire assignment was about the research process. In which case, the teacher should explicitly state the parameters of what is unethical and not representative of one's own work. I would hope that these kind of assignments do not occur very frequently. I would hope that they are very rare in undergraduate coursework and that this does not occur in graduate courses, which are the two levels of faculty I advise.
- If the research skills are the point, why not ask students to write a detailed paragraph describing how they accessed their resources?
- If research synthesis is the point, why does the access to the resources matter?
The reason I find this topic so perplexing is that I'm not confident that all the people reading this article understand the technology described. They see "del.icio.us" and mentally file it away as a method of cheating. In fact, it could be a very helpful tool for aggregating student resources and showing the power of an extended network of resources.
To be fair, Mr. Jakes is very balanced in his assessment of the tool and notes the importance of teaching about the tool and cultivating its appropriate use. However, the opening grab of the article is the meme against which I may have to do damage control.
