This Wasn't on the Syllabus

Well, here we are, at the end of EME6414. It’s hard to believe that another six weeks have gone by. While I could talk about the incredible resources and the amount of practical knowledge I’m able to use on a daily basis, I think I’ll use this last blog for this course to talk about something that wasn’t on the syllabus, or in the readings, or mentioned in any of the videos – a personal experience that I could never have foreseen.

I expected interactions, but I didn’t expect a network of support. The relationships we’ve built have formed so organically. Through our experiences, we’ve found our very own communities within the class, and each interaction seems to be one of support and encouragement. Although our focus has always been on the course material, we’ve each been afforded opportunities to make the experiences personal and relatable. With every blog, every tweet, every VoiceThread, we’ve gotten to know each other a little better.

I think that’s what has been so powerful about this course. We’ve been studying how people connect, and in the process, we’ve connected with each other. We’ve joked several times about how this experience has been very meta, and that is the most perfect way to describe everything about it. I know we don’t have to write any more blogs, and I know today is the last day of the course, but it won’t be for me. This blog, these connections, those tools, all of them will continue to be a part of my life, and for that, I thank all of you.

To the future!

With gratitude and admiration,

Melissa

Social Networking & Faculty: A Plan to Build More PLNs

Now that we’ve come the last day of the course, I’ve been thinking a lot about the approaches I am going to take to implement some of the great ideas we’ve shared. Since I work directly with faculty, the process is a little different than if I were building a course. In some ways, I think the students would be much more accepting of the use of these tools, but I look forward to forming a network of faculty who are interested in ways to incorporate more Web 2.0 into their classes.  

In a few weeks, we’ll be opening up a faculty development course on education technology. The course is an elective and tends to be one of the most popular. Since those faculty are actively choosing to learn more about ed tech, I’ll be able to show them several of the tools over the eight-week course. Many of them, I believe, will be most interested in blogging, maybe Twitter, and some of the curation resources.

One of the approaches I am going to take will shift the focus onto the faculty. I’ve built in an activity that asks them to implement one of these Web 2.0 tools (or one of their choosing) and reflect on the process. This idea is a modification of my produsage project, which I will also be launching as a collaborative learning course, and I think it will work well with ed tech participants.

Another way I plan to leverage some of these tools is with our “Tips” plan that we’ve been developing. Working alongside my team, we will be sharing “Teaching with Tech Tips” that will be disseminated to our faculty. The idea came out of our need to promote some of the resources that are available, but underused, by faculty. By incorporating much of the work I’ve done in this class, I’ll be able to create mini-sessions on what a tool is and how it can be effectively incorporated into classes, from both a technology and teaching perspective.  

We’ll undoubtedly have early adopters and faculty who are already using Web 2.0 on a regular basis, so I plan to rely on their knowledge and enthusiasm as well. Much like Web 2.0, faculty development works best when you have supporters who are willing to share their experiences with those who are in their PLNs.

I’m tremendously excited about the potential to incorporate so many of the things we’ve learned in this class into bite-sized sessions for the faculty. And just maybe, I can even collect some data on how they are being used. J

What a Difference a Decade Makes: Privacy, Digital Footprints, & Education

The very first class I taught at the university level was ENC 1101, almost 10 years ago to the day. While the Department granted a great deal of academic freedom to its instructors, there were three major writing assignments that every 1101 student was expected to complete. I don't remember the details of two of the assignments, most likely a personal narrative and descriptive essay, but the details of one assignment have never left me. It was a light research paper, in a compare/contrast format, about the benefits and complications of social media. Looking back, I'm not sure if we were ahead of our time or way too late. 

As my wide-eyed, nervous freshman sat staring back at their equally wide-eyed, nervous professor, I asked them to work in small groups to think about the ways social media was changing communication. Being a novice instructor, I wasn't exactly sure how to frame the discussion in an academic context, so we focused mostly on how people used language (on Myspace, which was the main form of social media at the time) and the benefits of staying in touch with people you wouldn't otherwise see. I relied pretty heavily on my own experiences. I wasn't quite 30 yet, so the people in my age group were using social media to find high school and college friends that had long since disappeared from our Nokias and Blackberries. 

Nearly every paper I got from that project was exactly the same. I read over and over again about how powerful it was to have a personal digital space and about how scary it was to actually live in there. They cited cyber bullying and predators as contrasting points to family reunions and the ability to be "friends" with celebrities. And while many of these points are similar to ones we could raise today, the one thing no one talked about was privacy. 

As I finished this week's readings on privacy, and thought back to our conversations from the data analytics class, I couldn't get that first set of students out of my head. That project didn't show up on the syllabus after that school year, but I think its objectives were noble and not so far removed from many of the points raised in the readings. While we may not know everything about privacy, I do think we, as educators, have a responsibility to learn as much as we can. And I want students (and faculty) to consider the ramifications of their own digital footprints, yet I recognize how important collecting some of that data can be. 

In fact, I've just gotten off of a planning call for an upcoming faculty development workshop. In that workshop, we're going to show faculty how to collect data from the LMS to measure engagement rates and, hopefully, improve the academic success of their students through a very structured approach. Much like the 1101 project, we are doing this with the purest intention - we want to be able to help students be successful - but doing that involves looking into their habits and patterns. This is by no means new or different that what other institutions are doing, but it does put us in an interesting place when we look at privacy. In education,  I still think the benefits of collecting data outweigh the complications, but would I feel differently about it if it were a company, rather than an institution, doing it?

As we continue to navigate the complicated world of privacy, I think the key is transparency with our students. But it's much more about helping them understand the permanency and reach of their online lives than it is to create fear or distrust, which can sometimes be the case when we talk about privacy. If I had it to do all over again, I don't think I'd change too much about that social media project from a decade ago, but I do have some ideas about how different my role would be. 

In the Palm of Your Hands: Considering the Role of Mobile Learning

Last week, I promised I'd share a little about the conference I attended in Las Vegas, and as we find ourselves planted in the final week of the course, I thought now would be a perfect time. The conference, Fusion, was hosted by D2L, a Canadian-based learning management system provider whose history, mission statement, and philosophies rival that of a Silicon Valley company much more than a standard LMS organization. The university I work for uses D2L, and the more I build in it, the more I like it. Their goals are lofty, and they seem to spare no expense when it comes to research & development and training, and that alone is enough to make me want to support them. Considering they also rented out Omnia nightclub for us in Vegas, they also know how to throw one heck of a party.

I was fortunate enough to be a participant on two panels, and presenting at conferences is one of my favorite ways to build my network. I am also one of those people who refuses to miss a breakout session. Ok, I may have skipped one this time - I mean, when a company rents a club, you go. At every conference, a theme emerges, something that didn't necessarily take center stage, but seems to be dominating the breakout sessions and the coffee chats. At Fusion, it was mobile learning. Everyone, including my team, was talking about the necessity of placing learning, quite literally, in the palms of our hands. 

Now, at this point, I feel like I should admit something. I love innovation, and once I'm given an idea, I can easily adopt a clear vision and make it come to life. I like to think creatively, and leading brainstorming sessions is something I consider a strength. However, I have absolutely no ability to predict, with any level of success, what the next big "thing" will be. Remember when texting was first made available? Yeah, I thought, no one will ever use this. Kindles? Who wants to read on a screen? So, needless to say, I'm not sure what the future or our hands will hold when it comes to mobile learning. 

I see a lot of potential for AR and learning, and much of AR happens now with aid of our mobile devices. And when we consider the incredible possibilities of feedback and participation with Web 2.0, our mobile devices seem to be personalized learning hubs. I'd even argue that they are already where we do most of our informal learning.

At the conference, one of the big reveals was the new mobile platform that D2L has created, and it is beautiful. As far as design theory and UX, they've done everything right. But I'm still unsure as to what role mobile learning will have in the big picture of higher ed, or formal learning in general. What type of learning will take place? Will it still be supplemental? When we look at the 21st Century learner, where do we place mobile learning?  

Produsage: Cycle of Collaboration

After watching Professor Dennen's presentation on our Produsage assignment, I was able to restructure my plan in a way that I am very excited to share. I'm going to be a little meta here and design a collaborative professional development course on collaborative learning! There was an article on Inside Higher Ed. a few months back titled, Even Professors Hate Group Work, that keeps making its rounds on my LinkedIn and Facebook. The article is open and realistic, and it made me more empathetic to several viewpoints. Actually, if I had to sum up my entire professional career into one goal, it would be to see genuine and continuous cross-disciplinary collaboration from both faculty and students. As a faculty member, I once combined my English Comp class with a Biology course to practice descriptive writing. As an administrator, I spent an entire academic year working with professors from different programs to get them to form teaching squares and recognize core competencies between fields. And most recently, I've been focused on working with faculty and instructional designers to help them consider ways to build more collaborative assignments (other than just discussion boards) into their courses. 

The studies prove over and over again that collaboration can be a very effective method of improving student learning outcomes and retention in online classes. And while I understood the theory behind this and could easily throw out suggestions, I never really understood just how collaborative an online class could be until I was a student in this one. It's as though this class gave me an outline of exactly what I needed to know to show faculty just how engaged and active students can be in an online class. So, needless to say, I've chosen to design a course that centers on collaboration and, with your feedback, can be shared with faculty this fall. The course will be optional and can count towards professional development hours.

• Plan
• Build the course using a free Canvas account. I've done this before for interviews and sample course building because it avoids FERPA and access problems with using LMSs associated with institutions. However, once this is done, I'll transfer the most effective materials to D2L, our LMS. 
• Ideas and Needs
• Some scholarly readings to provide discussion of Web 2.0 and education: faculty will be expected to read these, and I will use either discussion forums or blogs for interaction. (Don't wince yet, that's only a tiny part of it!)
• Curation tool: faculty will be expected to spend a certain amount of time curating their own resources for ideas, strategies, and tools that can be used for collaboration in online classes.
• Presentation methods (asynchronous): so that faculty can share their findings with each other.
• Journal: There will be a reflective element to this course. Once faculty have selected certain tools to try with their students, the experience should be shared with their colleagues. 
• Social network: For this project, I will build in the use of Twitter, but for the one I will present, I might use Social, our University's social media space.
• Problem-based opening: To get faculty more engaged, I'll use a problem-based learning strategy to get them to consider all the ways in which collaboration can be used to increase student engagement.
• A listing method, perhaps using a wiki??, that asks faculty to make the pros and cons lists as they progress through the course.

Ohhh! I'm so excited to build this. In the past, I've always thought my collaboration courses were a bit sad in that, well, they didn't have much collaboration in them. I'd based them mostly on readings and education theories that support the benefits of collaboration. Eeeek. That sounds awful, doesn't it? 

So what do you think? Is there anything I'm missing or not considering? Once the course is built, I'll tweet the link to everyone to join! Thank you, in advance, for the feedback!

Writing Tools: Pirates, Mediums, and Sad Faces

Ye, be warned! No, no, not that kind of pirates, mediums, and sad faces. This blog is all about writing tools. 

When I read over this week’s suggested tools, I’ll admit I had never heard of most of them, but I was instantly drawn to the Writing Tools section, especially PiratePad and Medium.

For PiratePad, I see how it could be valuable, but I’d limit that value to those who don’t have access to other, arguably better, tools like Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect, Microsoft OneDrive/Skype or many of the other collaborative writing environments. My main reason for supporting these other tools over PiratePad is mostly because there are other built-in features that accompany the wiki-like environment. In education, I’d suggest that the other options are easier to use and are able to handle logistical concerns that PiratePad just can’t manage. 

Now, with all that being said, PiratePad is free and offers collaboration and wiki opportunities to those who might not otherwise have access. Since we’re using Wikispaces, I chose not to review it here, but that is also a free option that I think is superior to PiratePad. Whenever faculty I work with can’t decide if they want to use a new tool, I’ll often have them use a rubric to score the overall value and UX. I looked at the rubric as I explored on PiratePad, and it just didn’t score as high as Wikispaces or any of the other similar tools I’ve used. Again, I think it’s a great option for those who are beginning to explore collaboration and wiki-writing, and it’s easy to use, just wouldn’t by my first choice.

Screenshot of PiratePad in Use

Screenshot of Medium Homepage

Now, Medium, however is something I’ve already decided will be one of my go-to sites. I love that it is built around blogging, but that it’s taken it a step further and categorized and connected you to others who are writing on topics in which you are interested. I set up my account in less than a minute, and I’ve already found myself liking several of the stories that were recommended to me based on my selected topic areas. It, in many ways, combines writing and social media in a really beautiful way. 

The layout is clean, the controls are user friendly, and the free membership seems solid. Overall, after only a few days of use, I haven’t had any problems with it and enjoy the ability to connect with writers who share similar interests. While my excitement for this tool stems mostly from personal interest, I can see how this could be incorporated into education as well. This week’s tools were some of my favorite to explore because many of them were new to me and helped me consider other options to connect and learn.

On a somewhat separate note, after adding to the class wiki, I started thinking about microblogging. I searched several sites that listed microblogging tools, but of over 10, only two or three were still active. The others look like they shutdown sometime between 2010 and 2015. It made me so curious about why all those tools didn’t make it. Twitter is always considered a microblogging tool, but I wonder why those tools that labeled microblogging more like paragraph-length submissions didn’t fare so well. I’m sure there are many reasons why Web 2.0 tools don’t make it, but it seemed so strange that almost every microblogging tool I looked for had the same sad face and "no longer exists" message when visiting their former websites. 

The Power of Presence: Using Mini-sessions to Disconnect

I’m sitting at long wooden table that has been strategically placed in front of massive floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the Albion mountain range in Utah. The lodge has been built with deliberately natural details; wood and greenery fill the otherwise airy space. At its heart, it’s a ski lodge and spa, but during the summer months, it is home to what seems like back-to-back conferences. The wood-lined meeting rooms are filled with logo-heavy banners, branded swag, and people with a shared interest, mostly from academia or the corporate world. I glance up and see another group of people with plastic name tags walk by. Other than the branded everythings and fonts on the badges, this setting is completely different from the education technology conference I’ve just come from in Las Vegas.

But despite the change in scenery, and my inability to get used to breathing at this altitude, there is something that is remarkably similar about the two conferences. We’re all connected. And while I mean that in the philosophical – we all share a common purpose – I mean it in the literal sense, too. On all of those coffee mugs and portfolios and mouse pads and slightly-off-looking USBs, #s, @s, and QR codes make their presence known. There are contests for tweeting about the most sessions, there are hidden icons that are unlocked when the codes are scanned, and within four days, my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts have seen spikes that would surely fall out far out of the normal ranges. 

All of these things led me to think about our class, and the blogs that have been written on the importance of disconnecting and how and when we disconnect. I think most of us tend to think about disconnecting when we are traveling, but oddly enough, because I travel mostly for work, that’s not the case with me. Being in Vegas and the mountains of Utah seems like the perfect time to disconnect, but I’ve been more connected these past six days than I ever am when I’m at home. Even when we took a few hours to play in the woods (or the casinos), I found myself posting live videos and using the conference and class hashtags to let others know what we were doing when we weren’t sitting in keynote addresses and breakout sessions. My professional network grows so much at these events, but I still want to stay connected to those who can’t be with me.  

Yet I know how important it is to disconnect and take a break for more than a day or so. Although this summer hasn’t afforded me too many opportunities to do that, I think I’ve found ways to take mini-breaks without even realizing that’s what I was doing. I guess when we look at digital detoxing, mine tends to happen on those unexpected rainy Mondays when I am bathing the dogs, or on Saturdays and Sundays when I’m focused on planting new flowers in the backyard or organizing the towels and sheets in the hall closet. 

For me, right now, disconnecting means quiet times when I feel like I can get back in touch with those things that fall aside when we’re so caught up in our day-to-day routines. It means being present and giving my absolute attention to the things that are right in front of me, whether that be a new lavender bush or my squirmy little pugs. And although that may only be for an afternoon or a weekend, I think that those mini disconnect sessions can be exactly what we need when we find ourselves feeling overwhelmed with technology.  

Pinterest Fails: Where's My Analytics Tool?

In the previous class, I found myself falling more and more in love with all things analytics. For several projects, we used all kinds of analytics tools that put numbers into formats that even I could understand. I looked at my personal fitness data, which after a little CSV sorting, revealed more patterns and details than I could ever even consider. For our LMS, I pulled, and sorted, and analyzed with ease. And for my Instagram and Facebook analytics, it was a matter of click here, login there, and like magic, my life in pictures and statuses unfolded before me. So when this week's knowledge tracking assignment came around, I thought: smooth sailing. 

Alas, I was wrong. Let me start at the beginning. I've used Pinterest for several years now. At last count, I had 1679 pins. About one-third of them fall under my "Veg Life" board, which is all vegetarian and vegan recipes that I've convinced myself I will make... soon. And the other two-thirds fall neatly into categories like "Finding Inspiration," "Namaste," "Green Cleaners," and my latest addition, "Learning and Designing." Because I'm so familiar with Pinterest, and because I didn't use it for anything the previous class, I thought it would be a great option for this assignment. 

I even had a hypothesis that my older boards and pins would get more traffic than the new education board because of the networks I belong to and the followers I have. So I started the learning and designing board and began promoting it, first to friends on Facebook, then across Twitter to gain some followers from our class. Everything seemed to be going along smoothly. I was getting my notifications that things were being pinned and that I had three new followers to that board. Cool, I thought, I'm going to run all the numbers on Friday, since I'll be flying back to Orlando on Sunday, and put together my presentation. However, I made a mistake. I thought getting Pinterest analytics would be as simple as clicking a button, but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

Last night, as I sat in a hotel room in Alta, Utah, with a mild case of altitude sickness, I logged in to my beloved Pinterest to gain some insights in perfectly graphed squares. I had read about the analytics dashboard when it first came out, and I know it's visually appealing and easy to read. Yet, something was wrong. 

Where was the analytics button? Search, search, read, read. Okay, I need a business account. Well, that seems a bit odd, but alright, I'll convert to a business account. Hmm, that's weird. Where are the numbers? Search again. It can take up to 36 hours to analyze your data. WHAT? Why? All those other tools did it in less than five minutes. Back I go: Google, Pinterest Fails Analytics Tools. 

A NONlinear Progression: Dialectics, Social Media, and my Jet-lagged Brain

Greetings from the Alta Argument Conference in Snowbird, Utah!

For those of you who have been following my social media, you know I’ve been on a bit of a conference circuit this week. I left Orlando on Tuesday, and spent a couple of days in Vegas at the D2L Fusion conference, where I presented with my Teaching and Learning Innovation colleagues about our learning ecosystem. The conference was brilliant and all about edtech, but I can’t tell you too much yet because that will be another blog. (I’m so behind on my work this week!)

So, fast forward another time change and a flight from Vegas to Salt Lake City this morning, and I’ve shifted gears from ed tech back to my roots of communication and rhetoric. I’m not presenting at this one, but I’m lucky enough to be able to watch my dearest friend rock her panel discussion on identity, political movements, and wait for it, social media. Actually, the entire conference is “Networking Argument.”

My friend introduced me to one of the other presenters, and he gave us a preview of his argument. Again, this conference is all about argument and rhetoric, so he got into a lot of theory, but he was essentially suggesting that because of the pervasive nature social media, we are giving up some of the foundational elements of argument and persuasion. In some ways, I agree. When we look to Aristotelian argument and ethos, logos, and pathos, we have lost something with social media. Credibility, logic, and emotion can sometimes be difficult in 140 characters. I was in agreement with him for most of what he argued, except one point. Sorta...

He suggests that we’ve given up our ability to argue or debate two sides of an issue in a linear progression of back-and-forth points with the hope of finding a solution. The dialectical model no longer holds. My initial reaction was to recommend that he read Networked because, well, I'm biased and can't stop recommending that book. I also wanted to say that with Web 2.0, we’ve expanded debate and feedback models exponentially, to more people than we ever thought possible. 

But I hesitated. 

It’s been a while since I’ve been immersed in rhetoric and argumentation theory and I needed time to think through this. On one side, Web 2.0 has opened up communication to the masses, a true way to hear the voice of the collective. Yet, on the other side of that argument, I do think that with all its potential, Web 2.0 has failed to foster compromise and solutions. The goal, most often, when we take to social media, is to present our side of whatever the issue is; it’s rarely (if ever) to hear what our opponents have to say in order to find a reasonable middle ground. There is great power in the movements that happen through social media, but perhaps we are losing or giving up our ability to work on finding solutions.  

I hope I am missing something, some great compromise that I can’t recall because of my jet-lagged conference brain. Maybe after a good night’s sleep and some fresh mountain air, I’ll be able to think of some. 

What are We Missing?: Looking at MOOCs and BlockChain Technology

Near the end of last year, I signed up for my first MOOC, a popular Coursera class called Learning How to Learn. I made it through the first two weeks before I got behind and stopped doing the readings and participating in the course. I could list 100 reasons why I didn't complete the course, but most studies suggest that the completion rates for MOOCs are abysmal. 

The idea of MOOCs, though, is promising. The notion that people have the ability to be taught university courses by some of the most renowned professors in the world, often for free, is intoxicating. Like many, I see MOOCs as an opportunity to bring education to the masses in ways that traditional institutions never could. Yet when I bring up MOOCs in general conversations, many people have never heard of them, and those who have, don't seem very interested. For the most part, those who typically express a genuine interest are my colleagues and friends from universities. 

Despite the small sample size, my anecdotal evidence is pretty much on par with what the research suggests. In fact, Bergmann's 2015 article  reports that 80% of those who enroll in MOOCs have already earned a college degree and 44% have attended graduate school. Numbers that the author suggests are a far cry from our "utopian vision" of  MOOCs bringing education to those who couldn't otherwise have it. 

However, today's MOOCs are changing, evolving in ways that will hopefully improve their success rates. Much like OERs, I think we have an opportunity that we haven't quite realized yet. It's all still so new that I find most of the backlash against them to be shortsighted. But what happens once we do have better success rates? Like our struggles with accepting experiential learning, will these credits be embraced in a way that is meaningful outside of education for education's sake?

Along those same lines, a few weeks back, I heard about BlockChains being used for higher ed credits for the first time. I'm not someone who knew much about Bitcoins, so the entire concept seemed foreign to me. From what I understand the same technology that was used for Bitcoins can be used to verify courses students have taken, across multiple platforms, irrespective of any one institution, to allow students to, essentially, piecemeal together a college degree. I have no doubt that I am oversimplifying the process, but what an interesting idea. No longer would students be bound to a specific institution, and the nightmare that is transfer credit evaluation, it appears, would fall away. I always try to see the benefits and complications in every situation, bit I fear I don't understand enough about this to fully weigh the possibilities. 

What are your thoughts? Considering the ways OERs, MOOCs, and BlockChains could all drastically change the role and recognition of higher education, what are the pros and cons? What are we seeing, and what are we missing? 

An Apology and a Promise: A Lighthearted Self-Reflection on the Use of Curation Tools

The First Five Tabs I Have Open at This Moment

62: Bookmarked items on Facebook

1308: Pins on Pinterst 

71: "Want to Read" books on Goodreads bookshelf 

34: Articles save to "Online Learning" folder 

16: Clip to OneNote files

Apparently, I like to bookmark things. Maybe even more than I like to make lists. 

I was very excited to see two of my favorite words show up in this week's discussion: Curation and Folksonomies. Ok, I'll admit I had never heard the work folksonomies before, but I quickly Clipped its Wikipedia page and added it to the top of my list of words to use more often.

Honestly, I didn't realize just how much information I had saved. So as I reviewed the curation tools for class this week, I made it a point to go through some of the bookmarked items that I've found worthy of adding to one site or another. And as I suspected, hours went by as I let out tiny squeals of excitement "This is perfect! I'll surely use it soon!" and mumbled "Why did I save this?" from behind my computer screen.

This made me start thinking about the experiences students have when they are first learning to research and organize. Whenever I would introduce them to research, I would stress to them how important it was to keep up with the sources that they were using, but more often than not, I'd have students who would inevitably cite the wrong authors or forget where the information came from when they tried to include it on the reference page. But after seeing all the horribly organized articles I have, I am beginning to think I should have been more sympathetic to them, or at least taught them how to save their research. 

To my former students: Sorry about that. My bad. 

Taking this week's reading and tool suggestions into consideration, I am vowing to do a better job with organizing folders, using tags, and reviewing saved items. I am going to set aside time to make sure all of my saved items are relevant, tagged, and where they should be. 

Hmm... I wonder how I should get started? Oh! I know, I'll bookmark that page I found on how to curate and manage online resources. Now where did I see that...

My Own Worst Enemy: Using Communities and PLNs for Faculty Development

I promise this isn't another post about LMSs. Well, okay, maybe just a little.

Until this class, I never thought too much about the limitations of LMSs and the impact that has on learning. As an instructor, I always incorporated other tools for students and got mixed results. In an ENC 1101 course, I set up a wiki. For ENC 1102, I created a Facebook group. For an ENC 4531 course, I asked students to post a video presentation on YouTube. The students had fun, and I was happy that I was able to show them ways to make their voices heard.

Those assignments, though, were designed with many objectives in mind, but collaboration wasn't one of them. And because I taught mostly face-to-face and hybrid classes, I never worried that students weren't getting enough interaction. I designed the hybrid shells for several English classes, but as long as the information was clear, I didn't worry too much about the ways that the students would interact. There were discussions, and I assumed that was enough.

Fast forward a few years to me being solidly in the world of online learning, as a student, a designer, and an instructor. When I started working on this grad certificate in instructional design, it wasn't out of necessity - it was out of curiosity and my own desire to feel like I was growing in my field. I think we should always strive to be more educated, and when the opportunity to take classes at FSU presented itself this summer, I knew that's where I needed to be. So as someone who had never taken an online class, I thought that the interactions would be lost and that I would be working, in some ways, in isolation. I could not have been more wrong. In this class in particular, I have already learned so much about the ways we can connect and use online forums to build communities. If my full-time job was still in the classroom, I have no doubt I could implement tools that would help students establish PLNs and online presences. 

From diylol.com

But my job is a little different, and this week I found myself having a rather harsh internal dialogue as I finished putting final touches on some advanced faculty enrichment courses. All I could think was, "Why is there so much text?!" I can't tell you how many times I advised faculty to avoid walls of text, and yet, that's how some of the modules I just created looked. I struggled to understand why I couldn't figure out a way to make this more interactive. I have the tools and I know how to use them, so why didn't they turn out like I had planned?

Part of it has to do with audience, at least that's what I'm telling myself. These courses aren't designed for students - they are designed for faculty who have voluntarily gone through online development courses. This group in particular is made up of faculty who have successfully finished two levels of development and are now moving into the final level, which makes them eligible to become mentors. It's a small group, and they are divided by topic area, and that means that some of these mentor courses have only one faculty member in them. And now that I know what I do about course design, it's difficult to plan out interactions with only one person, especially when limited to the features of the LMS. 

With this week's community paper on my mind, I started thinking more about the roles of PLNs and communities. Through all of the readings and the outside research I did for my paper, I suddenly realized what I needed to do. These courses are meant to be somewhat self-paced, so I needed to rely more on communities and established networks, like the ones we've been participating in for class.

Just a few weeks ago, I reminded a faculty member who was designing a course that he didn't have to provided all of the information. We know that 21st Century learners need to know how to find answers, so I advised him to keep that in mind. Once again, I realized that I wasn't following my own advice. I've been so busy worrying that I couldn't provide the framework for a community, I forgot that more than likely, our faculty probably already belong to communities of their own! 

The answer I needed was right in front of me the whole time, literally, right in front of me... in a wall of text, under a submodule titled, "Ways to Improve Engagement in Your Online Class," that I created. 😑

Equality in Higher Education: Initial Thoughts about OER

After reading Caswell, Henson, Jensen, & Wiley's article on Open Educational Resources, I thought back to how often I have heard that phrase in the past few months. At work, there have been several professors who are opting to use OER instead of pricey textbooks. We recently received a congratulatory email highlighting the amount of money that those changes save our students. On Facebook, a friend posted Walsh's "Why Open Educational Resources Matter" (video linked below) and commented that he, too, would be selecting only OER for his upcoming courses. And last month, while at a conference, a person I sat next to at lunch mentioned that her daughter, a freshman in college, hadn't been assigned a textbook for her chemistry course and that all of the materials were in the public domain.

I fully support the idea, but I wonder how this will play out in reality. I've been in meetings where I learned more than I ever wanted to know about textbook selections and the how the contracts work between institutions and education publishing houses. I have nothing but respect for those who write textbooks, and I know how much work goes into the creation and curation of those materials. But as someone who spent several years working with students from low-socioeconomic communities, it would sometimes make me queasy to see their bills for textbooks. The students who are most impacted by those costs are the ones who are, most often, already at a disadvantage. As we consider more ways to provide equality in education, we can't ignore the costs of textbooks. With OER, I think it's a step in the right direction, and I look forward to seeing how many institutions find ways to support more cost effective means of acquiring student resources.

Back to Base Camp: Technology, Voices, and Equality

If it has to do with technology, collaboration, and education, I more than likely support testing it. Even some of those quirky tools that never really worked quite right, yep, I probably said something along the lines of, “But what a great experience that was!” when reflecting on it with faculty. It’s impossible to know all of the learning tools out there, but I still like to check them out. Just this afternoon as I was looking for new people to follow, I came upon one of my classmate’s blogs about how she still doesn’t see much value in Twitter, and I respect her position. I even laughed at her statement that it’s like an “org chart gone crazy” because I’ve thought the same thing before. I’ll probably still think about how to work Twitter into a faculty enrichment course I’m teaching, but her words will stick with me as I think about how much emphasis to put on it.

This class has changed the way I look at online learning. As I mentioned in last week’s reflection, this is the first time I’ve thought that online communication could rival the authentic interactions that take place in face-to-face classes. I’ve seen that through choices – not everyone will love every tool – students will find their niches and the platforms with which they feel the most comfortable. Since I work entirely with faculty now, I already have an idea of which technologies they want to use and which ones they typically shy away from. But today as I was reading through everyone’s blogs, I began to worry that maybe I’ve been out of the classroom for too long to feel genuinely connected to the student experience. And for someone who still sees herself as an educator, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

All of this got me thinking about the experiences I had as an instructor. My time in the classroom was spent pretty evenly divided between traditional college students at a state school and non-traditional students at a private career school. As an instructor, my expectations never changed. I recognized that students were coming in with different knowledge bases, and although my methods changed, the rigor of my classes never did. I knew that at-risk populations had different needs, so I got more creative and arguably more effective at what I did because of that. So I’ve tried to remember the faces and backgrounds of all of those students as I’ve worked my way through this course.

Earlier today I tweeted an infographic from EduCause  on technology and students. I didn’t find that by accident. I was curious about what today’s student technology profile looks like, and I think that’s what’s been on my mind throughout this course. As I think about sharing this with faculty, I try to foresee the complications they might encounter in their classes. All of these tools have been working so well for our class, but would a version of this work for undergrads in a typical online class? And that’s the thing, I don’t know. A few years ago I feel like I would have been able to answer that question, but now I’m not so sure. Luckily, I am surrounded by faculty who openly talk about what’s working and what’s not, and for that I am grateful.

College students, no matter what their career goals, should have some level of online literacy, and I know that I will always work with faculty who are early adopters and who, like myself, will openly embrace technologies. But I worry a lot about the “gap,” that space where technology and education fail to create equality and begin to lose students (or institutions) who don’t have the means, financial or otherwise. While technology closes the gap in some ways, it expands it in others. As instructors, if we aren’t using some of the digital literacy methods, are we leaving our students at a disadvantage? This is a complicated discussion, but I really like one of the suggestions from our readings. Start small, or as Lowenthal, Dunalp, and Stitson (2016) would put it, go back to base camp.

This idea of a base camp, a controlled environment where students can build an on online portfolio, seems to be beneficial in so many ways for both the students and the professors. Once everyone feels more comfortable with working as a person in the sometimes isolating experience of being in an online class, the opportunities will present themselves. I tend to jump right in, but it’s important for me to remember that not everyone feels that way, so we need to look for a common ground that can be lightly treaded on by nervous students and apprehensive professors. We're cautious, but we are making wonderful strides in online education, and my experience so far, especially in this class, has been one of hearing everyone’s voices.  And when we really step back and think about it, isn’t that what equality is all about?

References

Lowenthal, P. R., Dunlap, J. C., & Stitson, P. (2016). Creating an Intentional Web Presence: Strategies for Every Educational Technology Professional. TechTrends, 60(4), 320-329.