COLTT 2015 Nicole's Summary

I’ve gathered some notes, ideas and highlights of the sessions I attended.

“Times are changing: Moving from lecture to experience in the classroom” Kevin Zeiler/Jeff Helton (Metro State)

During the session we generated ideas for experiential learning. (case studies, role-play, debates, collaboration, problem-solving projects, group work etc.) Opportunities to work through Kolb’s experiential learning style theory: It is a cyclical loop that includes: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. http://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html It is important to close the gap on outcomes. What worked- what didn’t work?

During this session I thought about how to better apply this theory to the online classroom. I found this article that questions the same thing: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/applying-the-kolb-experiential-learning-model-elm-to-distance-learning/

“Digital Tools and Strategies to enhance instruction” Steve Pillow (Emily Griffith Technical College)

https://sites.google.com/site/personaltechplan/presentation-tools Steve put together a whole google site chock full of suggested tools. He incorporated a new tool that I had not heard of called Symbaloo. It is a tool that allows you to organize any links into a visual grid. When you go to Steve’s Google site and look to the right of the Symbaloo grid he has concrete examples of the top 3 tools for each category. I certainly appreciated that. One tool in particular that stood out for me was Popcorn Maker (https://popcorn.webmaker.org/ ). It seems to be an easy, free, tool where you can import any video and add pop-up questions for students at any points during the video. I think this would be quite useful.

Another thing that I was not familiar with but it piqued my interest to investigate, Subtitling text add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP) https://support.office.com/en-sg/article/Sub-titling-text-add-in-for-Microsoft-PowerPoint-STAMP-df091537-fb22-4507-898f-2358ddc0df18?ui=en-US&rs=en-SG&ad=SG Here’s the description straight from the link: “The Subtitling text add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint lets you add closed captions to the video and audio files you include in your presentations. If you work with captioned video and audio files that already have Timed Text Markup (TTML) files associated with them, this add-in lets you import them directly into your presentation. If you don’t have a TTML file, you can add captions directly in your presentation.”

“Crossing Campus Chasms to Create Accessibility Services” Mark Werner and colleagues from CU Boulder

I found this session to be incredibly informative and helpful. The CU Boulder team laid out their recent journey when they received a formal complaint letter from the DOJ regarding ADA compliance.  (NOTE: If you go to the Zerista site for the conference you can download all of the materials and presentation files.)  The complaint letter was rather vague and broad but basically pointed out some issues regarding content accessibility for students with blindness and/or low vision. The letter really launched a collaboration between academic, disability services and IT. Together they addressed the issues and created a policy. They were able to get executive buy in. This was something that they pointed out was very KEY for placing priority around the issues. The team learned that this had to be less about risk management and more about sustainability and being proactive. They formed a new position “chief digital technology accessibility officer” to collaborate with all the key players, keep things transparent for everyone, and maintain the accessibility standards. It might seem like an overwhelming task to keep up or even be proactive, but they said to remember that even small steps towards the overall accessibility goal is good!

“Notice what you notice: the power of experiential learning in Online courses” Cynthia Drake CU Boulder

Cynthia referred to Kolb’s experiential learning theory. Her key recommendations:

1. Use social media platform to bring them in on a personal level. She creates a closed Facebook group for her class.
2. Do at least one multimodal assignment. She used the example of Pecha Kucha (20 slides in 20 minutes or 15 slides in 5 minutes). Any tool that helps to tell stories with voice and visuals would work well for this step.
3. Require peer interaction and feedback.
4. Elicit unexpected reflection. Ask Socratic questions and critical thinking.
5. Breakdown the false compartmentalization between school and life. Help the students incorporate connections.

 TEST KITCHEN!

I participated this year with the new Test Kitchen as a chef. Here's my classic recipe for incorporating technology for student learning