I recently attended the ELCC conference and it was a beneficial conference. The ELCC conference brings together faculty and designers to share their experiences with teaching and technology. The most important part of the conference was the networking opportunities. I was able to connect with Kristin Rivedal of Front Range and Nate Wadman from Pikes Peak to discuss their recent upgrade to V10. The initial upgrade itself took longer than expected, but there were no major issues reported. They did encourage administrators to work on the branding and for faculty to start using V10 soon as it is quite different. In Kristin’s session on analytics was informative. She described that analytics has always been an issue since they have been on D2L. They have had difficulties in getting all the data they want and D2L has not been able to address those concerns.
In the session Interactive Documents for Mobile Devices, focused on utilizing Adobe InDesign to create fun and interactive documents. The presenter had created an interactive book with Design. The book allowed users on mobile devices to swipe to the next page. The document contained scrollable areas within a page, dropdown menus and media. Another session Designing and delivering engaging digital content also focused on InDesign. The presenter was a rep from Adobe and this session was more of a demonstration. The presenter put together an interactive slideshow. It was interesting to see the creative and powerful solutions that InDesign offers. InDesign is a complex program and is not an ideal solution for everyone, but as a developer it is beneficial to look at all the possibilities out there.
The session titled “Generational Differences in the Use of Touch Screen Devices” presented findings on their research study. This was a great session to attend after our initial mobile evaluation. The study consisted of participants from K-12 (11 to 13), Young Adult (18 to 40) and older adults (over 70). The data collection was conducted by semi- structured interviews and observations. The participants owned iPads instead of android devices. Regardless of age, accessibility and mobility were the primary reasons for owning touch screen devices. All participants used their devices for entertainment, but varied between the age groups. Children preferred to play games and young adults seemed to use various media and social media. Older adults focused on reading or listening to music. Children and young adults downloaded more apps than older adults. Older adults were not active in sharing information about new applications. Older adults expressed discomfort with the touch screen. Often times they required a stylus and had difficulty using the virtual keyboard. Older adults view apps as device specific. They were unaware most apps were also available on an iPad and not just the iPhone. The information in this session is helpful when utilizing mobile devices in courses, taking into the account the knowledge each generation has about mobile devices.
I attended another session on universal design and this was an informative session and was very engaging with the participants. Universal design is the design of products and environments usable by all people to the greatest extent possible. This is important as all students learn differently some are visual learners and some learn best by reading information. They provided 3 principles for universal Design. 1) Provide multiple means of representation. Students with language barriers may not understand all the words. Provide text with images or symbols to assist with instruction. 2) Provide multiple means of action and expression. This is the how of learning. Try to provide different options for action, expression and communication. 3) Provide multiple means of engagement, the why of learning. Students need to be able to see the relevance of the material. Take an assignment for example. Instead of providing students all the required criteria provide guidelines and allow them to choose the subject.
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