Leading by Example

The Big Question

The Learning Circuits Big Question this month is about learning professionals, leadership, and literacies. Tony breaks it down as several questions, but the Learning Revolutionary summed all the questions up nicely:

Should learning professionals be leading the charge around new work literacies such as social media and informal learning?

Because I’m outside the corporate world, I’m going to look at this from the perspective of 21st century literacy skills rather than “work literacy.” Granted, I think there’s a lot of overlap between the work literacy ideas and the Framework for 21st Century Skills. I see this as similar goals but different contexts.

Let’s start with the idea that K-12 students should be supported in learning 21st century literacy skills. This should not be a controversial starting point; after all, 80% of American voters agree that the skills students need now aren’t the same as the skills needed in the past.

If students need to learn these skills, then their teachers need to have them too, right? Granted, some students will learn the skills outside the system, in spite of whatever the schools teach. But we’re looking at what we want to happen, and I want these skills to be supported by the schools. That means teachers need to have the skills. They have to be able to model the skills for students.

Where will the teachers learn the skills? I don’t think there’s a single answer here: professional learning communities, workshops, conferences, university courses, and mentoring all play a part. Since I work in the higher ed realm though, that’s where I’m going to focus. I think our instructors should have 21st century skills. These are the people who are teaching the teachers, who pride themselves on being the “best of the best” in the field of education. They’re the next group of people who need the skills.

But where are they going to learn? From me and the other people on our team. We have to lead by example for these skills. Our team is leading the charge, and we are making progress. It isn’t nearly as fast as I’d like, but when I look at how far we’ve come in our little corner of the world, it does give me hope.

I want the K-12 students to learn those 21st century skills, but I don’t have access to them directly. Therefore, my responsibility is to work on my own sphere of influence, starting with our online course development team leading by example for our facilitators. When the facilitators have strong 21st century skills, they’ll pass those skills on to the teachers, who in turn will be leaders for their students. If I want others to lead in these skills, I have to do my part to lead by example too. It would be hypocritical to ask them to teach technology skills without practicing what I preach (that is, after all, why I started this blog in the first place).

If I had to focus on one single skill, it would be lifelong learning. Perhaps this isn’t a skill so much as an attitude. It drives me crazy to see educators who think they’ve learned all they need to learn and aren’t willing to even try to learn anything new anymore. Cultivating a culture of learning, where people expect and enjoy continuous learning, is the underlying solution for everything else. We’re never going to get teachers to use technology if they’re determined they don’t need to learn anything anymore. Until they accept their role as learner as well as teacher, we won’t get the changes to happen. Creating a culture that supports lifelong learning needs to start with the professionals who lead by example.

If you had to focus on one skill for this leading by example, what would it be? What’s the underlying skill that supports all the rest, the one where you will concentrate your efforts first?

Technorati Tags: workliteracy, learning+circuits, leadership, changemanagement

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: 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

TCC08: Extreme Makeover: Course Edition

This is another liveblogged post from the TCC 2008 conference. The presenter is Robin Bartoletti, Texas Women’s University, Denton, Texas , USA.

She does course redesigns–has done over 80 of them

Goal is to make courses easier to look at and navigate

Mix it up

• More than just text
• Multimedia–you can find things online
• Many instructors rely overly on PowerPoint

Agenda

• Users
• Redesign
• Navigation = curb appeal
• Resources
• Information Basics
• Testing & Evaluation
• Examples

Users

• Who are your users?
• Traditional or nontraditional students?
• Experienced or not?

Redesign Rules

• Get small
  • Small steps–don’t need to do everything at once or use every Web 2.0 tool available
  • Small chunks–chop content into bite-sized pieces, make it more readable
  • Small links–focused research with refined searches, use existing directories instead of creating your own

Navigation

• Includes a “Start here” link in the navigation I think this might be a good thing for us to copy when we switch to the new LMS
• Submenus have instructional goals explicitly visible
• Checklists of content–if you do everything on this list, you have finished this module

Blog has examples of resources, data visualization, favorite tools (most free, some paid)

Information Basics

• This is the “Start here” info
• Syllabus, calendar, course map, policies
• Where to get help

Testing & Evaluation

• Usability testing
• Student satisfaction
• Faculty satisfaction

Tips

• Fun
• Simple
• Small steps
• Conversational–course evaluations are better for courses with a conversational tone
• Interactivity–more than just reading and discussion
• No lecture pages–no big long text
• Online is different
• No “books”–”Don’t put War and Peace online.” They won’t read it.
  She gave an example of a course where you could watch 170+ slides, or you could watch the slides while listening to the audio of the instructor reading the 170+ slides. Her choice? Neither!
• Check Teaching Naked
• This is all stuff we’re already working on with PLS courses–nice to see that we’re on the right track

Examples

• Visual test with maps–created in WebCT, can be done elsewhere too
• Zip files for Blackboard course available on blog

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Technorati Tags: interactivity, multimedia, usability, navigation, coursedesign, tcc08

TCC08: Cultural Diversity in Online Education

I am again liveblogging during the Technology, Colleges, and Community (TCC) 2008 conference. Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Cultural Diversity and Its Impact in an Online Education Environment

Presenters:

Penny Lorenzo, Kaplan University, Cave Creek, AZ, USA
Gurmit Kaur, Kaplan University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

World is becoming more interconnected, so we should prepare students to function in an interconnected, multicultural world

Cultural diversity enriches organizations & encourages different approaches to teaching and learning

Need awareness of cultures to understand impact on learning process

Instructors can relate content to international current events, even with a set syllabus

Clearly assuming their audience is all instructors in how they are approaching this

Example with researching the Hague Convention countries

Students who are more sensitive to cultural diversity will be more valuable to employers

In an online environment, you may not know immediately what culture someone is from or what their primary language is. When you see a different spelling, do you think it’s a typo or do you consider the cultural perspective?

Especially in online education, language is a big aspect. Using a common language helps to build a learning community. Speaking another language doesn’t mean giving up your identity; it means adding to it. If you’re preparing students for jobs in the US, they should be able to speak and write well in English.

How we label things & what words we choose matters–words reflect power structures and cultural perspectives. Sometimes you need to discuss terms together and come to common understanding of meanings. We did this for the Cultural Competence course, discussing how “racism” would be defined for the class.

For Sikhs, all males have the last name “Singh” and females have the last name “Kaur.” Historically, this was a way to get away from the caste system. I had no idea–this was totally new to me.

Diversity enhances our lives, helps us understand ourselves better

Provide support for students who need it so all students can be successful

Understanding diversity & cultural heritage can help retention rates

Important to create a learning environment where everyone can feel comfortable with the diversity they bring to the community. Students must know it’s OK to be different and to have individual perspectives.

Learn about the culture to make them feel special, like learning about the holidays

• Use e-cards to let students know you are learning about their holidays
• Had a student who learned a few words of Malay to speak with her, made her feel special
• Take a step towards the students and learn about them

IM can be useful for building relationships b/c the expectations for spelling and language aren’t so formal

Reach out to the students, celebrate them. Be open to learning from them.

Technorati Tags: diversity, online+education, culture

TCC08: Transitioning from WebCT to Sakai

The full title of the presentation I’m liveblogging is “Help! I Need Somebody: Faculty Perspectives on Transitioning from WebCT to a Sakai-based Learning Management System,” by Ariana Eichelberger, Educational Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

(Missed the beginning of the presentation due to my computer’s inability to start Elluminate in under 9 minutes)

Open-ended interview questions for faculty

• Hopes and expectations for LMS
• Will you use new features in Sakai?
• (2 more questions that I missed)

Faculty responses

• Approaches to Change
  • All felt some resistance to tech
  • Comfortable with WebCT and hesitant to switch
  • Changes felt imposed on them and not in control of it themselves
  • Technology changes especially disruptive
• Importance of Support
  • Institutional support, especially one-on-one mentoring
  • Mentoring will reduce anxiety (I like this idea–wonder if we could do something like this)
• Expectations
  • Could see benefits even if hesitant
  • Saw benefits of new features–collaboration, easier to learn, sharing resources between courses
  • Resistance didn’t prevent them from feeling optimistic

She had expected that because these people had been through a lot of technology change in the past that they would be more tolerant of it, but there was still a lot of hesitation. The positive attitudes were directly related to their feelings of support available.

Attitude matters. Participants who were successful saw benefits early and were optimistic.

Title of “Help! I need somebody” due to the recurring theme in the responses about the mentoring. She didn’t ask about that, but the responses repeatedly mentioned it.

Pressure on faculty to be self-sufficient, but successful participants relied on assistance from others.

They are currently in transition, but WebCT will be going away soon

Questions:

She mentioned how Sakai can be changed when the universities want it to happen rather than when WebCT decides it will happen. Changes will happen at the system level there (although theoretically you could have different versions of Sakai running from different servers).

Q: What do you wish had been done differently?
A: Many faculty felt that they hadn’t really been involved in the process. If she had been able to influence it more, she would have tried to make more people in the system feel “heard” in the process. People accept the change more easily if they have participated.

Q: Are the students ready for the change?
A: This is probably harder for the faculty than the students. Faculty have more growing pains.

Q: Is the mentoring face-to-face or online?
A: In the past has been mostly face-to-face, but are doing some mentoring through Elluminate too. The mentoring programs have become so popular that they have to assign priorities to the mentoring.

Q: What training was available for faculty during the transition?
A: Workshops at basic to advanced levels for faculty, continue to offer training throughout the transition. College of Education did better internal training than other departments.

Q: How would you do one-on-one mentoring at the community college level where you don’t have grad students to use?
A: They did a pilot for that previously with a grant to help instructors integrate technology. Once the grant finished, they did look for ways to continue the mentoring

Q: Who made the decision to move to Sakai?
A: Leadership, with input from the university community. Collected information from variety of users. Specifically looked for a system that allowed better collaboration between faculty. Sakai has a proven track record with a large number of people.

Q: Who will do the fixes? At the community college resources may not be available to do the fixes for open source.
A: It will be at the system level through IT when enough people ask for changes

Technorati Tags: WebCT, Sakai, LMS, faculty, changemanagement

Update: I’m collecting all of my posts from TCC08 on a single page, so check there for more from the conference.

Free Subscription

If you enjoyed this post, consider a free subscription so you can receive automatic updates. Don’t worry, I hate spam as much as you do, so I’ll never share your email address with anyone.

Subscribe by RSS feed

Subscribe by Email

TCC08: Creating and Teaching a College-Level Undergraduate Course in Social Networking

This is another liveblogged post from the TCC 2008 conference, presented by Robert Fulkerth, Ageno School of Business, Golden Gate University, San Francisco, CA.

• Developed a course on social networking for business
• Will teach with blogs and a wiki
• Using the tools to teach the content–mostly avoiding the LMS
• Use online library databases to research social networking

Past predictions about online communities assumed text because that was what was available. Now YouTube and multimedia are important.

May get invites from people you only vaguely remember–instructors may not remember every student they taught

(Provided a bunch of stats on social networking usage–I’m not taking notes on all that)

Many businesses consider time on social networking sites wasted, but not all

Wachovia is testing social networking for sharing information and developing community within the community

Businesses fear the lack of message control, but some hope that by creating a safe and pleasant environment internally that employees will talk internally rather than out in public

Premises

• Social networking is driven by the desire of people to “demonstrate themselves”
• Predicts a tiered structure will develop
• Right now, this is “Tier 1″
  • Proprietary with some customization (like Facebook & MySpace)
  • Owned by major companies
  • Mass subscription with low/no barriers to entry
  • Free or low-cost, available to all online, use task-specific tools
• Social networking sites will continue to be important, but they require active leadership
• Ease of entry will allow more personalized websites

Tools Used:

• Used Weblog.com to create the blog
• Google Sites for the wiki
• Myspace
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Plaxo–aggregating from multiple social sites
• YouTube–lots of educational resources
• iTunes University
• Second Life

Future Trends

• More for younger generations
• More communities of practice
• Move from passive to active participation (Isn’t that already happening? I don’t think that’s future, that’s now)
• Lines between social networking and formal education will blur
• Social networking sites will reflect changing roles in online engagement

In the chat, there was some good discussion about how sites like Facebook may not be the best for meeting new people, but rather for maintaining and improving existing relationships. Some good discussion about differences in social networking along racial and class lines and the opportunities for networking in the Hispanic community.

Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.

Image: ‘My social network‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503019876@N01/1804295568

Technorati Tags: socialnetworking, business, tcc08, web20