Notes: Online Course Showcase- Nov. 24, 2010 hosted at the JIBC

 

Event web site

Focusing on “best” from an instructional design perspective:

1.    Best extended LMS: how do you extend your institutional LMS to create a well-designed online course? Or, do you have a best example of a course built outside of the LMS?

2.    Instructional Design: show your course that is your most creative instructional design or addressed a challenging teaching and learning context problem.

 

Organized by Tannis Morgan JIBC and Karen Belfer VCC

BCcampus helping to screencast to allow event to go beyond who can attend today

Thank you to JIBC for hosting.

[Notes on wiki - let us know if you have additions/corrections]

 

Part 1: Best Extended LMS

 

Ross Laird, Kwantlen

 

what course: Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts; series of courses on new/social media; students spend alot of time online; context Kwantlen is a new university so flexibility to try things

why: frustration with closed systems; current situation didn't allow for regular lives of students to be integrated with academic

 

how: Drupal content mgmt w Facebook/OpenID logins

- beauty of Drupal is you can post inside/out and control level with privacy and selected controls; export things easily

- openness is great but you can keep things private until ready to share---students really liked this

- can distinguish btw public/private spaces

- choose when you want notification on updates

- Drupal has many many options --"geekiness factor" - 7000 modules!

- always found something he wanted to do; options with Drupal

 

Hurdles: students who haven't used a computer - preference for using Word;causing problems; but only 5% of students

- Ross has mangled lots of things on Drupal, crashing and breaking things - Linux motto "if you break it you get to keep both pieces"!

- online components using Drupal; has to be cautious about not breaking things

Current course components:

• blog
• personal profile page
• RSS feed
• workspace
• file repository
• a contact page
• twitter
• group forum
• course forum

 

What worked: has great potential  to do all sorts of things "like a machine shop"

What didn't work: "geekiness factor" of using Drupal might not work for people

Demo: Showing of public posts and when you log in more content is shown (public and private comments and post dates)

Questions: Is there live monitoring feeds? --Yes, every student can stream of activity of the course they are enrolled in; recent tweets; hash tags fro every course; Ross tells students every time they visit site need to do 2 things; only works if people contribute and keep site active

How long did it take to setup the site? 15 mins

Do you find the openness sometimes not a good thing? Yes..reason why Facebook is not pulled in so as an instructor doesn't want to deal with the issues re: personal privacy

How does it affect the learning/teaching experience?  Students say it deepens experience; not separating life from school; can build a profile which they need to further their career/life pursuits. As instructor this is more efficient; enables him to immerse himself in culture of students; believes digital media at present is a larger force than education and is shaping education

 

 

Rosamaria Fong,  Jimmy Lowe BCIT

 

what course and why: Chemistry  0011 -students needing the foundational course; especially important for ESL students; new students

Background: typically offered as face to face  class; 3 hr lecture; 1 hr tutorial and 2 hr labs

Most students just want to get through and do just enough to pass; motivation is an issue; Chem 11 taught in 15 weeks

1993-95 traditional classroom delivery and limited audio visual

1996-98 static web site - accessing site sometimes a problem but can monitor student usage

2000-09 more connectivity but web components adding to the workload; noticed students late with deadlines

Moved from static web site to a Wordpress site, extended features:

- information in Mediawiki

- communication in Wordpress site

- twitter integrated

- Polldaddy - allowing polls online

Creation of a Student-centred web site

 

What worked: can post ahead; does all the linking; notes in wiki are searchable; students can follow course in twitter; polls allow for anonymous voting

Results: 40 students and more students staying with the course and doing better in their assignments and test scores improving as show by stats

32 student feedback: 24 subscribe to RSS; don't want to make it mandatory; not every likes/wants twitter; suggested integrate Facebook

Poll on phones: 33 students - many carrying smart phones now

Mobile devices is the trend and we need to design with this in mind

Announcement re: Adobe event at BCIT Wed. Dec 1st (mobile learning) http://groups.adobe.com/group/190

 

Jeff Miller, UBC

 

Course: ETEC522 with David Vogt and David Porter ---Venturing beyond the LMS

Pushing beyond the CMS - challenge students to explore different technologies and look at trends; seek ventures; be entrepreneurial and using technologies for a business; to be intrapreneurial

students all over the world; mixed audience; started inside of WebCT;

 

As course leaders need to model this intrapreneurship - Crowdtrust (tag association)

students at first found it highly disruptive; students were comfortable with threaded discussions so shift to extend outside

 

Wordpress- good for personal communication  with constraints;easy space but not sophisticated for conversations and not easy for site management

Students wanted backchannel communication no control over way students communicate with each other

BuddyPress (WordPress extension added)

 

What does it mean to go beyond the LMS? Students are doing things everywhere and sometimes endurance/stability/longevity not there e.g. Ning work disappeared

How do you bring a social media stack inside? UBC has Mediawiki and WordPress; can control servers so info not lost

 

Course Outline:

-Student Bootcamp: looking at markets (4 wks)

-Research into emerging markets- students do this in teams and present e.g. mobile technologies, social technologies, open source technologies (8wks)

-Venture Forum (1wk)

 

Design challenge: how do we keep it bounded so it is coherent and has endurance/lasts over time

Success in that the end of the course result was 8 resources on the topics

• Creating community in social media
• info overload; training students to use authoring tools (keyword tagging and categories
• pre-wired and thematic structures emerge as students work thr course modules
• Community Knowldege Building - scholarship in public - feeding  a collective space ( licensed as Creative Commons); need to be in the course to participate but everyone can see what is posted
• Negotiating public and private spaces important (discuss with students)
• need to introduce some structure to help students navigate

What is an authentic way to have student analyze these resources and open source resources

Note: Discussions are in WordPress; Mediawiki hosts resources

Students cite each other as "peer scholars"

 

Summary what they are doing at UBC:

• leading edge; building infrastructure to support
• build safe and enduring environment
• negotiating public and private learning spaces
• faculty development

 

Jerome Rodriguez and Rosamaria Fong, JIBC

 

What course: ICS 300 Online - common language in critical incidence

why: Students are first responders and can't attend f2f in many cases; Different approach supported by InukShuk funding with requirement that 60% of course has to be freely available as resources

Partner with RCMP

Components: digital version of ICS300 classroom materials; still & videos; interactive exercises (scenarios); interactive maps; ref guides; forms smart phone glossary application; publicly accessible digital object repository

 

Typically computers are locked down in workplace of students but everyone has smart phone

Using maps, pictures, charts to present information; visuals and colour; "forms carousel"

Partnering on creation of video/photos (as partner RCMP can use freely)

Digital Object Repository for JIBC built on Drupal

Very easy to use - Over 600 people using the site and using the objects

Project was done over 1 1/2 yr; Budget: $25K JIBC; $25K RCMP; $85K inukshuk funding

Great collaboration - project mgmt key

Lessons Learned & Things to consider:

• How "open" is "open"? - totally open & drives usage
• Multimedia Production - app video still dvmpt; takes longer to do video give yourself lots of time
• Use of Technology - need to be mindful of platforms and what students are wanting; produce for tmro
• Project Mgmt - good to have someone not immersed in the content but just really good at PM; deal with a large group of people
• Leveraging Openness -learned to take things on a different path re: development and view open technology

 

Questions/Discussions of panel of presenters:

If you are going to do this again would you develop for just mobile devices?

- JIBC perspective Wouldn't design completely for mobile as need  context of academic course/credentialing;

-some students participating with mobile now and works well; some courses lend well to an app

- Wired article by Chris Anderson say "web is dead"

 

-Choosing a tool for longevity is working against us- tools are changing so rapidly so need to focus on principles (teaching/learning); tools need to subsumed by why we are using them

- If you find yourself saying we really need use X (whatever tool)...stop; More important to ask what you want students to do. (don't focus on the tool)

Digital Literacy Practices - "divide" - ways that youth are using media; our use of social media in education - are we being authentic (see work by Dana Boyd; Mimi Ito)

Note: accessibility issues (persons with disabilities) with web 2.0

- Open source software & bridging the have and have nots

-Too early for answers yet pay attention to the conversations about social media and use in education

 

Advice to Educators not on board?

-Academy not good for getting on-board with use of social media - Reference to Marshall McLaren; learning not happening just in classrooms

-movement twds "geek culture"; uncomfortable to move in a different culture at first; what you can do to enter this culture of technology and how See:  rosslaird.com

-Youth move from one thing to the next quickly;we need to approach with open mind; open heart and be responsive

 

How are students managing their own learning and feel about it? We are in the midst of a learning culture change (technology change is rapid; education change is slow)

-Education is slow to change (Medicine is slowest to change); we want to jumpstart change but change happens over time

- Jeff experience is that 1/3 of students feel free; 1/3 aren't sure; 1/3 say what are you doing?

-when asked to extend beyond LMS university should be like kindergarten; work should be displayed on the wall; we need sites of practice

 

Note: Better to say "maker culture" not "geek"-- Clarification of the term "geek" and what it means- concentration over conformity; knowledge and imagination; This is not to be confused with "nerd" (science)

 

Issue of privacy/appropriateness of posts

-Some topics not appropriate to be discussed in public; conversations/process are private; assignments are public (posting is an act of publication)

- Need to be sure of clarity (in a discussion with students) on what is/is not appropriate to be posting/sharing; There will always be some people who will not get it!

 

Part 2

Chris Crowley, Sunah Cho, Josefina Rosado, UBC

Brian Wilson, UBC

Jane Slemon, Emily Carr

Rob Chong, JIBC

Rosario Passos, Paul Krampitz,  BCIT

 

Part 3

Karen Belfer, VCC and Tannis Morgan, JIBC