It's All About the Learning

So, maybe we should feed em?

2009-04-05T10:43:00.002-04:00

Have been enamored lately with reading research related to learning and the brain (I think this latest interest began with The Brain Rules, to which I refer constantly). [Link]

Anyway, prior research indicates that flavenols, found in cocoa beans, appear to increase blood flow to the brain. Taking that a step further is this exploratory study from England that fed flavenols to students in an experimental group and then asked both they and a control group to do some math calculations (counting backwards by 3's for example). Turns out that the flavenol enhanced group were less tired and more adept than the control. [Link]

So, maybe if we come to class armed with Snickers bars? Nah .. we would run into peanut allergies for sure.

Online learning paradigm

2009-03-08T14:14:00.004-04:00

I know .. I haven't actually posted here in a while, letting my Facebook status upgrades keep me current.

However, I am compelled this morning to ruminate about an apparent paradox described by the following two recent headlines from various RSS sources to which I subscribe:

Online students learned more than peers in traditional lecture format [Link]
This is the most recent iteration of this story to come to my attention. I have seen it in several other venues, and have received links to it from folks who know I would be interested in it. Basically, it describes a longitudinal study which resulted in a conclusion that students learned better from audio such as lectures posted at i-Tunes U than from just attending class.
AND
Professors Regard Online Instruction as Less Effective Than Classroom Learning [Link, subscription required]
This, from February 10, 2009 "Today's News" at the Chronicle for Higher Education. The article reports the results of a survey of 10,000 faculty members at 67 public universities.
Instructors' extra time and effort aren't being rewarded financially or professionally, and what's more, online education doesn't translate into better learning outcomes, said respondents in the faculty survey.

While 30 percent of faculty members surveyed felt that online courses provided superior or equivalent learning outcomes when compared with face-to-face classes, 70 percent felt that learning outcomes were inferior. Among faculty members who have taught online courses, that figure drops to 48 percent, but that still represents a "substantial minority" holding a negative view

Ummm .. ok. Does this leave anyone else scratching their head and saying "huh"?

(Image: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/people/people.htm)

SCC Learning Tech's Podcast

2009-02-22T18:11:00.001-05:00

Check out our new podcast from our SCC Learning Tech team. We're shooting for weekly, so be sure and subscribe there.

http://scclearntech.blogspot.com

Enjoy!
Jana

Playing with Factbook

2009-01-03T16:05:00.001-05:00

Passages 2008 presentation

2008-11-07T07:45:00.000-05:00

Web 2.0 for Passages 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2.0 stanly)

I have to teach myself - Complaint or Praise?

2008-10-19T07:33:00.012-04:00

Perception is everything, isn't it? (In this picture, you can see both a beautiful young girl and an old hag, depending on your point of view).

To prepare for a presentation we gave in Raleigh last week, I had occasion to interview some of our students just finishing our "Student Success" class. The goal of the class, obviously, is to help our new students prepare for college work. We have revamped this class (which was the topic of our presentation) so that, hopefully, students work not only at learning the content, but at learning to learn and at preparing to do so in an online environment. The course is completed from our online LMS, although students can opt for a facilitated environment to help them with the technology. The content is designed to provide choices of pathways towards mastering the various skills identified as necessary for college success and includes the requirement for some reflection and student self-direction.

One of the students I interviewed indicated she didn't like online classes because, in her words:

I have to teach myself!

I find that such an amazing statement, particularly within the context of NOT liking an environment designed to help students become independent life-long learners.

Teach yourself? Of course you have to teach yourself! How else can you learn? You can be told, warned, coerced, lectured, spoon-fed, praised, criticized, .....

BUT

Until you self-illuminate the "light bulb", you have not learned.

What the student was saying, I think, was not "I have to teach myself", but more probably:

I don't know how to self-direct my learning. I only know how to memorize what someone else tells me is important about a subject. I am unfamiliar with non-passively creating knowledge and do not like the uncomfortable feeling it imposes. I much prefer the safety of having someone else tell me what I need to know.

We educators propagate this resistance. As David Cohen pointed out in his June '08 essay in the Oxford Review of Education, teachers are experts and, as such, generally present concepts from their expert perspective. They are far past remembering the fumbling and frustration of the learning years, and so tend to bundle their expertise in complete packages that a learner cannot possibly emmulate. Worse, Cohen does not offer an easy way out of this paradox (emphasis and spacing added):

The lack of many efforts to thoughtfully unpack knowledge is no simple oversight, easily remedied with a bit of supplementary instruction. For such teaching cuts against the ways that we learn and hold knowledge, and the value that we attach to masterful performance.

Much deliberate re-learning would be required before most good performers in any field would be able to understand novice work and appreciate the paths to competent performance.

Much study of learning would be required in order to recover the elements of early and inexpert performance, and to learn what instructional approaches might help novices to improve.

Much analysis of knowledge and of teaching would be required to understand how knowledge might be unpacked and extended so as to offer learners greater access to it.

Many opportunities to cultivate intellectual courage and adventurousness would be required if teachers were to learn to extend knowledge in ways that increased uncertainty and multiplied the difficulty of instruction. (p. 374)
(Cohen, David K.(2008)'Knowledge and teaching',Oxford Review of Education,34:3, 357-378)

It sounds like we all better get busy! We've got a lot of work to do and much to teach ourselves.

Joining Work Literacy 6 week event

2008-09-28T20:00:00.001-04:00

View my page on Work Literacy

Just joined College 2.0 at Ning

2008-09-27T09:28:00.001-04:00

View my page on College 2.0

EdD comps and the state capitals?

2008-08-03T11:08:00.005-04:00

I have just finished the course work for an EdD in Community College Leadership. It has required 4 years, about $16,000, uncounted hours away from family and hobby pursuits, and has been an absolutely fascinating journey. I am looking forward with great anticipation to applying what I have learned and learned to reflect on while I complete the dissertation process. I will be delighted to have earned the prestige marks that will follow my name.

Having said all that, I am less than enthusiastic over the latest hoop we had to jump in order to pursue this dream. We just completed a comprehensive, closed-book, six-hour essay exam, the outcome of which is unknown to us, and can remain so for another month. We can't figure out the rationale for this exam as it obfuscates the very curriculum from which we learned; a curriculum based on cohort discussion, learn-to-learn contextual activities, and constant research, all framed by adult-learning theory. Being forced to reverse course, spend a month memorizing authors and quotes and dates turned my brain into oatmeal and my stress level up to overload. It was one of the worst experiences in my professional life and one I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Dr. Tony Karrar had an interesting post following up on his concept of being knowledgeable vs being knowledge-able (sure wish I had said that!). [Link to full post] Entitled Brain 2.0, Dr. Karrar posits that he would rather his children know when it would be important to know the capital of a state and what they would need to know about it than to have them memorize the 50 state capitals.

I had not thought about my recent experience with the EdD comps in context of the 50 state capitals memory exercise, but suspect they have a lot in common. I had to memorize the capitals, I bet you did, if you went to elementary school in the US, and apparently today's young folks still have to do that. What are the odds that the form and content of the exam I was just tortured with was required because it always has been required, just as, apparently is the 50 state capital memorization activity? Has anyone, with either example, looked to see what is being assessed and correcting where it is the wrong thing? I doubt it.

Karrar's blog posting moved from his children to a reflection on one of his college professors who tested on details rather than critical analysis. Specifically, he recalled the questions:

(1) "What was the population in England in 1800?" (2) "What percentage worked in agriculture?". I actually knew the first part, because I believe that fully 10% of the population had moved to London which had grown to 1M people. (Now these facts could be completely wrong some 25 years later, but that's besides the point.) I got part 1 correct. The second part I had to guess between 25% and 35% or some such thing and still don't remember.

I could have told the professor about the move towards more urban and away from agriculture, but he didn't ask that. He didn't know if I knew the important concepts that he stressed in the class. No he had to ask a ridiculous memorization question.

I guess that says it. What if we all took a look at every assessment we force on our students and try to determine if each gets to the meat of what the student knows of if we, too, are guilty of asking "a ridiculous memorization question"?

Is it really the method?

2008-07-03T14:57:00.002-04:00

Clive on Learning is a blog I read [Link to blog] and there recently found what I might describe as a paradox in his postings of June 26. First off, Clive humorously retells some "Now I've heard it all" stories gleaned from IT trainers he recently encountered. [Link to posting]. This posting brought lots of comment of ridiculous IT adventures with hapless newbies; the kinds we have all seen. (CD drives used for coffee cup holders comes to mind).

So, where's the paradox? Well, that same day brought a posting entitled "It's the method, not the medium" where the gist was that e-learning efficacy depends on the instructional approach rather than on the delivery platform. [Link to posting]

These two posts, though not intentionally connected, made me think about the technologically challenged folks described in the first who, for various reasons, enroll in our online classes. How can we possibly expect them to succeed in a technologically driven platform, no matter what the instructional pedagogy, as discussed in the second? Someone who thinks a mouse is a floor pedal with too short a cord has been set up to fail in e-learning, don't you think?

Surely, the medium, just by virtue of its inherent learning curve can be intimidating enough to have an impact on the success of an e-learner. While not insurmountable, I think this combination of Clive's blog posts serves as a reminder to us that, while it very well may be the "method and not the medium" we must be vigilant to fulfill our educational duty to make sure our learners know how to use the medium BEFORE we ask them to learn the content.

All lecture, all the time?

2008-05-31T14:06:00.007-04:00

OMG, it has been more than a MONTH since posting. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, busy, busy, busy, mutter, mutter.

Reading some terrific blogging over at "The Clutter Museum", a new find for me. [Link to blog]. The post that has driven me back here to my own blog is the piece of trillwing's May 24 entry entitled "The tyranny of content" [Link to full entry].

Specifically resonating for me are her comments related to perceptions held by many higher-ed instructors that classroom knowledge transfer via all lecture, all the time is the preferred instructional approach. Small group discussion and other such activities are raise eyebrows and are thought of as new and innovative and relegated to alternative, or "if I have time", activities. Specifically, the PhD Mom, who works with faculty to student center their focus, said:

Tens of thousands of people come through this building every day. And yet I rarely hear student voices, except during passing periods between classes. The talking emanates mostly from foreign-language classes, where students are hunched over textbooks or workbooks, mumbling through exercises or conversing haltingly with their classmates.

I was naive. I was shocked to learn that people from across the disciplines still lecture all the time. And I pointed this out to the science faculty at the talk--that they had it backward. That lecturing should be considered the "alternative" method, and interactivity and active learning should constitute our modus operandi.

She coined the phrase, "tyranny of content" in exhorting some science faculty to focus on learning to learn rather than trying to cover all the content. This strikes so close to home. How many of our faculty, no matter the discipline, feel they must mention all points of content, be it from text book, web site, etc.? Instead of helping students learn how to extrapolate important concepts from readings, postings, videos, or other resources, our faculty think they must TELL them the important points or they will miss them.

I know there is something to this mindset as our students have become passive and used to someone telling them what is important. That is regrettable. But must we perpetuate the error? What if we decide to talk no longer than 15 minutes per hour of learning? We would, at first, befuddle our students. But once they were empowered to take responsibility for their own learning, I'm betting we would drastically improve that learning, well beyond the assessment and the semester.

I'm afraid I have echoed the thoughts voiced by George Siemens (who's blog, elearnspace, I never miss), who said in a recent posting:

Educators are concerned about student use of technology in the classroom. Laptops are an easy exit point from a lecture. A few years ago, I upset a series of colleagues when I stated something to the effect of "if students are distracted in your class, the issue is not with them, but with you as a teacher". [Link to full posting].

I wonder if we would see more benefit to technology in the classroom if we stopped lecturing and started facilitating its use for learning.

My CD Cover Meme

2008-04-27T14:24:00.004-04:00

Here is my meme for a CD cover, following the instructions on David Davies' blog (Happy birthday, by the way :-) [Link go David Davies blog], which I found upon my reading of the can't miss Stephen Downes' Half an Hour blog [Link to Half an Hour]:

A graphical designer I am NOT, but check out the Flickr group of CD cover memes. [Link to Flickr CD cover memes]. Now THAT's pretty awesome. AND, look at how some instructors are using this group. Obviously they have assigned the meme as a learning activity. I'm betting it is a pretty popular assignment, at that!

Collaboration - why don't we teach it?

2008-04-24T20:40:00.002-04:00

Crunch time here so very little blogging time. Besides, I must say that trying to whip your dissertation proposal into shape leaves little incentive for more writing.

This terrific white paper on collaboration, though, caught my eye. [Link to full article at Anecdote]. Actually, what caught my eye was this sentence in the introduction:

Today we all need to be collaboration superstars. The trouble is, collaboration is a skill and set of practices we are rarely taught.

Now, as a "teacher" of long standing and a concerned community college professional, that concerns me. Why are we "rarely taught" to collaborate? As discussed in this white paper, tomorrow's workers will need to collaborate as never before. And, sheesh .. aren't these new millennial gensters supposed to be master collaborators to the exclusion of any interest in one-on-one discussion?

Is it possible that formal educational didactic environments remove natural instincts for collaboration in favor of "group work" that most people I know claim to hate. Maybe our formal learning "group work" needs to start with teaching our students HOW to function in those groups; teach them HOW to collaborate. Consensus building, constructive evaluation, evolving leadership all are components that would serve our students well.

Four items per lesson

2008-03-29T14:46:00.002-04:00

Four items per lesson .. or so says Dr Itiel Dror, a scientist at the School of Psychology, university of Southampton, in a presentation at a recent conference summarized by the British Computer Association [Link to Full Article]

Four items! That's a give or take number depending on the lesson content, but, according to Dror:

We are a machine with limited resources. We have limited information processing capacity. So when you design training, you need to think about which parts of the brain you are targeting. You need to make sure learning goes into modules to do with the memory. You can spread learning load over different modules to increase the amount of information that can be processed.

Some of his examples are old friends from adult learning theory. For example, lessons should be planned around learner prior knowledge, "a context with which the learner is familiar". Other examples, such as illuminating contrasts among items as a memory tool, are common sense to many of us.

His best advice, IMHO:

Focus on the learner, not on the material

Ah .. now therein lies the rub, don't you think? How many syllabii have you seen with learning objectives based on pacing or other content oriented features? (I have to cover this much of the book today). I'm afraid there are too many classes conducted from this perspective and, worse, I'm afraid the objectives do not drive the class anyway. What if we each took time to help our students identify the real take-aways based on the knowledge they already bring to the table?

Honest .. I couldn't help myself .. the computer made me cheat!

2008-03-02T13:27:00.005-05:00

mmmm hmmm [she says, noncommitally]. I first read about this posting to a blog called "Research Digest" from the "The British Psychology Society" [link to that full text] from George Siemens' wonderful elearnspace blog which is one of my "can't miss" subscribed blogs. [link to full post on elearnspace].

Basically, according to the BPS blog, students were asked to take computerized tests where they were told that there was a glitch in the testing program that displayed the answers to the test questions and were given instructions on how to avoid having that happen. Before testing began, the treatment group read about deterministic argument that postulates human free will is a myth, an "illusion" as they say on the blog, and that the students (presumably human) thus had no control over their actions or decisions.

You guessed it. The treatment group were found to be more likely to cheat than those who had not read the material about determinism. A second, similar experiment where students were exposed to information arguing for the concept, against, and neutrally and were then asked to self-evaluate a test is also described, and again, those who read arguments that we really have no self-will were more likely to cheat.

The researchers say the significance here is:

If exposure to deterministic messages increases the likelihood of unethical actions, then identifying approaches for insulating the public against this danger becomes imperative.

Yikes! I hear so much about cheating students, particularly in online classes, and I have always thought one of the main reasons was because we put so much pressure on the grading process and so little on actual learning assessment. But heck, maybe all we have to do is insert anti-deterministic literature before every quiz and test to solve the cheating process

Nah .. I still think it's the stress!

Teaching Millennials

2008-02-09T13:56:00.000-05:00

The instructional areas of our community college are just starting to be exposed to the "Millennial Generation" and are very perplexed by what they see. Our faculty senate just sent a letter to our compatriots in other community colleges in our state to see if they have developed any answers to "problems" like:

"apathy with classroom participation and discussion lack of responsibility for outside assignments lack of etiquette toward instructors/students disregard of proper cell phone use".

Our vice-president of instruction pointed to this You-Tube video:

Her take was that those of us who are members of the "Baby Boomer" generation have forgotten that we were probably the most disrespectful, rabble rousing, standards changing bunch in a long time and that our teachers MUST have had to change things to accommodate our learning needs.

We have conversed extensively about the traits of this new generation, but it doesn't seem to have an impact with us as we continually try to "teach" using the techniques we learn best with, rather than those preferred by these new learners.
I ran across this comparison recently in an Eric document that illuminated these differences for me.

(Kiesa, A., Orlowski, A. P., Levine, P., Both, D., Kirby, E. H., Lopez, M. H., et al. (2007). Millennials talk politics: A study of college student political engagement: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)).

Flat classroom project

2008-01-26T11:06:00.000-05:00

I just read about the "Flat Classroom Project" in the August 2007, Learning and Leading with Technology [Link to full text - pdf file] and am more than wowed! I think I am green with envy, glowing with admiration, and anxious to get to know these two women as we obviously share common pedagogical beliefs.

To summarize, international educator, Julie Lindsay, currently in Qatar, and Georgia, USA high school teacher and EduBlog award winner, Vicki Davis, have teamed up and implemented the Flat Classroom Project in reaction to Tom Friedman's "The World is Flat". The project paired geographically separated international students and had them investigate one of the precepts of the the Friedman book as a function of their own perspectives. The instructors served as facilitators, and the learning was documented via video and wiki. Now, how cool is that?

This project has reinforced our belief that learning takes place in many different ways, times, and places. It also shows us that the single-classroom research that emphasizes the effectiveness of collaborative learning, genuine assessment, and project-based learning can occur when students have partners that are never in class at the same time. Additionally, social learning research has shown us that the sociability of online learning combined with interaction can help promote understanding. (p. 28)

In addition to wikis, the project utilized synchronous and asynchronous tools, including many Web2.0 applications. As noted in the article, they have plans for future projects where they think an implementation of Elluminate as a student final project summit would add to the benefits.

An instructional environment such as this would be a phenomenal opportunity for our community college students, many of whom have never traveled outside their area. We strive to help them incorporate a respect for diversity, but there is little context for them. An international project could certainly help with this.

It's all about the learning - What I learned in 2007

2007-12-30T09:40:00.000-05:00

Happy 2008! Gosh, I love the new year time as it truly does offer each of us a fresh new start.

The Big Question on the Learning Circuits blog of which I am a shameless lurker asks what we learned in 2007 [Link to full text]. For someone who may be addicted to learning, you would think that would be an easy question to answer. But .... maybe if I categorize?

I completed 24 hours towards my EdD at Western Carolina in 2007. What did I learn? A ton about higher ed programming and leadership and research. I integrate concepts from school into my job every day, and probably, for me, the most important tidbit is that a dedication to our mission puts students and learning first, but is all too rare, even for idealistic educators at community colleges. I've learned I am definitely an outlier, usually finding the status quo to be an unacceptable alternative for any solution, and becoming more impatient with the lack of andragogy-based instruction in higher ed. Most surprisingly, I learned that instructors of adults trained in the shadow of Knowles and his counter-parts, tend to be extremely resistant to adoption of said andragogy-based instruction!

I assisted 46 different community college faculty to adopt or improve their use of technology as an instructional tool. My involvement ranged from training folks to use their e-mail program to co-authoring media-rich online classes. What did I learn? Without doubt, I learned that people embrace change reluctantly and only when they foresee a benefit to themselves. On the other hand, I learned to break down the process of change to extremely small steps, and found that resistance eased and, in many cases, innovation ensued. I also learned that effective seated-class instructors fear the loss of interaction and "light-bulb" moments in moving their classes to an online environment. I learned, however, that as long as I didn't try to boilerplate a solution, these same instructors found much joy in collaborating with me to develop individualized, media-rich online classes to which they point with pride.

On a personal note, I learned how much smaller the world seems without my dad and my brother-in-law, Cliff, both of whom we lost in July. I learned the value of international travel, visiting Europe twice and Mexico once. I learned so much on these trips that I join one of my professors in the belief that all students at our community colleges should get a passport and be offered myriad ways to use it.

OK .. enough is enough. I really enjoyed reading what others learned as linked from the Big Question and hope this adds something to the conversation.

Happy New Year and all the best in 2008!

Generating online discussion

2007-12-19T14:41:00.000-05:00

Wow! It has been a while! Time just gets away from you when your plate is too full, doesn't it? What with the best job on my campus and a full load of doctoral classes, I guess I let this little blog slip through the cracks. Oh well, I'm back at it now!

I had bookmarked this article on how to generate online discussion [Link to full text] a while back as the topic is one of interest to most of the online faculty I know. Research invariably tells us that online students engage when they are connected, not only to their instructor, but to each other as well. Asynchronous discussion postings are one way we have of trying to make sure that connection occurs and grows. Some of the suggestions offered the above ref'd list include:

Consider integrating Internet research, in which students include and discuss relevant Web sites as active links in their messages to each other, for example, a misconduct case from Ethics in Science or a Pre-Raphaelite painting from the Victorian Web. When appropriate, encourage students to incorporate visual images and multimedia.
AND
Encourage or require students to quote from the textbook, from your lectures and materials, and from their classmates’ posts when they respond to each other and when they write their tests or papers on topics they discussed online. Provide a model for informal documentation for these source references

There is no question, that effective online discussion in a class full of community college students is not an easy goal to attain. Some instructors force the point, requiring a certain number and level of postings as part of the graded activities for the class (the list cited here suggests giving credit but not grading). I'm not sure that gets us where we want to go, but leaving students to their own devices often means no postings at all! So, what are some ways we can encourage lively debate amongst the inquiring minds enrolled in our online classes?

I have always felt that one "no duh" point is that the discussion topic, including the way it is worded can make or break the dynamics of the discussion. A topic or question that doesn't interest anybody isn't going to generate much innovative thought.

I try to tie my discussion topics and questions into some media or third-party product, particularly ones self-discovered by the student. Lately, I have turned to YouTube for the basis of my discussion points and have had pretty good luck engendering conversation on the discussion boards.

Train the brain

2007-10-24T09:13:00.000-04:00

Training the brain for learning is what we are all about in the community college instructional world. We all have our unique approaches, of course, but training the brain is definitely what we are after. It seems to me that our jobs would be easier if those brains were happy brains to begin with, as attitude has a lot to do with accomplishment.

Consider this recent article from the wonderful Pick the Brain blog entitled "The Psychology of Happiness" [Link to full post]. The thrust of the post is simple. We choose what we pay attention to and what we choose determines whether we have happy brains. As the comments to the post pointed out, we probably can't teach our students to "think themselves happy", but there are skill sets we can help them acquire that might impact their outlook towards learning.

The "Train Your Brain" article that is linked in the Pick the Brain article includes a bit of information about the power of the word "can", which is probably what I would focus on in trying to help students take responsibility for their attitudes about their learning. There is a quote there, "The question should not be whether you are happy but what you can do to become happier" (Dr. Ben-Shahar) reminds me of my own favorite quotes on what CAN be done (warning, these come from my mom days, so the sources don't exactly have rigor, but the concept is relevant):

Do or do not, there is no try (Yoda)
and
I don't say, no .. I don't say can't, I don't say I won't try. All I say is 'yes I can' and I get there bye and bye (Eeore)

I'm just going to call you all Suzy

2007-10-07T07:18:00.000-04:00

What? How much ferpa / hippa / zippa / lippa (ok, I made those last two up) can we deal with? Check out this information from the Iowa City Press-Citizen regarding the possible privacy issues with ... are you ready? .... CALLING STUDENTS BY NAME IN YOUR CLASSROOMS! Unbelievable. [Link to full text]

Distance Ed - Teachable Moments?

2007-09-23T07:54:00.000-04:00

There has been lots of research and commentary concerning the comparative learning from and readiness for distance learning. This article from NewsWise and initially sourced to Indiana University [Link] is a recent example. The focus of this article is the concern that the uninitiated younger college student will not do well in online classes.

"Freshmen really stood out," said Mark Urtel, assistant professor in the Department of Physical Education in IUPUI's School of Physical Education and Tourism Management. "It's counterintuitive -- people say younger students are the ones who grasp technology, use it most, and know it the best, but it's my opinion that they grasp the technology and use it on their terms, not necessarily ours."

This statement seems to suggest an assumption that the "net native" generation, because of their exposure to the technology, will naturally take to the LMS structured, due-date delivered pedagogy of a "typical" higher ed online class. I don't think the most techie geek could accomplish that; everyone needs orientation to the navigation and requirements of a class as well as student to student and student / instructor connection. At our institution, we have piloted online student success classes which, at the student's discretion can be taken in a "seated" facilitated environment. In this way a new student is introduced to the how and what of online learning in a setting more comfortable to their expectations. We're still compiling data, but our "seat of the pants" reactions are that the experience is positive and preparatory, particularly for students who had not expected to ever have to face an online class environment.

I have another problem with the statement from Indiana. If we are NOT using the tech our students know how to use, are comfortable using, and enjoy using, I have to ask, WHY NOT? Would this not be the perfect launching point for the integration of prior student knowledge into the learning process? Wouldn't Malcome Knowles be proud of us if we found ways to do that with texting and vidcasting and music?

Just my 2¢ worth in my quest for finding ways to focus more on learning and less on process.

Textbooks; Why do you assign them?

2007-08-26T12:57:00.000-04:00

An August 20, 2007 article from the Inside Higher Ed folks about whats spurs students to read their text books [Link to full article] raises the question in my mind as to why we assign textbooks for classes. According to the research cited in the article:

Four factors (not all of which professors can control) best predicted whether students would spend more time with the textbook: gender of the students, the quality of visuals and the quality of photographs in the books, and the extent to which professors link assigned textbook sections to lectures and other in-class work.

That last item is the real kicker for me. If the textbook is NOT used as a class learning tool, why is it required? Could there not be "suggested readings" instead of required texts? Better still, why not get students involved with finding and evaluating those suggested readings? As with all instructional methods, it would take a lot of time to implement and the instructor would have to be on her / his toes to make sure that students had the necessary skills to locate, evaluate and report on quality and relevant learning material for each course. But imagine what the possibilities for actual learning!

Learning, Pepsi, Pickles, and Spaghetti Sauce?

2007-08-11T19:35:00.001-04:00

One of the best books I've read recently was Malcolm Gladwell's Blink about first impressions and missed opportunities. So, I was intrigued when one of my favorite blogs, e-learning Weekly posted an article which tied a 2004 TED Gladwell talk to the concept of learning preferences [Link to post].

The 13 minute YouTube video is well worth the look-see [Link to video]

In a nutshell, Gladwell discusses an obsessed physicist who had been unsuccessful in determining the ultimate, perfect percent of artificial sweetener for Diet Pepsi. His conclusion was that there is no "perfectly sweetened Diet Pepsi"; rather the answer was there were many perfect Diet Pepsis. Of course, this is not what Pepsi wanted to hear. Vlasic Pickles, however, heard his message and, instead of trying to create a single perfect pickle, created a second kind of zesty pickle which appealed to the taste buds of an entirely different group than did the original Vlasic Pickle.

The reputation-building victory for the physicist, however, was with Prego spaghetti sauce which, in spite of being a superior product was losing to Ragu in the spaghetti sauce wars of the 70's. So you know what this guy did? He worked the the Prego folks and created a gazillion varieties of Prego and taste-tested them with folks around the country and, instead of looking for THE winner, grouped the preferences into data clusters which indicated three categories of taste preferences, one of which was not available at all on super market shelves. The short story is that Prego took over the market by meeting a "need" for chunky spaghetti sauce.

So, what does that have to do with learning? As with the spaghetti sauce, there is no perfect learning approach, there are perfect learning approachES. How many varieties of learning opportunities do you offer in your own instructional environments? If you do vary your instruction, is it within your comfort zone, or do you make an effort to determine the preferences of your students? How do you know the preferences of your students? As Gladwell points out, you can't ask them; they probably don't know!

The thing to remember IMHO, is that there is no perfect instructional approach, there is no hierarchy of instructional approaches where one is better than another. There ARE however, variable instructional approaches which will appeal to different people. Like chunky Prego and Gray Poupon, there are instructional approaches that have never been tried, but once experienced might blow the socks off our current ideas about learning.

Just something to comtemplate.

Why PowerPoint?

2007-06-23T15:28:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading a 2004 interview of Richard E. Mayer, a guru of educational psychology research and psychology professor at University of California - Santa Barbara. The title of the article reporting the interview is "The Cognitive Load of PowerPoint" and the crux of Dr. Mayer's remarks have to do with our instructional objectives when using PowerPoint in the classroom [Link to full text, registration required]. Specifically, he suggests we instructors (and presumably committee presenters, and conference presenters, etc., etc., and so forth) take a look at what we are trying to accomplish when we use PowerPoint. Are we trying to use the slides to transfer information or to guide learning? The former, he says, usually does not result in learning since sharing information via a PowerPoint slide does not typically allow for cognitive processing time. On the other hand, he says:

When your goal is cognitive guidance, you want to make sure that the audience members build appropriate knowledge in their memories. Your job is to communicate in a way that will have the desired impact on the audience, so you need to design your slides so they are consistent with how people learn.

Now that's a pretty interesting distinction, don't you think? And Dr Mayer goes on to point out:

Research on instructional design has shown that the presentation medium does not create learning, but the presentation method does affect learning.

In other words, PowerPoint doesn't teach anything, it is a tool. And if it is used to present information in a way that is not instructionally sound, it doesn't even HELP with learning and may have a negative impact on what we're trying to accomplish!
So, next time you're creating a PowerPoint enhanced classroom lesson, consider the principles put forward by Dr. Mayer for effective use of the tool:

people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone
people learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included
people learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented at the same time or next to each other on the screen
people learn better from animation with spoken text than animation with printed text
people learn better when the material is organized with clear outlines and headings
people learn better from conversational style than formal style

Seven axioms for teaching our "traditional" students

2007-06-09T17:51:00.000-04:00

As community college instructors we are faced with the unique challenge of living up to the open access required by our mission. That means we take all learners as they are and help them become all their talents allow. Facilitating the learning of our "traditional" students, those freshly graduated from high school, is complicated by all of the layers of policy and theory and politics layered into their schooling. Many of my counterparts point sadly to the No Child Left Behind act as the culprit responsible for the preponderance of students we enroll, saying they have learned to memorize long enough to spill the facts on a test and forget as the result of a test based standard in our public schools.

I don't think the problem is that simple. I see our instructors employing the same instructional techniques as those used in their own education and wonder how our Next Genners can adapt to such a stymied atmosphere when they are used to personal learning techniques that provide instant access and information. Of course these techniques are ot generally applied to the formal learning we try to stuff down their throats, but I don't know a single one who hasn't self-learned to use their cell phones, text a message, or locate downloadable music. As I see it, the issue is to find a way to adapt our delivery of instruction to match the interests and learning preferences of these students.

In an article entitled "Backwards into the Future: Seven Principles for Educating the Ne(x)t Generation" in the June / July Innovate Journal [Link, registration required], authors Helen Sword and Michelle Leggot offer their insights for teaching for the future in their seven principles:

Relinquish authority
Recast students as teachers, researchers, and producers of knowledge
Promote collaborative relationships
Cultivate multiple intelligences
Foster critcal creativity
Encourage resiliance in the face of change
Craft assignments that look both forward and back

The article highlights tips and techniques from the authors' "Poetry off the Page" which they teach at the University of Aukland.

The concepts presented would be a stretch for most of us; but what if we each chose one or two to implement and study?

Lifelong globalized learning - Count the buzzwords!

2007-06-03T08:19:00.000-04:00

Ok, ok .. I know today's title is a conglomeration of cliched buzzwords. But they describe my recent two week European study abroad experience that combined visits to a variety of educational institutions with myriad cultural immersion experiences. The learning on my part was non-stop and the global context was eye-opening.

Higher ed educators tend to view short term study abroad opportunities with skepticism, voicing questions of viability similar to those noted in this 2004 article about an Elon sponsored trip to Belize [Link to full article].

I can only speak for myself, of course, but my two week sojourn with 18 fellow EdD aspirants to the Netherlands and to schools there and in Belgium and Germany was life altering in many ways and has inspired and educated me professionally, personally and culturally. I have a journal full of ideas and concepts to present to our faculty and decision-makers, all of which I hope will have an impact on my institution and profession. How many students, after sitting through a semester-long, lecture driven, seated class can espouse such outcomes?

Back to the buzzwords. Are we, as community college educators, serious about lifelong learning and preparing our students for globalized careers? What if we find ways to help more of them, and the faculty who teach them, experience the critical skills building, mind opening, interdisciplinary interest building, collaborative skills enhancing opportunities of international travel? What if a Western Civ class could culminate in a trip to Greece, for example? Or an environmental biology class could head to Latin America at the end of their studies? Talk about life-long, globalized learning!

No time for learning

2007-05-02T09:06:00.000-04:00

According to an April survey of senior business executives, professional development opportunities are generally under utilized, with time issues cited as one of the main reasons company personnel do not take advantage of training offerings. [Link to full article].

Based on my experience as a "trainer" of faculty at my institution, and with absolutely no data to back this up, I have to agree; unless training is offered in conjunction with a scheduled professional development day, attendance is less than spectacular, even though I use venues such as webcasting and web sites to help make it more convenient. The reason I hear for the lack of participation is also plates that are too full with other duties.

I understand that, and wish that our institution could find a remedy for the over-commitment that prevails on our campus; I guess that's what comes from caring about your students and your community. I do think we need to find a way to prioritize learning time for our learning professionals. They need time to ruminate on emerging issues related to teaching and learning and methodology and technology. They need time to collaborate with their colleagues here at our college and around the region, nation, and world. How else will they stay current? How else will they keep from falling behind, which cannot help but cause their students to learn less than is needed to compete in our economy. After all, I think we all have heard the adage that we cannot train our students with the skills they will need for their future jobs, because we don't know what those skills are; they do not yet exist. With no time for our teachers to learn, our students cannot learn.

I guess what I am saying is, I don't think we have time NOT to learn. Now, how do we sell that to our faculty and leadership?

Reducing the distance in distance education

2007-04-22T06:48:00.000-04:00

Technology available for use in learning may be helping us take the distance out of distance education, or so says the MBA Universe [Link to full article]

Financial Times (FT), in his report on Distance Learning (published on March 19) quotes James Fleck, dean of UK based Open University Business School (OUBS) saying: We are trying to drop the term ‘distance learning. I don’t think it accurately portrays what OUBS does.’

Broadband service and synchronous tools that allow us to webcast, talk with, and 3D avatarize with our students can help us all stay engaged and learning.

Change comes slowly, of course. Many of the faculty, at least where I work, are reluctant to take on new technologies as they worry about the reliability and usability, pointing to each disruptive e-mail outage or some other server belch as evidence of the fragility of the digital world. Others are concerned about student dial-up connections and mixed time zones, while some cannot find the time to even think about learning new tools as they work to stay up with discussion board postings and e-mail submitted questions and assignments.

It is interesting to contemplate that, when we do begin to fully integrate synchronous technologies into what we currently think of as distance learning, we will have to change even its name as we will have removed the distance through the use of the tool.

Citzendrium - Wikipedia with validity?

2007-04-08T10:05:00.000-04:00

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, left that experiment in 2002 as it became apparent that Wikipedia would either have to close its doors to anonymous edits to salvage the reliability of its information or continue to allow anonymous edits and be faced with continuous vandalism and reduced dependability.
The instructors at my school who require research papers do not, as a rule accept Wikipedia as a cited resource, although they encourage their students to use the site as a starting point when searching for Internet articles in support of a research question. (Our podcast on the subject is available from the June, 2006 archives of this blog).
Enter Sanger's newest efforts at socialized knowledge building. Citizendrium is a wiki would-be substitute for Wikipedia which attempts to encourage scholarly resourcing by requiring authors to use their real names and utilizing editors, an experiment Sanger refers to as "gentle expert oversight".
Sanger's essay on the viability of the project is optimistic [link] and the wiki currently sports about 1200 articles [link] even though it went "public" just this month.
It will be interesting to see if our research-oriented instructors change their minds about socially created knowledge given these new developments.

Cognition Daily?

2007-03-27T19:03:00.000-04:00

I love to read Cognitive Daily. Lots of times, the posts are beyond the scope of this blog, but, then there's today's post, which discusses how body position can impact longterm memory [Link to full posting].

A new study adds an unexpected method to the list of ways to spur memories about our past: body position. That's right: just holding your body in the right position means you'll have faster, more accurate access to certain memories. If you stand as if holding a golf club, you're quicker to remember an event that happened while you were golfing than if you position your body in a non-golfing pose.

Bear with me now. Imagine the possibilities for our students! Can you envision planning not only the content for the activities in your next class, but also how you will pose your students? I sure can! What if, we tried to tie body position with memory anagrams for hard to remember facts such as the ones we must pound on in Anatomy classes or terminology exercises?

A "Learning-Cemtered" Syllabus?

2007-03-09T19:49:00.001-05:00

Learning centered pedagogy theoretically places the student at the center of every learning activity. Most of us learned from and consequently instruct from a teacher centered model where we decide, convey and test what is important in our classes. Learning centered methodology would force us from center stage to be replaced by our students, who resist this change almost as avidly as we.

I ran across the BYU Center for Instructional Design [Link to CID - great site with lots of resources for educators of all sorts] today which includes an interesting article on creating a learning centered syllabus. Interesting to me because I believe a refocus on a class syllabus that is learning centered might be the first step in moving our instruction in that direction. [Direct Link to downloadable PDF]

According to the instructional experts at BYU, a learning centered syllabus contains the following components:

Course description. Purposes and context of the course, why it is important for students to learn this subject matter and how it is valuable to them.
Intended learning outcomes. Knowledge, understanding, abilities, and skills students can expect to learn in the course.
Learning activities. Description of what students are expected to do to facilitate their learning (e.g.,assignments, projects, activities).
Learning assessments and grading. Description of how students will demonstrate their learning (e.g., exams, portfolios, performances) and the criteria/procedures for grading student learning.
Recommendations for learning. Ideas and suggestions for students to enhance their learning, improve their study habits, and succeed in the course.

We could surely get that far, don't you think? And it is a step in the direction of shifting the focus from teaching to learning. I love it!

Student comprehension of planned learning outcomes

2007-02-27T17:13:00.001-05:00

Assessment and learning outcomes are important topics for higher education folk as we look for ways to find out if our students are learning what their classes are designed to teach them. In general, we create planned learning outcomes for our classes and, hopefully, tie our assessments to those objectives.

According to this month's League for Innovations Learning Abstract, Making Student Learning Visible by Shree Iyengar and Ken Jarvis a consortium of 24 community colleges are in the process of finding ways to go beyond rote memorization and test cramming to truly assess learning. [Link to full article].

The full article is well worth the time it takes to read and reflect on it. One part did stand out to me, though. Reprsentatives from the member colleges got together for a workshop and compiled common issues.

"One central issue emerged: The faculty’s identification of student
learning outcomes has not yet generally led to students using them for
their learning. In this regard, it was noted that faculty discussions
on student learning did not involve students at key points or at
appropriate levels in almost all institutions."

Think about that! We spend all this time on creating learning objectives and mapping them to assessments, but, at least based on the consensus of this group, our students don't know that's what they are supposed to be learning! Our students do not equate instructor stated learning objectives that they find on our syllabii to the idea that they can cram for a test and get a decent grade. But it shouldn't be about the grade, should it? Shouldn't it be about the learning?

To me, this is another argument for doing away with testing and finding basic, simple alternatives where students can demonstrate their proficiency with learning objectives. At least they would know what they didn't already know, I think. The group in the League article is investigating various corrective models. I wonder what would happen if we kept it really simple and asked our students to SHOW us what they have learned.

Community college presence in the blogosphere

2007-02-24T15:29:00.000-05:00

I am currently taking a qualitative research class as part of my EdD - Community College Leadership pursuit from Western Carolina University. We just finished a "mini-project" where we developed a research purpose of personal interest, gathered a small amount of data and completed an analysis of the data.

I chose as my purpose: "What is the community college presence in the blogosphere?" and performed some document analysis of blogs I located through Technorati and Google Blogs that were by or about community college educators.

This was a very rough and incomplete practice project (my first with a qualitative model), but I learned a tremendous amount. Based on the assignment scope, I stopped once I had identified seven community college blogs.

Since I believe in multi-tasking whenever possible, he seven blogs identified for my class projects have been added here as components of my Community College Blogroll. I have every hope that I find and add many more blogs from educators interested in community colleges.

Emerging technologies .. what's next?

2007-02-22T20:12:00.001-05:00

New Media Consortium and Educause have looked into their crystal balls and have identified six technologies they think will impact our classrooms (face-to-face and virtual) in the near future [Link to the NMC report]. Here's the list:

User created content - I think this is the perfect marriage web 2.0 authoring tools like wikis and blogs and Malcolm Knowles theories of androgogy and adult learners. With an emphasis on creative thinking and collaboration, these tools empower our learners to find, evaluate, and report on information relevant to their personal learning.
Social networking - Beyond MySpace, consider the learning potential in a world where each learner can connect with experts and other students at a time and pace relevant to his or her learning.
Mobile phones - You know, those devices permanently attached to the ears of our students? Imagine the learning impact if we could harness just a little bit of that connection to deliver learning materials, assess understanding, or just to expedite administrative details like when registration opens.
Virtual worlds - Second Life ... say no more.
New scholarship and emerging forms of publication - Textbooks, as we know them, are almost certainly headed the way of buggy whips and butter churns. Further, the creation of knowledge in some of the collaborative environments available with broadband will almost surely be documented in e-journals and blogs and wikis. That's a far stride from in-print peer-reviewed journals, doncha think?
Massively multiplayer educational gaming - Gaming has been the buzz maker at most of the conferences I attended this year. Our school recently added a new program leading to an Associates Degree to study the field. I will be interested to see the research on the learning impact of this growing field.

Pretty interesting, thought-provoking stuff, this NMC report. I wonder how many community college instructors will read it, and how many will begin making the changes to their instructional regimens to prepare for impact of these emerging technologies.

Touch v Tech, mutually excusive? I think not

2007-02-10T11:10:00.001-05:00

Consider this vision of our college campuses as espoused by Charles Reed, chancellor of the California State University System:

Reed said he envisions students becoming more like telecommuters. They might meet with faculty and peers one day a week on campus, and then use simulations, virtual worlds and downloaded information the rest of the week to complete coursework. [Link]

To my way of thinking, this takes the idea of hybrid class construction to a whole new level where learning content is delivered via the technology and the personal touch is maintained with meetings, mentoring, group work, etc.

How refreshing to not see an argument for one or the other approach, but the peaceful coexistence of the two. I wonder what faculty think about the idea?

The romance of semicolons?

2007-02-03T06:53:00.001-05:00

I am not an English major or teacher, although I do a fair amount of writing for my real job and in my doctoral studies. I must admit, I had forgotten much about the use of the semicolon, though, until I ran across this charming and whimsical article in Helium [link to full text of "The scintillating, seductive, and saving power of semi-colons"].

So why include it here in a blog for community college instructors and their use of technology? I think it is relevant from several different angles.

It is about a dry subject; what could be more mundane than a discussion about a tiny piece of English grammar? (Did you note my use of the semicolon there? I hope it's right!) The presentation of the subject however, is entertaining and light. Wouldn't we all like to learn more about ways to transfer these characteristics to our classrooms where we all too often find ourselves staring at bored eyes as we drone on about our own dry content? What if we each pursued a quest to find ways to make our own delivery entertaining and light? Would such an endeavor not improve the learning the ensues?
It is a collaborative document; the article was created as part of a creative writing workshop. Ah ... there's that "c" word again! The ramifications of integrating effective collaboration (dare I say "group work"?) into our own instruction are purported to include improved student engagement and learning. How will we know unless we try?
The article is delivered using a new and unique platform; Helium is a Web 2.0 forum for socially created knowledge based on collaborative research with a paid writing staff. While I am not familiar enough with the venue to comment on validity, I can say that it represents alternative environments to learning that can be explored and utilized. Learning DOES take place outside the classroom. In fact, probably MORE learning occurs away from the bricks and mortar of our static institutions than within their hallowed halls. So why not find ways to harness the power of alternate learning environments for our instructional use? Alternate delivery is not constrained to an asynchronous online classroom from the LMS. We just have to be prepared to recognize effective platforms when we see them.

All this and and new knowledge about the semicolon, too? Too cool!

Do our students have a procrastination quotient?

2007-01-12T08:40:00.001-05:00

Utility = E x V / (Gamma) x D.

This formula calculates our propensity to procrastinate a given task (or so says University of Calgary prof, Piers Steel [Link to "A formula for procrastination"]. The idea is that our level of procrastination is a function of our expectancy that we can complete the task, how valuable completion is to us at the moment, how close the deadline is and the degree to which our personalities value play today vs. long term rewards.

Though I've never really thought about it in mathematical terms before, I know I have learned to break large tasks into smaller ones and, if necessary to break them apart even further. This works for me because I value the sense of achievement when completing a task ("check it off" "that's done"); and that reward isn't there if the goal is too convoluted or complex. I guess this correlates to Dr. Steele's concept of expectancy and value. The deadlines I try to work with are generally self-imposed such that the sum of the tasks completed equals the assigned task which in turn means external deadlines can be met without the last-minute push of the dreaded "all-nighters". I'm assuming that my "sensitivity to delay" has decreased with age, which helps to increase my personal procrastination quotient.

So, what that have to do with community college teaching? Well, maybe we could put this concept to work with our students. What if we break large
assignments into smaller reporting points so that the completion reward
stays closer to today? And, what if we add perceived value to
immediate completion? I don't know that we can do much about "play now, pay later" personality types, but reducing the other components of the formula might help our students learn how NOT to procrastinate.

Just a thought.

Graphs, charts, and critical thinking

2007-01-07T08:46:00.001-05:00

I just ran across the most unique blog. Each posting is a single index card which contains a graph which in turn, depicts the point the blogger is trying to make. In addition to being hilarious (and sometimes controversial), it illustrates to me a possible tool in our arsenal for teaching critical thinking skills. I wonder what would happen if, before we assigned the next research paper, we asked our students to think about and we collaboratively created a Venn diagram (that's the chart where circles intersect, for you non-charters) relating the concepts and what emerges when they are combined or kept apart? I can just SEE those right brain cells lighting up. I'm going to go try it right now for a paper I am writing ...
[Link to Indexed blog]

Encourage critical thinking

2007-01-06T06:39:00.001-05:00

I just ran across a web 2.0 site called FunAdvice and, as usual, reviewed it with an eye towards its usefulness as a teaching tool. The site is set up to allow users to pose questions which other users answer and I'm sure was not initiated as a learning utility. But, what if we asked our students to pose questions on the site related to concepts under study and then analyze the answers received (or why no answers were received). I can even envision some useful group analysis. So, why bother? Why not just assign a research question? Well, to my way of thinking, the students might engage and connect with something like FunAdvice while learning to evaluate information and think through the concepts we present. It might be worth a try. [Link to FunAdvice]

Some techie thoughts as you plan for new classes

2007-01-04T15:22:00.001-05:00

These are some ideas I recently circulated to our faculty related to possible increased tech use for learning:

Do you teach both a seated and online section of a class? If so, consider the learning possibilities for your online students if you could give them access to a recorded version of your seated classes. The benefits can also extend to your seated students too, as revisiting a lecture is great for review purposes. an audio recording of your class is EASY to create and PAINLESS to distribute. A microphone attached to the instructor's computer in the classroom with audio captured with the free Audacity program [Link to Audacity] can make this a reality with minimal equipment or expertise.
Do you assign research projects? If so, don't overlook helping them to learn about the online data bases available through your library. At our school that is a service called NCLIVE. I have developed interactive tutorials on the basic use of NC LIVE to help our students perfect their skills with this awesome tool. http://www.stanly.edu/learning/learnobj/NCLIVE/NC_LIVE_at_SCC.html
No time to create PowerPoint slides to accompany your classroom activities? Don't hesitate to start SMALL. Create a slide that lists today's learning objectives and display it as class begins. Redisplay that same slide at the end of class. Accompany the latter with summarizing concepts and assessment and you have a great learning tool. When time permits, add a slide to the end highlighting what students need to do before the next class. I have lots of templates and graphics, just let me know of your interest.
Are your office hours less than productive because they don't coincide with when your students are on campus? Consider holding some office hours via the web. At our school we use a web conferencing tool called Elluminate! [link to elluminate ], but you could use an instant messaging client like AOL messenger [link to aol messenger] or your school's web conferencing tool. Your students can take advantage of your counsel from any Internet connected computer AND you can create a recorded session for them to review later.
Do your students struggle with their writing projects? Consider introducing them to mind / concept mapping. At our school we use Open Mind [link to openmind], but there are lots of others, including some free open source programs [link to FreeMind]. Concept mapping helps students organize and plan projects before they know they are supposed to be scared of such things.

Teaching from and to objectives

2006-12-21T09:32:00.001-05:00

Do we really pay attention to learning objectives? Oh yes, they are clearly identified on our class syllabii and, hopefully, there is some cross referencing between stated learning objectives and assessment.

But what about today's class? When our students walk in to our classrooms (or log in to our virtual classes), do we know what outcomes we're hoping for when they leave today? Do our students know? Do we assess the achievement of those hoped for outcomes?

I'm not talking about testing each day (basically because I don't believe we can simply test and get a clear understanding of our student's learning). I'm wondering what we do, as community college instructors, to find out if our students learned TODAY what they will need to move on to TOMORROW's class.

I don't know the answer, but I don't think I am alone in the wondering. See the post "Teachers Need Objectives" at 21 Apples [Link to full post].

I wonder what the answers would sound like if we began to consistently ask our students, "what did you learn today"? I wonder changes we would make based on those answers.

Take the UGH out of Group Work

2006-12-16T13:42:00.001-05:00

You know you should include some group work in your instruction, right? I mean, we've been told that and have endured group activities as participants in professional development workshops, so it must be true. But, if no one was looking and your response was just between you and me, would you admit that you HATE group work?

Many instructors I know are sailing the "you have to do this in a group" boat even though they would, if they were the students, prefer to NOT participate in a group.

I have a theory that the reason so many of us dislike group work is because we were never taught how to be successful with a learning group. Like us, I'm betting OUR teachers disliked group work, too (and probably for the same reasons). As educators, I think we have the responsibility to help our students learn not only the subject matter related to the title of the class we teach, but the real world skills they need to be successful (like how to effectively contribute as a member of a group).

I just read an Eduforge article entitled "Disigning engaging online group work". If you're interested, I recommend the full article [Link to full article ]. Just to give you a dose of context from author Anouk Janssens-Bevernage, he lists these 10 components which we MUST include in any group work assignment:

Design a well-structured meaningful task
Clearly describe the expected deliverable
Give a deadline
Give students clear directions
Develop a clear strategy for group composition (including team roles)
Explain your rationale (why is group work important for this particular course?)
Explain how the group task supports the learning objectives of the course
Grade the activity; if you can't (e.g. because of moderation requirements), link work to individual assessment
Design a feedback strategy that is motivational for all the learners involved
Drama controversy make learning more exciting it should always be fun!

Speaking for myself, there are several of these that, now that I think about it, make perfect sense but which I have never considered when assigning group work.

Look ma! No more UGH!

Do hungry students learn better?

2006-12-15T18:12:00.000-05:00

According to this NY Times article [Link to full text of "Empy-Stomach Inelligence", 12-10-06], laboratory mice who were hungry processed and retained information better than their well-fed counterparts.

So .... maybe we should skip the chocolate for answering a question in class?

Pretty interesting read.

Are we accomplishing our goals? Tech use in higher ed classes

2006-12-12T18:33:00.001-05:00

I just finished reading a couple of fascinating articles concerning the use of technology in higher ed classrooms. Talk about a learning experience!

Student perceptions of tech use in higher ed classes: This Educause article is a must read for community college faculty, whether they are tech users or tech resisters. Data were gathered in 2004 from survey responses received from over 4000 university students. Not surprisingly, the "digital natives" report heavy reliance on and ownership of a litany of personal technology devices. But they purport to be quite discerning when it comes to preferences for technology use in their classrooms. I'm betting they have seen a lot of bad PowerPoint, but whatever the reason, they indicate a partiality for a "moderate" level of technology use by their instructors. When it comes to their online classes, they report, in general, positive experiences with the Learning Management System (LMS) at their institution. Interestingly:

"the interactive features least used by faculty were the features that students indicated contributed the most to their learning. The students were especially positive about sharing materials with students (38.5 percent), faculty feedback on assignments (32 percent), and online readings (24.9 percent)".

[Link to full article]

Enhancing Teaching With Technology: Are We There Yet?: Expanding on the findings related to student preferred components of their LMS was this article from Innovate which states:

"Students claim that their schools and teachers have not yet recognized—much less responded to—the fundamental shift occurring in the students they serve and in the learning communities they are charged with fostering".

As indicated in the article, we have to question the level of engagement we ask of our faculty. And my own 2¢ is that we could use a whole lot more professional developement opportunities and round table types of discussions for sharing of ideas and best practices when it comes to helping the faculty get excited about embracing a new technology.

[Link to synopsis, full article available if you create an account ]

Student engagement

2006-12-04T17:08:00.001-05:00

Survey of student engagement: Each year the CCSSE surveys community college students from around the US to determine their level of engagement with their studies. This year's survey is out. Key findings include:

Outside the classroom group work is not as prevelant as inside the classroom.
A full third of responding students indicated that they spent 5 hours or less preparing for class.
Two thirds (TWO THIRDS) of responses indicated their coursework relies primarily on "rote memorization"!!
Part-time students report significantly less interaction with faculty than do full-time students.
Less than half of developmental students make use of available learner support services

The full report, an executive summary and a report on what some community colleges are doing about some of these areas is available from the CCSSE web site [Link to CCSSE web site] [Link to threaded discussion at the Chronicle for Higher Ed]

Some research on certificate programs

2006-11-27T17:02:00.001-05:00

To help fulfill our mission, community colleges offer lots of educational options other than a full associates degree. One of the most popular alternatives are our certificate programs which are generally comprised of a grouping of skills based classes and are attractive to those students who come to us for retraining or who are not interested in an academic degree.

Common sense has led us down this path, assuming that a certificate could only help our students in their quest for gainful employment. It seems there is now some research to back up our "gut feeling" about certificate programs. According to a study done by Eduventures, a substantial portion of surveyed employers think that certificate programs are a good idea assuming they can be delivered flexibly and in areas deemed beneficial.

Of special interest to me in the survey responses was the overwhelming indication that soft skills (critical thinking, group-work abilities, etc.) are imperative for employer stamp of approval on an institution's certification program. [Link to review by clomedia]

Learners, teachers and YouTube

2006-11-22T07:10:00.001-05:00

Viral video, copyright thoughts, learning assessment, and thoughts about the Bell curve caught my interest this week. My Web2.0 pick is a sticky note place for sharing and organizing. Enjoy!

Profs on YouTube: It's easy to forget that everyone seems to be toting a camera these days and, with the popularity and ease of sharing videos via YouTube, it's equally easy to "go viral". In case you're not up on the buzzwords, viral indicates a YourTube video that spreads everywhere. Examples? How about this guy enforcing his "no cell phones in class" policy? [Link to video] And remember, students know how to edit for impact! [Link to video]. Even at your "coolest", you may not want world-wide visibility. [Link to video][Link to video]
Copyright? What copyright? According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, educators are not exactly well informed when it comes to copyright. All those photocopies, digital chapters and electronic reserves that we think are covered by fair use allowances [Link to official definition] may be breaking the law. [Link to article] [Link to debate on WiredCampus]
Learning assessment - If you have even scanned the recently released report "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education" (a.k.a. the Spellings Report) [Link to report] you are aware that accountability and learning assessment are expected to receive microscopic scrutiny in the near future. Take a peek at the learning objectives you post in your syllabii. Are you assessing the stated learning objectives and are those objectives declarative or procedural? Are the assessments fairly weighted? Too often we place inordinate weight on tests, which can efficiently measure declarative objective outcomes, but don't tell us much about how well students can perform procedural objectives. I learned a lot about this from Patti Shank's e-Learning Guild - Avoiding Assessment Mistakes [Link to article] Also, wcet.info has an e-topic on outcomes based assessment where there is a nice list of resources [Link to e-topic]
Mastery of learning - I can't remember a time when I haven't at least heard about "the curve" when it comes to grades. As an instructor, I couldn't help but wonder if I employed fractured grading policies as my students, in general, tended to get very high grades. Aha! Maybe it's not grade inflation! As Becky pointed out in her blog posting [Link to posting] with more elaboration in Dr. Beutner's Personal Philosophy on Teaching and Learning [Link to paper], I have to agree that Bloom's Learning for Mastery concept is a "no duh" for me. If a learner learns in my class, then OF COURSE they should get a higher grade than a statistical norm would predict. What do you think, honored community college educator? Is there validity in forcing class grades to a statistical curve?
Web 2.0 - stikkit.com is a virtual replacement for all of those sticky notes all around your computer monitor. Sign up is free and easy. You create stikkits and set them up to remind you by e-mail or text message. Stikkits can also be used collaboratively (hey .. what if you had your class group projects use them as status and to-do documentation?) [Link to stikkit.com]
Ponder this - "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea". Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Student creativity? [evil laugh] and other musings

2006-11-19T10:01:00.000-05:00

This week, the categories that tickled my fancy include 3 lists (one enumerates comments you can make to ensure that you stifle creative ideas, another includes tips to improve your PowerPoint presentations, and a third to point you to places you can download images) a Web2.0 app that lets you upload and resize your digital pictures, and some collaboration resources and ideas. Hope you find some / all of interest.

Stifle creativity - Ok, so this headline is a brazen attempt at reverse psychology (I'm hearing my sainted mother's voice intoning, "Don't you eat those beans, young lady!"). It was the only way I could think of, though to entice you to think about some of the things we say, much more innocently than those attributed to said sainted mother. Scott Berkun teaches a class on creative thinking at University of Washington and he and his class created a list of phrases that are sure to stop out-of-the-box thinking before it can foster into an innovation. [Link to full article]
Web2.0 - Resizr - A digital camera creates great BIG pictures (citation = those pictures you open and have to scroll to see just the eye of the subject). To use one of your pictures as a learning tool displayed from the computer screen, you need a much SMALLER picture. There are lots of programs that will accomplish this task, but none simpler or more accessible from whereever you are than my pick for today's Web2.0 highlighted application. Resizr is very simple. You upload the picture to the web site (jpg only right now), indicate how wide you want the picture and any rotation it needs, click the Resizr button, and download the resulting image. All images are deleted every 24 hours. [Link to Resizr]
10 tips for better PowerPoint presentations - Ask a random sample of students who are members of Net Generation what they think of a PowerPoint enhanced lecture and I bet that the word "BORING" is included in the majority of the responses. The slide to slide technology that wowed us a few years ago is old hat to these folks. If you aren't ready to give up your PowerPoints yet you might be interested in this list. Garr Reynolds, presenter extraordinaire, shares his personal list of how to make your presentations better. Assessment of these techniques? Try them and see if more of your students stay awake! :-) [Link to full article]
Images for the poor - As Garr points out in one of his tips, good images are essential to a good presentation. But where are we poor (financially and in terms of time) to find decent images to include in our presentation slides? In his blog, Garr posted early in 2006, a nice list of image sites, both inexpensive and free. [Link to full article]
We are greater than me - Pearson publishing has caught the latest buzz related to collaboration and wikis (which are websites that can be edited by all with rights to do so). Pearson thinks that wiki technology can be used to collaboratively create a book for business readers. They have set up a web site where any interested party can read and add to the draft content for the book which will eventually be ghost written for publishing [Link to article at Wall Street Journal]. Imagine the possibilities! You and other instructors from within your discipline could collaborate on an up-to-date, dynamic text book for your classes. Your students would surely "rise and call you blessed" for the cost savings. Speaking of your students, what if they were to create a class wiki for each of the learning objectives? The ending document could go a long way towards your ability to assess their learning and the degree to which the course met its objectives. Or, what if you and members of your committees decided to collaboratively create that new policy manual? Interested? Check out the free and simple pbwikis to get started [Link to pbwiki.com].

(Epilogue- You don't have to buy into the wiki realm to produce collaboratively created documents. Check out Google Docs to create word processing documents that can be downloaded in a variety of formats, including Microsoft Word. [Link to Google Docs]

Thought for the week: "Distance education offers the potential to further the mission of the community colleges in significance ways. However, the practice of education will not change without corresponding changes in our fundamental views of teaching and learning as they are reflected in our state, federal and institutional policies. In spite of this the community colleges are better positioned to offer other sectors of higher education a vision for the future". [A Workplan for Distance Education Policy Planning for the California Community Colleges]

Soft skills, Web 2.0, and other thoughts

2006-11-12T07:37:00.000-05:00

No new podcasts here; as happens so often, other duties have put them on the back burner. Attendance at a marvelous two days filled with David Warlick's take on education (landmark-project.com and his 2¢ worth blog) has reignited an interest in blogging about the unique world of instructional technology at the community college. I believe the title of instructional technology can be framed in various ways; information related to each separate word as well as the phrase itself can help our faculty create lessons for effective and useful learning.

Job myths - Remember those "soft skills" we educators like to discuss? Do you think that job interview preparation should be part of how we prepare our students? I hope you said yes! I think such skills should be introduced in our "Student Success" classes and reinforced within every class we teach. Mary Ellen Slater, Washington Post writer enumerates some useful information related to mistaken ideas about job interviews. [Full article here]
Web 2.0 - Web based applications and collaborative efforts can be an instructor's best friend. This week's Web 2.0 recommendation for CC faculty is del.icio.us, a social bookmarking web site recently acquired by Yahoo. The instructional possibilities? What if a class activity was to build a list of discipline relevant web sites? Or, true to Knowle's theory of adult learning, what if the instructor created various web links and gave students a choice of assignments related to the links? [Link to del.icio.us]
Math infomercial - Math instructors have a heck-uv-a time helping students find relevance in the subject. What if they added a link to this infomercial to their online class web sites? As my late friend, Buddy Hackett might have said, "Couldn't hoit". [link to infomercial]
Mind Performance Hacks - This book is on my wish list. And, thanks to the O'Reilley proclivity for sample chapters, we don't have to wait for the book to be delivered. Sample hacks related to memory and cognition can be downloaded. Usefulness to CC instructors? What if you find a few memory jogging techniques and incorporate them into your instruction? Imagine the benefit to our students if each class included a few ways to better remember and recall information. [Link to Mind Performanc Hacks (book) Link to downloadable sample hacks]
Teach forum? (aka Death by PowerPoint) - Berkeley provides a private teach-net newsletter that is used by their instructional staff to gain teacher to teacher insight. I would like to see an implementation of this for CC instructors. Maybe we could host a forum using Droople or Moodle? I'll do some investigating and report back. The idea came from an article about attendance and effective use of learning tech including the age-old debate that if learning materials are provided to students, they stop coming to class. Frankly, I agree with the folks who point out it's not about the technology, it's about the learning. If a class is comprised of someone reading PowerPoint slides to the rest of the assemblage, why would ANYONE attend? Class time should be used for activities and knowledge exchange not available from digital materials (IMHO). [Link to Berkeley article]
Last word - What if more of us incorporated the following into our pedagogical leanings?

(This instructor decided to) have the learners who were studying abroad or involved with an internship, take the course as a group online, once again, using very simple technologies. Students liked it, I felt good about enabling learners to do something important, and compared with their class-bound colleagues, they seemed to produce better work, and at the end of the term, when they were called home, they also performed on average better on a traditional final examination than their counterparts .. Ken Udas, Penn State World Campus, Nov, 2006

#5 - Wikipedia, plagiarism, source evalution and more

2006-06-15T17:40:00.000-04:00

After a summer delay, we are delighted to be back with our latest episode of the Stanly Community College First Ever Podcast. Our subject is one near and dear to educators; what makes a good source for a research paper (and why do we care)?

The June 12, 2006 Wired Campus blog from the Chronicle of Higher Ed offered a tidbit related to Wikipedia and its use as a research source. (You can read the article from right here).

To hear from those in the classroom "trenches", Myra Furr, English instructor, along with Cindy Dean and Robert Stack who teach humanity courses joined me to discuss the topic and offer their unique insights on this highly relevant topic.

Here's how to hear the podcast(8MB streamed):

To listen at your computer, click on the title of this posting

To save the file to a mobile device (like your Axim, iPod or other mp3 player), right click on the the link below, choose Save Target As, and save to the device.

Right click here

To subscribe to the podcast - Add our feed to your favorite podcatcher (i-Tunes, Juice, etc.):
http://feeds.feedburner.com/InstructionalTechAtStanlyCommunityCollege

#4 - How about a Library Audio Tour?

2006-05-05T09:20:00.000-04:00

Welcome to episode #4 of the First Ever SCC Podcast series. In this 20 minute discussion, Dee Estes and Mike Hicks, our amazing LRC experts join Bill Lefevers, idea man and Institutional Effectiveness guru along with, Jana Ulrich, SCC's instructional technologist to discuss the pros and cons of creating an audio orientation of the LRC.

The LRC is such a terrific resource and one that all of our students could learn more about. After our discussion, Mike found some links related to other libraries from around the world who are currently using audio to enhance the learning of their users. These include:

Podcasts at John Hopkins

Westen Kentucky University Podcasts and Library Tour

Worcester Polytechnic Institute Podcasts and Library Tour

Curtin University of Technology in Australia Library How To's

As a result of the discussion, Mike and Dee will be creating outcome objectives for those who choose to experience the audio tour and we will begin to build the orientation which will be ready for testing on June 30.

Here's how to hear the podcast(7MB streamed):

To listen at your computer, click on the title of this posting
To save the file to a mobile device (like your Axim, iPod or other mp3 player), right click on the the link below, choose Save Target As, and save to the device.
Right click here
To subscribe to the podcast - Add our feed to your favorite podcatcher (i-Tunes, Juice, etc.):
http://feeds.feedburner.com/InstructionalTechAtStanlyCommunityCollege

#3 - Get wise with Interwise

2006-04-25T08:59:00.000-04:00

Webinars and virtual meetings are a wonderful way to connect with students, peers and the community. At Stanly Community College, we have invested in a platform called Interwise which allows us hold meetings, workshops, mentoring sessions and classes where all participants attend from their computers. Podcast #3 of the first ever SCC podcast series, is a discussion of some of the specifics of the current use of Interwise and some of our aspirations for its use.

The podcast panel are members of the Interwise Core Team who have been on the vanguard of the deployment of this technology. Instructors Susan Spence (Director of Nursing), Claudia Gresham-Shelton (English) and Kim West (Business) along with staff members Gaye Wood (Student Development), Christi Almond (Crutchfield Technology) and Shelley Hancock (Title III) all convened with moderator Jana Ulrich to talk about Interwise.

Be sure and give this 18 minute podcast a listen. You will discover how very easy it is to use a virtual meeting space to impact student learning, cut down on travel time to scheduled meetings, hold impromptu meetings rather than playing phone or e-mail tag and many more efficient and effective ideas.

Here's how to hear the podcast:

To listen at your computer, click on the title of this posting

To save the file to a mobile device (like your Axim, iPod or other mp3 player), right click on the on the link below, choose Save Target As, and save to the device.
Right click to save file

To subscribe to the podcast - Add our feed to your favorite podcatcher (i-Tunes, Juice, etc.):
http://feeds.feedburner.com/InstructionalTechAtStanlyCommunityCollege

Community college podcasting - If and when?

2006-04-10T08:34:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the second podcast emanating from the ivied walls of Stanly Community College in beautiful Albemarle, North Carolina, USA. In this event we discuss if and how podcasting technology can benefit our community college students, institution and community.

Joining us in the 15 minute round table discussion is Christi Almond, Tech Support Extraordinaire for Crutchfield Education Center, Michelle Peifer, Public Information Officer for our college and Shelley Hancock, Title III Activities Director.

You won't want to miss this interesting talk on what impact this popular new media can have. Download it to your computer or, better yet to your mobile device so that you can give it a listen at the gym or while walking the dog! (And remember, if you subscribe to our podcast, you will be notified about the next update). This podcast file is ~5MB in size.

To listen to today's podcast:
- Click on the TITLE of this posting to download the file and start it in your player
- RIGHT click on the TITLE of this posting and save the file to your computer or mobile device
- Request the feed through i-Tunes, Yahoo's My Podcasts, or Juice or your favorite aggregator. Our feed is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/InstructionalTechAtStanlyCommunityCollege

First ever podcast - Stanly Community College

2006-03-27T15:42:00.000-05:00

Join us as we discuss three areas of our college where innovation and creativity reigns.

Nancy Joines, Division chair for developmental studies fills us in on the "Bridges" initiative that she is working on to create early intervention for developmental math students.
Shelley Hancock of the Title III office discusses several areas under development with those funds, as well as some of her research into the use of podcasting educational materials.

Crystal Harkey in our grants office joins us to help us understand all of the possiblities she is working on and some of the ways that we can help.

You won't want to miss this, our first ever Stanly Community Podcast.

How to listen to the podcast

Click the title of this posting to download the podcast to your computer and listen through your computer's speakers. (File size ~ 8MB. Will start playing once it is downloaded and the player is started.)
Right click the title of this posting and choose Save Target As to save it to your mp3 player to listen while you are on the go.
Subscribe to it via i-Tunes or Yahoo Podcasts, or your favorite podcatcher. We are listed under Education. You can subscribe directly using the following feed information:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/InstructionalTechAtStanlyCommunityCollege
Remember that a subscription means you will be up to date with all future podcasts!