Question: Tracking CBTs

A reader asked a question that I’m not really sure how to answer. My experience has mostly been in higher ed, so I’ve always needed to do grading or more tracking than what this reader needs:

I am the sole person involved with e-Learning in my branch, and I am mostly limited to using freeware.   At present we are developing self-paced CBTS using PowerPoint, a PowerPoint-to-Flash converter, and HTML.  My client wants two things that I am stuck on:

1) good server software for posting CBTs and then having basic tracking of student usage.  The ideal vendor solution might be the Adobe Connect training module.  Things like Moodle are overkill, as we don’t need grading, blogging, wikis, etc., however fashionable they may be.  We just want to post the modules and have some level of reporting.

2) a means to track % completion of course topics on the course menu (I think Skill Soft uses empty-, half- and full- moons to show completion).  We have created a home-grown HTML template with a course menu in the left navigation bar (the Flash files play in the main window), but the best we can do is change the HTML link color once it is clicked.  While this is better than nothing, it is a far cry from the “real” tracking of CBT course players.

What would you suggest for administering and tracking CBTs for this reader? Is there an open source solution that isn’t a full LMS but does what’s needed here? Has anyone done anything like this before?

I’m really not sure what’s available for this, so I’m hoping someone out there in the blogosphere will. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: CBT, LMS, tracking

Fear of Virtual High Schools

A reader sent this question to me today:

I was wondering if you read Clayton Christensen’s prediction that by 2019, nearly 50 percent of high school courses will be taught online.  What exactly did the author mean by this?  Did he mean that by this particular date that nearly 50 percent of high school students will be at home doing virtual schooling or that 50 pecent of the high school courses will have an “alternative online option” to the course.  I teach History, do you think there will still be a need for plenty of classroom History and Geography teachers?

This is a scary world we are living in.

I hadn’t read Clayton Christensen’s article before, but I’d heard the prediction elsewhere (Technology Seen Transforming U.S. Education System and The rise of ‘virtual schools’ divides education world, for example). I believe it means that half the courses taken will be taught online. For some students, that probably will mean they take all their courses online; for others, it will mean taking some courses face-to-face and some online. For example, a student might go to high school in the morning but take other courses online from home in the afternoon. I think we’ll also see continued growth in areas like online tutoring outside of the schools.

Online courses can give students more choices, for starters. Many schools in the US, especially rural schools, don’t have enough students to fill advanced math and science courses or to offer multiple choices for foreign languages. Online courses allow students in those schools to take subjects that simply wouldn’t be available to them otherwise.

There will absolutely continue to be a need for teachers with online schools. When we’re talking about virtual high schools, we’re talking about schools where teachers are employed. This isn’t homeschooling or completely self-paced learning; the student-teacher ratios are usually comparable to face-to-face classrooms. However, if you’re only willing to teach in a physical classroom and not willing to teach online, that may hamper your job opportunities in the future if the prediction is right. Your job prospects may depend on your willingness to learn to teach online, and it is a different set of skills than teaching in the physical classroom.

To get an idea of what a virtual high school might look like, check out the Colorado Virtual Academy. Their curriculum lists 20 different history and social sciences courses; clearly, the need for history teachers still exists.

Are we looking at a future where we’ll only need half the teachers we need now? No, I don’t think so. Are we looking at a future where the role of teachers changes, and many more people will teach online? Yes, I do believe that. I don’t think that’s scary though; I think it’s exciting. We have all these possibilities for global collaboration in education. We can provide choices for students so they can find the right environment for their individual learning.

For instructional designers and others who develop e-learning, I think the online K-12 market is definitely something to watch. Whether the prediction of 50% by 2019 is right or not, this is an area that’s going to grow. This is good news for instructional designers; it means a whole other market for jobs.

For teachers, I think this means a different set of opportunities–not necessarily more or less, just different. My guess is that teaching online will allow some teachers to do a “partial retirement”; instead of retiring from teaching entirely, they might choose to teach a few courses online while travelling or spending time on hobbies or whatever.

If you’re working in the online K-12 environment, either as a teacher or as an instructional designer, I’d appreciate hearing from you. How would you address the fears identified by this reader?

Telecommute Instructional Design Jobs

About six weeks ago, I added a new feature to my sidebar: an Ask A Question button. This idea was mentioned on Problogger as a way to promote your blog, find out what content is actually relevant to your readers, and improve interaction and community. Since I was already getting a number of questions in comments, I thought I’d try this out to see what kind of questions I received.

Last week, I got a great question from Robert K.:

So my question is, are there instructional design companies that will let you work remotely to some degree or do most require you to be in office to interact with SME’s or other office staff?

The short answer to his question is yes, it is possible. It can take more work to find the right fit, but you absolutely can work from home.

I work 100% from home, although I will admit that it’s rare to find salaried positions that are 100% telecommute. But yes, some companies will let you work from home all the time, and many more will let you do so some of the time. For example, during one contract, I worked from home 3 days a week. One of my friends at that job worked most days from home; she even got permission to work only half days, all of it from home, for several weeks when her daughter was sick and needed extra care.

A Google search for “‘instructional designer’ telecommute” returns over 18,000 hits, so there are things out there. You do have to hunt a bit more though, especially if you want to work completely from home. I’ve been recruited in the past for jobs that required travel at the beginning and end of a project, plus perhaps occasionally during, but otherwise you could work from home. I’m not sure whether you can do any travel in your situation or if limited travel would be acceptable.

Dice and Craigslist both let you restrict your search to telecommute positions, also there isn’t a good way to do a national search on Craigslit. WAHM does a pretty good job of compiling new telecommute jobs from multiple sources, even if it isn’t the easiest site to navigate. You can use the Find command on your browser to search for “instructional” on the page with their job listings.

Especially for someone looking for telecommute positions, I would suggest looking at online schools and publishing companies.

• Online colleges and universities, including community colleges, may be more likely to have telecommute opportunities. These are organizations who are used to having instructors work virtually, which makes it easier for other employees to telecommute too.
• Research the online K-12 environment. This is an area with a lot of projected growth, so those companies will be hiring. The same goes for K-12 schools as higher ed; if other employees are already telecommuting, the infrastructure, policies, and organizational culture already support it.
• Check out publishing companies; they are all doing a lot of e-learning now. Publishing companies should be more accustomed to telecommute work; after all, they don’t have all their authors working in cubicles.

General Job Searching

For all that the big job boards (i.e., Monster & Careerbuilder) get dinged, I personally found them to be helpful. I’ve gotten jobs through both Monster and Careerbuilder, as well as the eLearning Guild’s job board. Certainly networking is still important and online job boards shouldn’t be your only strategy, but there seemed to be a lot of recruiters looking for IDs on Careerbuilder two years ago. Posting your resume wouldn’t take too much time, and it would make you more visible.

Curt Bonk assembled a terrific list of resources for finding instructional technology jobs.

I think anyone who is looking for a job should be on LinkedIn. It lets you build your network and see how you’re connected to companies you might like to work for. Although the author of Linked Intelligence isn’t updating much anymore, the archives of this blog have great information on how to use LinkedIn.

Your Suggestions

What advice would you give to someone looking for a telecommute instructional design job? Are there resources I should have suggested but left off my list? I know my list is fairly US-centric; I’m just not at all familiar with what else is out there in the world.

What have your experiences been finding instructional design jobs where telecommuting is an option?

Update: Read all my posts about Instructional Design Careers.

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Technorati Tags: instructionaldesign, telecommute, career, job

Image: ‘Day 2: Now THIS is what I call telecommuting…‘
www.flickr.com/photos/13684545@N00/456799827

Tools for Getting Started in Second Life

Elena at Lively Learning posted some comments about Second Life for education in response to my liveblogging of the TCC Keynote Why do we need a Second Life? (Her original post is in Russian; the Google translation gave me enough to get the gist of her post.)

In response to my comment on her post, she asked this question:

In your comment you’ve mentioned about last year’s introduction to second life - is possible to find it somewhere? Second Life is not popular in Russia now but it is obvious that interesting is raising. I would appreciate if you can give some information about it!

Unfortunately, the archive from TCC 2007 isn’t public and requires paid registration. However, there seem to be lots of free online tools available.

I’ve bookmarked a few Second Life resources previously.

• For just getting started using Second Life, these video tutorials are really helpful.
• I haven’t spent much time with it, but the New Media Consortium’s Getting Started page is probably where I’ll go first when I decide to start playing with SL again.
• For educational purposes, I’m sure the folks at the SLED (Second Life Education) community would have lots of ideas. The SLED blog looks good too.
• This wiki with educational uses of Second Life has a number of resources.
• Karl Kapp’s MSIT Second Life wiki has lots of resources. You could also search his blog archives, as he writes about Second Life often.

I know I have readers with a lot more experience in Second Life than me. What resources have been helpful to you? What would you recommend for Elena? Is there anything on Second Life in Russian?

Technorati Tags: second+life, russia, education, tcc2008,

TCC08 Keynote: Why Do We Need A Second Life?

Presenter: Dr. Barbara P. McLain, Professor, Music Education and Secondary Instrumental, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

In Second Life: Professor Lilliehook

“Change ahead requires vision now”

Visions for change

• Touch screen computers
• Holographic displays
• 3D TV
• Merged technologies

What would you do as an educator if you had a holographic display?

Trends

• Social networking
• Visual communication
• Diminishing attention spans
• Multitasking
• Game-based learning
• Improved bandwidth & access
• High def screens
• Touch screen interfaces
• Merged technologies
• Open source software
• Internet subscription software

Overview of Second Life

• Wants to explain why people are so excited about it
• She thinks its a little ahead of its time–we’re catching up, but it’s slow
• Free software, but land costs
• Grid: how land is laid out
• Archipelagos for land
• In-world economy of Linden Dollars
• Avatar Creation
• Tools available

Says better help from other people than the in-game help

Everyone has art ability–everyone can build

Library of Congress has a Second Life

• New Media Consortium Getting Started info: http://sl.nmc.org/wiki/Getting_Started
• NMC’s own orientation island: http://sl.nmc.org/join/

Educational growth in SL–nearly anything can be taught in SL. Growth is like previous growth of online education

Second Life & virtual worlds are a new movement, but SL isn’t the first world and won’t be the last

Minimum Needs for Teaching

• Space (Borrow, buy, or rent)
• Skills
• Time–she calls it “wonderful time” but there is a learning curve

Why Second Life Education

• No subject left behind!
• Many classroom limitations gone–size, space
• Engaging–banish lectures
• Address more learning styles
• Research opportunities

Research from Intellagirl:

• 91% of students see the internet as a place for answers
• There are more online gamers than golfers in the world

Schools are not the only places to go for learning

How Second Life Education

• Active, student-centered learning. If you’re just going to do a lecture, don’t do it in SL–there are better avenues for that.
• Peer groups

Selling Second Life Education to Administrators

• Match to institutional goals
• Collaborate with prior successful projects
• Look for unique opportunities

4 Types of School Administrators

• Sherman Tank: always has to be in control, has to be their idea. Give them the credit so you can get your stuff.
• Social Butterfly: include pictures in your proposal
• Teddy Bear: 75% of administrators–they are worried about porn, access for all–they are the nesters of the world, want to protect us.
• Picky Picky: their avatars will look exactly like they do in real life. They will check all the details

In the chat: “But almost every major technology has been propelled forward by pornography! See, all we’re doing is leveraging the most recent porn delivery platform for instructional purposes. We did it with the web, we can do it with SL. ^_^”

Responding to Naysayers

• It’s more than just a game
• There’s porn online and in the convenience store down the street too, not just in SL. It’s a matter of choice.
• It’s cheaper than Blackboard.
• “It’s too complicated”: So is web design, but we have online courses
• “The avatars are too sexy”: So are some of the profs (at least in Hawaii where she teaches)

Q: Community college environment is more concrete and don’t see this as part of their academic environment
A: She provided a zip file with a sample proposal, research, etc. Just like when online learning started, you share the quality examples. Sometimes you have to wait for those administrators to retire though.

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Image: ‘The Teach‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18839217@N02/2381606521

Technorati Tags: tcc08, tcc2008, secondlife, education

TCC08: Making Distance Learning Courses Accessible

Making Distance Learning Courses Accessible to Students with Disabilities

Presenters:

• Adam Tanners, Doctoral Student in Exceptionalities, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI
• Kavita Rao, Educational Technology Specialist, Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, Honolulu HI

Overview

• Background
• Legal Mandates
• Four Scenarios
• Conclusion

Four student profiles

• Matthew: Blind
• Marlee: Deaf
• Albert: Learning disability–difficulty reading large blocks of text, overwhelmed by too much info
• Steven: physical disability–unable to use standard mouse or keyboard, voice is soft & hard to understand

Assistive Technology = anything that increases, maintains, or improves “functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities”

Universal Design

Tools:

• Many built into computers
• More available specialized

Instructional Methods

• Address diverse learning styles–multimodal materials
• Alternate methods of presentation & evaluation

Laws

• IDEA: K-12 setting, “least restrictive environment”
• ADA, Title II
• Rehabilitation Act Section 504 & 508

Issue isn’t just whether students have access, but whether the communication is actually as effective as that provided to others. It’s not just whether it’s possible, but how usable it is.

Scenario

Online course with asynchronous (LMS) & synchronous (Web conferencing)

• Text-based files
• Threaded discussions
• Video files & audio podcasts
• Interactive online class meetings

Matthew (Blind)

• Limitations
  • Reading & inputting text on screen
  • Seeing graphics & video
• Accommodations
  • Screen reader
  • Refreshable Braille display
  • Braille textbook

Tips for Matthew

• Alt text for all graphical content
• Create textual content in HTML, text, or accessible PDF (PDF needs to have the meta information with the text, not just an image of the text)
• Create descriptive audio for videos (i.e., have someone describe the video)

Question: How accessible is Sakai?
Answer: Not sure yet–he hasn’t tested it

Marlee: Deaf

Limitations

• Hearing audio content
• Hearing and speaking during synchronous meetings

Accommodations

• Captioning
• Alternative text for audio (i.e., transcript)
• Video conferencing

Tips for Marlee

• Elluminate has real-time captioning available (I’ve never seen anyone use this in a presentation before–very nicely done. It requires someone to type it out, but it’s possible.)
• Can use a relay system with video interpreter
• Select pre-made videos with captioning
• Caption videos that you create for the course
• Provide the script for narrated presentations & podcasts
• If you use a script for your presentations, you have a transcript already for accessibility

Albert: LD

Limitations

• Large blocks of text
• Dense information

Accomodations

• Text-to-speech software

Tips

• Create textual content in HTML, text, or accessible PDF (same as Matthew)
• Course design–good use of white space, good design principles

Steven: Physical

Limitations

• Keyboard & mouse
• Turning pages in printed text

Accommodations

• Alternative computer input (too much to go into in this session–lots of options)
• Electronic text

Tips

• Course design (including big icons to make better “targets” for less accurate input devices)
• Electronic version of all reading materials, including textbook

Conclusion

Tips often overlap–things that help one student often help others too

PowerPoint slides–don’t JUST read them, but if you read them it, then that content is available via audio

Not every instructor can do all of these–students should be proactive about asking for which parts they need. Know your audience.

Question: If you could only do 1 or 2 of these tips, which would have the most impact?
Answer:

• Captioning videos–even people who don’t have hearing disabilities may use it.
• Electronic text–give people ability to access it

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Technorati Tags: tcc08, tcc2008, accessibility, online+learning, universal+design

TCC08: Wikis and Blogs and Tags: Oh Why?

Presenters:

• Alice Bedard-Voorhees, Colorado Mountain College, Glenwood Springs, Colorado, USA
• Lisa Cheney-Steen, Colorado Community College System, Denver, Colorado, USA

Starting with an intro to Web 2.0

New tools pop up all the time

Why not just use the features in your LMS?

• Information or Presentation
• Social Connection
• Collaboration

Categories overlap & aren’t clean distinctions

Information & Presentation

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Voicethread
• Slideshare

“Information is not always text” This is a really important point

If it is text, a blog is good

In chat, Alan Selig pointed out that using tools outside the LMS is important b/c they’ll have them after they graduate.

• Life is not a closed situation like an LMS
• Show students what you are reading–demonstrate importance of material outside the classroom
• Add “real world” content by bringing things in from outside (podcasts, blogs, etc.)

Audience is important!

Question about FERPA (student privacy law in the US)

• Important to protect feedback and grades
• They checked that moving student writing outside was OK
• May have students use pseudonyms
• Cynthia Calongne said for game-based rubrics she adds NPCs to disguise the real scores

Social Connection Tools

“Increased engagement = Opportunity for Increased Learning”

Engagement is the why for these tools

Information Literacy & Sharing Discoveries

• delicious
• Diigo
• Twitter

Annotations on sites helps information literacy.

Diigo = “delicious on steroids” with more annotations or conversations, sticky notes. More social community.

Cynthia uses Twitter for keeping track of bookmarks–lets her tag it with who shared it with her and when to give her context

Collaboration Tools

• Wikipedia
• Kaltura–collaborative video editing
• Google Docs
• Diigo

Create a sharing community

Important to teach students collaborative skills to prepare for work

Teams are goal-directed

Wikis as classic example of collaborative tool

• Gave an example of faculty handbook created with wiki (using MediaWiki)
• Wikis make it very clear who did what–always a problem with group work for grading

Students learn how to judge the stability of information & collective intelligence through using a wiki

They get complaints that their website information is out of date but that the wiki information keeps changing.

Wikis have more work application for students too

Diigo

• Set up a group
• Have everyone in the group highlight and add sticky notes to discuss the content
• Diigo’s dashboard has forums for discussion
• Automatic notification available so instructors can keep track of discussion
• Help connect learning in class to learning outside

How do you pronounce Diigo? Is it DEE-Go?

LMS is nice to have as a launching point so students have a home base

They have had good support from their administration.

If students are really uncomfortable sharing online, you need to make accomodations–one participant said he dropped a class b/c it required Blogger and he doesn’t like Google’s privacy policies

You need to set expectations for writing style–if you grade on grammar and tell them what is acceptable, they will write with an appropriate level of communication for that level. Ask students what they want to be remembered for–is it l33t speak?

Privacy issues: Edublogs may be better than Blogger, or do it on your own servers to control information.

Image: ‘Ruby Slippers by Peter Alexander‘
www.flickr.com/photos/14351900@N00/2128542926

Update: I switched the image for this–I didn’t realize that my original choice had graffiti over the picture; I was just seeing Dorothy and Toto.

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Technorati Tags: tcc08, tcc2008, wiki, blog, diigo, privacy, education, writing

TCC08: What can Educators Learn from Online Religious Communities?

This is another liveblogged post from the TCC 2008 conference.

Presented by Scot Headley, Amy Dee, Sue Phillips, Tricia Meyer, Jeanette Eggert

Doctoral students at George Fox University

Based on seminar where doctoral students created online community projects

Used a wiki for the course–most content went through the wiki, not through Moodle.

The seminar raised a question about whether online religious communities could be a model for online educational experiences.

Amy Dee: Wiki-Mania

• Used wiki for communication with a church small group
• People were used to checking email, not the wiki

Missed most of her presentation due to a phone call

Tricia Meyer

• Moodle–Used Moodlerooms
• Invited 10 students (10th grade) and 5 guest hosts (employees of school/church)

Successes:

• Idea received positively by students
• Students did thoughtful posts
• High quality information from guest hosts
• Good feedback from students

Failures

• 50-60% involvement
• Minimal interaction with each other–students responded to adults but not each other
• No evidence of learning from others’ posts
• Technical problems

Conclusions

• Students don’t have much time but they like it
• Forum is good for giving students time and space to think carefully and express themselves
• Didn’t really create a sense of community

Sue Phillips

• Used MySpace & a wiki
• Chose MySpace b/c lots of existing religious tools available (e.g., Bible verse of the day)
• Also explored specifically Christian sites, but secular sites like MySpace may offer better options

Jeanette Eggert

She had not used a chat room, IM, Facebook, or MySpace before joining a site called OurPrayer.org

Joined a group that did live chat

She’s still active in the group even after her class assignment

• Chat has structure
• People assigned as a leader and an “usher”–one person is designated to welcome newcomers through a private message and help them get started
• Everyone can contribute
• 30 minute chat, 2X a day
• Fellowship time before and after official time

Feels a sense of community with the group–technology has connected her with others. Provided opportunity for isolated individuals to experience community,

For education

• It’s hard to do synchronous and get everyone there at the same time
• A larger total population may give you enough people
• Chat does add pressure for spelling and typing, even when the group is accepting

Scot Headley: Quaker Meeting in Second Life

• Second Life focused his attention–unprogrammed worship requires that focus, not multitasking
• Respect for people behind the avatar
• Consensus decision making
• Encouragement and accountability online
• Learned about philosophical and practical aspects of online practice

Questions:

Most people in the online communities were part of other face-to-face Christian communities

Audio might be better for people who have trouble typing

Technorati Tags: tcc08, tcc2008, education, religion, community, web20

TCC08: Second Life: Teaching Tips from the Virtual Frontier

Presented by Cynthia M. Calongne, Colorado Technical University

OK, I admit that I’m not really expecting to be able to apply anything in Second Life for my current job. However, Cynthia is a sweetie and a great presenter, and I want to see the neat things she’s doing.

People are interested in avatars, sense of self

Tips for Teaching in a Virtual World

• People: sense of presence
• Places: learning environment
• Content: course design
• Assessment: assignments, rubrics

Sense of Presence

• Appearance–like real or ideal self? Do you want to look exactly like yourself? Different people make different choices
• Movement–it matters how you stand, sit, walk, dance, etc.
• Communication–voice, text, gestures. Crucial to being successful for learning

Flexibility

• If the technology is not working with the behavior, change the behavior
• Have to be flexible when working with technology (considering the problems with slides for this presentation, that is very true)

Groups: Have students use groups so you can easily share messages and items. Also sends emails for asynchronous communication. Can use kiosks with info for asynchronous communication too.

Uses small groups for collaborative work. Works best to have each student create subsections of a project, then integrate the sections at the end.

Experimental Design Classrooms

• Virtual classrooms don’t have to have desks in rows
• If you want students to be active, create an environment to encourage that
• “Why create the brick and mortar when you can do magic?”
• In her environments, students sometimes don’t leave when class is done–they stay to play more
• Had students put avatars in wheelchairs to think about how to design for that restriction–good for teaching accessibility issues

Site to compare virtual worlds provided in chat: http://www.virtualenvironments.info/

The world keeps changing, so it affects how objects behave. The changes teach you to be more tolerant and accepting of change and problems.

Dr. Dobbs Life 2.0: http://www.life20.net/

Second Life is a “context-rich environment”

Meetings can mix people in SL and outside–you can use a webcam from outside SL that is projected in-world. Sloodle lets someone who is logged into Moodle chat with someone else in SL

Teaching and Learning in SL

• Office hours in SL
• She is more social in-world than in RL
• Roleplay & conflict
• Blended reality

80% of the world’s internet users will be in a virtual world by 2011

Suffern Middle School students acted out trial from Of Mice and Men

Autism & Aspberger research in SL–virtual worlds can be helpful

Important to be familiar with camera controls so you can control what you see

Social networking–Cynthia Twitters for backchannel while in SL

Learning environment should include

• communication tools
• content
• variety of course delivery methods

Teaching object creation–she has samples of each stage, gives them the textures, they can walk through each step with an example

Edumuve: sites of interest to educators in Second Life

She has “stuff” available in world so you can contact her and ask (Lyr Lobo in SL)

Her slides are available on Slideshare

Image:

Lyr Lobo at TCC2008 Preview Event by WI Burt

Technorati Tags: secondlife, education, avatar, identity, teaching, cynthia+calongne

TCC08: Instructional Uses of Google Apps

Collaborative Web 2.0 Tools Changing the Face of Higher Education: Instructional Uses of Google Apps

Laura C. Brewer, Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, AZ, USA
Zeynep Kilic, ASU, Tempe, AZ, USA
Samuel DiGangi, ASU, Tempe, AZ, USA
Angel Jannasch-Pennell, ASU, Tempe, AZ

Missed the first part of the session due to a phone call

Web 2.0 in Education

People are producers rather than just consumers of content

Students in the Web 2.0 World

• Net Generation
• Digital Natives
• TV, Internet, video games over magazines, books, newspapers

Net Gen Students

• Don’t make blanket assumptions–there is diversity
• They are not always as tech savvy as we might think
• Ubiquitous technology for entertainment and communication, not necessarily for learning

Faculty in Web 2.0 World

• Rapid changes in technology –> changing expectations of teaching roles
• Shift to learner-centered paradigm
• Shift in balance of power
• Do faculty see educational value in technologies?

Google Apps

• Free for standard edition
• Education version has some premier features too

Google Docs & Spreadsheets: Pros

• No geographical or time constraints
• Any number of collaborators
• Can be published or private
• Import from other file types
• Export in multiple formats
• Automatic backup
• Extensive revision history
• Single sign-on is easier for students

Google Docs & Spreadsheets: Cons

• Output layout is hard to control. Html code is not clean
• Bibliographies, citations require extensive reformatting
• No support for offline editing with later merging of these versions
• Menus and tools not consistent across applications
• Institutional concerns
• Privacy

Ed Tech people are excited, but are faculty really using these tools?

Faculty Surveys

60% never use Google Docs; 20% use at least once a week

Those that do use it, use it more for research than for instructional or personal use.

Many faculty who use other Web 2.0 apps don’t use Google Docs, but it’s growing

Found it most valuable for research (70% valuable, 17& somewhat)

How instructors use it (all low percentages)

• Creating own materials: 10%
• Students use for required assignment: 7%
• Students use for optional assignment: 4%

Many more faculty say it’s valuable than actually use the tools

They don’t have enough data yet to develop pedagogy/best practices for using the tools for instructional purposes. Want to do additional research.

Question came up in chat about Section 11 of Google’s TOS. This answer talks about content ownership.

Google says: “The first thing to understand is that this language doesn’t give Google ownership rights to your data. You, and you alone, own your content.”

Examples of Use

• Some students use Google Docs in combination with other tools to collaborate for group projects
• Course development (like how we use it)

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Technorati Tags: GoogleApps, GoogleDocs, education, online+learning, faculty