Dr. Barbara White, CIO of the University of Georgia, just delivered a compelling keynote that was aimed at CIOs, but was immensely helpful for faculty and technologists to hear. The central message: be there, be involved, and take part in the process of decision making. Information is king, and so is knowing the requirements of your audience when you have those important conversations. The bean counters want to know about ROI and TCO, so having cost numbers in hand is critical. Overall, you must discover and understand the mission of the institution and be able to articulate how your plan, mission, program, etc., fits in to the greater plan for the institution.
This was one of those "common sense" presentations that contained information we all forget from time to time--sometimes to our peril. If you follow the rules, you definitely improve your chances for achieving your objectives. As the conventional wisdom reminds us, some days you get what you want, and other days you get what you need.
I'm now off to a session entitled "Instructional Technology Council (ITC) National Survey Results: The Status of Distance Education in the US". I'll let you know how it goes.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Syllabus--The Adventure Continues
Syllabus Update—Thursday, July 28, 2005
It has been a busy week. I never cease to be amazed at how much happens at conferences. Participants will sometimes complain about the cost or the venue, but it’s clear that amassing so much experience, knowledge, and like-minded enthusiasm in one place for a week is worth many times what we invest in these adventures.
Issues that seem to bedevil almost everyone center on technology integration and faculty/staff development. For the most part, participants acknowledge, students can find ways to make technologies work as long as faculty provide (or suggest) logical connections between the tools and the content. Content is king. I asked Diana Oblinger (dolblinger@educause.edu) of EDUCAUSE if she felt that the content we’re able to provide online and our ability to assess are a match yet. She stated (and I agree) that we can provide the content, but we’re not yet able to address unique learning styles in the way that we currently assess students. A great deal of online assessment is still multiple-choice and true-false—objective tests which don’t work for a significant number of students. There definitely seems to be interest in further developing alternative means of assessment.
There were certainly a number of occasions during the past several days when ePortfolios were on the agenda. Still, there exists the question of how to assess quickly and consistently. A group of educators from the University of San Diego ( discussed the use of ePortfolios, but lamented that providing a level playing field for the assessment of those portfolios has been a challenge. They’ve striven to use rubrics to streamline the process, only to find in the initial stages that different evaluators scored similar content quite divergently. The team has since refined its practice, but this is a good example of the evolutionary nature of problem solving in the digital age—or any other time, for that matter. (Blogger's note: It's worth mentioning that the ePortfolio implementation was in reponse, at least in part, to USD's mission to achieve NCATE accreditation. The manuscript detailing their adventures can be found at http://www.sandiege.edu/~ammer.)
On the issue of ePortfolios, the make-or-buy debate rages. Apps like Taskstream (http://www.taskstream.com) have a sizeable following, but there are still technologists who like to roll their own solution. The most common tool is HTML, followed by PowerPoint. Regardless of the tool, streaming media is growing in popularity. The group from USD found that their students were able to demonstrate the ability to teach reading and math more readily by providing a video artifact. California evaluators like the digital video, but only if the segments were long enough (appox. 2-3 minutes) to show the competency, but not so long as to take up huge amounts of time. This is definitely an idea worth adding to the list.
Archiving content is a significant concern among attendees. Ali Hanyaloglu (ali@adobe.com) of Adobe (http://www.adobe.com) and Brian Harris of Loma Linda University offered up a surprisingly non-commercial presentation about the use of PDF/A the soon-to-be de jure standard for long-term archiving of content. We can implement PDF/A right now, as there are options to output to the format from Acrobat 7.0. The standard is just settling in, but we know that it will exclude such things are JavaScript, executables, and broken links. Fonts will be embedded, much as in current Acrobat, and the resulting package, it is hoped, will help institutions avoid the inevitable technological obsolescence that has rendered some Vietnam War records, land use records, and certain types of Census Bureau data unreadable in the past. This is pretty exciting, and it fits right in with the practices I see happening among some PCC faculty and staff right now.
It’s about time for me to go off to the last keynote of the conference. I’ll post more information this evening and in the upcoming days. There’s so much to do (well, some things haven’t changed), and so many good ideas to at least consider.
It has been a busy week. I never cease to be amazed at how much happens at conferences. Participants will sometimes complain about the cost or the venue, but it’s clear that amassing so much experience, knowledge, and like-minded enthusiasm in one place for a week is worth many times what we invest in these adventures.
Issues that seem to bedevil almost everyone center on technology integration and faculty/staff development. For the most part, participants acknowledge, students can find ways to make technologies work as long as faculty provide (or suggest) logical connections between the tools and the content. Content is king. I asked Diana Oblinger (dolblinger@educause.edu) of EDUCAUSE if she felt that the content we’re able to provide online and our ability to assess are a match yet. She stated (and I agree) that we can provide the content, but we’re not yet able to address unique learning styles in the way that we currently assess students. A great deal of online assessment is still multiple-choice and true-false—objective tests which don’t work for a significant number of students. There definitely seems to be interest in further developing alternative means of assessment.
There were certainly a number of occasions during the past several days when ePortfolios were on the agenda. Still, there exists the question of how to assess quickly and consistently. A group of educators from the University of San Diego ( discussed the use of ePortfolios, but lamented that providing a level playing field for the assessment of those portfolios has been a challenge. They’ve striven to use rubrics to streamline the process, only to find in the initial stages that different evaluators scored similar content quite divergently. The team has since refined its practice, but this is a good example of the evolutionary nature of problem solving in the digital age—or any other time, for that matter. (Blogger's note: It's worth mentioning that the ePortfolio implementation was in reponse, at least in part, to USD's mission to achieve NCATE accreditation. The manuscript detailing their adventures can be found at http://www.sandiege.edu/~ammer.)
On the issue of ePortfolios, the make-or-buy debate rages. Apps like Taskstream (http://www.taskstream.com) have a sizeable following, but there are still technologists who like to roll their own solution. The most common tool is HTML, followed by PowerPoint. Regardless of the tool, streaming media is growing in popularity. The group from USD found that their students were able to demonstrate the ability to teach reading and math more readily by providing a video artifact. California evaluators like the digital video, but only if the segments were long enough (appox. 2-3 minutes) to show the competency, but not so long as to take up huge amounts of time. This is definitely an idea worth adding to the list.
Archiving content is a significant concern among attendees. Ali Hanyaloglu (ali@adobe.com) of Adobe (http://www.adobe.com) and Brian Harris of Loma Linda University offered up a surprisingly non-commercial presentation about the use of PDF/A the soon-to-be de jure standard for long-term archiving of content. We can implement PDF/A right now, as there are options to output to the format from Acrobat 7.0. The standard is just settling in, but we know that it will exclude such things are JavaScript, executables, and broken links. Fonts will be embedded, much as in current Acrobat, and the resulting package, it is hoped, will help institutions avoid the inevitable technological obsolescence that has rendered some Vietnam War records, land use records, and certain types of Census Bureau data unreadable in the past. This is pretty exciting, and it fits right in with the practices I see happening among some PCC faculty and staff right now.
It’s about time for me to go off to the last keynote of the conference. I’ll post more information this evening and in the upcoming days. There’s so much to do (well, some things haven’t changed), and so many good ideas to at least consider.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Syllabus 2005
July 25, 2005: Syllabus 2005, Day #1
Nanette and I arrived in Los Angeles around 10:30 last night. Since we flew into LAX, we had quite a transfer to get to Hollywood; we were finally in our room by around midnight. It was definitely time to crash; Monday morning would arrive early.
Nanette and I arrived in Los Angeles around 10:30 last night. Since we flew into LAX, we had quite a transfer to get to Hollywood; we were finally in our room by around midnight. It was definitely time to crash; Monday morning would arrive early.
Figuring that waking up would be, well, complicated, I set two alarms. I needn’t have bothered—nervous energy and the trusty internal alarm clock effectively awakened me about an hour ahead of my schedule. I was early for registration and passed the time reading a little Hunter S. Thompson before facing the day. Once registration was behind me, it was off to a quick breakfast, then on to the first event of the day—the keynote.
Always Start Your Day with a Good Keynote
Tracy Futhey, VP and CIO for Information Technology at Duke, focused on the delicate balancing act involved in launching new initiatives, including the innovative iPod First Year Experience that provided iPods to about 75% of the freshman class (AY 2004). The portable devices were used in creative ways in more than 35 courses to gather information, help students review for quizzes, and provide a platform for playing back lectures. A curious project, to be sure, but one that seemed to work; it provided enhanced learning for students and new teaching modalities for interested faculty.
Surprising Facts
When we think about large research institutions, we (at least I) assume that such places have tight coordination of effort. That’s why I was a bit surprised and confused when faculty presenters from a MAJOR, WORLD-CLASS institution of research and higher learning candidly revealed that their university currently operates almost 30 different delivery platforms for distance learning, and rolls along with nearly 50 different email solutions on its vast campus. Who knew?
Blended Instruction Insights
An entertaining and informative session on what we would call hybrid instruction left me with the conclusion that we are actually some distance ahead of even major universities. The initiatives described by the team from UCLA were launched only after considerable preliminary work with college representatives at the provost, dean, and department chair levels. The classes developed and deployed were successful, at least based on initial analysis.
I found it curious that the developer’s choice of tools required that a separate quiz tool be implemented to accommodate the import of question sets. After having worked with both WebCT and Respondus, I’m convinced that I have a serious set of tools to confront most situations. I can’t really imagine going out to find bolt-ons. Of course, there is a tendency for groups to implement their own proprietary solutions. I haven’t quite figured this out, however. Perhaps the logic of it will come to me in the shower.
Save It—Don’t Throw It Away!
Terry Ryan of UCLA Library offered up some great ideas in her session entitled “Dynamic Models for Saving, Finding, and Reusing Learning Content.” She and her colleagues are busily developing protocols for archiving the information, learning objects, and even entire Web-based courses developed by UCLA faculty. The team first finds out if faculty are willing to share content, then they determine whether the content is, in fact, worth keeping (or legal to keep). Provided that all the signals are encouraging, the staff then works with appropriate faculty and departmental representatives to determine the best way to archive the resources. One compelling argument for placing such information in the hands of the library staff is that libraries are in the business of creating and maintaining repositories of information. Second, creating an accessible archive helps the academic community retrieve and reuse content in other courses. Seems like a viable labor saver, but there are plenty of questions that will require deeper reflection, including the best way to tag data for easy retrieval and whether to convert resources to some sort of standardized file format. More on this, perhaps tomorrow.
The Exhibit Hall: Opportunities for Spirited Adventure
I do so love wandering the exhibit hall floor during a technology conference. Because the sessions today were held at UCLA (far away from the conference hotel), I’ll be denied my bliss until sometime Tuesday afternoon. I look forward to learning about new technologies and registering for the chance to win free software. If all goes well, I’ll bring home some good things to share. At the very least, I will end up with a handsome collection of professionally-produced marketing materials.
It's getting late, and tomorrow will be busy.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Summertime: Time for new projects
This blog is inspired by a need to share news and information that may be of help to those involved in education, paraeducation, library/media assisting, and instructional technology. I hope to unearth some nice resources, share ideas from others, and provide a forum for some of my own crazy ideas. Probably most important, this blog gives me a chance to practice what I've been preaching for the last two years...it's time for the instructor to walk the walk. My experiences and (mis)adventures in instructional technology over the past 20 years should provide at least a modicum of entertainment for the gentle reader.
Besides, everyone needs a new project!
Besides, everyone needs a new project!
New Hardware...New Options
Grants are great. Just when you're sure that there's not enough money to drive innovation in your program, a pot of money materializes. Not every time, and certainly not with any degree of certainty, but just often enough to help maintain sanity and faith in humanity. Such was the case with a program that just helped us place five Dell SX 280's in our Education classroom. These desktops will help support our community college-based programs for library/media assistant students and inservice/preservice paraeducators. To supplement the systems and to demonstrate to the students that there are ways to get the functionality they crave without the expense usually associated with commercial software, we are outfitting the systems with open source software solutions from the The OpenCD (http://www.theopencd.org/) including Open Office, The Gimp, PDFCreator, and Firefox. Since many of our students either work or will be working in libraries and schools that lack significant financial support, commercial applications are not always an affordable choice.
One issue became clear as we were spec'ing and ordering these systems--USB mass storage is pretty much the personal storage unit of choice. We chose smaller hard drives and skipped the floppy option in order to maintain our CD/DVD-ROM functionality. Because of its small form factor, the SX doesn't have loads of space...so you make choices. While we'll probably have at least one USB flop drive around the shop somewhere, students will be encouraged to go USB. We spent some time agonizing over this decision, because many of our students seem to subsist on a week-to-week basis monetarily. In the end, the combination of better pricing for USB devices coupled with financial aid support for "required" class tools (books, paper, thumb drives...) made the decision a bit easier to bear. The flexibility and convenience will certainly outweigh most problems, and we're pretty excited about the move.
Check back periodically. I'll write about how we're leveraging the systems to deliver instruction and help our students be successful.
One issue became clear as we were spec'ing and ordering these systems--USB mass storage is pretty much the personal storage unit of choice. We chose smaller hard drives and skipped the floppy option in order to maintain our CD/DVD-ROM functionality. Because of its small form factor, the SX doesn't have loads of space...so you make choices. While we'll probably have at least one USB flop drive around the shop somewhere, students will be encouraged to go USB. We spent some time agonizing over this decision, because many of our students seem to subsist on a week-to-week basis monetarily. In the end, the combination of better pricing for USB devices coupled with financial aid support for "required" class tools (books, paper, thumb drives...) made the decision a bit easier to bear. The flexibility and convenience will certainly outweigh most problems, and we're pretty excited about the move.
Check back periodically. I'll write about how we're leveraging the systems to deliver instruction and help our students be successful.
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