Fusion 2011 was held July 2011 in downtown Denver. This was my first D2L conference and how nice that it was held less than 20 minutes from the Regis campus.
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| Image of Jonah Lehrer |
The Monday morning keynote featured Jonah Lehrer, a rather young-looking scholar with a number of ideas about thinking. Jonah provided examples of how people can dramatically alter results simply by thinking in less obvious ways. He suggested trusting your intuition for rapid decisions. And similar to an inventor experiencing multiple failures before reaching success, he suggested that one needs to be incorrect multiple times before being correct once. Practice makes perfect.
Desire2Learn featured several new, or at least newer, products. One is Campus Life, a mobile app. This is a stand-alone product that integrates features such as campus announcements, a campus calendar, and similar with D2L courses including content, discussions, and calendar. It’s an extra cost option that is worth looking into. D2L also featured a recently acquired technology called Capture for lecture captures. Capture was recently purchased and is still being integrated into the D2L fold but appears to have all the basic features of a lecture capture solution including scheduling and streaming.
The Tuesday morning keynote featured Natalie Jeremijenko, a social scientist who examines the overlap between social media and the world around us. Although I found her talk quite entertaining, I really can’t summarize what she said. I’ll simply share the title and let your imagination take it from there: The new entertainment system: Why wrestling rhinoceros beetles, texting fish and building swamps is the new black.
I was fortunate enough to attend several private sessions with D2L reps including an overview of several mobile technologies. D2L mobile is included in the basic D2L package. Mobile provides basic access to content, discussions, and email to most mobile devices. There are also a number of extra-cost mobile options that show great promise. I’ve already mentioned Campus Life. A project targeting faculty that is still in development will provide downloadable assignments, offline grading that automatically syncs with courses when a signal is available, and on-screen notation. The app primarily targets tablet computers rather than smartphones since I can’t imagine annotating anything on a smartphone. Two other mobile apps mentioned that have real potential are a mobile eportfolio app and mobile analytics. Pretty cool stuff.
The Wednesday noon keynote featured Steve Brinder, a K-12 educator and professional stand-up comedian. Steve’s talk was titled “How to survive teaching with a sense of humor” and was really quite funny.
Here is a YouTube clip from another talk he did but using similar material. Enjoy.
Gary Abbott from D2L did a session on D2L implementations. Gary suggested getting our campus library involved due to the integral role the library plays in the support of students. He recommended developing resource libraries for each discipline such as links to databases, common reference materials, and contact information for key library folks such as the reference and media librarians. He also mentioned a number of additional resources that I jotted down but none of which I can put into context. Hopefully these will prove useful:
Gary made a great point when he emphasized that students don't have issues when migrating to a new LMS but they do have issues with faculty that aren’t familiar with the new environment and how the tools work. Faculty must do their homework and become familiar with their new classroom.
Perhaps one of the best sessions, and one that is still being talked about on this campus, was presented by Josh Lund of DePaul University. DePaul recently completed a migration to D2L and Josh and his team were responsible for the creation of faculty training modules. He stated that his team created an entire training curriculum within three months. This included the print documentation, video tutorials, a self-paced course, and identified a number of FAQs. Their training materials also included quick guides and a step-by-step training of each tool function. Josh recommended providing a teaching commons area containing all D2L training resources. D2L provides an icon library that can be used for embedding specific into training pages. Very handy. Josh said to keep the initial workshops short (no longer than 2 hours) and to provide an open lab after each F-2-F session. DePaul created one fundamentals course and several separate tools workshops such as:
· Workshops and suggested times
o Fundamentals (2 hrs)
o Assessing student work (1)
o Quizzes, surveys (2)
o Grade book (1)
o Collaboration (discussion, chat, groups (1)
o Personalize course (1)
o Open labs (1)
DePaul provided sandbox courses for all pilot faculty. He suggested creating sandboxes as soon as possible. If creating video tutorials, he recommended focusing on one question and making courses functional rather than informational. Don’t tell them what to do but make them actually do the task. DePaul’s D2L training materials are available publically at http://teachingcommons.depaul.edu. Josh graciously allowed permission for their use by emailing fits@depaul.edu.
The second phase of training at DePaul will expand on what’s already been created. This includes a D2L quick-start focusing on the fundamentals of course development, a module that goes beyond the basics including advanced content, modifying the home page, and similar. Another workshop will be on simplifying your life that has sections on the use of groups, grade books, and instructor tools. They will also create a module on "paperless papers" including Dropbox and Turnitin. Josh mentioned the popularity of open labs and how they are made available at the end of each workshop. Lastly, he recommends using a checklist of competencies. The example he used is available at http://www.itd.depaul.edu/website/students/trainingmaterials.asp
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