Mobile learning
I'm collecting resources for a workshop on mobile learning. Although there are definitions and frameworks for "mobile" learning, those sounds very similar to non-formal learning and some of the work by Falk & Dierking on that free-choice learning. Isn't mobile learning just free-choice learning on...well, your choice of pda?
Which leads to a big design problem. Unless you are at a school that gives everyone iphones, the student population is not using standard equipment. Although it seems like everyone has an iphone, I'll tell you someone who doesn't: ME. Why don't I join the modern age, you might ask?
The first reason is I don't need one.
I'm going to let that sink in. Oh, yes, I want one, but I don't need it. 90% of my day, I'm in front of a computer with dedicated internet access. Why for the other 10% of the time would I need the additional distraction?
The second reason is that I don't need the additional cost. The iphone itself isn't too expensive, but it would require a more costly data plan, that again, I just don't need.
And I'm sure that there are a lot of students out there, who for various reasons have made certain choices about the technology they have available to them at home. Sometimes it's not a choice, especially in this economy--they probably just don't have the money.
So we can't assume that everyone has an iphone, but there is a fairly high saturation of cell phone users. Except, there is mixed saturation of TEXTERS. danah boyd had a great post on this issue a while back, and how "all you can text" plans greatly facilitate an increase in receiving text messages. Until very recently, I didn't know a lot of people who would be willing to accept my text messages (They accepted my phone calls, so it's not for the reason all of you are thinking!) One can also send very basic emails via text message that are not "data" but text messages. So that's handy. And with some ingenuity, for example using tips such as those offered by David Pogue's TED Talk, you can send a text to google and get local business listings. Just with a text message.
And though we can't assume that people have iphones, with their bloated service plans, many people do have ipods or similar mp3 player equivalents. And the newest ipods often play video, an mp4 format should do the trick in producing materials that students could download to view in their copious free time (hopefully not while they're driving). But at the same time, I can record video clips on my cell phone, but that format seems locked down and incompatible with other players (codecs be damned!). It would be great if I could also play mp4 on my cell phone, and maybe I can and I just need to test it out. But even if I could, would I download video lectures to my cell to watch? I'm not sure...
I started this post out by asking what a framework is for mobile learning and how does it differ from a concept like free-choice learning. Sadly, one way it differs is that in the title of a presentation, the mlearning concept is the one people want to hear right now. I'm also not confident that formal institutions of higher learning are ready to accommodate "mlearning" in its truest form. It requires a level of flexibility and a committment to what students really need and just-in-time learning that stands in opposition to carefully crafted learning programs defined by what others think students need. At a certain level this is appropriate, but for a lot of adult learners today, education needs to be accessible, flexible, and immediately applicable. The aspect of mlearning that gets most attention right now, it seems, is the pushing of content in a variety of formats, but the real power in mlearning would be the ability to collaborate and interact "anytime, anyplace." A lot of students don't have the resources, both time and money-wise, for engaging with their coursework in that way. At the same time, exploiting tools that students encounter every day so that students see all the artifacts we interact with as an extension of their lifelong learning process, would have real value.
What are your thoughts on what mobile learning is? What has worked well in providing flexible formats to students at your institution?
Wrapping up Assessment & Evaluation
This semester, I had the privilege of teaching a graduate course in Assessment, Evaluation and Criteria of quality for the second time. The learners were all art education MAT students. Early in the semester, we established a need on their part for a heavy integration of research skills into the course. From my perspective, this is a perfect match, since very similar skills are required for assessment and evaluation, as are required for pure research.
The only complaint I have about the course is that I find it very difficult to include both assessment and evaluation into only one course. On the assessment part, students expect to spend a lot of time discussing classroom assessment and developing skills in the classroom. It takes a lot of time and discussion to help students develop a vocabularly to discuss assessment in the terms that educational researchers and assessment-savvy educators use. Then suddenly, bam-- let's switch to program evaluation. Yes, in one sense it's a micro to macro perspective, but I always feel like the evaluation portion is rushed.
The best part of the class is that it was very hands-on. Most of the students currently teach, so the project for formative assessment was for them to conduct action research whereby they thoughtfully integrated a formative assessment strategy into their classroom practice and reflected on the results and noted how it would impact their future practice. For the students who are not teachers, they did an inquiry into the assessment practices of someone who is currently teaching through interviews and observation.
Instructors should have aha moments too. My aha moment over the course of the semester and in tandem with my own work which is increasingly heavily assessment-oriented was that feedback is at the center of instructional practice. While some instructors understand this intuitively, others are not aware of how crucial it is. One of the students in the class, who teaches in an informal setting (thus making assessment that much more challenging) simply changed up the introduction to the lesson in a way that required the kids she was working with to reflect on what they were creating. Simply adding a question can radically change an entire lesson and the way someone else is thinking about their own work. That's powerful.
Adding Audio to Instruction Using Horizon Wimba
This training was available both online training via Centra and face-to-face. The objective of the training was to teach online and hybrid instructors how to use the tools available through the Horizon Wimba building block in Blackboard. This training was offered in academic year 2006-2007 at Northern Virginia Community College.
“Online = checked out”
Dr. Crazy's post about difficulties teaching online is very insightful about the challenges of engaging students online. Student motivation is key. Attrition in distance courses is a widely known issue and Dr. Crazy's summary that students translate "online equals checked out" is right on the money. Or more like, online equals out of sight out of mind, and if I don't check the course site, it doesn't really exist.
But I am also curious about the course design. I'm not going to suggest that if students aren't showing up and they're not even doing the basic assignments required that the instructor can make miracles happen BUT I'm curious whether the course design builds an investment in each other on the part of the students. I didn't really see reference to that on the list of considerations in the post. Maybe if the course started out with peer interaction as a required assignment and the requirement to contact peers in the course was imperative? If students were required to post an email AND a phone number where classmates could contact them for this assignment? Have there been or could there be optional synchronous sessions for the instructor to just take questions from students who might be lost or not know where to start? In the future offering of the course, could there be a required synchronous session to start out the course?
These are just some suggestions, and it sounds like Dr. Crazy has been doing everything she can to motivate students. SO, maybe the biggest motivator would be an email sent out to floundering students that says: "As it stands at this moment, you have only completed x % of the required work to date. As of this moment, the highest grade you could expect to receive is a "?" C? F? Please contact me as soon as possible to discuss." My guess is that some students have no idea they are failing the class to date and that might clarify things. But she did send emails saying they have 0s on assignments, one would think they could translate that to the big picture.
A faulty assumption might be that an email does the job, though I'm not suggesting every DL instructor can take the time to call students individually. It seems that at schools where students are part-time, their interest in logging into institutional email seems lacking. Again, we're back at "what is the student's responsibility."
So maybe administrative support on the front end is required. Is there an orientation for distance students so they understand the type of dedication that is required to be successful online?
I want to thank Dr. Crazy for the candid account of the frustration of teaching online. I do believe the biggest responsibility is on the part of students to keep up with the work, and I completely agree that students assume that "online" will just fit into their life because it is flexible, without realizing that it generally takes more effort than f2f classes and a lot more self-direction. A lot of the responsibility to mitigate these incorrect assumptions lies at a program-level, where administrative types need to recognize the importance of this problem, and provide proactive, pre-emptive strategies to make sure the right students are signing up for distance for the right reasons.
Crowdsourcing: intensifying a “culture of assessment”
I understand why the call to create a "culture of assessment" has spread like wildfire in the title of workshops and in the rhetoric of the outcomes assessment movement. Just look here, and here, and here. I understand the concept is originating in the need for assessment in the process of considering the effectiveness of any assignments, courses, programs, and so on. But why the presumption that we don't have an existing "culture of assessment?"
Isn't what distinguishes the educational experience, or what makes it an educational experience is formal feedback and review from an expert/instructor and/or peers? And while I was drafting the beginnings of this lame and derivative discussion of what constitutes a culture of assessment, my brother emails me this idea:
I was thinking that it would be really neat to bring self-education and adult education into the 21st century a bit... to have a website which lays out an entire secondary and post-secondary education, delineated by courses, similar to high school and college work. So you have the syllabi, maybe videotaped lectures, problems, assignments, and tools for working through the material with others that have done it before in addition to volunteers that want to stick around and help with it. I think that the format for working through the material is something that will be evolving very rapidly, with people like you to blame for the innovations.
I think that its value would still be relatively small without some rigorous or at least semi-rigorous assessment. So, I'm thinking, you sit down and do a test... maybe it's too hard to check if someone is cheating. That's one problem to look at. But I think it might be possible to have others (multiple people) go through and correct/score the quiz/test/assignment. This is more straightforward, I think, with science/math, where it's just a matter of getting the correct answers (though there's the technical problem of how do you load it onto the website - do you require scanning it? faxing it in?). You have multiple people go through and score the test, and then you weight the scores depending on how reliable the scorer is. So the scorers themselves are scored.
Yes, the scorers would have to initially be scored by experts - perhaps real professors or students, either volunteer or working under a grant. The point of crowdsourcing the assessment is to allow the site to scale to serve millions without the need to add thousands or tens of thousands of paid experts.
First, I'm flattered he thinks I would be to blame for innovation. He's even considered inter- and intra- rater reliability in the model. OpenCourseWare movement, I would like to introduce you to Crowdsourced assessment and then ask the question, why will college still cost $50k/year? Content + assessment will not be enough to create a holistic college-level education for the average user. What it's missing behind it is the community of practice that accepts it as acceptable preparation. In other words, we still need a sponsor, a reputable one, to own the process and assure its rigor. But stepping back from the logistics of the whole process presented, and just on the assessment piece-- why not some degree of crowdsourced assessment for the existing college classroom? We do it for screening for plagiarism (well, kind of, if we consider the artifacts of each student to be the "crowd").
And it would tie in nicely with Downes' Open Source Assessment model. State the problem or have students state the problem. Have a number of raters assess the success of the solution. People will definitely learn this way...but can they be credentialed (and should we care if they can't ? )?
Now, live from Baltimore
I am a sporadic blogger. I admit, and accept that. It's not that I haven't had relevant topics to discuss here, but every time I find a focus for my blog, my professional role seems to shift. And then it feels like I have to start all over again.
At any rate, I successfully moved from PA to MD. It's all the same geographic region, but instead of suburban/rural, we're right in Baltimore. I love it. I moved from Communications faculty back to Instructional Design with a heavy emphasis on assessment and faculty development. Now that I'm getting settled in and my focus is back on some big ideas, especially about assessment, learning versus schooling, program and curriculum development, distributed learning, and so on...
My dream
In my dream world, besides the world peace and solving of world hunger (and god knows we're not even close to this), after these much more major issues, I dream of having a version of Adobe Captivate that works with the Mac OS. If that were to happen, I can't think of a reason I'd ever have to touch a PC.
What's happening to me?????
Developing a Citizen Journalism Website: A Technical Perspective (Phase I)
Tonight our Department debuted a Citizen Journalism website. Now that the technical structure is in place, I thought I'd comment on the design decisions that went into it.
First, back last summer, when this project was first introduced to me, we looked at a number of existing citizen journalism websites for some insight, such as Chi-Town Daily and MyMissourian. These sites are excellent examples of the genre. In the beginning, it wasn't clear to me exactly what sort of content (e.g., what types of media) would need to be accommodated. And while to the end-user, the integration of audio, images, and video all look like they work together seamlessly, the back-end handling of these various media forms is not as easy. On many sites we looked at, the media seemed to drive the division of stories, so one would go to one section for video and another section for images. In this way, it seemed like the technology (the media) was driving the site organization rather than the content. In contrast, we wanted the story to drive the navigation, instead of it being driven by the media form.
Furthermore, although there are a number of open source platforms to choose from, when deciding on an appropriate platform, our criteria for selection became: 1) ease of use on the administrative side; 2) availability of plug-ins to handle images, audio, video; 3) and to a lesser extent availability of customizable templates. Based on these criteria, wordpress appeared to be the best option. Though it's not traditionally a CMS, it is robust enough. We also considered drupal (but I hate the admin panel and the templates always seem to look drupal-y) and joomla (not an intuitive administrative panel).
That was the easy part. I will spare the details of the entire process, but the plug-ins that have been instrumental are:
- Vidavee:This plug-in allows for the uploading of video content, where the video is compressed and you can easily cut and paste code in the post that embeds the video for integrated playback. My only fear is that Vidavee's terms of service will change.
- YAPB (Yet Another Photo Blog): This plug-in just literally saved the day because due to a server setting, the built-in resizing of images that comes with wordpress doesn't work. I would recommend this plug-in anyway, because it nicely resizes images to a small image on the front of the site, a larger image within the full post, and an easily customizable sidebar in which to display thumbnails.
- Podpress: I swear this used to support audio upload, and it was a breeze. I might have imagined that. Nonetheless, after adding audio to the built-in wordpress media gallery, a user can cut and paste the url into Podpress and a snazzy audio player is embedded right into the post.
For a while I was also using the flickr rss plug-in. I really like that as well, but we didn't want to add an additional layer of username and password for We-Town site users to have to go through to add pictures. Also, the group feature does not currently work with that plug-in. (It works if you are hard-coding the sidebar, but not when using widgets for some reason). I will also say that the YAPB plug-in is a little more flexible, and I like that we can change the width of photos as they appear. For someone already using flickr, this plug-in is excellent though. In fact, I use it on this site. For this same reason of not wanting to burden potential site users, we didn't opt to demonstrate major overlap with YouTube either.
We are currently pulling together directions for using the site. I have started customizing the admin panel to reflect more specifically for a potential user what each section might be for. If podpress would just support uploading audio, it would make my life a lot easier as there would then be no need to point users to the media gallery.
Next, there are still a lot of process-oriented aspects to consider. I am also curious whether the "one image at a time" aspect is going to frustrate users. Certainly more sophisticated users can link to photobucket, flickr, or other photo sites, but then these images won't show up in the sidebar. It will also be interesting to see how the categories across the top play out. They are designed to mirror the types of categories one might see in a newspaper. This is fine, but I wonder whether community users will see this as helpful. I can also start to imagine other features that would be good to add, including a way to add to a community calendar. The easier the better, I would think.
So I think we can fairly say that we've come to the end of Phase I - choosing the tool, customizing some key additional features, and choosing a look and feel (done by one of my Publication Graphics and Design classes). Phase II will be much more concentrated roll out of student-produced content and community events to help potential contributors get familiar with the process. We imagine student-designed workshops to do outreach to the community.
YAPB, I love you
For the moment, I am in love. Due to some server issues, GD Utility was not working with Wordpress on a site I am working on for our department's citizen journalism site. Thus, images were not resizing and life felt grim. Yet Another Photo Blog, YAPB has made my life easier within moments. Some additional customization will be necessary and widgetizing related photos for the sidebar is the future, but for the moment, I am elated that I don't have to worry about how people will upload images and have them appear as reasonable sizes.
