Educause Learning Initiative: 7 Things You Should Know About

The “7 Things You Should Know About…” series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

This month’s brief examines backchannel communications, which I mentioned in my recent post on designing interactivity into live web conferences on the Adobe Connect Professional tool.  While our online faculty harness the power of the backchannel to foster participation and drive lecture content,  I wonder whether others here at Penn are experimenting with using backchannel tools in their face-to-face teaching.

Anyone out there using chat, IM, Twitter, or Google Wave for group participation in their face-to-face classes? If so, would you consider sharing your activity with us here?

If not, what do you think are the potential pros and cons of enabling backchannel conversations to become a part of the student experience in face-to-face classes at Penn?

Our  “revolutionary video project” involved the delivery of over 30 hours of broadcast-quality lectures in a fully-online non-credit course to more than 1000 participants in 62 countries on 6 continents. Course participants watched the video lectures and discussed them using tools of the social web. Come hear a bit more about this and other exciting video projects:

Connect@NMC: Kaltura Inspire: The Future of Video in Education

This Webinar will explore how video and new forms of multi-media enabled learning are revolutionizing education across the country. Video in Education now goes beyond simple publishing and includes internal university ‘YouTubes’, deep learning management system integrations, collaborative video editing assignments, video for distance education and libraries, and media-powered blogs and social networks.  Kaltura has developed an open source alternative to proprietary video platforms that is flexible, easy to integrate and includes custom tools  specifically for education.

Join us for a showcase of  revolutionary video projects. Penn State’s Chris Millet, Penn’s Marni Baker Stein, 2Tor’s James Kenigsberg, and Kaltura’s Leah Belsky.

Note you will have to pre-register to attend via http://www.kaltura.org/education-webinar-registration?ref=NMC

Over the next few months we’ll publish here descriptions of other video projects we’re working on with Penn faculty. In the meantime, why not share some information about a project that you’re involved with?

1. Design your presentation mindfully; plan interactive moments.

Use the interactive features of your web conferencing software to keep your audience connected to your topic and each other.

• Provide a warm-up activity. Share a map on the whiteboard and have participants identify where they’re located, for example, or have participants play a simple word game, like Hangman. Getting participants to use the interactive features right from the start helps set the “ground rules” for interactivity throughout the session.

• Design moments for guided reflection. In her undergraduate World Music course, Dr. Carol Muller plays unfamiliar music to her students and prompts them to describe in few words their initial response to that music using the direct messaging tool.  As the written responses come in, she continues to speak, rephrasing student thoughts using the academic register of her field. Within a few weeks, she notices that students start to use the language of ethnomusicology in their chat sessions.

• Design question and answer sessions into your talk. While Dr. Peter Struck delivers lectures in his Greek and Roman Mythology course, for example, students are encouraged to participate in backchannel conversations with the Teaching Assistant via the chat tool. Every 10-15 minutes, he pauses his lecture, allows the TA to report on what students are commenting on in the chat, and then extends the conversations with the students via the voice and video tools before returning to his lecture.

• Design small group work into your presentation. In Academic Writing and Research Design in the Arts and Sciences, a graduate seminar, Dr. Kris Rabberman uses breakout rooms for close reading and group discussions. In these private spaces, students work with a select number of their peers on an activity aligned with instructional goals. Dr. Rabberman visits each room to provide guidance/feedback. After the group exercise, students then return to the main room to present their findings/conclusions to the larger group.

• Use polls (quizzes) to check for understanding and track participation.  You can design these in advance, or create them as you deliver your content. In the LPS information session for online students, for example, we ask how many users have taken an online course before, whether or not they’ve used the web for real-time interaction, and, if so, which tools they’ve used (Skype, Google Talk, etc.). We then use that data to drive our conversations about how online courses work at Penn.

2. Create visuals that enhance your verbal delivery.

• Share your screen with users. Take participants on a web tour or show them how to use online tools. As a guest lecturer in a graduate seminar, for example, David Azzolina from Penn Libraries introduces students to key databases and resources available in Penn’s extensive library system.

• Create a whiteboard where participants can work collaboratively. Dr. Kris Rabberman uses the whiteboard to help students identify writing conventions and develop peer editing skills. She uploads samples of text to the whiteboard and asks students to use the marking tools to highlight/circle key issues.

• Pre-load images or include them in your lecture slides. In a lecture describing the history of parliamentary land enclosure in Britain in the eighteenth century for her Introduction to Romanticism course, Myra Lotto includes historic maps and images of a pastoral countryside to convey the mood of that period.

• Use PowerPoint strategically. In Calculus 2, Nakia Rimmer uses animated slides to guide students through solutions to complicated problems. Read Edward Tufte’s work if you want to learn more about the effective use of Power Point and the design of visual information. He’s bringing his one day course on Presenting Data and Information to Philadelphia on March 16, 2010.

3. Control your verbal delivery.

• Speak a little bit slower and a bit more emphatically than you might normally speak in a face-face lecture session.
• Vary the volume, rate and tone of your speech.
• Incorporate pausing to highlight key ideas, transition between points, and/or recapture the audience’s attention.
• Worried about whether or not your participants are following along? Establish techniques for collecting frequent feedback from participants. Have students use the “My Status” tools (shown on the right), for example, to let you know whether you need to speed up or slow down, speak louder or softer.

To learn more about effective practice in designing presentations using Adobe Connect Professional, visit:

RIT Online Learning, winner of the New Media Consortium’s 2008 Center of Excellence Award.

• Student Engagement Strategies
• Best Practices and Technical Tips

Adobe’s Resource Center provides tutorials on features and best practice advice:

• Read through the User Quick Guide or watch a video about how the web conference tool works.

• Best Practices for Delivering Virtual Classroom Training

Please consider sharing what you learn by submitting comments below.

I found it interesting – but difficult - to teach this way. I spent much time preparing handouts (sample spreadsheets of “before” and “after”) and worrying about pace and structure. I chose a traditional approach where I shared my screen and manipulated Excel and then asked participants to “watch and repeat” on their own computer.

The technology worked quite well and the participants all seemed to keep up, and be eager for more. But being the presenter, I had this odd sinking feeling that I was shouting down a deep, empty well.  I have presented at several conference sessions online – but I have no expectation of audience participation when I am lecturing. It felt much stranger to conduct a small-group hands-on workshop completely online. We are planning to try this again in January and suggestions for how to structure the activity to be more interactive and less didactic would be most welcome!

Founded in 2007 and supported by six higher education publishers, CourseSmart provides higher ed markets with digital versions of over 7000 titles from some of the leading textbook publishers today (including McGraw Hill Higher Education, John Wiley & Sons , Sage Publication, Pearson and 10 others).  According to its website, students from nearly 6000 universitites have subscribed to CourseSmart eTextbooks, saving an average of $62 per purchase.

Saving  up to 50% off the publisher list price, students subscribe to eTextbooks for 180 days, in either fully online or downloadable versions.  eTextbooks have the same content, page numbers, and layout as print versions of the text, as well as a suite of interactive tools which allow students to search for keywords, add notes, highlight key points, copy and paste quotes, print pages and even email excerpts to their classmates.  What’s not to love?

The attention-grabbing headline of this report states, “The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes…was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face.”

However, the authors provide this important caveat:

“Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium. In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction”

Later in the report the authors mention,

“Studies in which analysts judged the curriculum and instruction to be identical or almost identical in online and face-to-face conditions had smaller effects than those studies where the two conditions varied in terms of multiple aspects of instruction” (page xvi)

and

“In terms of instructional features, the online learning conditions in these studies were less likely to be instructor-directed (8 contrasts) than they were to be student-directed, independent learning (17 contrasts) or interactive and collaborative in nature (23 contrasts). Online learners typically had opportunities to practice skills or test their knowledge (42 effects were from studies reporting such opportunities).” (page 17)

In my humble opinion, this study validates the effectiveness of a variety of pedagogical techniques and thoughtful course design.  These techniques can be applied to both online and traditional courses; the pedagogy matters more than the medium.

An article which summarizes the findings of the report is available at

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/29/online

and the full report is available at

http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

Facebook is particularly suited for extra language practice. During the 2008 – 2009 academic year,  I implemented a Facebook project for GRMN 101 and GRMN 102. The original thought behind the project was to have students create online portfolios for their written work which they could share with each other and comment on. In the past,  Bb’s Threaded Discussions and Blogs adequately served this purpose, but this time I wanted to expand the project to a more socially authentic environment that  most students were familiar with as a means for communicating and circulating information. It was my hope that students could then experience language practice as a meaningful exercise designed for them to become acquainted with each other in a less formal setting. Below is a screen shot of a short writing sample from one student’s post in Facebook.

click on image to enlarge

You may notice that the author of the above post uses an alias. In this instance, the alias is that of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. For this project, students were required to choose an alias that referenced a known German artist, philosopher or scientist. Students were not permitted to invite personal contacts to join the group. Membership was limited to only students from the class.

Students frequently combined their knowledge of the personalities they adopted in Facebook with details of themselves. This combination seemed to foster a playful use of the language even at the elementary level. Furthermore, the images that students used to illustrate their ideas may have contributed to stimulating their creativity and imagination. The translation of Goethe’s post in the example above is: “When I was still young and innocent, I was amazed about a lot. I thought that this world was exceptional. I laid in the sun and had fun in the present.”

Students also posted longer writing samples. As was the case with most of their written assignments, students were encouraged to illustrate their stories through images. In the story below, the student describes a fictitious battle that he imagines between himself and the monsters floating in his cereal bowl. The story gradually develops into a modern day fairy tale.

It was difficult to prevent inaccurate uses of the language since most posts were not checked before appearing in Facebook. However, there were opportunities in class to review student posts, make suggestions and do corrections. On the whole, there were few instances in the Facebook exchanges between students that caused communication problems. More importantly, the tasks for the students in Facebook did not have a particular grammatical focus but rather aimed at providing students with meaningful and creative opportunities to communicate with each other about themselves outside the classroom.

Besides providing students the opportunity to share their written work, students were also able to notify each other in the target language about their current status. Moreover, students were able to comment on each others’ posts and ask questions;  e.g., in the post below, Goethe wrote that he “is dreaming.”  Heidi Klum asks later: What are you dreaming?” Goethe responds: “I dreamt that I was a goalie in the NHL.”  The illustration below shows other status updates and posts by students .

click on image to enlarge

In the example above, we see how students outside the classroom are able to correspond with each other about their daily activities and thus personalize their language experience. In addition to describing what they were doing at a particular moment, students also described their hobbies and personal interests in art, music and culture. Students were able to provide examples of their interests not only through images but through other forms of multimedia such as video and links to other web sites.

Facebook also provided students with opportunities to learn new vocabulary. Students could easily switch the language of the interface to German and change all menus and instructions to the target language.

click on image to enlarge

Facebook was perhaps a factor in changing some of the dynamics of the course by facilitating a peer learning environment, in which the students could teach each other content. Although German rock music was not on the syllabus, students initiated their own discussion of German rock bands by posting music videos in Facebook that they found on YouTube. On occasion, students not only exchanged music videos but also shared the lyrics for each other to read which the lengthy text in the post below illustrates

click on image to enlarge

Finally, Facebook developed a community of learners, who learned about each other in ways that may not have otherwise occurred. Frequent users of Facebook use it as a means to quickly and simultaneously connect and network with friends, family and colleagues from around the world. It was namely Facebook’s networking aspects that hopefully helped the students to change their perception of language learning from that of an individual activity to that of a more dynamic group activity.

Privacy of student information is a complex topic. Technical, pedagogical, cultural and legal factors will all impact how your students share their work in public forums. Educause published a very helpful guide on one type of public web assignment – student blogging. See http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI8006.pdf

U.C. Berkeley  has a concise and helpful page with suggestions to instructors planning online projects. Please see http://teaching.berkeley.edu/onlineprojects.html

What follows is a very brief overview of some issues you should consider when planning assignments. I’ll be working with privacy experts and other instructional support staff at Penn to provide more detailed guidance in the future.

Be clear about activities and goals. Students are usually enthusiastic about the opportunity to publish their course work on open web sites. They welcome the opportunity to have their work contribute to the community or advance scholarship in their field. Make it clear to your students from the outset what aspects of their work will be posted publicly, and why. Discuss issues of appropriate content and ask your students to let you know if they have concerns about posting their work publicly. If at all possible, review the plan for these activities at the start of the term so students will know what to expect and can decide if they want to continue with the course.

Offer alternatives. Your students have the legal right to control how their academic work is shared. If students express concerns about the privacy of their work, be prepared to offer alternative ways for them to complete the course requirements.

Avoid discussing sensitive personal information. Avoid activities which might lead students to disclose sensitive personal information about themselves or others. Caution them not to post information which could lead to identity theft (home address, date of birth, etc.) or compromise the privacy of their family, friends or classmates. This is especially important when medical or psychological history may be involved. If you have an activity that might lead students to disclose personal information, plan to conduct those activities using Blackboard or other systems provided by your school which will restrict access to students enrolled in the course.

Protect the identityof individual contributors. It may be possible for students to include their work in a course site without publicly disclosing personal identifying information. For example, you may have students composing the contents of a web site in a wiki on Blackboard or another protected system. The wiki will allow you to see and evaluate individual contributions, then export the final draft to a web-ready format which won’t reveal who contributed what. In other cases, you can have your students post to blogs or other forums using pseudonyms to protect their privacy.

Get permission from people who appear in photos or recordings. If your students will be posting pictures or audio/video recordings to publicly viewable sites, they need to get permission from the people who are seen or heard in those pictures or recordings. This is especially important when dealing with telling personal stories or commenting on controversial issues.

Respect copyright and provide citations. Appropriate use of copyrighted material in educational activities is a very complex subject in its own right. If you’re planning activities in which students might want to re-purpose copyrighted materials you need to become familiar with the principals of “fair use” and review those guidelines with your students. Of course, the usual rules about citation for academic work also apply to work posted on the web.

Encourage students to save their work. Commercial services such as Blogger, Wikipedia, Google Sites and others offer great functionality and convenience. But you and your students have little control over what will happen to these sites over time. Whenever possible, students should save personal copies of the materials they post to these sites. This can help protect against possible loss and assure that they will continue to have access to their own intellectual work products.

I encourage instructors of courses in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences to contact me if they have questions about issues concerning privacy of student work, or if they are planning assignments in which students will post their work to publicly viewable web sites.

Instructors at other schools should contact their instructional technology support providers, or school privacy officer.

-John MacDermott

SAS Computing

The tutorial on “Creating Enhanced Podcasts of Your Research” at http://www.apple.com/science/productivitylab/ is a prime example of this.  More than just showing you how to publicize your research, it provides 10 minutes of detailed instructions on how to create an enhanced podcast.  I could envision this being used in any number of ways in education – from instructors creating such podcasts to deliver mini-lectures that are available to their students on demand, to instructors using this tutorial as a tool when assigning students a project where they create the enhanced podcast.  The students’ podcasts could take their classmates through the details or concordant material related to a text or historical event, or could describe a scientific experiment or debate in history or even in the current journals.  The possibilities seem endless, and we’d be happy to work with any instructors who are interested in pursuing this.

If you know of other good tutorials like this one, please share them via the comments!

I’m particularly interested in this symposium because it will address “new literacies; and any technology or practice that shows promise for engaging students and supporting teaching and learning using new media”.  NMC events are always very interesting and helpful, and this one is online so you don’t have to travel or disrupt your schedule to attend.  The registration isn’t free, but it’s a lot less expensive than most in-person conferences.  

Check it out at http://www.nmc.org/2009-nml-symposium 

Once the session topics are listed, if you’d like to attend one of them by looking over my shoulder, just let me know and I’ll reserve a room with a large screen and speakers where we can watch together.

Hope to “see” you there!