Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Notes from Sloan-C Conference, November 2010

Pre-conference workshop: Blended Learning: Frameworks, Models, and Big IssuesModerator: Mary Niemiec
University of Illinois at Chicago

The workshop featured a whos-who of DL industry leaders providing comment on different areas of blended learning. Included in the panel wasThomas Cavanagh (University of Central Florida); Chuck Dziuban (University of Central Florida); Joel L. Hartman (University of Central Florida); Tanya Joosten (University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee); Stephen Laster (Harvard Business School); Patsy Moskal (University of Central Florida); George Otte (City University of New York); Anthony Picciano (City University of New York, Hunter College); Karen Swan (University of Illinois Springfield); Norm Vaughan (Mount Royal University, Canada); and Karen Vignare (Michigan State University).


The session began with a panel discussion on key areas of blended learning. The panel consisted of Tony Picciano, Stephen Laster, and Tanya Joosten. The session was then divided into table groups, with moderators facilitating table discussions. Key points from each topic and table were then shared in open session. Key points included:


Research is indicating higher student success rates using blended versus only f-2-f or only online
  • Institutional drivers 
    • Educational opportunity 
    • Increase education level 
    • Resources 
    • Learning effectiveness 
    • Mission 
  • Issues facing higher ed 
    • Access 
    • Cost to degree 
    • Community outreach 
    • Assessment 
    • Graduation rates 
    • Improving learning for diverse student populations 
  • Issues for institutions 
    • Land-locked 
    • Access to courses in general 
      • Courses 
      • Better pedagogical opportunities 
      • Better meet student needs 
      • Students demanding better access 
      • Access to busy urban professionals 
        • Minimizes campus trips 
        • Provide a balanced life 
      • Students can better control their time 
  • Students 
    • Don't see themselves as online or campus but as students 
    • Blended courses offer better opportunity 
    • Need to maximize access 
    • No reason to assemble a class to listen to a talking head 
    • Emphasize community of learners 
      • Instructor not the hub 
    • Think of the cost equation 
  • General 
    • Cannot skip on faculty development 
    • Must have strong faculty knowledgeable about pedagogy of blended model 
  • Issue: Community outreach 
    • Should be basic part of all programs as well as mission 
    • Develop programs in conjunction with community businesses and organizations 
    • Blended can assist in saving travel between institution and organization 
    • Provides way of building connections across borders 
  • Issue: Improving learning for diverse student populations, remediation, general student population, lifelong learners, technological skill development 
  • Issue: Graduation rates, retention, attrition 
    • Blended ensures engagement, 
    • Requires upfront investments in pedagogy, faculty development 
    • Setting up students to be lifelong learners 
      • Education never "fnishes" 
    • Using different mediums can accomplish different tasks 
      • Accomplishing organizational tasks using different mediums 
    • Place some of the assessment activities online 
    • ePortfolios can be used to 
      • Show student progress 
    • Show class progress 
    • Students can use for future employers 

Table discussions: Q&A
  • Faculty buy-in 
    • Incentives 
  • Gap between the expectation of technology use between students and faculty 
  • Student learning communities 
    • Cohorts for non-traditional students to support technology use 
  • Don't lock down your courses. Allow them to modify courses to integrate innovations 
  • Require all courses to have at least one hour online requirement 
  • Book: Blended Learning Research Perspectives 

Examples of Blended Learning Models

All models on the website at
http://sloanconsortium.org/aln/presentation/blended-learning-frameworks-models-and-big-issues 

Model 1: Blended as a matter of scale

Model 2: Blended learning as a group boundary object

Model 3: Blended learning as an ecosystem
  • The technologies and environment are ever-changing 
  • Entities adapt to the environment 
Model 4: Value added model
  • What does the technology allow you to do 
  • Let the pedagogy drive the technology 
  • Don't use technology if you don't feel comfortable using it 
  • Introduce concepts using short videos 
  • F-2-f provides spontaneity 
  • Some students may need someone to talk with 
  • Strongly encourage wikis and student-generated content 
Suggested reads:


Session: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Lessons Learned from Online Service Learning
David Pratt, Purdue University North Central
Service learning in an online environment 

  • The definition of Service Learning is "Teaching and learning in an approach that integrates community service with academic study to enrich learning, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities" 
    • Benefits recipient and provider 
    • Cooperative rather than competitive 
    • Addresses complex problems 
    • Promotes deeper learning 
    • Generates emotional consequence 
    • Positive and meaningful real life experiences 
  • Many times the online instructor has no experience in technologies 
  • Must balance the two considerations of 
    • Course goals, and 
    • Community need 
  • For technology difficulties, pair up student to teacher 
    • Consult about uses of technology 
  • Process: Students learn technologies 
  • The Good 
    • Integrated as part of course 
      • Need to reformat course to make room for service learning project 
    • Goals of course must be connected to project 
    • Must be organized 
      • Course schedule and activities 
      • Timely IRB review 
      • Formative and substantive feedback 
      • Secure funding (http://www.compact.org) 
        • Small grants for USB drives, books, are usually available 
  • The Bad 
    • Not informing students before course 
      • Students may not want the extra effort 
    • Tension between the structure of the project and the necessary course flexibility 
    • Lack of f-2-f contact with students and sites 
    • Finding appropriate community partners with similar service learning and course goals 
  • The Ugly 
  • Legal documentation 
    • Must be signed by student and site 
  • Selection of service learning placement 
    • Ensure student and community location are compatible 
  • Assessment 
    • Students should evaluate the site as well as vice versa 
  • Communication with students and sites is required 
  • Ensure a process for problem resolution is in place 
  • Ensure a process for tracking and managing data is in place 

Session: Developing effective online etextbooks using Softchalk and Web 2.0 
Debra Runyon
Northwest Missouri State University: Digital campus

Overview
  • NMS provides textbooks to students on a rental basis 
    • Rental fees cover printing of materials by students 
  • Laptops provided on loan to students 

Pilot project
  • Phase 1: Students provided Sony eReaders 
    • Student not happy with eReaders 
  • Phase 2: Students provided notebook computers 
  • Publishers use different formats for etext materials 
    • There was no value added when using electronic versus paper 
    • To add value, began using VitalSource which allowed 
      • Highlighting 
      • Searching 
    • Ran into issue when converting textbooks to electronic format 
  • Phase 3: Full integration of eTextbooks and electronic learning resources 
    • Students charged $6/credit hour for etexts 
    • Publishers wanted an exclusive contract to create individual chapters rather than entire book 
    • Another option was a tablet PC with eReader option 
  • Midwest K-12 schools are incorporating PDF of textbook within the CMS 
    • Called the One-to-One Computing project 
  • Softchalk incorporates 
    • Web editor 
    • Learning objects 
    • Flash games and activities 
    • Pictures, sounds, text 
    • Quizzing 
    • SCORM compliant 
    • Incorporates intra- and inter-page navigation 
    • Can copy/paste document text directly into SC page 
      • Watch for copyright issues 
  • Web 2.0 tools 
    • Screen recordings, Jing, Captivate 
    • Video recording, FlipVideo, Youtube 
    • Web conferecing, Elluminate, Wemba 
    • Audio, Audacity 
    • Podcasts/vodcasts 
    • Widgets 
Presentation available athttp://cite.nwmissouri.edu/presentations 


Session: Lights, Camera, Action: Digital Storytelling in Healthcare 
Sonya Hardin, Lucille Travis
Nov 4, 2010, 1:40 p.m.
http:// inet-nurse.org 

Digital storytelling for nursing students
  • Innovative Nursing Educational Technologies 
  • Any student can submit a digital story for competition 
  • Why use digital storytelling? 
  • Overview of generational learners 
    • Gen X self-oriented 
      • Technology is 2nd nature 
    • Millennials are also digital natives 
    • Highly collaborative 
    • Emphasize a work/life balance 
    • Need continual feedback 
    • Older generations digital immigrants and generally unfamiliar with technology 
  • The Wired generation 
    • Spend many hours on web 
    • Use cell phones, IM, and instant downloads 
  • Creating a student friendly environment 
    • Students want to be included in decisions that affect them 
    • Students want education to be multi-disciplinary and incorporate more that one thought process 
    • Students want to be entertained as well as educated 
  • Steps in a digital story 
    • Develop the storyboard 
    • Choose music 
    • Choose software 
      • Ensure it's compatible with all computers 
    • Narratation 
      • Use a good speaking voice 
    • Share the project with the class 
  • Parts of the story 
    • Need a point of view 
      • Emphasize the audience. What would they want to hear? 
    • Ask a dramatic question 
  • Technology tools 
  • Ensure that students cite resources 
  • Always provide rubrics for scoring 
  • Creativity increases when using groups of students rather than individuals 


Session: Future Metrics of Online and Blended Learning 
Patrick Szuta
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Nov 4, 11:55 a.m.
  • The nature of online/blended systems presents an overwhelming amount of student info such as 
    • Time on task 
    • Time of access 
    • Information on AI solutions 
    • Discussion posts 
  • Classifying data into 
    • Assessment data 
      • Test scores 
    • Task data 
      • Time on task 
      • Attendance 
  • At what point does elearning become innovative? He then gives the comparisons such as 
    • Computer grading vs. hand grade 
    • Electronic gradebook vs. hand gradebook 
    • LMS discussion board vs. f-2-f discussions 
  • Such are not really innovative 
  • Innovations include things such as 
    • Interactive books 
    • Electronic exams 
  • Becomes important to hone in task data to determine whether students are having difficulty with 
    • Time on task 
    • Number and length of logins 


Session: Improve Student Outcomes with Tegrity's Cloud-based Lecture Capture Service Nov. 4, 10:25 a.m.
  • Overview 
    • Improves student/faculty experience and institutional ROI 
    • Also includes eportfolios, social learning, mobile learning 
  • Attributes 
    • Cloud-based 
    • No hardware or software 
    • Makes available to students within 20 minutes of completion 
    • Real-time integration with CMS 
    • Easy to start/stop/pause 
      • Can be automated for instructor 
  • How does it work 
    • Just need mic and computer 
    • works with browser and mobile device 
    • Noting to download, can watch presentation directly 
  • Search function 
    • Captures any text presented on screen as searchable text 
    • Can search across multiple recordings within a course 
    • Scroll bar can display images of slides for searching 
  • Portability 
    • All recordings accessible through mobile devices 
  • Bookmarking 
    • Can use mobile device to bookmark a live presentation 
    • Can add comments during live presentation 
    • If student leaves session, Tegrity will restart session at point of departure when they log back in 
  • Other 
    • Students can IM between each other during sessions 
    • Live webcasting available 
    • Remote proctoring 
    • Students can submit recordings for class assignments 
    • Presentations can be edited 
    • Reporting tools 
      • Who's playing what 
      • How many times accessed 
  • Remote proctoring 
    • Students start recording and begin exam. 
    • Shows student test area via webcam 
    • Proctor can watch as student takes exam 


Session: Bringing f-2-f instruction back into online faculty development 
Michael Uttendorfer
New York Institute of Technology
Nov. 4, 9:40 a.m.

iris.nyit.edu/~muttendo/sloan2010

This was primarily an overview of Elluminate. Of note was the use of vRoom which allows up to three people to use Elluminate for free.
  • Provide self-service training model 
    • Using for just-enough, just-in-time modules 
    • Made available through the LMS 
  • Provide virtual, live training using 
    • Webinars (vRoom, Elluminate) 
    • Orientations, LMS support, ePortfolios 
  • Summary of user interface with Elluminate 


Session: Research on the Effectiveness of Online Learning: Insights, Controversies, and Gaps 
Barbara Means
Co-director for the SRI International Center for Technology in Learning
http://www.sri.com/policy/ctl
Nov 4, 8:15 a.m.

Plenary session:

  • Questions
    • Is this innovation worth implementing
    • How should we implement this innovation
  • Studies published between 1996 to 2008
  • Criteria used to select studies
    • Compared fully online or blended to face to face instruction
    • Measured learning objectively with same measure and control group
  • Evaluation of Evidence-based practices in online learning 
  • Results
    • Blended approach shows greater student success than only f-2-f
    • Due to redesigning the learning experience, not of the medium
    • Purely online courses have outcomes similar to f-2-f
    • Blended approach better than both
  • Alternative approach for implementation
    • Combine frequent cycles of design, implementation, and evaluation
      • Integrate formative assessment into courses
    • Did I get this? quizzes following a presentation of new material
    • Short essay questions call on on students to make connections between concepts
    • Muddiest Point requests asking what was confusing
      • Discuss these points in class
    • Principles for blended learning design
      • Incorporate range of online activities
    • Give options
    • Gaps
      • What is the proper blend of OL and f-2-f
    • Level and nature of instructor guidance
    • Retention and transfer of learning 
    • Cost-benefit analysis for different blended models
    • Recommendations
      • Need iterations of development delivery and refinement
    • Pooling of data across courses
    • Advantage to agreement on major challenges
" I can't create my future with the tools from your past."
http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=kra_z9vMnHo



Session: Colleges for the 21st century: the New Ecology of Learning 
Peter Smith
Academic Strategies and Development, Kaplan Higher Education
Nov. 3, 2010, 4:30 p.m.
Keynote address
  • Harnessing Americas Wasted Talent
    • Higher ed no longer controls the changes
    • Indicates a change in blanace of power
    • Open courseware hugely important
    • Do what you believe will work
      • May find yourself unemployed but go for it
    • Opencourseware meant that countries didn't need typical infrastructures for education.
    • Success indicated when we can be successful in tangible ways with skills needed by people
    • Many highly skilled jobs are chasing people
      • Supposed to double by 2020
    • Institutions need to create merit in students so they can be successful
    • Moodle, itunes U, opencourseware 
    • No shortage of places to learn
    • No shortage of SMEs
    • LMSs the new learning platforms
    • Unbundling of services
      • Rate of change too quick for institutions to take full advantage of benefits
    • Networks the new process
    • Burk smith, Smarthinking, had the 20 most popular courses built, had them accredited, and are now available to sutdnets for $500 each. 
      • All are self-paced
      • Don't pay attention to the mode but in the outcome
      • What works and what doesn't
    • There will be a number of new alliances
      • Don't try to invent services already existing
      • Contract with others that created needed services
    • Inevitably there will be more control and choice of learners
    • Wiki-ization of knowledge
      • Groups of people creating knowledge
    • Tremendous opportunities for research in blended and online learning
      • Try something and throw out if it doesn't work
    • "You don't have to wait to get a seat at the table of opportunity"


Session: Top Gear: Driving Your LMS Transition for Student Success 
Diane Chapman
North Carolina State University
Nov 3, 2010, 3:15 p.m.
North Carolina State University
  • 90% of students uses the LMS
  • flickr:webmove
  • All LMSs have the same tools
  • http://wolfware.ncsu.edu
    • (Look for SOP)
  • Used Moodle before selecting for pilot course
  • This is first semester for all Moodle
    • 62 students, 8 instructors
  • Compared Moodle with current system (BB)
    • Surveyed both instructors and students
    • Students preferred Blackboard Vista
    • Needed an orientation (mandatory training not required)
  • Most importat factors for students
    • Instructor feedback
  • Least important factors for students
    • Ability to collaborate with other students
    • Didn't want LMS orientation (may have been age-dependent)
  • Student advice to other students
    • Be patient
    • Check into class often
    • Contact the instructor for course information
    • Student advice to faculty
      • Get some training on LMS and learning technology use
      • Streamline the courses across disciplines
        • Use similar interface so students aren't relearning navigation each term
      • Template the course design
      • Be patient with students


    Session: Sloan-C Effective Practices 
    This session featured award winners for effective practices.

    Practices reviewed for
    • Replicability
    • Supporting evidence
    • Impact on the field
    • Based on faculty meetings or round table for discussion and sharing of ideas that worked in classroom
    • Check on Sloan website for award winners and more resources
    • Award #1
      • Kaye Shelton
        • Tool to evaluate online administration programs
        • Standards found
          • WCET, CHES, IHEP
        • 24 standards from IHEP/NEA identified
        • Also idnetified additional 80 quality indicators
          • Approved 45
        • Final instruments has 70 indicators
        • Next steps
          • Benchmarking
        • Support materials
        • Determine minimum scores for each category
        • Community of practice website
        • http://bit.ly/da04uK
    • Award #2
      • Dabbagh-George Mason University
        • Developed the Learning Asset Technology Integration Support Tool (LATIST) 
        • Identify processes and methods for using innovative learning technologies and delivery tools within current learning modalities
        • Advanced learning technologies
        • LATIST website
        • Decision trees
        • Suggested technologies based on several criteria such as development time, usage (daily, weekly, etc)
    • (Missed remainder of session)



    Session: Second Life Viewer 2.0: Additional Potential for Virtual World Platform 
    Dana Willett
    University of Southern Indiana
    Nov 3, 2010, 1:45 p.m.

    SL introduced new viewer (Viewer 2)

    • New viewer much different than previous version
    • Several new tools
      • Shared media (Media on a Prim)
      • Drag and drop media onto a primitive object
        • Create an object
        • Select your content (web URL, media, etc)
        • Drag it onto object
        • Others in the room see in real time when instructor clicks "play"
        • Must use Firefox
        • Doesn't support Java or Java applets
        • Audio and video
        • Everyone gets personal login if prompted
        • PiratePad.net
          • Generates a Notepad
          • Public notepad
          • Color codes each persons contributions to the document
        • DabbleBoard.com


      Session: Rethinking Faculty Development: Shifting from Product to Process 
      Linda Merrilat

      Arkansas State University

      Nov 3, 2010, 1:00 p.m.


      • Identified number of software apps available and used by faculty
      • Push to do more online
      • Began rethinking focus from the course to a learning environment
      • Resuted in a three-fold increase in interactions with DLT and faculty
        • Integration of best practices of teaching and learning
      • Developed a Course Dvelopment Life Cycle (CDLC)
        • Focus on properly building a course

      • CDLC is a continuous process involving continuous learning
      • Each phase has 1-7 steps
      • Quality measured by rubrics from 
      • Helps to shift emphasis from assessment to quality improvement
      • Have an institute each summer
        • Improve technology skills
        • Two times per week for four weeks
        • Faculty work on course while attending
        • Most of course developed by end of institute
      • Developed the ITTC Institute Online
        • Developed in Blackboard
        • Provided to all new faculty when BB account created
        • Serves as exemplar course
        • Includes
          • Learning guides on specific tools of BB
          • Resources
          • Department contact info
          • Feedback
      • Learning Centers
        • Kiosk-style
        • Buttons representing various areas
        • Short(1-2 hours)
        • Self-paced
        • Workbook included
        • Integrated technology and best practices for the classroom
        • Encourages skill building
      Learning Center topics
      • Course development life cycle
      • Learning Expereince
      • Coruse planning and design toolkit
      • BB boot camp
      • Designing courses in BB
      • Work smarter not harder
      • Using rubrics for student assessment
      • Creaing online tests using respondus
      • Working with large classes
      • BB communications
      • Cppyright fair sue and teach act
      • Detecting plagiarism
      Resource


      Arrival at Caribe Royale and Sloan-C conference: This should be fun!
      We arrived last night around 8 p.m. at the Caribe Royale in Orlando. Beautiful hotel but what a change from Denver! Waterfalls, palms, and from what I could tell (it was dark when we arrived) lots of beautiful landscaping. Conference is well organized but was disappointed there wasn't a breakfast available. I almost hopped over the ropes to grab some of the food that was reserved for the conference staff. Thought better and grabbed coffee instead. Bumped into Burks Oakley on the was to the pre-conf workshop. Great to see him again and was floored that he remembered the DMC Discussion in Distance Learning blog. He has a great memory!
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