As a bit of an extension on the previous post, when I think about campus computer labs, one of the most common uses that I’ve seen them serve over the years is printing. My guess is that’s still one of the big functions they serve today. But with the big improvements in screen resolution, wide adoption of handhelds, and emphasis on
A quick follow-up on my previous post: I regularly read Doug Belshaw’s blog because he covers a variety of things related to educational technology and teaching. On top of that good stuff, he also shares some of what he’s doing in terms of his graduate thesis (dissertation). In many ways, I find the informal sharing of research through blog posts to be more valuable than what I’d get from a conventional academic conference. At the typical conference, I get the highlights, which can be valuable in certain situations, but with blogs, I get more insights into processes that led to the highlights.
Jeffrey Keefer has an interesting post on doc students using the blog to share or chronicle their academic/research journey (e.g., Why do this via a blog? How does it feel to be public with your thinking?). At the end of his post asks, I wonder if there is a research problem and question in here?.
I think there is. One angle might be reluctance. Blogs often represent a person’s fragmented, truncated, rough-hewn thinking on something. They’re not something that’s polished and subjected to numerous R&R cycles as is the case with traditional journal publishing. But I think that precisely because the research journal has been the dominant model in higher ed for so many years that it’s difficult for some to bring the messy, fragmentary thinking that leads into those more polished journal pieces out into the open. For the reluctant doc student, there is the question of value: what value do I get by sharing my fragmented, iterative thinking? Will it go into a community? How active will the community be in reciprocal sharing?
When it comes to technology and the classroom, it’s hard not to hear at least one person mention Twitter. Among higher ed faculty, you can find your Twitter aficionados and your detractors. Mashaable Mashable reports on Purdue University’s development of their own customized application (Hotseat) that combines both Twitter and Facebook. After looking at the intro video [scroll to the bottom of the post to see it], they’ve configured it with the same 140-character limit, but have added a voting feature. So, for example, a professor could see how voting patterns identify specific content areas that need further elaboration. In theory, this would help faculty more quickly get a read on confusion. Another possible advantage is that unlike clickers, the language and terms of the communication is being determined directly by the students.
What’s interesting from a research standpoint is how this isn’t a story of one early-adopter faculty who has a techie-fondness for Twitter, but rather one of a school and its broader, more systematic effort to see if this technology actually resonates with students.
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Instructional Design, Mashable, Purdue, Educational Technology
In a couple of my classes, we’ve been surveying different learning theories and one we’ve been focusing on recently is Behaviorism and its predilection for measuring only that which can be observed (e.g., stimuli and response). In an interesting coincidence, I came across one of Daniel Pink’s recent TED talks where he argues against what amounts to a kind of behaviorist (i.e., Carrot & Stick) approach to managing the workplace. More specifically, he references some studies by well-known economists who found that when managers assigned workers to projects that involved “even rudimentary cognitive skill” that rewarding them (read: Behaviorism) with more money didn’t improve performance, and in fact even lowered it. The emphasis, he argues, should be more focused on intrinsic motivators such as autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In terms of educational contexts, an easy analog to this would be an undue focus on grades as an incentive. What can we educators learn here? I think this talk by Daniel Pink would be a good one to use in ed-psych classes.
[Credit: Presentation Zen]
I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that numbers geeks, engineers, and scientists have been flocking to Wolfram Alpha ever since its release on May 18. But after watching their introductory screencast, I found that it’s got offerings for word and language enthusiasts as well.
For example, let’s say you need to write a paper in the range of 15000 words. If you enter that figure into Wolfram Alpha it computes the number into both single-spaced and double-spaced page equivalents;
… or … if you were writing a paper on the history of the English language (a standard course offering in English Dept graduate programs) and needed to know the background on prepositions; if you entered prepositions into Wolfram Alpha, one of the results you’d see would be its first recorded use: 1388 or 621 years ago. To check the credibility of this data, you could also click the Source Information link and see that Princeton University’s WordNet, among others, was one of the references.
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Wolfram Alpha, WordNet
In a recent issue of First Monday, Scott Reid shares results of a study he conducted of faculty shifting traditional, face-to-face classes to an online context (Online courses and how they change the nature of class). Part of this discussion centers on faculty experiences in using the discussion board feature and the challenges of building successful online learning communities. This vexing question, of course, represents a big component of distance education research. Nevertheless, in one of the more interesting excerpts, one of his respondents speculates that part of the problem may relate to cueing:
One professor … thought some students were holding back on participating because they didn’t have cues such as body language to help determine the receptiveness of other people in the course.
What I find interesting in this relationship between cueing and the level of receptiveness is its implications for spontaneity. Spontaneity can lead to promising insights and creative ideas, but if a student is overly concerned with the degree of receptiveness, then it seems likely that the potential for that kind of stimulating environment is reduced. One way faculty lay the groundwork for better receptiveness or -cueing participation- is through a variety of orientation activities that focus on building interpersonal connections rather than immediately launching into the business-side of the course. Learning communities can’t be built without recognizing the time it takes to build the trust and understanding of different students’ communication styles.
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First Monday, Scott Reid
With the massive adoption of microblogging platforms like Twitter, there’s been talk about whether or not RSS readers are dead (1, 2, 3) . One of the recent threads in this discussion happened over at Mashable in which one of the commenters (Eric McGinnis) mentioned feedmil — something that isn’t an RSS reader or a microblogging platform. Essentially, with feedmil, you can search blogs, microblogs, and news sites. But that simplicity belies its power (at least as far as I’m concerned). It’s got numerous features, but here’s just a little smattering of what I found beneath the surface.
instructional technology, one of the related keywords that will appear in the Topic Significance slider column is
university. If I then move the slider to the right to increase its significance, then my search results are automatically tailored towards higher education. (UI gift = No need to click a confirmation [OK] button.)
So in my initial fooling around with it, the Slider seems to be where its real potential power lies; it pushes beyond basic keyword searches.
Am I going to toss my RSS reader? Not likely. For me, my reader (currently NetNewsWire) is still an optimum way to keep up with my favorite observers and analysts. But I definitely plan to use this as a research tool and would suggest it to students.
Continuing to sit in on a grad Comp/Rhet class as a guest panelist/speaker…
Today, we spent some time talking about a piece in the NY Times that has attracted quite a bit of attention. In fact, I just checked the Times and it sits as #1 in their Most Popular listing.
Glossing the details, the author, Mark Taylor (a professor in Columbia’s Religion Dept.), argues that higher ed needs to be modernized to meet 21st century demands. While the argument isn’t new, one of his recommendations that I like is his call for more cross-disciplinary collaboration. Historically, colleges such as Evergreen and UC-Santa Cruz have made this a centerpiece of their curricular model since the 70s, but increasingly, more universities have moved in this direction (e.g., MIT Media Lab, Penn State’s Information Sciences & Technology, Stanford’s H-Star, Maryland’s iSchool). I’m somewhat surprised, he didn’t briefly allude to this relatively established trend, but still, it certainly can’t hurt to advocate for more of it.
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Penn State, Stanford University, Evergreen State College, UC Santa Cruz, MIT Media Lab
Dspace is an open source systems that academics can use for sharing their work. It allows not only text files, but multimedia as well.
Quickly skimming the site, they list many other American universities already using it. What struck me about Dspace, especially after watching their introductory video, was that while configuration, etc. seems fairly straightforward, it might be better to route these database-oriented responsibilities to the main campus library staff who are already assuming more IT-like jobs than leaving it up to each individual department whose internal staffing resources might be already pretty constrained.
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Dspace