ELI Course: How to Humanize Your Online Course

I've written previously about the institutional focus at CSU Channel Islands, my place of employment, to foster a culture of "humanized" online learning.  In April, Jill Leafstedt, Kristi O'Neil-Gonzalez and I facilitated a workshop at ET4Online titled "How to Humanize Your Online Course" and next week, I will be starting a 4-week online course for the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) on the same topic.  This course does require registration through ELI. A discounted rate is available to ELI members.

The ELI course will incorporate asynchronous activities, including participating in a VoiceThread conversation; participating in Twitter polls; sharing reflections/resources/questions via Twitter (#HumanizeELI); creating a high-energy course bumper video in Animoto; creating a course banner in Canva; and curating these visually-oriented content creations into a Tackk that will be posted to our course Tackkboard!  The course is intended to pull higher education faculty, instructional designers/technologists, administrators (and other roles I'm missing) into an immersive learning environment that is designed around the principles of humanizing an online class.

An ELI digital badge will be earned by those who are willing to step out of their comfort zones and into the exciting landscape of content creation!

The asynchronous activities are anchored by the following four live sessions:

• "The Foundations of Humanizing"  
• I am the presenter for this one. Tues, 5/12; 10am-11:30am PT/1pm-2:30pm ET
• "VoiceThread for Universal Design: Supporting the needs of diverse learners" 
• Guest presenters: Jaimie Hoffman and Jaime Hannans from CSU Channel Islands. 
• Wed, 5/20; 10am-11:30am PT/1pm-2:30pm ET
• "Reaching out, being there: What we know and don't know about social presence"
• Guest presenters: Patrick Lowenthal, Boise State University and Joanna Dunlap, University of Colorado, Denver
• Thurs, 5/28; 10am-11:30am PT/ 1pm-2:30pm ET
• "Humanizing share session!"
• In this session, I will invite volunteers from our course to share their Humanizing Showcases and reflect on their experiences and key takeaways.

I look forward to learning with those of you who participate. Everyone is invited to follow our hashtag on Twitter and learn with us! #HumanizeELI

Navigating Generational Diversity in Higher Ed

I just participated in the Educause Live webinar, "What Do Newer Generation Faculty Want from IT Services?" and have some reflections to share.

First, I participated through using Adobe Connect Pro Mobile, a free app for iPhone.  The experience was excellent.  Rather than sitting at my desk, listening, I was able to go for a walk and get some exercise at the same time which I really enjoyed. 

The hour long event involved an insightful and very relevant discussion between Bruce Maas, CIO and Michael Zimmer, Assistant Professor, both of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  I was most impressed by the importance placed upon the effective development of "dialogue" between IT and campus stakeholders about the social media and instructional technology tools faculty are using/want to use.

Zimmer, self-identified as a lat Gen Xer, considers himself an early adopter of technology and spoke candidly about his use of the campus supported LMS, Desire 2 Learn, as well as external sites (like Tumblr) which facilitate a more seamless sharing of content with his students. Maas shared his thoughts about the challenges involved with staying in dialogue with faculty to keep a finger on the pulse of the technologies they are interested in seeing supported with the campus services.  The two of them also posed some very provocative questions that I thought were really important points.  For example, is it important, in this day and age, to provide campus supported alternatives to the tools faculty are using?  How do we select which tools to support and, then, does it become a requirement or an option for faculty to use them?

This conversation has left me wondering about how characteristic this close collaborative relationship is of campuses across the nation.  Is there a disparity between institutional type?  That is, do community colleges have as much IT support and dialogue with faculty as at 4-year universities?  Does it come down to the robust staffing levels which are, in generally, limited by campus budgets (as well as hiring priorities)?

The single most important takeaway I have right now is how refreshing it is to see "generational diversity" be considered in such an authentic and professional manner.  Too frequently I hear comments that suggest college faculty are not interested in integrating technology into learning.  This discussion focused on an observed interconnectedness between "newer" generation faculty and the student population.  In the conversation, it was noted that younger faculty are more in tune with the engagement and learning benefits of integrating emerging forms of technology into a class experience than their Baby Boomer colleagues.  Y

Year over year, the proportion of Gen Y and Gen X to Baby Boomer faculty will continue to shift.  How are campuses preparing for this shift? Is it a priority at your institution?  If not, should it be?

Painting, Power and Pedagogy: Reframing the Classroom

On May 19th, I had the pleasure of presenting at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, as the keynote for the EduSoCal10 conference.  The event was a creative venture to substitute the Educause regional conference that did not take place on the west coast this year.  I'd like to thank Crista Copp, Director of Academic Technology at LMU, and Michael Berman, CIO of CSU Channel Islands, for this speaking opportunity.  LMU has shared this presentation, in addition to many other of the day's sessions, as videos on their iTunes U site.  I have embedded my presentation below, with permission from LMU. 





My presentation explores the art historical role of innovation and risk-taking in western society, highlighting the potential of creativity in teaching to unhinge higher education from its lecture-based traditions. The presentation showcases a specific case study in teaching innovation from my community college History of Women in Art class that examines the learning effects of an instructional model that embraces active learning in the classroom, rather than passive delivery of lecture. Student feedback and survey results are included. This case study was also shared last September, 2009, as an Educause Learning Initiative webinar titled, "Teaching Without Walls."

I'd like to take this opportunity to respond more deeply and thoughtfully to one question I received from the audience.  My presentation criticizes the effectiveness of lectures as a learning activity.  I was asked (not verbatim), "Given your perspective of lectures, why, then, did you select to deliver your content via lecture?" I had considered the contradiction embedded in my lecture style as I was preparing my content but, truly, hadn't worked through it entirely.  In my response to the question, I acknowledged that contradiction but didn't have a clear answer as to why I delivered my presentation via lecture.  Now I can lucidly explain this, as I've spent some time thinking about it.

Lectures do have value in learning and I believe my case study demonstrates this fact. However, if I'm given 16-weeks with a group and my goal is to facilitate they their learning of a variety of concepts and ideas, lecture alone is not an ideal activity, especially to fill my precious face-to-face time with my learners.  Lecture has an important role in learning but it's not only piece of how we should be facilitating deep learning.  As facilitators of learning, we need to engage our audience actively in critique, debate, and discussion to promote higher levels of learning, as well as meet the "offline" expectations of our digital generation of students who are deeply informed by YouTube and TiVo who are most likely to say, "If it's passive content like a lecture is, share it with me digitally so I can watch it when and where it's convenient for me,  I can rewind and forward the content, and learn at my own pace."

When teaching a class on a campus,  I believe this moment in higher education is our moment, as "teachers"-- not deliverers of information -- to implement technology into our instruction (via web-based tools outside the classroom) to enable us to have more time to work directly with our students in a live setting -- without technology -- resulting in more dynamic, relevant, and enriching learning for our students.  "The World is Open," as Curtis Bonk has demonstrated, and our Googled, YouTubed, mobile society has capsized the relevance of a learning model that is based on showing up at a specific time and place, twice a week, for sixteen weeks to hear a professor deliver information that is available in the pocket of most students.  It is time for our classroom model to be transformed by technology, just as the rest of the world has been.

Enjoy the video (56 minutes). I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Educause: 7 Things You Should Know About Next Gen Presentation Tools

As some of you know, I'm a big fan of the Educause "7 Things You Should Know About..." series.  This is a link every educator integrating web-based technologies should have on their radar and share with everyone in their professional networks.

Ironically, today I received an RSS update from Educause noting their most recent addition to the "7 Things" library which showcases the topic of my last two posts "Next Generation Presentation Tools."  If you've enjoyed the posts "So Long Powerpoint, Hello Prezi" and "Zooming into the Future of Visual Learning" then you'll certainly enjoy the well done Educause abstract which includes an excellent scenario describing why and how a student in a face-to-face class could benefit from the innovative features of the Prezi interface.


For those of you who are new to the format, here are the "7 Things" each abstract explores:

1. What is it?
2. Who is doing it?
3. How does it work?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

Also see my June 26, 2009 post discussing the "7 Things You Should Know About VoiceThread" resource.

More Evidence: Ning+Students=Collaborative Learning Success

Social networking has been prodded and probed for its educational value but many educators have shied away from integrating public venues like Facebook into learning experiences. Ning, a social networking site that allows for the easy creation of *free* closed social networks, is becoming increasingly popular amongst educators. The recent publication of Educause Quarterly features an article about how a French Literature and Civilization in Translation course at the University of Connecticut utilized Ning to improve student success in many areas.

I particular appreciate the comments shared by students that include the crucial value of personalization in a learning experience. I believe higher education will fully engage students and pull them into relevant learning connections when students feel welcomed, comfortable and connected in their learning environment. Being online for this generation has never been not a sterile, flat, disconnected experience. So a learning experience should not be that way either. Here is a student comment from the article:

“I found Ning to be something very different than I have used before in a class. Here at UCONN, we have the discussion boards on HuskyCT, but with Ning we were able to add people from all over who shared an interest in French Literature. Also, we were able to decorate our personal pages with our specific interests. I would say seeing what other people wrote in their posts helped my writing. I could also see a different perspective on the topic which helped me by knowing what other writing styles students were using."

The students were required to enter the Ning network outside of class time and share required writing assignments in a social network setting. The collaborative learning environment of Ning resulted in increased accountability (over submitting assignments solely to a professor), improving the students' preparedness for class and strengthening the students' overall writing skills.

Have you used Ning or another social networking site to enhance your students' classroom or online learning? If so, please share how this research compares with your own experiences or reflect on your feedback about the article which you can read in its entirety here.

Teaching without Walls - ELI Web Seminar

I am really jazzed to share the news of my upcoming Educause Learning Initiative web seminar! It is open to all ELI members and I am hopeful my students' voices will contribute to encouraging other educators to take risks with innovative uses of technology to enrich learning and expand face-to-face time and increase active learning in the classroom. If you can't join us for the presentation, please click on the link below and listen to the 20-minute "Student Interview" at the bottom of the page to hear end-of-the-semester reflections from some of my students. Enjoy! As always, comments are welcome and appreciated.

Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture
September 14th, 10:00-11:00am PT/1:00-2:00 ET

Malcolm Brown, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative director, will moderate this web seminar with Michelle Pacansky-Brock, where she’ll pull back the curtain on the classroom of the future, exploring a semester-long teaching experiment in which a class of community college art history students engaged in a technology-rich, web-enhanced, inclusive learning environment. You won't find any lectures in this classroom: they were all made available to students through Blackboard in the form of PDFs and podcasts, giving them options for how they learned. From there, students engaged in dynamic online modules that included VoiceThread discussions, all completed outside the classroom. The course design allowed for class time to be left freely available for discussions and other active learning activities like a "Wiki Challenge" led by fearless students on a quest for extra credit.

Teach Naked!!

Yeah, baby!

This is good, really good.

I shared a blog post awhile back about an experiment I did in my spring art history class in which I removed all the lecturing from the classroom and rolled them all into podcasts (and PDFs - students were given a choice as to how they access their classes) and spent the face-to-face time with my students discussing, debating and critiquing the class content.

This week there was a great new article shared in the Chronicle of Higher Ed about Jose Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, who has made the bold move to remove computers from his classrooms. His goal? To axe boring PowerPoints from the lives of students and reinvigorate their learning with engaging, human-to-human contact. Hmmmm. Sounds like the stuff learning is made of.

Check it out:



If the concept sounds intriguing to you, I hope you'll join me in September for a webinar I'll be presenting for the Educause Learning Initiative titled Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture, based on very similar concepts as Teach Naked (darn, I wish I had thought of that title!).

Educause: 7 Things You Should Know About VoiceThread

Well, it looks like VoiceThread is moving up in the world of education technology. Educause just featured it in its acclaimed "7 Things You Should Know" series which is a wonderful resource for faculty and instructional designers eager to consume clear examples of how specific emerging technologies can be applied in educational contexts to support learning. Be sure to check out the series if it's new to you.

I'm also excited to see that Educause has featured my own study from Sierra College in the "Who is Doing It?" section citing:

In one recent evaluation at Sierra College, where VoiceThread was used in distance learning courses in art appreciation and art history, students noted that the tool helped establish a sense of community and reinforced the impression that the instructor was involved in their learning process.

There is one description in the "7 Things" report that I am either misunderstanding or is incorrect. Here is the complete excerpt from #5: What Are the Downsides:

VoiceThread might require a rethinking of traditional approaches to assessment. Because VoiceThread does not allow multiple users to have simultaneous access to the same account, it may be necessary for an entire class to use a single class account login. As a result, students could remove or change comments made by others or inadvertently delete an entire VoiceThread. As with other multimedia-based applications, VoiceThread presents an accessibility problem for some users. The application can be slow or quirky and does not function uniformly across all browsers, raising questions about its robustness. Because VoiceThread produces Flash movies, using the application from a mobile phone can be problematic.

I'm not understanding why multiple users (students) would need access to a single account in order to accomodate an assessment. If an instructor creates an assessment (like a template in VoiceThread) and each student has his/her own free VoiceThread account, then each student easily logs into that account online from anywhere and completes the activity. The comment moderation tools comes in handy for instructors who haven't completely made the transition to collaborative, formative models of learning assessements. Maybe I'm missing something here but I just don't see this as an issue with VoiceThread at all.

The bigger issue to me is the accessibility concern which is referenced, although minimally, and I've noted in an earlier post VoiceThread has stepped up and is resolving this issue -- yeah, VoiceThread!

Enjoy the new resource!