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Ok, folks we're gonna get started here
in like thirty seconds.
{ idle chatter }
Is this coming through up there?
Hello!
That's right! You're gonna stick it on me.
Ok, is that any better Tim? Is that coming through at all?
Hooray! Thank you! Ok,
well welcome to session 1 everybody. This panel is
gonna be talking about emerging and disruptive technology in education.
And just so that we have a little bit of level setting
so that we know what we're talking about. Basically we'll
be looking, the conversation will be about
approaches or technologies that kind of force the re-thinking
of the way things are done. It's a very general way of putting it.
In this context we can be talking about
tools for student reflection, interaction and collaboration, or content creation.
And what I'd like to do, oh, I should
also mention that,
Is that one on? I would kill that one while you're talking.
The dance of the while me turn off.
Oh, we have one already. If you have questions
that come throughout the panel, please place them on the question tool
or vote on ones you like. At certain points in
the talk I'm gonna stop and read some of them. And then also
if people want to actually ask questions in person
you are welcome to do that too. I guess we'll figure out a microphone
run out to the audience situation. So let's go ahead
and get started with having the panelists introduce themselves.
And talk a little bit about their projects related to either
emerging or disruptive technology. And then we'll get into some of the
questions that were listed on the wiki as far as themes that we want to discuss.
So let's start with James down at then end there.
Hi, I'm James
Howell I'm faculty in Veterinarian and Bio Medical sciences in
the College of Agricultural Sciences. And I teach first year
seminar for students who are coming into the
majors in toxicology and immunology and infectious disease. And in that course
I have the students do some live bookmarking
stuff and they set up a blog and
I use their blog pages for them to do sort of
an extension of in class discussion of issues that come up in
the class and I found some really
surprising things. One is that the incoming students tend
to be, you know, they're on Facebook like it's their job.
And they're, you know, on the iPhone all the time.
But they're really kind of shy about actually creating content
on the web. That surprised me. The other thing
that we do is there's sort of a little wiki that you've never heard of
called Toxipedia. That is sort of
catalog of toxic chemicals. And we have a project where they work together and then
make an entry for a chemical that's
not in the database and that goes in. This year what I'm gonna do
and I'll let you know how this works next year, is to
them make Wikipedia entries
and edit Wikipedia entries. So the deal is gonna be
when you use Wikipedia to do research for your presentation
you have to improve that Wikipedia article with other stuff that you learn.
So I'm gonna see how they like that.
And I'll talk about that more if people have questions, but now I'm gonna turn it over to Cole.
Thanks James! Cole Camplese, Director
of Education Technology Services and some times teacher in the College of Education.
Before we start I'd like everyone to close their laptops.
This is highly disruptive for me to, no, I'm just kidding.
I thought I'd go through the Buzzword Bingo to start the day off.
So, Flickr, Facebook, Web 2.0, Plone, Apple, Wii,
Assessment, Adobe Connect, and Learning Design. Bingo, done, ok!
So what do I think
and know about disruptive technologies. I spend my time in a group that
really spends most of it's time thinking and looking at disruptive technologies
for teaching and learning. The thing that we try to do though is to integrate those into
learning environments so that they're appropriate. So to try to figure out what works and what doesn't work.
Because so many times, I think, a lot of us get accused of this thing where we're really focused
solely on the technology and not really on the teaching or the learning.
And so what's interesting is that we have sort of this living
laboratory in ETS where we can take our time and really review things and then work with faculty.
You're gonna hear from our Faculty Fellows later today. The things that they think about.
Many would say very disruptive. I'm not
gonna talk too much right now about the course that Scott and I taught. We talked to you guys
about that last year. And we're getting ready to teach that again this spring with new ideas. I'll let him
mention most of those things. It's just really cool
to be able to come and see this many faces thinking about these kinds of things.
And so what I'm hopeful for is that during this hour or whatever time we have is that
you press us to talk to you a little bit about the kinds of things that you're
thinking about. Because I think ultimately that's what makes all this go around.
Thanks Cole! Scott McDonald, I'm
faculty in the College of Education. I'm in science education.
And I have a background and interest in learning technologies from
my Ph.D and really before that.
And the work that I've been doing in disruptive technologies sort of covers
a lot of territory, but Cole and I have been working together as he
said on a course that ran in the spring of 2008 called
Disruptive Technologies, which is convenient for this panel.
And that was really about how these technologies
play in teaching and learning spaces. And we took the, the term comes from Clayton Christiansen who's a
social theorist at Harvard Business School. So it doesn't mean what most people
think it means, which is things that interrupt class. But it really means things
that have large scale social implications in how
they change the way that we interact with each other and how society works.
So Cole and I ran that class in 2008. We're running it again in 2010
in the spring. These new ideas he's talking about, I haven't heard anything about. So I'm excited to
hear what the new ideas are for the class. It'll be a grand experiment.
One of the things that we know about the class is that
there'll be something that came out of it that we didn't expect. Because that's definitely what happened
in the spring of 2008. Twitter became, we call it the rise of Twitter.
We'll be interested to see what's in 2008. I'm also interested in
these issues because I'm now transitioning as of the
following to the role of the Director of the Innovation Studio at the College of Education.
And that studio is specifically focused on thinking about how these
technologies play in higher education. So I'm interested in that transition
in the fall. Hello, I'm
Karen Keifer-Boyd and I'm Professor of Art Education
and also affiliate professor in women's studies.
So I work within the School of Visual Arts. And I teach things like
Web 2.0, pedagogies, and new media and
pedagogy. And recently this spring with [ inaudible ]
Klagenfurt University taught visual culture and gender constructions
and gender studies
and activist art. And some how when I was talking
to Brett and telling him a little bit about my class
on what I was taught and such. I was invited to this panel. But I hadn't really
considered so much that what I do, I hadn't used the term
really disruptive technologies, but what I do teach
is activism. And so I think even the way that you've defined
it, and of course I'm using new media and technologies
to do that as many artists are. So I'm looking at a lot of artists that do
this and introducing these to my students. And then they
create activists. In Austria there's a big need for that
as well as in the US to change some of the
injustices in the world. And so I come from that
idea of participatory democracy. And I'm the using the technologies in
those ways. Some of the things, just simply to use things like
Good Guide or Skin Deep, those programs.
And you just put in, go through your house, and put in the products you use
in your house. And you can do this, as I prepare people who are
preparing to be teachers, art teachers, these are things that
they can do with the young children they work with.
And I know as a parent my own kind of
awareness of the environment, since I didn't grow up in that era, came through what
my kids were bringing home and telling us like you can't eat this or you can't
throw this away. So the whole recycling stuff became
really the kids teaching the parents. And so
as I prepare people to be teachers, I prepare them to
encourage their children to do this.
So something like Good Guide, you put in the products from your home and it gives you
a rating of the health performance,
the environmental performance, and the social performance. So how the people are
treated in all the production of it and the environment and then your health.
Skin Deep, you just enter, you know, any kind of beauty products or body care
products into that. So those kinds of things. And then introducing
artist I introduce things Coco Fusco and
the use of Flood Net. And Flood Net is
a kind of use of technologies with
disrupting and diverting the direction of the traffic. So
in cases of the women in Waras
and so on so that they did use Flood Net
and there's a calling on the internet trying to get everybody to
go to this site at the same time. And when you do you scramble
and so that you close down a corporation or a government site
for a short period of time. You can also redirect it to new information too.
So that's the kind of thing that perhaps
maybe that sounds like disruptive technology. I don't know. But it
does give alternative kind of views. And
so those are some of the things. And also just using
YouTube and creating different
kinds of alternative views
about gender, about
sexuality. About all sorts of kinds of things and presenting
these views on something like YouTube as well as any other kinds
of things. But YouTube is a very popular place to go. And so I keep looking
at those. Where do people go and how can we
put out new voices in there and disrupt the hegemonic
views?
{ silence }
Just seems like a good spot to talk about one of the questions that's come in.
is sort of a definitional issue with disruptive technologies and
panel feel free to jump in here. My understanding with Christiansen's term
is really to differentiate it from
what he calls sustaining technologies, which are improvements on
ok, we're just gonna go with the mic.
Improvements on an existing technology in a broad
sense. So one that would be relevant to us is
and again someone jump in if I'm really off here, a new version
of ANGEL would be an example of a innovation and a
sustaining technology that already exists versus addressing some of those same
student needs outside of something like a course management system. I don't know if that's
helpful in understanding
the differentiation. And I see Brad has actually
sent people to Wikipedia, which is probably a good place to go.
Well I thought for the purposes of the panel, one approach
we could use is to sort of talk about
two kind of large themes. The first being students.
The way that you're using these technologies in your classes and the reaction
that you got from students and sort of the adoption of what
they've and their experiences. And I'm sure there's interest in strategies on how you
managed the process. And then the second half
if we have time hopefully I really like to move onto faculty issues.
So issues that have more to do with the academy
in a larger sense and it's view of sort of new media.
New digital scholarship and the way that it's viewed
and so I think one
thing that I think people might be interested in is what your
impetus for adopting these approaches were.
So whoever wants to jump in. What were the sort of drivers?
So using the terminology that we've talked about. What about the sustaining technologies
were not meeting a need for you for your classes? That required you
to step outside and try something different.
So I teach this first year
seminar and I feel like a big part of what I'm trying to do in there
is to just get sort of skills and literacy skills and study
skills and persistence in independence
kind of skills for the incoming students and
looking at it that way, having familiarity with these
kind of communication skills and these kind of knowledge
creation skills and
knowledge, sort of information evaluation skills.
Like say, let's say, using Wikipedia as a research,
initial research tool. This isn't some kind of novelty. This isn't
you know an extra. This is a basic
literacy thing at this point. And so that's why I brought it into the classroom.
Because I felt like I would be doing the students a disservice if I didn't
do it right off the bat.
I would say for us it was more about
disrupting the patterns of practice that we have for
our classes. So I think classes in higher ed,
well K-12 too, I'm concerned with K-12 as well, but in higher ed we have sort of
ways that classes get run and they're not very collaborative. They don't
invite student voice very much. They're sort of
and this is not really new news, but I think
we were intentionally bringing these technologies in an effort to break down those patterns.
To try and say, what happens when there's more than one
channel of discourse? What happens when not all the information is coming from
one place and going to one other place? So I think
we were really pretty intentional in our course in saying,
we don't know exactly how these technologies are gonna work in this class, but
we know that they're gonna do interesting things and we know that they're gonna disrupt patterns.
And we'll just see how that happens and
go with it I think. It was relatively organic, but it
was intentional in the sense that we really
didn't want to do a class about technology. We wanted to do a class
about teaching and learning change when you use interesting technologies
in ways they haven't been used before.
And I'll add to that, so even before Scott and I taught this course I think that
when I was teaching in the College of IST, which happens to be a square on the bingo thing,
I was noticing that the students were
less engaged than what I had hoped. Even when we were doing really
interesting things. Even when we were doing things that I think that I felt as though
they'd be really engaged in. So in a lot of ways there was something about
increased sort of mental energy related to it. Where having them
explore new environments. So ANGEL while we all know
it and love it, some times isn't the most inspiring place to have rich
dialogue or conversation. So five or six years ago we started
introducing blogs into the classroom and saw just really ridiculous
amounts of conversation happening. That was very disruptive then, it's
not all that disruptive now. And I think you see about the same level of discourse in a blog
as you do in a course management system these days.
But I think part of this has to do with really trying figure out not
necessarily where the students are spending their time or what they want from us, but
really new ways to try to get them to participate. What I'm so,
I think a lot of us get tired of, is walking into classrooms and seeing the laptops open and the computers
and not knowing how to really engage them. And I just read an article in the Chronicle yesterday where
there's some people talking about it's time to take computers out of classrooms.
To return discipline and to return discourse. And I think
what we're trying to do is we're trying to invent the new pedagogy. To utilize these
technologies. And I think that that was something Scott touched on. We didn't know
how to deal with the fact that students had their heads down the entire time in our class.
But what grew out of that were some sort patterns and some sort of things
that we've sort of figured out about how do you actually engage students through the laptop. And that was a really
startling sort of discovery for us that there is massive amounts of
discourse that can go on behind the scenes if you, not just allow it, but you
encourage it in a directed sense. So it's really about sort of discovery I think and
engagement. I wanted to mention one quick think because
Cole mentioned engagement a number of times. And I think that was really critical
for us and he was saying, you know, the laptops up and it gives you a different sense. And so just
looking at you all in the audience, most of you are not looking at us.
Most of you are looking down. So that was an adjustment
I think for Cole and I. But what we wanted to think about was
engagement doesn't mean that the students are looking at you or that necessarily they're
having fun. Because that's typically I think what we talk about when we think
oh, the kids are really engaged. Well you know you're humorous or we were really
interested in engagement meaning engaged with intellectual activity.
Engaged with thinking about the problems that we're there to talk about. And if that engagement
happened through Twitter or through Facebook or through a wiki
we didn't care. We weren't interested in where it happened. We interested in
the engagement. And I think that was our focus.
Well, you know, I'm thinking
that why do I do this? And it really comes back down to that
underlying belief of a lot injustices
going on in the world and so and one of the things that we
need to do is bare witness to those injustices. Share those things.
Listen to each other. And then envision something new.
So there's this generative aspect of envisioning.
So in working with students and just a range of students in fact
when I got my sort of the Fulbright orientation letter to teaching
at Klagenfurt it said the students don't
they won't come to your office. They're not gonna speak to you. They're very formal. They expect
lectured. Don't expect discussion. It's not like the classes in the US
and so on. And I thought well this is gonna be a little odd since
I kind of you know participation and discussion is my way of
working. But you know in the first hour of the class,
the students, I hardly had a chance to say anything. You know, I just sort of set up
the process and the students were discussing. And later somebody
one of the students said, I have taken a gender studies before and
so I thought I kind of knew everything, but after the first hour
I realized how much I had learned. And there was no
lecture. What I did was the day before in Klagenfurt
I went around and took photographs of their [ inaudible ] center and I pulled up a couple
and I asked a few questions and got them in groups talking and then telling
me. So they were telling me about what they knew about, but
I asked questions that they had never thought about those things in the same
way. And so it's really just
a pedagogical approach is kind of how I do that. And so one
of the things evens with something as simple as like iGoogle Doc
I can have like a group like this size
and even a lecture hall kind of space like this and it will appear silent
and the kind of things that is going on
together what we're doing here is going to be more interactive
than if I were to ask a question out here now and a couple people would raise their hand
or call out or something like that.
There's a kind of participation so I can use that in real time face to face
something like that. But it's kind of
the questions you set up and how you connect to the things that they
can contribute. I do a lot of visualizations getting down to
what's really meaningful to them. I'll have them write privately
and then take these discernments. And I'll even physically have a hat
that they put them in. And then I'll pull those out of the hat. Put them up here.
So we know the discernments of some
very meaningful thing that happened. But they don't have to
say some private story to us,
but the issue is up there. So it becomes in the iGoogle Doc and that's why
I can engage them in that kind of thing. So those are just a few strategies.
I actually want to back up real quick.
I was originally on this panel to be a participant and I actually neglected to introduce
myself. I'm Gary Chinn with the College of Engineering and I'm
gonna break moderator protocol and actually answer my own question.
Which I hopefully can do well.
So our challenge with the classes I was working on in the College of Engineering were that we were teaching
a simultaneous engineering course at
four campuses across the Penn State system. And we had made the decision to require
a four to six minute documentary video
as the assignment. And we wanted cross campus collaborative
distributed work teams. It introduced all kinds of
pressures with the infrastructure that was available and also it was
the first time that we had kind of tried anything like that before. The driver
for us was actually accrediting agencies in the
College of Engineering that had information from
employers that people who could work in distributive work teams
effectively would have an advantage in the workplace. It was something
that companies were asking for more and more.
So our driver was really, I guess,
more of a immediate practical matter of
addressing accreditation holes that we had
found.
So that's gonna segway to the next one, which I've seen a few times on here
already and is always relevant to probably everybody in this room, which is
the actual adoption
or the managing of the introduction of something like this. Some new approaches.
There are a couple different models.
We in the College of Engineering had discussed possibly even like having the students
sit down with tech people. I should mention that we used the Digital
Commons resources for the video. And they set up workshops
for us at all campuses. And it was kind of I think a test for their
for how that system would work in
across campus sort of collaborative way too. But I'd be interested to hear
what you're approaches were on sort of
an in class practical level as far as how, what kind of push back you got?
What were your approaches? Did you take time out to introduce these technologies? Step them through.
Did you point them to resources elsewhere? Did you have them rely on one another?
It's probably the combination of the three. But I'll stop talking now so somebody else can actually
chime in with what they experienced in their class.
You know I found
honestly that it's best just to sort of like open the flood gates and see what happens.
And there is an immense amount of push back. I mean even in the class
Scott and I taught together there were, when we first introduced Twitter.
You have to remember that when we did this Twitter was not really what it is today.
It was two and a half years ago or so or two years ago and so people were
nobody had anybody in their networks. Nobody was following anybody. They didn't even
really know what it meant to like use the at symbols and all the stuff that we just sort of take
for granted now as we've invented this new language in this space.
We actually got an email about the third week from a student who said, this is
absolutely ridiculous. This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life. And I want out.
I don't want to use this technology. And I think Scott and I
responded to that with, you know, this is part of what the futures gonna look like for you as a teacher.
And it's important for you to stick with it and explore and continue to press.
And honestly by the fifth or sixth week in went from the stupidest thing to
I can't believe I've lived my life without this technology. I'm so connected to my
classmates. I'm so connected to my peers. And I've seen that pattern
repeat itself over and over again. I've seen students when I'd
do podcasting say, why in the world would I listen to you lecture once and then listen to
you again. Only to have them report that it helped them study for tests.
I've had them introduce blogs and they say, I can't understand what's going on here. I don't know where
to click and eight minutes later they have the beginnings of an ePortfolio set up.
So it's very different than what you're talking about Gary with sort of
video conferencing tools and stuff that really are very complex even
for pure IT people. The kinds of technologies that I think many of us
are exploring, Karen you mentioned Google Docs, that's another thing that I think many of us are exploring.
Metaphorically it's the same as what we're used to it just adds this wonderful piece of collaborative
opportunity to it. So I think more and more we're going to see that what
is initially very disruptive only stays disruptive for a few moments.
And then you have to get down to the business of sort changing your practice with the
technologies. What I
find is that high demands for engagement are high demands
for engagement. And high demands for participation are demands for participation.
And students don't like them. Students
you know maybe this is just Bush bashing, but I think the that the generation of students that's coming in now
haven't ever experienced anything, but the No Child Left Behind sort of
paradigm. And so they're extremely passive. I mean maybe I'm sounding like my dad.
But they're extremely passive when they come in. So I don't give lectures
in this course. I have the students prepare and deliver the lectures in the course.
Very conventional, no technology, I mean they use powerpoint. But I decided that rather than me
slapping together a twenty or thirty minute stack of
slides that I then extemporaneously, I mean, let's face it, that's all we have time
to do. I mean this is how busy
faculty put together lectures. Students think I'm lazy for doing
it this way, but meeting with them for an hour is more time that I would've spent actually
preparing for the lecture anyway. So it's not for me
saving time, it's to get them engaged. And they crap their pants
when I tell them that they have to do the lecture.
But at the end they get so much out of it that I think they get it.
So one of the background questions here, maybe we'll
get to it and I'm sorry if I jump gun, but this question of the jargon
disruptive technology. It has pros and cons.
You would never go to your, I mean I would never go to my department head and my dean and say, dude,
I'm so excited about this disruptive thing I'm gonna do. You call your department head dude?
That's more disruptive. That would sort of be
the equivalent if I dropped that bomb.
So students they're just
as, I think they're just as resistant
to having responsibility for learning technology
and engaging with it as they are standing up in front of the class and engaging the class.
Well I think I can connect
this to administration as well. Because this belief of mine
about, well really you know in the
preparing of a presentation and such that's actually
it's part of how you learn. But if I'm the teacher
and I'm doing all the learning, then the students aren't doing the learning. So
that's kind of the philosophy behind I do things like what you just described.
there. And so in other words the content comes from the
students. I set up processes. And so
that and the processes are very important and very deliberately
set up and that's how in
cultures and situations where people aren't comfortable speaking it
does happen. Because the processes, you know thirty years of teaching and figuring out
some processes and so this idea that
content comes from the students is not a very easy thing
for the replication of my classes
when they're online. This is
a dilemma that I am dealing with in trying to
develop graduate courses
in which even more so, but I would do the same with my
undergraduate courses and do do the same, that
the content comes from what happens there. So there's a lot of
you know you can just use also things like Digo where the
students just put the feed right into the course.
These kinds of things where they're constantly creating the stuff
now it's very important what that process is. It's not like anything goes.
But that the students developing the content. And so I still
don't know really how to work with that because
administratively online classes
and through the World Campus, you know, a big thing. And it's with this economic
crisis and budget cuts and everything, yes, those World Campus
courses bring in a lot of money. And they bring in a lot of money when they are large classes.
They're [ inaudible ]. And the students are not developing
the content and so, I am struggling with that
right now. So I kind of raise that to everybody else.
Yeah, I want to build on what Karen said, and actually respond to something Jim said, which is
I'm not sure our students are passive. I think we just don't
know how to engage with them. I think this is a pattern that we've seen over
generations and generations. I mean we look out at the class and we say,
you know, if I'm an instructor and I'm looking out at you guys I'm saying, you're not engaged.
I mean, really, ninety percent of you, as I said before,
are not even looking at me. So the question is
is our problem that our students aren't engaged or is our problem that
we're expecting them to engage the way we did when we were students. And frankly, if you remember,
when you were a student, it wasn't that interesting.
At least for most of us. And we weren't engaged that way either.
So I think this sort of conservatism
in the sense that well, the students aren't like they were in my day.
I think actually they are. And I think the only that changes is the way
that they interact and the technologies they use to interact. That's exactly
I think the function of courses like the one that Cole and I ran.
Which is to say, we don't know these technologies. We use
them a little, but many people, especially our students, use these technologies
all the time. Facebook and things like that. And so
I think we have to get beyond saying that there's something wrong with our students.
And really say there's something wrong with our pedagogy.
And that again I think the engagement doesn't mean that it has to be
fun and you have to be their Facebook friend, but I think
you do have to push them to think. And say that, you know, you're here to be in a rigorous academic
environment. And rigorous means that you have to do some thinking and not just listen to me talk
all the time. Because that's not rigorous. That's boring.
I'm gonna go with boring. So this whole notion of
disruption and Carla actually twitted it. And this is so meta by the way, so like you're not looking at me. I'm not looking
at you. I'm watching myself on You Stream and I'm seeing people Twitter comments to me.
It's absolutely incredible. Well Carla has this statement where she said, you can't explore new pedagogy's
without first adopting a stance of valuing student voice and engagement.
I think that that's a really important point here is that we want to attack these things.
And we want to do all these things. But if we're doing it in the same old model, and that's me standing up in front
of the room projecting out. You're not gonna have engagement whether you're using Google Docs or
Digo or blogs or Twitter or anything else. There has to be
something about the two-way street. And I think that that maybe the largest
disruption that we can impose on our classrooms. And that's turning over a little bit of the control of the classroom.
At least in my mind in a lot of ways.
So I think we're finally getting to the nut of it here.
That maybe a better word for disruptive, I don't know,
I think what were disrupting is the paradigm. And we talk about
paradigm shifts and it sounds so abstract, but actually a paradigm shift is a really
mundane thing. So if you understand
that you can no longer have control over your classroom
then you're on one side of paradigm shift. And if you're somebody who's
grasping and trying to keep that control, you're on the other side. It's like the
your brain can only see one or the other. It's like the optical
illusion. The old lady. The young lady. And you're pretty likely to have
administrators above you who are one side of the fence and you're on the other side.
So I guess
that's my point. If you embrace this then you have to be willing
to be in front of a classroom where you have to
I don't know if this is the right word, but compete for
the attention of the students. And you know that's where we all are.
And you either realize it or you don't. I guess that's how I feel about it.
Ok, well
I saw from Twitter that answering my own question was big hit.
So I'm gonna give the people what they want.
So Chris Long asked there's a question
one that tied for the lead here about passive learning.
The only thing I wanted to say on this is, you know, we're lucky in
the Leonard Center in the College of Engineering to be able to have full time
assessment team as part of our group. And we're actually able to run assessments on all the classes
we run. And we've run three semesters of this course that I mentioned earlier.
And my favorite story from the data that we've gotten back
is that the students
don't like, well let's see, the videos take too much time and they're too much work.
But we shouldn't get rid of them and they prefer them over other
traditional assessment techniques. So it really is kind of
speaks to this idea that if it
goes well, you can actually be sort of empowering students be more active
in creating something that does give an additional voice to
what they're used to. I will say though
that mid semester when it really ramps up, the level of push back in those classes
is pretty overwhelming to point where they've self-organized a few
semesters and sent group emails and wanted to
write a paper. And change the whole thing mid stream.
So it's definitely kind of pulling people along.
Which is another bridge to our next topic, which
I think everybody would be interested in as well. And it is not always everyones favorite
topic, but assessing these new approaches. Is something that
comes up a lot and we've got
all kinds of stuff out there. As far as rubric approaches
and different best practices. I'm curious to know
how you all went about the assessment portion of
the technologies that you had incorporated? As far
as grading them or participation.
[ inaudible ]
We'll start with the fact that we had no idea. That was the big thing. We had no idea
that what we were doing was going to impact the class so
fundamentally. We had all this assessment set up to do
all sorts of other things. Where they had to write these reflections and read these articles and do this
and do that. But then what exploded was this massive back channel participation.
And we had no way of assessing it. We were completely caught off guard. And I think that
and the end of the day those are the kinds of things I think we learned from it. I mean we walked into the class saying,
it was a grand experiment. Not really realizing that what we would have were all these unintentional outcomes
that sort of shocked our system to say the least.
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean
how do you measure participation when twenty percent of it is in Twitter.
And fifteen percent of it is in a wiki.
And twenty more percent is in a podcast. And then some other percentage
is in media that you're not even aware that the students are using to talk to each other.
So I think it is a really, really tough question and
I don't, I don't think we have
the answer for like the three hundred and fifty person section that happens
all the time on this campus. I mean the class that we're teaching, we're talking about here, had twenty
masters and doctoral students. So it was a whole different world. And while they were really good at
rigor piece, the technology crushed them.
Unless they were good at the technology piece and then they got crushed by the rigor.
They had to pick their poison. So I think your mileage may
vary.
The way the course, the first year seminar course, is designed is that
it's meant to have a lot of discussion and participation.
So the metric I use is really crude. If a student speaks, they get a
check mark next to their name on the roster. So I don't take attendance. I take participation.
It's incredibly crude. All they have to do is speak. And some of them just
resolutely will not speak. Even though I
if they go two or three meetings without speaking, I'll say, you know, you haven't spoken for the last
two or three meetings. And they say, I know. I guess they just can't.
So they're allowed to sort of make up
for that not quite a hundred percent, but they make up for that by
blog posts or commenting on other peoples blog posts. And I'll let them do that.
But you know this is all experimental. One thing I like to do in the
course, before I did this, I noticed that students were
you could see the wheels turning. Things were coming out of their mouth
I could tell they were trying to guess if they were saying the thing that I wanted to hear.
This was especially true when it came
to you know if we talked about stem cells or anything controversial.
So what I tell them is look, I'm just another
participant, the moderator, the presenter
moderates the discussion and I have to wait to be called on too. So I'm just another participant
and Microsoft Excel generates your grade.
I have no input into what your grade is.
It's just a numerical thing. So that helps to
disinhibit the discussion.
But it does make it a little bit mechanical. So what I think I will do for this,
the real trick is that the presenter
is not evaluated by me. The presenter is evaluated by
the peers. And I have this little rubric that you know people make little marks on.
Some times I worry that everybody
just pegs the needle and gives really high marks, but if you look at the numbers
at the end of the semester it's clear there's enough variance that they're actually
exercising some discernment. So I think that's how I'm
gonna answer the question on the live tool here. I think that's how I'm going to
evaluate the Wikipedia
authoring that people are gonna have to do. Is basically
some kind of rubric form to say, is what they contributed
weak or not.
And as time goes on I'll probably find ways
to refine that. But as a first
stab I think the peer evaluation can really help to sort of
it also disinhibits. People don't crap their pants as much
if they know that.
Well I tie the assessment in with the pedagogy
and I think of it as another form of teaching.
And so like if they're creating new media art and
so how are we going to assess this? Well I could give them how to assess it.
We could look at how this is juried and rubrics from that. But
then how do I know that they have learned anything. What new media art
is? You could take any topic like this. And so they
come up with the rubrics. I have them work in groups and they
speak out and we have to come to a consensus. So now they
in their language. It's what they understand.
What they decide that they can actually create this thing within the time
frame and such. And so they create
I actually in them creating this assessment I am
learning how much they have learned or not. And so I can just
work with that through discussion and such. It's so linked.
My assessment is so linked to the content and the pedagogy
that it's really close to seamless.
Well it looks like we're actually
one minute past half way and I had hoped to do
student stuff first and talk about sort of faculty or institutional issues
in the second half. So things are going well. But does anyone have a
question they want to ask in real life that they don't want to put on the tool?
Otherwise, we'll just move on. Let me quick.
Cole and I were both noticing that Chris Long posted a question. What are the pedagogical
objectives that are met with the disruptive technologies? So I think we're gonna
try and address that one. I mean for me the biggest one is
that it provides a formative assessment for the
faculty member. So it gives you a way to take the pulse of the class that you can't do
in almost any other way. So I think pedagogically,
I mean we've talked about student voice and I think that's a huge piece of it, but I think pedagogically
why you want that student voice is so that you can make mid-stream adjustments. You can
say, well, there's a push to move over into this area and start talking about this.
Or there's some confusion about an area that we want to delve more deeply
into. So I think for me that's a huge of piece of how these
technologies support pedagogy in interesting ways.
And quickly cause this also related to pedagogy, Ann Taylor has one about
the large enrollment classes. And I think if we want to talk about disrupting of
paradigm. That's something I'd like to see disrupted. I mean I think
I'm hard pressed to see the argument for a three hundred fifty person lecture hall class,
but we can talk about that more.
Come to your department heads budget meeting next month and find the answer to that out.
So I think a lot of it does start with objectives. And I think what ended up happening or what happens
is that we attempt to push for the outcomes that we're
looking for based on the objectives through the use of technology
in a lot of cases. So in the case of our course. I mean part of thing we did was we looked at
three over arching themes. You know community, identity, and design. And what we wanted to do was to allow
the students to feel what it meant to be part of a community.
And the ways that we participate so much now are through these
computer mediated social communities. And I think part of it really was [ inaudible ].
We wanted to be able demonstrate. We wanted people to be able to actually live in the same kinds of
environments that feel so comfortable in. And feel the power of community first hand.
Identity is so tied to all of these places that we
sprinkle little pieces across the web. You have pictures on Flickr. Links on Delicious
and so forth and so on. That we wanted them to experience fractured identities.
And so again pedagogically we used the social networks and the web to
allow that to manifest itself. In a lot of ways it really had very little to do
with us coming up with these structured objectives like a lot of us
designers do. It really were these over arching themes and we felt
as though the only way to really demonstrate this stuff in a short period of time, cause let's get real,
fifteen weeks is not a lot of time for students to get this stuff
that we've been living for the past five or six years. So it's embedding
them in that culture I think in our case especially had a lot to do with sort
reaching those objectives.
When you think about
disruptive technology or otherwise
you actually have to stop traffic. That's you have to stop
things the way that they have been happening.
And so that example with Floodnet is one way.
But I think pedagogically you have to think about how do you
disrupt, actually disrupt
the technologies themselves. Disrupt the
chairs screwed down in the floor like this with this audience kind of thing.
How do you disrupt those things to get to these things, such as community and
collaboration and learning?
Great, ok, well there will be plenty of time
I think at the end if we want to have any re-visiting of
in the class issues. But I wanted to make sure we had a little bit of time to talk about
something that I've been interested in
following in terms of the way activity in
this area is viewed by the institution. By
academic institutions. So there's been a lot of recent press on
re-visiting the way that universities
look at new forms of digital expression.
And especially for research purposes.
And I wanted to take a moment to read something, this is actually from yesterdays Inside Higher Ed, that
I thought was interesting. And I'll try to explain why I'm reading you this
afterwards. But it says there was a survey of
political science departments. And it was across bachelor, master, and doctoral
branding institutions. The survey found that scholarship of teaching
ideas by Ernest Boyer in which colleges would see research and publication
related to pedagogy or teaching as counting has not been embraced by
a majority of departments in any sector and by relatively few at doctoral institutions.
Asked if they agreed that teaching publications and substantive publications,
so this would be publications within the discipline of the academic person,
are equal in tenure reviews
in evaluating research. Only eleven percent of chairs at the doctoral institutions agree.
So this group is sort of
in a unique situation because we're often times
offered opportunities to initially collaborate with
faculty members on research. And
this I found not surprising, but somewhat disappointing.
And I think it does kind of speak to,
now this doesn't actually mention technology specifically, it mentions teaching issues.
I'd be interested in getting peoples views on
what we could do? You know this group is organized obviously
we're all here. Is there a way that this group could
do something or contribute in some way to increasing
the perceived value of the teaching aspect
in technology in teaching for the institution?
Sort of at large. So I'd be interested to know what peoples thoughts
are on that? And if they have any
ideas about steps that could be taken or if you've perceived any changes
in the last few years as far as have you been encouraged
to be more involved with these sorts of things? Do you think they're valued within your
departments? Or are you exploring these because
more of a personal interest in the technologies
and possibly a passion for improving teaching and things like that?
I think it depends on the department. Depends on the institution. In my particular case
I'm not, I don't have a tenure track appointment.
But I'm on a track where I can get promoted.
And I don't have a research lab. I don't have graduate students. So it's
not possible for me to have conventional publications.
So I'm hoping that
the progress that I make on this sort of thing will
and presuming that will count towards my promotion,
but that's pretty unconventional thing. I think that
as the 21st Century sort of rolls along there's gonna be more
unconventional kinds of academic appointments like mine.
Although, I think this is the issue, with
this economic crisis that we're in.
I think it's gonna depend on leadership to decide whether they want
to pull in their horns and be conservative and go back to the 20th Century. Which a lot of them
are gonna have that reflex. Or
if they're gonna think well let's push through and move forward and rely on
this sort of thing more and see if this can take us through.
And you're probably gonna see, even within a single office, you'll see leadership
sort of go back and forth on this. And again it's gonna depend on
where you are in particular. But I think and probably all of us are thinking about this.
Because this is where we've, to one extent or another we've all
sort of bet our careers on this.
And so I guess it just behooves us to be communicating upward about how important this stuff is.
Yeah, so that's something to think about.
Well,
I guess, I'm full professor and I've actually
been tenured twice. The last time was here it was early tenure
I went up for early tenure and full professor at the same time. So I don't
really fit into categories very well.
And I'm invited all over the world to,
you know people, South Korea all over the place, to present
about what I do. But a lot of it is my, I guess you would call it more conventional publications,
the books and the articles and such. So, you know,
all I can say is like you just you do a lot of things
and you do some things in conventional ways.
Some of my, part of though, for me it's like
the things
it's so complicated and so just to say like when
I asked a mentor of mine what is art education
and she said, it's whatever we make it. And there's a lot of us making it.
I took here seriously. And I kind of created this like what I do
in this discipline. And I'm seen as a leader. And
this is what get's me all over the place. And tenure and promoted and
so on. Like I'm able to create what's
happening in my field. I don't know if everybody else
is in that position or can do that or wants to do that or
whatever. But it's kind of like not looking at the
boundaries, but looking at where do I
want to take something. So it's like I really model exactly what I said about
envisioning something. Once you envision something
you can work towards it. And I believe that on a global way.
I believe that on a personal way and I try to model that.
Thank you! Those were very
interesting. One of the things that I've noticed
that they've come up in these sort of press stories
either Chronicle of Higher Ed or Inside Higher Ed. There's sort of a
continuing thread that there's an assumption that things will change
with the generational shift.
So there's this idea that there's this cohortative administrators who don't like anything.
And they eventually are going to go retire and we're gonna have
this whole different landscape where things are valued
more. And I guess the reason that that article really kind of resonated with me,
is that I don't necessarily
know that it's so. And there's not really any evidence
except for sort of wishful thinking. So one of the things that I was excited about
with this panel and with this group is, I really do believe we have
we certainly have enough people, numbers, to sort of start thinking more
about what our role could be in helping to change
perceptions of these new digital scholarship
approaches and the kinds of things we could do to make it
mutually beneficial for faculty and for a
unit like ETS or World Campus.
But that's the big issue that I was curious about
on the sort of institutional side.
It's not something I heard from the panel, but I would be interested
to know and names aren't necessary. Is there a general perception that things
are becoming, that people are more amenable to
considering these kinds of activities and value them?
So I think that is a myth
just as like the whole myth of the digital native permeates
higher education and education in general. I mean at the end of the day we're all
sort of getting this together. So this isn't really an issue where
our students are really wired any differently. I've grown tired of hearing
those arguments. They all still rate themselves very low
as technology experts. When we ask them these questions they always come back and tell
us that they're novices. We just see them navigate social environments and we think
oh, well they must know how to use technology to solve problems. It's just like
administrators, I don't see like there are any more
barrier today than there was ten years ago and I don't see any less of one
than happening ten years from now. I think that good scholarship will always
be valued at a place like Penn State. So whether or not there's
this increased awareness to the way technology can help things, yeah, sure,
our administrators, I mean the people I work with are on Facebook.
I mean our CIO is a blogger. Our president is on
Facebook. So it's not like they're developing a comfort level
with these technologies. Whether or not people are going to say,
hey, go teach your class this way or that way anymore today than yesterday.
No, that's not gonna happen. We've embraced technology. We have the World Campus. We deliver
thousands of enrollments via Distance Education. So all that's happened
and I don't think it's gonna take a new generation, this is just personally, a new generation of administrators to
make it happen. It's gonna take a better awareness of how to utilize the technologies
effectively to either support your scholarship or to support teaching.
So retirements are retirements. I mean I have just as many good friends who are faculty
who are coming towards the end of their career as those who are at
the beginning of their career who rocket with technology.
Honestly, both ends of that spectrum are covered very well at this institution and others. I see it all over
the country too.
Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean I think there are institutional barriers, but
I don't think they're connected to people who are in particular positions. I think we just have patterns
of the way the university functions. And because of those
there are challenges. I don't
know about the activism question. That I guess both Karen and
Gary have raised about how we can be activist for this
technology. Just to keep doing great work.
I mean that's really the, that's it.
Keep on rocking. I've done that.
Like I see that
good scholarship is rewarded and at Penn State and these kinds of things. And so
it's not to me so much about the adoption, the technologies and such,
I do think that the issue of
pedagogy being shaped by the
online environment and the issue of revenue is a big
thing, because if you need really, really large
classes and you need to hire people for
GTA's and such to teach these
many, many sections to bring in a lot of money budget wise for your program,
you know what happens to the quality of those kind of
classes. And so I have no answer to this, but this is
as trying to develop a graduate program, smaller classes,
and you know I've been able to
create one, but there's these obstacles about
will it bring in enough money. And it can't just
break even. It has to bring in lots of money. And so
this is the dilemma. So it's not
so much administrations only because they're under pressure with their budgets.
So we're gonna take a step back from the serious issues a little bit.
We have a request from Jamie that we have
you prognosticate on what's coming. And may I just say, that we are now
two plus hours into this and nobody has mentioned a certain upcoming
technology that I thought this whole day would be all about. So if you
have that on your cards, stay tuned, because I think we're gonna hear it.
You know you can talk about
your upcoming classes. Well it seems like there was some reluctance to talk
specifically about what is gonna be a surprise for you class. Well you see you can talk about
what you have coming up for your class. Or you know in broader sense
for implications for technology, but something that you see
on the horizon.
You say it. Don't make me say it. Google
Wave! Fill out your square.
And haptic. I been waiting. I was really trying to work that in
something I was gonna say. And I just couldn't. Because it would just sound
funny I think.
Do we want to talk about Google Wave?
I don't know if you can predict something that's already happened.
I think it will be interesting to see what Google Wave looks like in spring of
2010. When Cole and I teach our class, I think we're gonna use it.
I mean I think there's a lot of, I mean, Google
is doing amazing stuff. Google Voice is blowing my mind
some of the stuff that they're doing with that. I think there's a lot
and Twitter I think
is a perfect example of the blind side in technology. I mean we just
never know what the big new thing is gonna be so
I'm not sure I guess. I think Google Wave is gonna be really
fascinating. I don't know exactly why or how, but I'll be
interested to see. I'll let other people respond. I do
Cole and I were just sort of in a very 20th
or maybe even the 19th Century way whispering to each other during the panel here about
the tenure. Because a lot of people have brought up tenure.
And I guess we want to talk about that a little bit. But do you want to prognosticate?
I just think we'll see more of the same. And the more of the same means
increased hyper-connectivity. So the network effect
will just get louder and louder. And so Google Wave, whether it's Google Wave or even
an enhanced use of Twitter in the use of almost a
predictive market if you will. To be able to investigate what students are saying and identify trends
in your classroom. I think that in a lot of ways if you embrace some of things Scott was
mentioning earlier, what you have is you have the ability to really shift your course on the fly.
If they're participating and they're participating responsibly you're seeing things
flow at you if you're paying attention in ways you didn't before.
I think Google Wave, yes, is something that's very
exciting to a lot of people. And if you haven't watched the demo, it's a good hour
and twenty minutes to spend watching it. It took me about four days to watch the whole thing.
Because I kept going, oh my god, like the whole way through it. But really
all that these things are is there just a re-thinking of email
and they ways people create documents and the way they collaborate. We're moving from a
let me send you an email and wait for you to respond to me. To a real time
conversation and then construction of knowledge. I really want to explore Google Docs even more
in class. I mean one thing that we didn't do and Liz had pointed it out, that they used to
pass notebooks around and take sort of collaborative notes. Why aren't we doing more
of that. That's something that I think that I really want to explore. And that's not disruptive or emergent, but
to have them all in one Google Doc and project the Google Doc up there and see
them collectively sharing knowledge and constructing knowledge and dropping
and things. That maybe more ultimately productive than Twitter.
I don't know. I just think the ability to communicate like that and
collaborate on things is what's really gonna be and that's
like the big change over the next year or two. Is just an increased speed with which people are connected and how they use
those connectivities or those connections.
I have no predictions to make, but the
speech that I give over and over again to the freshman in my
seminar is that while we mortals have not
given to see the future, that's exactly the point,
if you look at sort of a marginal horizon in the last
six months, the last year, the last two years, Twitter sort of
looks inevitable. Facebook looks kind of inevitable.
But if you look back five years or ten years, nobody saw this coming.
And so that's an important lesson for students to have. You gotta keep swimming.
With these technologies and with the actual
content of the course, which is molecular biology,
this idea of lifelong learning is not anything abstract at all.
It's very concrete for them. There's every
week, every month, there's more things coming. And you gotta
stay on top of them. So that's the lesson that I want to give the students.
So new technology on the
horizon it's a good segway back to the number one vote getter from Matt.
How we sort of make sure students are not
spending all their time learning how Google Wave works and
not actually concentrating on course issues?
I can sort of talk a little bit about our approach
because we had engineering students who had
first of all never taken any kind of
it was an ethics course, so they had never taken any kind of philosophical
course at all. For the most part I think we had one or two throughout the three semesters,
but the main technology issue was of course they had
never, again there were a few here and there, but they had by and large not
made any videos before or edited things or
researched any kind of documentary, compiled statistics
to put throughout it.
I'll just talk really briefly about what we did, which was rely heavily on
other groups and people to sort of take care of the
technology aspects. So we had online resources from
Digital Commons. We had real in person workshops for one team member from each team.
We weren't really able to accommodate all of them.
And then allowed them to self organize as far as who the editors for each of the teams were.
Without that I think the project
would have been much, much more difficult. So it's sort of an outsourcing in a way of the
technology aspects of it.
I think it definitely helps to be using tools that were
relatively simple. I mean this wasn't something that required
I think the workshops are forty-five minutes we had them go through.
One workshop for forty-five minutes. I'm sure there was trial and error on the students part.
As far as
what you do to sort of limit how much energy the students are spending on these
technologies. What are your thoughts on that?
Ok,
well you know part of that empowerment is to be able to use it,
but to use it to figure out how to use on your own. And so
that's really where I direct them. And some times I model.
Ok, like you asked me a question. I have no idea. I'll do a search and here's
like five answers and go from that. And so from that point on
then they will answer those questions. I do a lot of things where
all this different open source. And it's like use something
like if I want them to do an animation, I don't care what program they use,
or putting something up with YouTube. You know like there's
Second Life, Machinima, and there's different things. But it's more the content
that I'm working on. And here's the resources
and if what my students
need to learn is how to go out
find, figure out, and solve the problems of how to use the technology. It doesn't
help if I'm solving it for them. They won't have me next to them all their life.
So even though they would like that, some of them.
That's not gonna happen. And so that's kind of how I approach it
is that I'm teaching them how to learn, solve their problems
technological problems as well as other problems.
I mean I think it's sort of a red herring to worry about teaching kids about technology
or teaching anybody about technology. I think
you have to, as Karen said, part of their job is to be able to find the tools
that they need to solve the problems that they're gonna solve. And so what you want
to do, and this goes back to the assessment issues, pose problems that force them to
be thoughtful and give you products, I agree that
what Cole and I ran into was the back side of the that, which is
then you get a bunch of products and you gotta figure out how to assess them.
That's hard when you get people that do really
interesting and innovative pieces and turn them in as a final assessment
and you have to sit around and say, well, what do you do
with this. Heather Hughes is here and her product for our class was a
mash up of blogs and Google Maps and you know, I mean, it was
great and what do you do with it? Well you admire it and then you try and figure out
what you're gonna do with it. So I think the point is
that often those of us who are really comfortable with technology, our safety zone
is to teach the technology as opposed to deal with the real issues that
the technology is there to solve. So I think that's why you see a lot of
Ed Tech classes become you know today's is about powerpoint and next week will be about Word.
The week after that will be about inspiration and then you'll go figure out to use it in teaching.
And I think that model needs to be
killed. We need to stop thinking about the technology
first and we need to start thinking about the pedagogy and the learning first and using
those tools as an after thought as a way to support what you're trying to accomplish.
So I agree with Karen I think teaching the technology lets
everybody off the hook. It lets the teacher off the hook. It lets the students off the hook and
I'm not about that. I'm not about letting them off the hook.
At the risk of belaboring the point,
the skill is really one of the things that I want the class to be about.
Not just the skill of learning how to edit
Wikipedia, which is, you know, you'll figure it out if you poke around a little bit.
It's really sort of the meta-skill of having the confidence and there's no way, if you don't have it,
there's no way to get it without learning to swim with the
jump in the deep end method.
Ok, so I'm out of questions now. So we're gonna go
to well let's see.
Someone chime in the room here.
Do we feel like we've talked about the passive learning thing or
are people interested in re-touching on that one? I tried to talk
about it a little bit. Passive learning.
Passive learners.
There continues to be a lot of questions about large enrollment classes. And I can tell you that it is
changing on campus. It is. I mean as more faculty
embrace the use of technology. More and more courses are being adjusted with
I wouldn't call them disruptive technologies, but enhanced by technology in the right way.
I think we're seeing less, death by powerpoint, which is a really great
thing. We still see it, but I think less of it.
Because remember we used to say, oh yeah, I teach with technology. I use powerpoint.
And everybody thought that was really cool. And then it was I teach with technology I use ANGEL.
And everybody thought that was really cool. I think over the next couple years,
you're going to see, by the way YouTube is number three technology used buy faculty
at this university. How do we use it though? We use it like we do old
we use it like we used to wheel the carts with the TV's in it and show people videos.
Oh, look at this. I think you're gonna see faculty really embrace the idea
that the web is a platform for collaboration and for communication.
That's the big change that's going to happen.
I really, really believe that. So in large
enrollment classes, Keith asked the question, Ann's been asking the question, you can't
throw all this at students. Especially at a distance. I think that that's too disruptive.
Because we don't want to teach the technology. It's something I heard these folks say.
But there are pieces that really shatter what kids can do. I mean
the use of Twitter for activism is an amazing thing to follow.
I mean if you followed the events recently on Twitter, it's startling what happens when communities
connect. And there are a lot of teachable moments on all those things. Do a tag search on democracy
at the blogs at Penn State and have your mind blown at what our students writing about
at all over campus. It's thrilling when you let go of that control and you let them
do some things. You don't have to make sure every student has a blog or they're podcasting
to be using these technologies in an effective way. But there are so many stories that
could be told just by peeling back a little bit and being a little more open minded
about the use of technology. I mean let your students go on Flickr and
do image searches for Creative Commons around tags and write about them. Do digital
storytelling. Let them think creatively within the context of your course.
It doesn't have to be this painful experience that I think so many of us characterize
using technology in the classroom is being this thing, like, oh my god, it's gonna blow my stuff up.
There's no way I can teach three hundred kids this way. Well you're doing it already. You're using ANGEL. You're using
Microsoft Word. You're using powerpoint. Turn it around and try something different.
Let them tell you something.
Just to
add onto that.
So it's an interesting idea. A lot of the sort of diffusion of innovation
literature is not necessarily, it's focused on
adoption of technology in a voluntary kind of sense it seems.
It's not really necessarily speaking about classroom
context where students are being told that they have to use something.
I mean I've looked through that literature over time
for guidance on how to best approach introducing new things. But in
my opinion it's somewhat limited in that
a lot of the information out there is about marketplace. Open marketplace
adoption of new innovations. So what we've settled on is really
one of the things that we've really tried to do is focus on
why it's good for the students and
it's been touched on with the literacy issue
I don't know how relevant it would be in terms of
winning your students over to making them more
amenable to new technology, but we've done a lot with trying to get information
from industry that says that we want employees to be
able to do x y z and
only know about engineering discipline because that's the one that we talk about
at my job. There is a lot out there in terms of what employers are expecting.
And they are expecting people to be able find things. And to self-organize
and to cobble together the tools they need
to work as a team and make a presentation or
build something. So, I think there's a lot
to be said for taking the steps to making it clear
why it's good for them in the end. You know, like, the vegetables.
Vegetables speech. Did you want to
re-visit your whatever this
tenure conversation thing was?
I don't want to deprive you. Deprive me of what?
Your opportunity to whatever it was.
We can skip it too. We can move on. No, no Cole really wants to talk about it.
So, in my line of work I've been here for over eleven, twelve
years now. Started as an instructional designer.
The conversation always centered around if we could just get those [ expletive ] faculty to write the content for us.
And then the faculty said, those [ expletive ] IT would just leave me alone
about this content I could get my tenure.
We've used that as a, we, from my side, I'm not speaking from
your side, I'm speaking from my side. I think we've used that as an excuse an a crutch
for a long time. That if the tenure process doesn't change we can
never really integrate technology into the classroom. The tenure process is
the tenure process. It's different at different institutions.
But at our institution it's a very rigorous process. And it's going to be that way.
That's one of the reason why Penn State is such a well regarded institution.
So I think that that excuse of unless we really change the
tenure process, we're not gonna be able to make progress. Is absolutely
ludicrous and I think it's a cop out in a lot of ways. And that's what I wanted to say.
So I hope I didn't [ expletive ] people off too much with that.
I think you did.
I'm [ expletive ] off person.
I agree with Cole. I think
I mean I don't think the tenure process is gonna change. I think we can
beef about if and we can say that that's what causing all the problems.
But I don't think, I mean as a pre-tenure person
I wake up at night screaming about it. But it's not
gonna change. And I think it's institutionalized and there are really good reasons for
it and I would like to see
a wider sense of what scholarship means, but there are
real costs for that in academia.
The problem is that in academia
you're reputation and your ability to generate new ideas
is how you live. And in an environment
where those ideas go out and get re-tweeted
within ten seconds by somebody else and just propagate through
social media so quickly. It's very difficult if you don't have
some sort of slower, more reviewed process
to sort of get a sense of who's ideas are
who's I guess for a lack of a better way of putting it. So I think it
is difficult and maybe some day academia will look more like
the blogosphere where you sort of build a reputation over time
and then you can live on that. And they can figure
out a way to evaluate it, but I don't see that coming anytime soon.
Well I find it a little disturbing to be
not so much the tenure thing
but to be asked you know give me the content and now
I'm going to create this course and it's gonna exist on its own.
Because really the faculty
it's processes and it's
kind of facilitation that takes a lot of experience and a lot
of knowledge of your field and a lot of knowledge of connecting
things to that field to make that
quality class. So you can't just hand over this content
and there's plenty of books out there and there's books by
authored by faculty here. It's not just putting the book up on there
or this content. It's more than that. So that's where I find
this disturbing. I don't know if you want to.
I do to. I find the whole process disturbing.
But at the end of the day there are
reasons. You started earlier by talking about the financial
rewards associated with producing courses in an online universe. And those are real.
And in many cases for a lot of colleges and departments, they are the only source of new revenue.
And so processes are in place to actually make those things go.
But on the other side of that, I don't do that anymore. That's not really my
space anymore. I think more about resident instruction and helping faculty think integrating
technology. But it's a huge challenge on both
sides of that equation. And I think the one thing that needs to happen and I don't see anything on
the program here, but it's something to continue the conversation around, is how do we change that
relationship? How do we make that less of this thing where I'm asking you
to hand over what you value. Your intellectual property. Your thinking. Your research.
And be more integrated in that process. So that it actually is more of a conversation
and less of this lock step engagement. And I'm just as guilty as
anyone else. I mean when I was at IST we had a very rigorous process. I'd pay you x amount
of dollars. You'd give me ten pages. We'd say thank you. You'd go away.
But looking back on it, I did it the wrong way.
I mean I know that now looking back on it. I think going forward if we're gonna
make progress as a university that's gonna serve hundreds of thousands of people
not just a hundred thousand people and that's gonna come through not building more buildings
it's gonna come through opening up new markets on a global basis. We're going to have to
re-think this whole relationship. And the idea that an online course can't come both
students and the faculty, while it seems so radical and confusing to so many people,
it's going to have to happen if we're going to scale this thing. It's the only way.
We're gonna have to lean on the same kind of collaborative techniques that have made Wikipedia
so successful. And there will need to be maybe faculty committees behind the
scenes that approve. Just like there's a very serious vetting process within Wikipedia.
So that it's the voice of a department maybe instead of the voice of an individual. But those
are down the line. But I'm not at all saying that
I want you to just hand over your stuff. I mean I think that that's evolving
hopefully even faster than what I think.
I mean I think the question really is the same for instructional designers
and faculty as it is faculty and students. I mean it has to be about a relationship between people
and building things together. And it has to be about a conversation.
I mean I think it's always about the conversation.
The problem is that there isn't enough
conversation between the learning design community and faculty and when
those conversations do happen you get amazing things.
I mean I think the Faculty Fellows will be able to speak to that later this afternoon.
So I think just like with students
and faculty there's a lot of blaming from both sides.
The students complain about the faculty and their dull lectures and their terrible classes.
And the faculty complain about the students being passive and annoying and
not contributing and not being like we used to be when we
were students. And I think the same thing happens in the learning design and faculty community.
As Cole characterized the sort of discourse that happens.
It's easy to stand on
different sides of the fence and throw rocks at each other, because then it's not your fault.
It's their fault. At some point it has to be about
community engagement. It has to be about a conversation. We have to let go of this
metaphor that one group has knowledge and the other group needs it in some way.
In some particular way. So I can tell you what you need as
instructional designers. I as a faculty member, I'm gonna tell you how to do
your work and you're gonna tell me how to do mine. That doesn't make any sense at all.
What makes sense, is for us to have a conversation about how we can do work together that's gonna be valuable
and productive and contribute to the Penn State community. So, I think
that's what's critical, is the conversation. And it's beginning
my sense is from other institutions I've been at, the conversations
better here than at other places. That being
said that's sort of sad state of the state.
I don't know how many faculty are here, but not a lot.
And so I think it's great. I think there's
movement. I think Penn State can be an example of what it can be like.
But I think we got a lot institutional change to happen before it's gonna be
the shining example on the hill.
So this goes on in K - 12 too. So if you moderate
conversations in the K - 12 community. What you get is a room like this only with
teachers on one side of the room. Like administrators right down front.
Cause they always sit right down front. And then the tech people. And the teachers stand up and say, if those
[ expletive ] tech people would just let me use blah and then
literally in the same room the tech people stand up and say, if those [expletive] teachers
would just understand what it means when they try to use those things. And you sit up front
and you say, you guys realize that we're all right here in the same room.
So this is not a unique conversation. I mean this happens all the way through K - 20
and beyond that there's always this conflict.
And that's the, like Scott said, that's the conversation that needs to be addressed.
And I think in a lot of ways we sort of go about our business and try not to address it
in a lot ways. So I think
this is a good segway for a point that I want to make sure to make and that is that the technology
so there was a question about accessing the Wikipedia assignment
and I think this is relevant generally to assessment.
I regard technology the way I regard assessment. And technology and assessment
I regard instrumentally. There a means to an end. And the end is
the thing you're trying to accomplish in the classroom. And things that you're trying to accomplish in the classroom
are not, again, they're not abstract. They're very concrete.
The point of whether there were a lot advantages and sort of objectives
to this Wikipedia assignment. But the most
important one is for students to understand what Wikipedia is. I want them
to have that aha moment when they realize, oh,
I'm Wikipedia.
Over and over again, I hear students say, oh, we can use Wikipedia? And I'm like, of course you can.
And it turns out that just four months ago when they were in high school
they were forbidden to use Wikipedia. If they're sitting
in the library and Wikipedia is on the screen, it's like ***, they're in trouble.
No, really, if they get caught using Wikipedia, they are in trouble.
Because, I think it's because, well meaning, but empty headed
teachers and librarians and whoever it is
realize that Wikipedia is not
perfectly reliable by whatever standard
and rather than use that fact, that context
as sort of a framework for teaching all these important lessons
they just outlaw it.
And it's such a missed opportunity.
I don't think I'm unique here.
Hardly an hour goes by when I don't look up something in Wikipedia. It's such a useful tool and
it has been for me for at least five years.
I mean you're not gonna use it as a sited reference, but if you've never
heard of, oh, I don't know, if you don't know anything about copper toxicity,
type it in. You've got a great start. There's gonna be a list of references at the end.
This is the first place you should go. And students are very
intimidated by this. And there's this
I actually tried to exploit this. There's this sort of
subversive thrill to using Wikipedia for a lot of them.
And what I want is for them to get the insight.
Wikipedia is not this anonymous thing. After you've contributed a paragraph
to Wikipedia, after you've done a little bit of work and put sentences
into paragraphs and paragraphs into context then,
I'm hoping, they'll realize, wow, this
we are Wikipedia. And that's gonna give them a whole different insight
into how reliable it is. And what it can be used for.
What it can't be used for. And to assess that. I mean I think it's simple.
I think at the beginning of the semester I'll give them a little questionnaire about what are your opinions about
Wikipedia? What's your experience with Wikipedia?
How reliable do you think of it? Those kind of questions.
That's the same questions at the end. And I expect there to be a dramatic difference.
That's my, I'm eager to
share those results with you when I get them.
I just want to add that Wikipedia is also a place for
activism and empowerment. And there's a lot of things to find on there
and really, while there's a lot of people defining it, a lot
of voices are not in participating and it's sort of our job
as educators and what we're working with to
get our students and other people we're working with. I'm doing a national
sort of activism thing on redefining something on Wikipedia
and it's not easy, it keeps flipping back.
So you have to have a really activist kind of approach to that as well.
Ok, I just want to do a real quick plug that I think is relevant
about the relationships and roles. Brett has a
section of the wiki where you can talk about your role as a
learning designer and what it means. And what it means, and obviously,
faculty, whoever, you're welcome to contribute.
We want to kind of get a conversation going about
these changing relationships and roles and see if we can get some good stuff
out of talking about those issues.
So, I'm one minute over. So, I'm gonna say thanks to everybody.
And thank you for the great questions and if
anyone has anything they want to add in summary. Now is the time.
Otherwise we will go eat some food and talk about how great this panel was.
All right, thank you!
[ applause ]
I just want to add that
there's questions on the live question tool that we didn't get to
but we have a session tomorrow morning where it's kind of a catch all session
and we'll try to get to some of those things.
One more thing, during lunch
you're free to use any of the, you could go to the Hub if you want. You could use this
cafe area out here. On Twitter I was talking with
Nancy Holberg, where are you Nancy? Oh, there you are.
about watching the first part of the presentation of the
Google Wave over lunch in this room. So if you want to come back here
with your food. Just be careful. Don't spill anything.
We're not technically allowed to have food in here. Also Dean is going to
end the last fifteen minutes of lunch and we'll probably go a little bit into the Faculty Fellows presentation
with more live music. What time is that?
If you want to hear Dean, come back at like a quarter till one.
Ok!