Journey through Personalized Learning: Transforming Education

Journey through Personalized Learning: Transforming Education: Take a moment and think about the students who are currently in your classes. When you teach a lesson on any given day there are typically...

Something for everyone

Rita Axford presenting on her Fulbright experience

RHCHP Faculty Development Day was held last month in the Mountain View Room. The
day featured something for everyone including research, learning technologies, a panel discussion on social media, and even a fascinating look at a Middle Eastern educational culture as seen through the eyes of a Fulbright scholar.

What was personally most enjoyable were the presentations by last year's Teaching and Learning with Technology Micro-grant award winners. TLTM is a competitive grant program funding small scale projects for examining the effects of technology on teaching and learning. I was amazed at what our incredibly talented faculty can do with as little as $1,000. Projects ranged from an examination of student reaction to audio-enhanced presentations, to the use of game theory for instructing Nursing students on the handling of end-of-life patient and family issues, to the development of an smart device app.

Kudos to RHCHP for sponsoring this most worthwhile event and for sharing with the Regis community.

Social media – The scary, the awesome, and the scary awesome

I attended the Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium held on October 24^th at Metro State University in Denver and wanted to share a little bit about a social media session that I attended called “Social Media – The scary, the awesome, and the scary awesome.”

Why did I choose to attend the social media session? I have to admit that I am not particularly devoted to social media and often wonder when the buzz of twitter will die down. I think to myself, what possible use or service could all of these different social media sites provide that makes them so relevant in today’s society? Someone must get it because, Facebook has something like a quarter of the world’s population enrolled on its site. That’s no small feat. So, I chose to attend the session on social media out of curiosity and to see how social media might be able to enhance the learning environment.

The presenter started by quizzing the audience to see if they could recognize the various social media site logos. I realized that there are many more social media sites than I had initially thought and some sites I had never identified as social media. The sites include: Flickr, Instagram, Blogger, WordPress, Good Reads, Pinterest (a personal favorite), Tumblr, Wikipedia, You Tube, Vimeo, Stack Exchange, Reddit, Octocat, and GitHub.

Some sites are great for photo sharing, others are good for discussion, while even others encourage group engagement. This is the key to social media in the learning environment I discovered, no one site is right for all circumstances. The presenter emphasized creativity in the incorporation of social media. Good reads for example is a site where anyone can go to post their review of a book and to comment on other’s reviews. This could be added onto a reading assignment or incorporated into a class discussion.

While the presenter didn't have time to go into the benefits of each site, we only had twenty-five minutes, he did leave us with curiosity. He pressed us to explore more social media sites and to think more abstractly about how they could be used in our day to day lives and in courses.  

Learning About Infographics at TLTS 2014

Another outstanding partnership between the eLearning Consortium of Colorado (eLCC) and Metro

State University resulted in this year's Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium. The event was well organized and well attended. And there was ample parking across the street from the event center. Awesome!

Normandy Roden and Travis Chillemi of the U. Colorado System provided one of the symposium highlights with their session titled "1,000 Words are Worth a Picture: Infographics to Enhance Teaching and Learning". Visual learners depend on  charts, graphs, and images for providing meaning to large amounts of information. Infographics can also be included in this toolbox of information conveyers. Giving a visual learner a well laid out infographic makes them a happy camper.

Infographics types and examples

The session began with an overview of infograph types including guides, step-by-step, decision trees, simple and complex timelines, and simple and complex data visualizations. An example of an historically significant infographic was the publication in 1862 of a complex timeline of Napolean's march on Moscow, pictured at the top of this post.

A more modern infographic example is the word cloud, sometimes known as tag clouds or wordles. Word clouds use block of texts that are represented by a word chart. The greater the frequency of the word in the text block, the larger the word appears in the graphic.



Creating infographics

Infographics can be created using a number of programs including MS Word, Wordle, Adobe Illustrator, and similar. PiktoChart  was specifically mentioned as an easy to use program. The free version is available but limited in the number of available templates and graphics. The Pro version, at $40/year, was a highly recommended option.

Keeping Up with What's Hot and What's Not

Randy Bass, Vice Provost for Education and Professor of English at Georgetown University, was the keynote speaker at the Regis College 2014 Fall Faculty Conference. During his presentation, Bass mentioned a data analysis tool called the  Gartner Hype Cycle. The hype cycle tracks technologies through their life cycle using scales based on visibility (hype) versus maturity (time).

Bass used one such scale, the Hype Cycle for Education, to illustrate MOOCs and their rapid rise and fall. Only two years ago, the 2012 Hype Cycle for Education had MOOCs as an Innovation Trigger, otherwise known as “On the Rise”. However, the 2014 Hype Cycle for Education has MOOCs sliding into the “Trough of Disillusionment”, having become virtually a non-player with little to no impact on tuition-based institutions.

That got me to thinking about other emerging technologies and the sustainability of their hype over time. First, take a look at the Gartner hype cycle ratings methodology and scale, then take a gander at some of these well known technologies:

2009

On the Rise	At the Peak	Into the Trough
3D printing	Internet TV	Web 2.0
Augmented reality	Cloud computing	Public virtual worlds
3D flat panel displays	Microblogging	Video telepresence

2011

On the Rise	At the Peak	Into the Trough
Human augmentation	Image recognition	Gesture recognition
Social TV	Internet TV	Virtual worlds
3D bioprinting	Augmented reality	E-book readers

2014

On the Rise	At the Peak	Into the Trough
3D bioprinting	Autonomous vehicles	Gamification
Digital security	Internet of Things	Augmented reality
Connected home	Wearable user interfaces	Mobile health monitoring

Other resources

• Gartner Hype Cycle main page and other "hype" categories. 
• The Randy Bass blog 

30th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning

http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/ 
August 12-14th, 2014
Madison, Wisconsin

As always, University of Wisconsin Extension puts on an excellent conference that focuses on distance teaching and learning. The best part about the conference is that there are 7 tracks of info sessions to choose from. Here are some key take-aways from some of the sessions I attended.

One of the first sessions I attended was labeled something about a TPACK. I was curious. TPACK stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. It is a framework that identifies the knowledge teachers need to teach effectively with technology. http://tpack.org/ The model shows how each of these three knowledge areas overlap to an ideal sweet spot that teachers can aim for. No argument there but the question is how can we support faculty to get there?

Evaluation for innovative change KEYNOTE by Dr. Michael Quinn Patton
This was a very good keynote that brought to light traditional forms of evaluation are just not cutting it. Dr. Patton explained that as educators we should adopt “evaluative thinking.” It is important to acknowledge failure and, learn from it, be open to it and reflect on the experience. Dr. Patton said “Education remains stuck in delivery method rather than making a difference in student lives.” Timing of feedback is critical. The greatest learning opportunity occurs early in a course so action may be taken. In other words, don’t wait until the end of the course to evaluate students or inquire feedback. A learner’s initial experience can really set the tone for the rest of the journey in the course.

Elliot Massie had a quick virtual spotlight shortly after that. He brought up an interesting concept “learning interruptus.” You can read his blog post about it here: http://www.learning2014.com/index.php/item/learning-interruptus.html. In a nutshell, learning interruptus is about how learners are swimming in a sea of learning options, choices, and personal control. His example is about how so many people may have good intentions and start a MOOC and then find that they just stop at the first week and never come back. What kinds of things distract you when you are learning? Elliot reminded us to be flexible with students and as we design learning modules. What would happen if we allowed students to redo an assignment until they got an A? Is there harm in that? Think about the advantages.

Grand Canyon University reported on some research they did with classroom assessment techniques and the connections it has to student learning. I love CATs! CATs are usually non-graded activities that check for understanding. Their research showed that when students choose to address their muddiest point and key take-aways in a one minute paper their quiz scores were higher than the students who didn’t do the one minute paper. Nice!


New book by Bonk! Add some TEC-VARIETY with a free PDF ebook by Curtis Bonk and Elaine Khoo! Go to http://tecvariety.com/ and look for the link to download. The focus of the book is on meaningful engagement and illustrates 100+ activities for motivating and retaining learners online.

Ray Schreoder- KEYNOTE Staying ahead of the wave
All the links are in his Google site https://sites.google.com/site/aheadwave/
Ray has laid out the steps to predicting the future! Understand the economy, technology, trends and job market. Check out the Google site.

Jane Bozarth- Using social media for learning
Jane always has great ideas to share. She talked about several methods for incorporating social media to engage students. She had Facebook at the top of her list. I didn’t realize there are ways now that you can create closed groups in Facebook and you don’t have to friend everybody in the class. http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/ultimate-guide-to-use-of-facebook-in.html
You can check follow what she is linking on Diigo https://www.diigo.com/user/Jbo27712
One example that sparked me is about using Pinterest, having students post something and then class and instructor can view all at once. Works best with visual work. You can then see one of many.
Jane’s new book is “Show Your Work; The Payoffs and How-to’s of Working Out Loud”
She mentioned a site I had not heard of called “SNAPGUIDE.com” it is a place for people to post or view homemade tutorials on pretty much anything.

Dropping down to the field of the heart

I attended a spiritual seminar a couple of weeks ago and came back feeling peaceful and recharged. In this day and age, we get inundated with flashing news, nonstop twitter updates and text messages. No wonder we get stressed so easily because we don’t relax any more. Worse yet, we've forgotten how to relax.

A large portion of the seminar devoted to explaining why it is important to hush the mind sometimes and enter into the “field of the heart.” Meditation is a good way to reach this heart centered awareness. As you engage in the meditation process, you will discover that your mind quiets naturally, and you become more aligned with your inner being. It is in this state that miracles start happening – you’ll see life as a joy rather than a burden.

For us meditation newbies, the seminar provided some useful techniques (Jonsson, 2013). Give these techniques a try and reflect on what you have noticed:

1.      Elevator: Imagine an elevator in your head. See a miniature version of yourself stepping into the elevator and allow for the doors to close. Press the down button. Follow your awareness as the elevator descends out of your head, down through your throat and even further down into your chest cavity. Allow for the elevator doors to open. Notice what you notice when you step into that space of no space and no place.

2.      Take a moment to feel into someone or something that you love unconditionally. Feel that connection. Notice the feeling and allow for that feeling to move through your entire body.

3.      See yourself as a Vitamin C tablet. Drop yourself through awareness as a vitamin C tablet into a glass of water and feel within yourself as your sense of separation dissolves.

4.      Get silly! See a waterslide from your head to your heart with a pool in the field of the heart. Energetically pop your eyeballs out of your head, drop them onto the slide and let them drop into the pool with a big splash. As your eyeballs resurface, notice your attention from the field of the heart.

5.      Notice the constant flow of thoughts in your brain or awareness without attachment. See your thoughts as clouds floating by. Do not attach to them. Observe them neutrally with a sense of curiosity and no judgment. Observing thoughts and experiences without judgment keeps us in a state of heart-centered awareness.

Jonsson, M. J. (2013). M-Joy practically speaking: Matrix energetics and living your infinite potential. Encinitas, CA: M-Joy of Being, Inc.