Janet Sue Alderson

Sloan Consortium Emerging Technologies Conference Reflection: Part 2

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On Wednesday, April 10, the day kicked off with a plenary address titled “Seven Tales of Learning Online With Emerging Technologies” by George Veletsianos. (I met George at the 2012 Association for Educational Communications and Technology Conference last October, so it was a treat to hear him speak.) Veletsianos identified seven tales, or experiences, that he has encountered in his career. The seven tales include the following:

  • Unexpected Outcomes – we cannot always guarantee an outcome of technology. 
  • Enacting Scholarship in the Open – there are several Open Scholarship Resources available, including www.PirateUniversity.org and www.ThePaperBay.com. 
  • Repurposing Technology – social media/technologies were not originally intended for education. 
  • The Value of Pedagogy – emerging technologies shape and are shaped by education; technology is NOT neutral. 
  • Past Experiences Framing Current Practices – we tend to see recurring trends in online learning, as well as revolutionary changes. 
  • The Open Course Phenomenon – The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) phenomena, including such platforms as Peer to Peer University (P2PU), Coursera, and cMOOCs. 
  • The Need for Research and Evaluation – we have hardly made a dent in the opportunities for research; and the importance of making this research available to the public. 

Veletsianos closed his presentation by offering his latest publication, Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, as a free e-book to those in attendance.

The next session I attended was titled “Online Video Clip Repositories: Expanding OER Content for Course Instruction in the Social Sciences.” This session was amazing; it provided a plethora of free, open resources for video that can be integrated into online courses. As an instructional designer dealing with limited budget and copyright concerns, these resources will be beyond useful. The following is a list of resources the presenter identified and the areas they cover:

The presenter continued to describe a study he and his student conducted over the phenomenon of open video clip repositories (OVCRs), or collections of video clips relevant to teaching of learning content in subject matter(s) that are freely available online. OVCRs were invented with several goals in mind: to aggregate video clips; to promote professors and content; and to locate, filter, and aggregate appropriate video.

The presenter identified three essential elements of an ideal OVCR:

  • Identification – filter through mass and identify relevant video 
  • Preparation – transforming content into curatable form 
  • Aggregation – collects – elaborate website to Youtube database (URL link to embed code) 

Additionally, he listed five desired elements of OVCRs:

  • Selection – search, categorization, tags/keywords, recency, popularity, clip length, supplemental links, clip summary 
  • Application – identifies conceptual relevance: how is it used in learning? email, rating system, comments, Facebook 
  • Interaction – promotes engagement by providing communication 
  • Transmission – communicate via social media, RSS, Google Plus 
  • Contribution – invite viewers to contribute content, identifies contributors of site 

Finally, the presenter provided a table and analysis of OVCRs in the field of social sciences, taking into consideration these essential and desired elements.

The next session, titled “Virtual Ethics: Whose Norms? What’s Right?” was an interactive session in which we openly discussed ethical challenges we face as faculty, technologists, and designers. Some of the challenges that the group identified include the following: inappropriate pictures; netiquette in discussion boards; cheating; accessibility – access to technology; confidential information – unintentional revealing of information; copyright concerns; cyberbullying; and data collection – personal visits to places.

The presenter continued to outline issues of student integrity, including the following: plagiarism; citations; testing; copyright; being “nice;” and privacy.

The presenter concluded by providing several suggestions for strategies for teaching ethics to online learners. These strategies included the following: The Analogous Relationship; Extremes Against the Middle; Testing the Limits; Writing a Policy; and Role Reversal. Two resources the presenter identified, and worthy of looking into later, are the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara (http://www.scu.edu/ethics/) and The Copyright Site (www.thecopyrightsite.org).

The next session, “How is Emerging Technology Shaping Faculty Development?” was a session outlining three designers/technologists’ universities’ faculty development initiatives. The first presenter identified the Faculty Learning Community Model (FLC) as a successful initiative. Similarly, he described Communities of Practices (CoP) as additional opportunities for faculty to surround themselves with like-minded people and similar questions. These CoP meet monthly at his university and discuss a relevant article to keep a continuing conversation among the members.

The second presenter identified several methods that his university uses for disseminating information, including the following:

  • Simulcast – faculty development workshops, develop mobile version and offer as podcast in iTunes 
  • Youtube channel – create playlists, can embed videos in various places 
  • Faculty Development blog 
  • Instructional guide formatted as PDF/eBook 
  • Buffer – send tweets via intervals of time 

The final presenter described her method of creating a hangout in Google + Hangouts as a mechanism for faculty to communicate with her as the designer. Google Hangouts integrates video, voice, and text chat and can hold up to 10 participants. The presenter uses the Hangout “On Air” feature, streaming the Hangout to Youtube so participants can watch and to create an archive.

The next presentation, titled “A La Carte Options for Faculty – a Survey of Tools Used to Increase Engagement in the Online Classroom,” outlined more traditional tools used in online learning. I had encountered most of these tools years ago in my graduate assistantship at Iowa State University, so this presentation was more of a review than new information. As such, the presentation provided information for the following tools:

  • Camtasia Relay 
  • Adobe Presenter 
  • Adobe Captivate 
  • Voki.com (avatars that can be embedded in the LMS, flash based) 
  • Softchalk 
  • Adobe Connect (alternatives: iMeet, AnyMeeting, oovoo) 

The presenters developed a Google Site for attendees to add their own development tools to the list:dd tools to this site: https://sites.google.com/site/alacarte.

Perhaps my favorite quote from the conference.

The final presentation of the day was titled “Working Successfully with Emerging Technologies and Innovations.” This presentation described the over-emphasis on efficiency and quick turnaround that tends to produce a standard. The presenter identified three types of innovations:

  • Core innovation – better delivery of current experiences for current users 
  • Evolutionary innovation – new experiences for current user base or current experience for new users 
  • Revolutionary innovation – new audiences and new experiences 
PowerPoint slide outlining the three types of innovations: Core Innovations, Evolutionary Innovations, and Revolutionary Innovations.

She continued to recognize those in the audience as the “10%,” or those active in disruptive innovation. The rest of the presentation was geared towards providing information on how to support the 10%, emphasizing the fact that cultures of innovation are cultures of learning (meaning, embrace innovation!).

Finally, the presenter outlined a popular initiative to implement innovation, called Penn State’s Hot Teams. Hot Teams are a mechanism for rapid investigation with the goals of learning more, quickly developing understanding, and recommending whether to implement and to what extent. Hot Teams consist of 4-5 members and aim to answer seven questions about the innovation in question:

  • What is it? 
  • How does it work? 
  • Who’s doing it? 
  • Why is it significant? 
  • What are the downsides? 
  • Where is it going? 
  • What are the implications for higher education? 

Furthermore, the Hot Team works on the following timeline, making the exploration of an innovation a four week process:

  • Week 1: identify knowledge gaps 
  • Week 2: use/reach out to users 
  • Week 3: discuss findings, draft document 
  • Week 4: finalize document 

The presenter left us with the following URLs to check out containing information from the conference, as well as additional information.

And so concludes Day 2 of the Sloan Consortium Emerging Technologies Conference. A wrap-up of Day 3 will be soon to follow.