dayle on OET

1. The plan

2. The prototype (email me for a login or tour if you would like to see it, Ted.. I have sent you the login details)

3. The report

1. This blog as well as contributions to the course discussion board, blog and vc sessions that can be found in the LMS course.

2. Comments made by ME on other classmates blogs

3. My tutorial on Discussion Forums, Blogs and Wikis… What’s the Difference?

4. I have put together my report for Assignment 1 below using some software called AuthorPointLite (I uploaded it to the LMS ‘Manage Content’ area so if you have problems loging in or accessing let me know and I’ll move it).

In a similar vein to Tay’s nice post about web 1.0 – web 2.0 these are some general trends that I have seen
(some of them not so new now…)

• linear information (books)
  -> searchable linkable information (internet)
  -> targeted presentation of information (last-fm, stumbleupon, google ads, amazon suggestions)
• this generally seems to make finding information quicker and easier. The internet is becoming more sophisticated,
  from flat html
  -> separating format from structure with css,
  -> to giving meaning to structure with xml definitions.
• read
  -> read/write/comment
• broadcast media (newspaper, tv, movies, radio)
  -> on-demand media (torrents, tivo, foxtel iq, online radio, rss, podcasts, lectures)
• perhaps this has made us somewhat impatient but it has enabled great flexibility.
• There is far less need to stick to strict timetables; you don’t have to be in a certain place at a certain time anymore, you really can do most things when you feel like it.
• Students desire flexibility in education as they do in their lives. Most students are working, some have families, some are elsewhere in the world and others are professionals continuing their education.
• information moving out of the lab/office/computer/internet/library and
  -> into the environment
• mobile everything
• minature everything
• augmented reality (http://youtube.com/watch?v=FMJwURqpFWs) – i cant wait for this to become mainstream!!!
• google model for IT support – tech stops (http://psychohistory.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/life-at-google-the-microsoftieperspective/)
• a general move toward
  -> social, interactive and immersive media – social networking sites, mmog’s, virtual worlds

My online tutorial is now available, just click the image to access. I was initially just going to do a camtasia walkthrough on how to set up a wiki in the LMS we use at Adelaide Uni but I thought this might me more relevant to this group. My initial camtasia walkthrough is in there too.

I’d appreciate any comments or feedback.

Gartner’s Hype Cycle describes the phenomenon of ‘hype’ that often occurs around new technologies these days (and in the past I suspect).

This graph shows the 5 stages identified and you can read more on the Gartner website.

Lecture recordings look like they may follow this hype model and have been causing a bit of a stir in the media over recent weeks, and years. I was discussing the backlash we receive from lecturers against providing recordings to students with a colleague and she made the point that most of the arguments presented are the same as when PowerPoint was the latest thing. Lecturers said that using powerpoint and providing them to students would mean students would not attend class, that they wouldn’t learn, that it was ‘not a good representation’ of their lecture. These are the same arguments we hear against recording lectures. On the other hand, you get those who are riding up the technology hype curve and think that recording lectures is going to revolutionise education and change the world, because if everyone can watch a lecture through the internet.. then of course everyone can learn everything.

I suspect the reality, as with most technology, is that it doesn’t matter so much what the tool is, it’s how you use it… as a teacher, and as a student. If a lecture sucks, then it still sucks when it’s recorded. But if a lecture is great, then it’s really useful to be able to watch it if you missed it, and watch it again and again if you need to. Is this issue is about how to provide a good learning experience or about how to force students to attend lectures?

In the article by Ashley Deal on podcasting posted in session 3 of the course notes outlines some of the research that has been done on the impact of recording lectures. There is also another article by the same author that specifically looks at lecture webcasting. I found both articles to be well researched and written and give a good overview of the issues involved. I have been involved with lecture recording at my uni since 2003 and many of the arguments for and against are familiar. For the most part, the results that we got from a 2006 staff and student evaluation of our service are similar to other institutions experiences. In my experience the students really want this service and the staff are often opposed to providing it. There is certainly still a lot of research to be done. This semester I am working with a group of Media Research Methods student on producing some potential research proposals.

Some of the questions I would like to further research are:

Effects on attendance?
- anecdotally,  fear about lack of attendance is the main objection by staff for recording lectures. Most research that I’ve read finds that attendance levels generally don’t drop significantly when staff record lectures. But would this change if we had more examples?
- if students dont attend then
- why dont they attend
- do they listen to the recordings
- if students replace attending with listening to recordings, what happens to their grades

Effects on educational outcomes?
- there is currently little evidence to say that there is any effect on educational outcomes either positive or negative from recording lectures
- what about efficiency? can students study more efficiently with lecture recordings available
- impact on particular student groups
- we have 30% international students and even more from NESB
- students with disabilities who used to rely on notetakers
- what is the impact on weak students versus high achievers

Impact on staff workload?
- does it increase the workload because of associated administration tasks
- does it decrease the amount of student inquiries and if so is this a good thing?

What are the barriers for uptake?
- why won’t some staff even trial recording their lectures?
- on the support side we are at a point where the service provided is stretched to it’s limit in terms of resources
- what is the critical mass needed for propper funding to be provided and for it to become a core service

How do students use the recordings?
- instead of attending, for revision.. etc (we do have some data on this)
- what mode is most effective – audio, video, mp3, narrated powerpoint etc and what delivery is best – streamed, download, pushed (rss/itunes)
- how do students access – on computer or portable device (currently most students prefer to access on their computer, NOT on there ipod)

Does the impact differ depending on
–discipline, class size, lecturers style, student learning style etc?

What should be the future direction? What do staff and students want?

Other?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

more…

Podcasting.  A Teaching With Technology White Paper.
Lecture Webcasting. A Teaching With Technology White Paper.
Ashley Deal, Carnegie Mellon University 2007

Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Higher Education
Jan-Martin Lowendahl, Michael Zastrocky, Marti Harris, Nikos Drakos, Whit Andrews, Rita E.
Knox, Leslie Fiering, Jim Tully, Claudio Da Rold, Carol Rozwell, Matthew W. Cain, David Gootzit,
Ray Valdes

Socrates in Earpods: The Ipodification of Education
Tara Brabazon, Fast Capitalism, 2.1, September 2006.

Lectopia Resource Centre

Blog vs Wiki vs Discussion Board

I think discussion boards, blogs and wikis all have their roles to play in a learning community and depending on the task or objective one may be better than the other in certain circumstances. I put together this table a while ago trying to define the differences…

Note – all three can include multimedia of all kinds and shouldn’t be thought of as purely text

I’m trying to make it clearer to people who are not familiar with these technologies what the differences are, how am I doing? I plan on making this a bit more visual and pretty.

For those who can think of way more lms cons than I can (see my previous post), you’ll probably also like these articles from the growing EDUPUNK community. Personally, I have a love hate relationship with the term and atm it makes me physically cringe to type it, but the articles are interesting and I know you’ll like these links… on the edupunk DIY philosophy =)

“Jim Groom recently coined the term “edupunk” to refer to a scrappy, DIY spirit in some sectors of educational technology.”
http://www.blogher.com/introducing-edupunk
by Leslie Madsen Brooks

“edupunk is student-centered, resourceful, teacher- or community-created rather than corporate-sourced, and underwritten by a progressive political stance.”
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44760
by Stephen Downes

“On thinking about edupunk, it strikes me that I’ve been drawn to a group of people that have embodied it for years. People that are open. That prefer to DIY. People who share, remix, mashup, and generally operate in the spirit of what is now being called edupunk. Here are my edupunk heroes…”
http://www.darcynorman.net/2008/05/29/my-edupunk-heroes/
by D’arcy Norman

LMS (learning management systems) usually consist of a space and set of tools where a subject can have an online presence. The most common LMSs that are used in Australia that I know of are Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai, Janison and Desire2Learn. These products generally offer tools such as:

• student and teacher roles with secure login and authentication
• a defined space for course materials and documents to be published online
• communication tools like discussion boards/email/announcements
• collaboration tools such as group settings/online chat/blog/wiki
• assessment tools such as quizzes, assignment submission, surveys
• gradebook and tracking tools

I think of the LMS as the home of a course and the place for students to access all their subjects. You can use other tools within your course that are external to the LMS (e.g. externally hosted blogs like edublogs, or other tools like skype or google docs, and of course links to other related website, libraries and resources) but the LMS is generally the launch point for all these tools.

So what’s the alternative to using an LMS? I guess it’s DIY style utilising the 1000′s of tools available to use via the web. Personally, I think it’s best to have a lms that is the same for students and staff regardless of their discipline or level, however I DONT think that the LMS should RULE our learning and teaching lives. A combination of tools from the LMS and others should be used depending on the objectives of the course.

1. Online Office Hours - this is the no.1 tip as it seems to be the most helpful from both a student and teacher perspective.

Establishing your ‘online office hours’ as a teacher means posting the times/days that you will be logging in and checking and responding to the discussion board. This manages expectations and provides a clear time frame when students can expect to see a reply. It means as a student you don’t need to login every five minutes only to be disappointed that there is no response to your question/post.

2. Stop Responding to Email – Insist that students post all course related questions to the discussion board rather than emailing you.

If a student then emails you anyway, copy and paste their question to the discussion board and post your reply there, then send them a link to view the response online. Eventually they will come on board. This saves you responding to multiple emails on the same question, and also provides extra information to all students rather than just the ones who ask lots of questions. In this way, the discussion board can be a time saver especially if you teach large classes

3. Assessment Drives Learning – whether you like it or not, if you attach marks to the discussion board then you will get more participation and better quality discussion. If you don’t want to assign marks to the discussion board, there has to be some other motivation or reward for students to use it… the motivation might be that the questions/topics posed are very interesting or controversial and the reward might be the social interaction and satisfaction from contributing. Ultimately though, marks are going to outweigh anything else from a students perspective.

Please comment with your top tips =)