Is there an added added academic value in incorporating multimedia scholarship into student projects? This is the question addressed by Mark E. Cann of USC in a recent article titled Multimedia in the Classroom at USC: A Ten Year Perspective. This past fall he recast a previous essay assignment into a group multimedia project in order to compare previous students' written work to current students multimedia work. He graded them according to the same basic criteria (clarity, coherence and cogency) and wondered if they would " produce more insightful analyses than conventional written essays."

He found four ways in which the students' multimedia projects differed positively from the written version. According to Cann, multimedia scholarship invited or encouraged students to:

1. "prioritize and dramatize their main points by highlighting text, incorporating eye-catching images, or employing engaging video clips. This contrasted to conventional papers where students often buried their main point in the middle of a paragraph or expected it to emerge miraculously from the text."
2. "assume multiple perspectives by using hyperlinks...While students might have done the same class analysis in a traditional essay, the fact is that they had not done so until their use of new media prompted them to experiment with multiple perspectives."
3. " layer their analyses. Students were able to explore an issue in depth by employing hypertext links to break it down into major components, then analyze major components by using links to break them down into subcomponents, and so forth."
4. experiment with interactive analysis. Students were able to use new media to demonstrate how making one choice likely results in one set of outcomes and subsequent options whereas making a different choice likely results in a different set of outcomes and subsequent options.

He goes on to describe how a grant had allowed a group of faculty from the university to develop and discuss similar projects between 1998 and 2003. Some of the challenges the group found were "that teaching and doing multimedia scholarship was extremely time-consuming for faculty, TAs, and students" and that there was a "tension between devoting class time to course content and devoting class time to training students in basic computer skills." They concluded that "the time and tensions were tolerable because multimedia scholarship did in fact add academic value to our classrooms. However, we learned from our discussions that multimedia scholarship added academic value to our classrooms in very different ways. We also learned that we all had trouble explaining to each other exactly how multimedia scholarship added academic value to our classrooms."

That experience led to the development of a university-wide Honors Program in Multimedia Scholarship. Developing that program, and undergoing the review process, forced the participants to articulate how multimedia can add academic value to student scholarship.

Implementing the program has confirmed the belief that multimedia "requires students to become adept in the use of new media tools” but that it can "develop students’ capacity for active learning and creative scholarship." Faculty also "emphasized the importance of multimedia scholarship for enhancing students’ analytical skills. Several faculty members emphasized the utility of new media for investigating multiple perspectives on issues, facilitating interactive understanding, and addressing issues involving contingency and ephemera." Some felt that "employing new media promises to develop students’ capacity for active learning and creative scholarship. Multimedia authorship demands that students not simply receive meanings but also participate in the construction of meanings." Others agreed that "multimedia scholarship promises to strengthen students’ ability to communicate their research and findings to other people."

Cann concludes the article with a discussion of the recommendations the USC program has made for the program. These can be useful "best practices" for anyone contemplating the addition of multimedia projects into their course. Full article at:
http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/multimedia-classroom

Posted by hope at 5:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The Center for Cultural Pluralism will celebrate its 10 year anniversary on January 29, 2009. The Center has announced their spring programming, which includes guest speakers Dr. Lee Kneflekamp speaking on "MicroAgressions in the Classroom" (Jan. 30) and Dr. Scott Page, "The Science of Complex Systems and Systems Scholarship" (Feb 2009). For a full list of films, workshops and events visit their web site.

Posted by wendy at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This fellowship program is designed as a seminar to help faculty develop a strong background in service-learning pedagogy. By developing a service-learning course, participants will strengthen service-learning knowledge and skills. Fellows will meet every other week during the Spring 2009 semester for 2 hours and commit to offering a service-learning course within a year of completing the program.

To learn more about the program, visit the CUPS web site

Applications for the Fellowship program are due November 7,2008.

Posted by wendy at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The Economist (Economist.Com) is sponsoring a series of debates on the future of education. Each debate topic considers the educational impacts of technology, globalization, and changing nature of social relationships. The third (and final) debate, which runs from from January 15th through January 25th, focuses on "social networking," specifically on the proposition :

Proposition: Social networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom. .

The debate is based on an online variant of the Oxford Debate rules - each speaker has three chances to advance his view - an opening statement, a rebuttal, and a final summary. Observers (who must register) may participate, mainly though a discussion with the moderator who will raise relevant points to the debaters. In addition, Observers may also vote for the side of the proposition they most agree with.

Speaking to the Affirmative: Ewan McIntosh, National Adviser on Learning and Technology Futures for Learning and Teaching Scotland. Mr McIntosh writes for The Guardian newspaper and the BBC on social media and learning issues, speaks internationally and consults for organisations on how social media can be harnessed for to improve learning in the organisation

Spealing to the Negative: Michael Bugeja, Director of Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, ISU. Mr. ,Bugeja is the author of 21 books, with research often being cited by NYT and IHT to name a few, Dr Bugeja was among the first to analyse the use of Facebook before many professors realised that most of their students were already registered and of Second Life before many students had ever heard of it.

Moderator: Robert Cottrell, Deputy Editor of Economist.com. Mr Cottrell has been deputy editor of Economist.com for the past two years, and online editor of Intelligent Life magazine since its re-launch this year. He is based in New York.

---

Image source: BBC News, Ban Foxhunting? - Oxford Union says no, Thursday, October 22, 1998 Published at 20:23 GMT 21:23 UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/198249.stm

Posted by steve at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (150) | TrackBacks (0)

The University of Vermont is now a member of Educause's Learning Initiative (ElI).

ELI explores the interaction among learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies. Membership benefits include reduced rates on ELI events and access to all resources on their web site, including archived web seminars and podcasts.

There are three upcoming events that may interest you:
January 14: Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 (online event)
January 28 - 30: ELI 2008 Annual Meeting - Connecting and Reflecting: Preparing Learners for Life 2.0 (San Antonio, TX)
March 18 - 19: Real World and Technology-Rich: Learning by Doing, Learning in Context (Raleigh, NC)

To access ELI resources and register for events, you will need to set up a member profile that connects you as an UVM affiliate. Go to the the Educause home page and follow the directions in the "Manage your personal profile" (under the "What would you like to do?" section).

We hope that you will explore the resources on the ELI site. If you find these resources valuable and/or are interested in attending an event, please let us know.

Posted by wendy at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (0)

The Faculty Fellows for Service-Learning Program recruits faculty members from across UVM to participate in a seminar each Spring on how to build service-learning pedagogy into courses. Faculty members must apply and be accepted into the Program, are given a small professional development fund ($750), and are expected to inject service-learning into at least one of their courses after finishing the program. Faculty participants cite the opportunity to interact with colleagues with similar interests as a highlight of this program.

For more information, and an application form, visit:
http://www.uvm.edu/partnerships/?Page=ffsl2.html
Application Deadline: November 9, 2007
Seminar Dates: January 8-10, 2008

Posted by inés at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Center for Cultural Pluralism is sponsoring an even that promises to be interesting and important:

"Moving Beyond the Basics: Shifts of Consciousness and Practice for Transformative Multicultural Teaching and Learning"

(snippet of the description on the CCP website)

September 28, 2007.8:30-4:00p.m. Location TBD
To register, call 656-9511 (CCP)

For more info., visit the CCP website.

Posted by inés at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a new case study, "Hybrid Learning: Maximizing Student Engagement," Ruth Reynard explores hybrid or "blended" courses (a face-to-face course that contains online elements). She concludes that these courses "provide more flexibility for on ground students and increase the overall marketability of programs of study to potential students."

She also provides a thoughtful analysis of how such courses can be structured to maximise "opportunities for the learning process to become much more engaging for students and for students to drive the learning process more directly. It is also an effective way to increase students' learning autonomy."

Full article at:

http://campustechnology.com/articles/48204/

Posted by hope at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Connectivism Online Conference is an open online forum exploring how learning has been impacted by ongoing changes. The conference, hosted online by the University of Manitoba, runs from February 2 – 9, 2006. The daily conference schedule is.

Friday, Feb 2: George Siemens, Connectivism: Learning Conceptualized Through the Lens of Today's World

Monday, Feb 5: Will Richardson, Connective Teaching: How the Read/Write Web Challenges Traditional Practice

Tuesday, Feb 6: Diana Oblinger, Balancing Agility and Stability in Higher Education

Wednesday, Feb 7: Bill Kerr, A Challenge To Connectivism

Thursday, Feb 8: Stephen Downes,The Recognition Factor

Friday, Feb 9: Terry Anderson, Research and Net Pedagogies

All sessions begin at Noon, EST or 11 AM CST.

If you blog or use social bookmarking sites, please use the conference tag: OCC2007.

Posted by steve at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

SmartClassroom

Margaret Price, Director of Spelman's newly-instituted Electronic Portfolio Project (SpEl.Folio) discusses the questions, challenges and goals of the successful implementation of e-portfolios.

"...I’ve come to realize that a central question of our project is, “What is an electronic portfolio?” Is it a medium? Is it a genre, or a set of genres? Is it a delivery system? Is it an assessment tool? Is it a means to reflection and learning? Is it a savvy career move? Is it a flashy new container for the work students already are doing? Is it a pain in the butt?

Readers of SmartClassroom have thought about these questions, and probably have well-developed responses to them. But the audience that concerns me most is the students and teachers at Spelman, a historically black liberal-arts college for women. They sometimes seem to view the electronic portfolio as a flashy container and/or pain in the butt. It’s this audience, and the perceptions they ultimately form, on which the success of Spelman’s project relies. And, as frustrated as I might get when explaining for the hundredth time that an eFolio is not simply in Kathleen Yancey’s memorable phrase “print uploaded,” I must pay attention to these responses. For, if the users and authors of SpEl.Folio view it merely as a flashy container or pain in the butt (or both), that’s exactly what it will be.

History of SpEl.Folio

Students at Spelman demonstrate the ease with digital technologies we’ve come to expect from the “Net Generation.” They text message and instant message, manage multiple e-mail accounts, and perform most of their scholarly research online. However, as Cynthia Selfe and others have pointed out, being a user of digital technologies is not the same as being a critical user, and Spelman students, like others, are still learning about issues such as copyright and fair use, assessing Web sites, and what Wikipedia is and is not. Faculty are also learning these things; my anecdotal impression is that many Spelman faculty, more so than faculty at the large state universities where I’ve taught, approach digital technologies with hesitation. Fortunately, the availability of smart classrooms, equipment such as computer projectors and video cameras, and free workshops at Spelman is excellent and may help to build faculty confidence during implementation.

In short, we have most of the stuff we need, and the SpEl.Folio Project’s greatest task is not in acquiring space and machines, but in developing students’ and faculty’s understanding of the project – most importantly, how their purposes as learners and teachers can be served by the project. Spelman’s Office of the Provost has responded to the pilot project with enthusiasm, perceiving that its purpose in educating young black women to be scholars and leaders can make use of the interdisciplinary and reflective power of SpEl.Folio. In fact, SpEl.Folio has become intertwined with the administration’s current project of revising and clarifying Spelman’s Statement of Purpose, which focuses on students’ abilities to integrate their intellectual, personal, and professional work. Participants in SpEl.Folio find ourselves in an exciting space: instead of attempting to fit ourselves into a college mission that doesn’t quite match our vision, our project’s purpose and Spelman’s purpose are evolving in unison.

SpEl.Folio grew out of the college’s Comprehensive Writing Program (CWP) in part because the CWP has been using an interdisciplinary writing portfolio for more than a decade. In its original paper form, the portfolio was designed to foster reflection and assessment of students’ writing in their first year. Each portfolio contained several essays from a student’s first-year classes, as well as a reflective letter. Portfolios were collected in paper form (housed in manila folders) and assessed by a jury of faculty from across the disciplines. In 2004, as we began to investigate the possibilities of a shift to an electronic version of the First-Year Portfolio, we held a series of group interviews with students and faculty to learn their impressions of the paper portfolio and of a possible migration to electronic form.

One thing we learned from this study that didn’t surprise us was that students’ main feeling toward the paper portfolio was annoyance: it was something to “get over with,” rather than a means to learn, synthesize, or reflect upon their work. Over and over again, as they described their work on the portfolio, students in different groups repeated the same gesture: a pantomime of placing papers in a folder, slapping the folder shut, and pushing it away. What did surprise us was that, when discussing the possibility of composing electronic portfolios, students expressed cautious interest, but also a concern that such a time-consuming project would be more appropriate for personal rather than academic work. As explained by one student, Chandra:

I wouldn’t really want to do it for school because, for me, it would take me a long time. I’d have to put music on it, get every picture that I want, I would have to get it perfect for me… But for school I’d rather do something like what we had to do [the paper portfolio]; just a little something to do and be over with.

What strikes me about this remark is Chandra’s separation of work done for school and “for me.” Clearly, she is willing to devote considerable energy and time to a project that has significance for her; but she also seems to assume that projects done for school and “for me” have no overlap.

These findings were both discouraging and exhilarating. As we moved to an electronic portfolio, we charged ourselves with the task of bridging this perceptual gap between work done “for school” and “for me.” We envisioned an electronic portfolio project that encouraged students to understand that their personal concerns are academic concerns, and vice versa. We wanted to create a model by which reflection and synthesis were not add-ons to an existing body of work, but entwined with the work itself. For, as we (idealistically, but truly) told each other and students, lifelong learning does bring together personal and intellectual concerns.

The question was, how?

SpEl.Folio: The First Three Years

Bolstered by our initial study, Comprehensive Writing Program staff set out to make the project purposes transparent to portfolio authors, and to ask students to help us understand their own purposes – actual and desired – for their portfolios. Our design is intended to be slow-growing and dialogic, ultimately engaging all students across the entire curriculum. As electronic portfolios spread into more classes and across more majors, we will keep asking students and faculty alike: “What do you want from this portfolio? What are you using it for? What do you think you are being asked to use it for? How can this project be more responsive to your own purposes? “

The initial project design was simple: enlist a small team of volunteer instructors, and ask them to integrate electronic portfolios into a few pilot sections of first-year core classes. Portfolios were built using Web editors (primarily FrontPage and Dreamweaver), and stored on CDs. In the first two years of the project, these classes were in First-Year Composition and the Computer Science program. Students who had composed course-based portfolios also completed their First-Year Portfolios in electronic form. In our present, third year, the volunteer instructors come from a range of disciplines, including history, chemistry, drama/dance, and biology, and teach both in the core and in upper-level major courses.

Thus far, we deliberately have avoided selecting a central system for the building, storage and dissemination of SpEl.Folio. Possibilities abound, from open-source to prepackaged to custom-designed, but we have delayed because we wanted to learn more about just what it is we’re placing into that system. We believe that the system selected will have much to do with the quality of learning it fosters. As Kathleen Yancey has pointed out, “What we ask students to do is who we ask them to be.” We fear instituting a system that will push students and faculty away from our central goal of author-determined and reflective purpose, and so we will gather experiences until Fall 2007 and then implement a central system.

During this slow-growing process, we’ve taken the following steps to enact and learn more about our desired focus on purpose:

* Students and instructors in the pilot classes complete introductory and exit surveys that ask how they perceive the electronic portfolio, especially in terms of audience and purpose.
* Each year, workshops are held to support faculty and students working on the pilot project. Some of the workshops focus on technical skills, but most of them are centered on discussions and development of learning: how to design assignments, manage assessment, and engage in ongoing reflection.
* Pilot faculty meet informally for lunch to talk about their course-based electronic portfolio assignments.
* The Comprehensive Writing Program hired four student assistants whose job is to help students and faculty work on multimedia projects. These assistants offer one-on-one tutoring, and visit classes on request.
* A steering committee with representatives from the Spelman student body, faculty across the disciplines, administration, and library staff was formed, and works to share concerns from these diverse populations and to guide the project’s forward progress.

Findings of the Pilot Project

Some of the findings from the first three years of the project have been unsurprising. For example, the most common concerns expressed by students and faculty are what new technical skills they’ll have to learn, and how much extra work electronic portfolios will entail. Two findings, however, have been surprising: first, the persistence of the question, “What is an eFolio?” and second, the revision of curricula at Spelman that has grown along with the SpEl.Folio project.

What exactly is an eFolio? As I continue to hear this question (in workshops, written on surveys, in quick hallway conferences, relayed from students to me by multimedia assistants), I’ve come to realize that this question is more about process than product. As project director, I regularly offer a working definition, drawing upon various sources, but, like the questions, “What is an essay?” or “What is reflection?,” this question is better served as a source of ongoing dialogue than as something to be answered and moved on from. To insist that the answer is straightforward or that all participants in SpEl.Folio should share a definition would work against our project’s central focus on purpose. I’m a believer in clear guidelines for various contexts, but I’ve learned from the students and faculty involved in SpEl.Folio that the question What is an eFolio? not only can be, but should be asked again and again, with attention to the rhetorical implications of its many possible answers.

The other discovery made as we’ve researched the first three years of SpEl.Folio has been that it is deeply involved in the revision of curricula at Spelman – ranging from individual courses, to majors, to the College’s own mission statement. I don’t argue that SpEl.Folio has caused this shift, but it has indisputably played a role. When I began this project, I envisioned it to be small and contained: simply a shift of medium for the First-Year Portfolio. However, as it’s continued to grow throughout the core curriculum and in the majors, I’ve realized that it touches on some of the deepest questions that educators must ask: “What do I want students to learn? What do I mean by terms like engagement, writing, and critical thinking? What are we teaching in our majors? How do we know when our teaching has been successful?” The project’s focus on purpose has come to be even more salient than we initially believed, for the purposes we are questioning and re-visioning are not only students’, but our own as faculty and the college’s itself.

A few days ago, I showed a colleague two questions I wanted to send to department chairs who are considering incorporating SpEl.Folio into their majors. The questions I’d written were these:

1. What goals or ideas in your major do you hope to serve if you incorporate an electronic portfolio?
2. How can the SpEl.Folio Project help you reach these goals, or develop these ideas?

My colleague, putting her finger directly on the key issue that has arisen this year, suggested that I add a third:
3. If you incorporate an electronic portfolio in your major, what in your department will have to change?

Margaret Price is director of the SpEl.Folio project and Interim Director of the Spelman Comprehensive Writing Program.

SmartClassroom

Posted by hope at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We were talking today, again, about that recurrent concern over the reliance on PowerPoint for presenting complex concepts or sharing knowledge. I recently read Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence and the second edition of his powerful PowerPoint essay is quoted in the title of this post.

It's a perpetual teaching/learning issue. Not only is PP increasingly relied upon to support lecture, but more students are required to submit their course work in this format.

Some questions that I feel are worth asking are, Do bullet points and pictures inspire or require smart and rigorous thinking? How much of the blame for bad (i.e., diminishing, boring, soporific, flattening...) PowerPoint presentations lies with the user and how much with the tool?

Read more on Edward Tufte's blog.

Posted by inés at 5:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Robert L. Schrag, a professor of communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, had been offering his students an MP3 copy of his lectures; the lectures were sold via an online company, Independent Music Online, for $2.50, with the professor receiving $1 per sale.

A student in his class reacted favorably to his project. "It's a pretty neat idea, but he also told us in class that you're going to get the most if you come to class and hear the lecture firsthand, so it's really a matter of choice," NCSU student Audrey Wilson said [1]. The student newspaper, the Technician, ran an article [2] also giving a favorable impression, but the editors of the paper disagreed [3] - wondering if this was a ripoff [should missing class be so expensive :)?].

The Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences was bothered by the practice and wanted time to think about it, and communicated this to Prof. Schrag who has, for the time being, removed the lectures from the site. UNC policy, however, allows professors to retain sole ownership of materials that they produce in their classrooms. [4] Notes and References

[0] Image: Robert L. Schrag, Mask. Image http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/communication/faculty/schrag/webpub/mask.jpg" on http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/communication/faculty/schrag/webpub/doodles.html

[1] Kelley Brackett, Professor gives students the option of purchasing his lectures online, technicianonline (N.C. State Student Media, Raleigh, North Carolina), http://media.www.technicianonline.com/media/storage/paper848/news/2006/09/13/News/Professor.Gives.Students.The.Option.Of.Purchasing.His.Lectures.Online-2268444.shtml. Robert Schrag records Communication 250 classes and offers them to students online for $2.50

[2] NBC17, Professor's Digital Lessons Put On Hold, NBC Channel 17, Ralleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. September 13, 2006. http://www.nbc17.com/education/9842776/detail.html "It's a pretty neat idea, but he also told us in class that you're going to get the most if you come to class and hear the lecture firsthand, so it's really a matter of choice," NCSU student Audrey Wilson said. "You can get the CD, or go to the live concert. A lot of people go to the concert because there's something about it being live, or a student being able to ask the question, not listening to another student's question."

[3] Unsigned editorial, The principle of the thing. Opinion: Professors should not charge for audio copies of their lectures when students already pay thousands of dollars in tuition and the university has free web space available. technicianonline (N.C. State Student Media, Raleigh, North Carolina) http://www.technicianonline.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&uStory_id=fc6306c2-6400-4fc3-8740-d499869a6c3f

[4] Andrea Foster, N.C. Professor Stops Selling Lecture Recordings Online After a Dean Raises Questions. Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2006. http://chronicle.com/free/2006/09/2006091501t.htm

Related

Wired Campus Blog, Online Lecture Sales Suspended, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2006. http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1570/online-lecture-sales-suspended. The Blog leads off a discussion with the question "Do you think professors should be able to profit from selling their lecture recordings to students online."

Robert L. Schrag, Robert's Quarterly Journal of On-Going Works, The Compleat Worke, Volume 1, Number 1. http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/communication/faculty/schrag/webpub/distribution.html

Robert L. Schrag (Bob), Educause Profile. http://www.educause.edu/PeerDirectory/750?ID=38482. Dr. Schrag has taught in the Communication Department at NC State since 1981. He focuses on digital technology and has a special interest in the intersection between those technologies and expressive communication - painting, sculpture, music, etc., and various combinations thereof

Posted by steve at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yesterday's New York Times contains an article [2] by Charles McGrath investigating the custom essay and term paper marketplace. Using his real name and real credit card, he purchased 3 essays from commercial firms specializing in custom wiring. He then send the writing samples to several college professors asking them to evaluate the submissions and assign them a grade.

The good news about the papers was that they were badly enough written to not seem like commercial products. The bad news was that they were so badly written that the student would be lucky to receive a "D." Most of the professors seemed to sense something wrong, and said that they would want to meet and talk to the student.

The article has a couple of nice bonus items ... a description of the assignment as well as links to the actual papers purhcased. It would have been interesting to run these by, for example, graduate teaching assistants typical of those at many larger universities who are normally assigned to first year courses - and may not have much experience with papers, with grading, and with cultivating undergraduate writing skills.

Notes:

[1] The image for this item (source: http://customessaywriting.com/images/15PerPage.jpg, was found by a google search for an image depicting a "term paper" comes from such a custom firms, Custom Essay Writing. The somewhat higher price is supported by the claim: Our staff consists of talented individuals that love to read, write, and conduct research. Their passion is backed up by college, masters, and doctoral degrees. You could have seen their works in newspapers, magazine articles, television (ads/news/etc.), and a lot more. They're friendly too!

[2] Charles McGrath, "At $9.95 a Page, You Expected Poetry?", New York Times, September 10, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/weekinreview/10mcgrath.html On Monday, September 11th, this article was rated as the "Most Emailed" article; it also failed to make the top 10 in the "Most Blogged" list. Maybe this says something about the New York Times readership.

Posted by steve at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

In the August 2006 issue of the Scientific American, Phillip Ross explores what makes an expert an expert. The key, both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, is training. Or what the article calles "effortful study, which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence." Training trumps talent. (Talent, in fact, might not exist at all).

Teachers in sports, music and other fields tend to believe that talent matters and that they know it when they see it. In fact, they appear to be confusing ability with precocity. There is usually no way to tell, from a recital alone, whether a young violinist's extraordinary performance stems from innate ability or from years of Suzuki-style training. Capablanca, regarded to this day as the greatest "natural" chess player, boasted that he never studied the game. In fact, he flunked out of Columbia University in part because he spent so much time playing chess. His famously quick apprehension was a product of all his training, not a substitute for it.

The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. What is more, the demonstrated ability to turn a child quickly into an expert--in chess, music and a host of other subjects--sets a clear challenge before the schools. Can educators find ways to encourage students to engage in the kind of effortful study that will improve their reading and math skills? Roland G. Fryer, Jr., an economist at Harvard University, has experimented with offering monetary rewards to motivate students in underperforming schools in New York City and Dallas. In one ongoing program in New York, for example, teachers test the students every three weeks and award small amounts--on the order of $10 or $20--to those who score well. The early results have been promising. Instead of perpetually pondering the question, "Why can't Johnny read?" perhaps educators should ask, "Why should there be anything in the world he can't learn to do?"

Philip E. Ross, The Expert Mind, Scientific American, July 24, 2006. (August 2006 issue). http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945. Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well.

Image credit: W.A. Mozart, retratu construiu, Barbara Krafft, 1819. http://ast.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart

Posted by steve at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

A Graduate's View of the Course Management System
By Ryan Tansey, Recent Graduate, University of Puget Sound

Two years ago when I wrote my first viewpoint for SmartClassroom (then eLearning Dialogue), I issued my university an “Incomplete,” with the suggestion that faculty spend more time developing their Blackboard skills. Now as a recent graduate of the University of Puget Sound, I am ready to issue a final grade, with one notable change to the primary criterion for the evaluation. For this viewpoint, evaluation is primarily based on how the campus use of Blackboard added value to my education. . .

(Ryan's final remarks on their use of Blackboard have some suggestions that apply to UVM...excerpts/paraphrasing follows...)

The Good

- putting material and assignments online made it easier for everyone to maximize their time in class. The instructional time in these classes began sooner and lasted longer.

- Faculty who created assignments that required Blackboard participation had students who came to class better prepared to participate in classroom discussions.

- (another) benefit was the archiving of both submissions, as well as easy access to all of the faculty-generated course materials

- also instant feedback on grades

The Bad

- where the professors only partially used Blackboard . . .[they] would sporadically post material, would occasionally respond to online queries, and would redundantly distribute materials both online and in class. . . frustrating to not be able to rely on regular updates.

- when a faculty member would not require students to sign up for the Blackboard instance of the course. ..[they] might post an assignment that a substantial portion of the class would never see.

Often, professors had little or no instruction on Blackboard capabilities. . . Professors who were content to use just the basic features – grades and syllabus – barely enhanced their classes.

Recommendations

It is hard to believe that the university could spend a large amount of money on an effective instructional tool like Blackboard, but spend so little effort helping faculty and students learn how to effectively use this valuable tool.

- The university needs to demonstrate to faculty the advantages of supplementing personalized in-classroom instruction with a technology that promotes active learning in the student body.

- We need to build enthusiasm in the faculty. I realize that it is difficult to make individual faculty adopt any new technology, yet faculty peers and department heads are currently untapped resources.

- we need to provide consistent instruction for both faculty and students. . . Training is infrequently available, and there is a lack of easy-to-find supplemental material.

Entire article, including the grade Ryan gave the university, at: SmartClassroom

Posted by hope at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There have been several stories in the news lately about colleges partnering with Apple to offer podcasts of lectures or other audio content through iTunes. (see below for example) Aside from the questions these partnerships raise about Apple, marketing, and iPod dominance, they also raise questions about how the CTL (LRG? UVM?) might enable this kind of activity. Should we be encouraging UVM to make it's intellectual capital available this way? How can we support this? What hurdles must be cleared to make the process easier? How do we get beyond the "early adoptor" stage?

roanoke.com - New River Valley Current-Apple isn't just for teachers anymore -- iTunes service to debut at Radford in fall

Posted by hope at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Alex Halavais has posted a few followups to his blogging in the large class (roughly 400 students) experiment. He has gathered together quite a bit of student feedback, and describes some of the technical and pedagogical hurdles he encountered while teaching his course on "Cyberporn & Society".

It sounds like getting students comfortable with the interface was one of the biggest challenges, along with the sheer bulk of reading and evaluating several hundred blogs:

"I’ve just finished going through nearly 300 blogs, and my eyes feel like they are about to fall out of my head. (Thanks go to the inestimable help of Brenda, who took on 100 of these.) I’ll write a bit more about this later. First, I was crazy to ask a 400 person class to blog. If I ever teach another course this large, it’s multiple guess all the way.

Second, about half the students really seem to be getting it, and the posts seem to be measurably improving for these students. About half have completely dropped out of blogging—effectively dropped out of completing the class, it seems. That failure rate is unacceptable, but I’m not sure what to do about it. Part of it is that students are unaccustomed to having something due each week, especially in an online course. Part is that they are not comfortable writing, I fear. But a lot has to do with the strangeness of getting used to blogging."

He follows those thoughts with the observation that some of the students were encouraged when they saw the traffic statistics now available in wordpress.com blogs, and that people were reading and participating in their blogs.

To collect and display all the blog content in one place, so to speak, he set up an aggregator. It looks like there's also a del.icio.us tag for the course.

I've mentioned this before on my own blog, but thought that a longer followup might be better suited for this arena. I am really looking forward to hearing more as he continues to look back on the semester.

Posted by justin at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The recently published results of the NetDay Speak Up survey revealed an interesting model of what students consider the ideal school.

When asked to "describe a new school for students just like you--what would be the No. 1 technology you would need," the leading response from students in every grade was access to personal laptops they could take home.

Sixty-two percent of students in grades 6-12 said a mobile computer is integral to a 21st-century classroom. More than 40 percent of this group said a modern classroom should include cell phones, interactive whiteboards, televisions, digital cameras, video cameras, scanners, and CD/DVD burners.

Also, students expressed a strong desire to learn in a more hands-on way. They said they'd find math more engaging if teachers infused more technology into their lessons. They also said they want to explore science through technology simulations, field trips, and "CSI"-like problem-solving exercises, rather than textbooks.

Links:

eSchool News Staff, For students, eMail already is outdated, May 3, 2006. http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/PFshowstory.cfm?ArticleID=6297

Netday "Speak Up" survey results, http://www.dell4k12.com/netday

Netday "Speak Up" survey tool 2005, http://www.netdayspeakup.org/

Posted by steve at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

A new Netday "Speak Up" survey by Dell and Bell South suggests that while teachers are increasingly using email to communicate to students, students are increasingly abandoning email for instant messaging (including cell phone SMS).

"Students have told us that eMail is still valuable--mainly for storing and transmitting documents and for communication with adults," said Julie Evans, chief executive officer of the nonprofit group NetDay. "IM is more valuable to them because it is instant, and they can speak with multiple people at the same time. I believe that this highlights a greater sophistication in student tech use--and a trend for us to watch."

In addition to instant messaging, students are more likely to use social networking tools like MySpace and Facebook to support their communication habits. "At least 50 percent of students, by the 12th grade, have some sort of personal, MySpace-like web site," she said. "This generation of learners seeks community online."

Links:

eSchool News Staff, For students, eMail already is outdated, May 3, 2006. http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/PFshowstory.cfm?ArticleID=6297

Netday "Speak Up" survey results, http://www.dell4k12.com/netday

Netday "Speak Up" survey tool 2005, http://www.netdayspeakup.org/

Posted by steve at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday we held another of our Colleague Tea events, this one entitled "Blogs at UVM". It was a cozy group, with only about five or six people attending, but it was a lively and enlightening discussion. I think everyone left with some ideas about how they could use this tool in their courses. Here are a few of the resources we looked at, along with some of the places and ideas we discussed.

At the beginning, we gave out a resources sheet with the blog.uvm.edu url on it and descriptions of the tools that could be found there, such as the Get a Blog! link, the Blogroll, and the "help" blog. This handout also had URL's for the Doctor Is In program, and the CTL Events calendar. We also had a "Blogging Lingo" (pdf) handout, definitions of common terms.

We started out with introductions, and discovered almost immediately that one of our participants was already blogging! She was excited to find out that she could set up a blog at UVM, in addition to using an external service - which she is currently doing with her Women's Bioethics Blog.

In after looking at that blog, we went to the UVM Blogroll and took a look at a few blogs currently in use in the classroom. The blogs of Paul Martin's canadian literature courses were examples we looked at, as were Charlie Rathbone's education course blogs.

After that, we briefly looked at the editing and posting interface, and how easy it is to upload and post a picture. Throughout all of this, we were pausing to talk about the differences between using this tool as opposed to others such as WebCT or regular web/"zoo" space. Along the way we also discussed various details of using a blog, such as being able to save posts in unpublished "draft" form. We touched on ideas such as publishing multiple versions of syllabii, re-using a blog space, as well as ideas for handling discussion and dealing with comment spam. As we wrapped up, it seemed that a few folks might really have more need of something like WebCT, for it's structure and tools such as quizzes and threaded discussion.

Toward the end, we looked at Technorati, and Google as ways of finding blogs of specific interest.

We also talked a little about feed readers.

All in all, it was a lot of fun. And the cookies were tasty!

Posted by justin at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)