Jun

11

Eduyawn

Filed Under Computers, Education | Leave a Comment

Edupunk is “Do It Yourself” in education or instruction technology. Free or at least cheap tools suitable for classroom use are so ubiquitous, the faculty have plenty of alternatives to the monolithic “enterprise” LMS.

If edupunk was a boat, then what would it be? A bamboo raft?

Kid at an Apple IIeThis is not something new. My mom conned her principal into letting her have an Apple IIe for her classroom where she refused the computer teacher’s help. Instead, Mom found and installed programs herself for what she wanted to do. She was not going to become an extension of the computer teacher’s classroom. She maintained this DIY approach throughout her career. She was always annoyed with technology in education classes because she already knew about most of the technology they taught teachers to use and offered her experiences in not only how to make it work better but more recent technology which looked more promising.

Her approach was simple but methodical.

  1. Try something.
  2. Covertly pay attention to what the students are doing.
  3. Evaluate the effectiveness.
  4. Keep successful approaches and ditch failures.

This was her method in both K-12 and higher education. If she were faced with using something like Blackboard Vista or Academic Suite, then I have no doubt she would be looking for greener pastures. At the same time, she is proud of me for having the job that I do: running the monolithic “enterprise” LMS.

* Picture by Greg G. It was licensed Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

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Mar

9

Dance Lessons, Anyone?

Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment

The modest proposal of having students help teachers learn to dance makes an interesting point. Suggesting the learners do not want to learn is an easy way to avoid the real problem.

I hear from higher education faculty, students are unmotivated and fail to see the importance of learning. I hear from academic technical support at the campuses my project supports, faculty members are unmotivated and fail to see the importance of technology.

Certainly, I ought not allow myself to think of students as unwilling to learn, faculty members unwilling to use technology, and academic technical support unwilling to help the faculty. Empathy is one of those right brain skills I should be using.

Feb

19

A Return To Educational Segregation

Filed Under Education | 2 Comments

Huh… A nearby school system plans to segregate sexes.The administrators say the research they have reviewed says boys and girls learn better in different environments: 1) Girls need quiet time. 2) Boys need to express themselves.

Probably the Hawthorne Effect will cause scores to increase for the first couple years. :D So they will stick with it. The parents will buy that it is working.

If not, then this school board will be voted out very quickly.

Feb

19

Literacy

Filed Under Education | 1 Comment

Before we react to the lower amount of reading, what exactly is the problem we seek to solve?

Is the problem declining student reading scores? We need to improve reading comprehension. Students may need to learn how to read more effectively so increasing the quantity may not help that much.

Is the problem half of adults read no books in a year? Is that really a problem? What adults do seems to be the canary for pointing out how we are a culture going to collapse soon. Two, three generations later, we are still here… More wealthy and concerned about a wider variety of issues.

Howard Gardner has an interesting article in the Washington Post about how the form of reading has changed over time. Just because we read out of books in the 18th to 20th centuries doesn’t mean books will remain the primary form ideas will be delivered in the 21st century.

Dec

28

Everything to Everyone

Filed Under Blackboard Vista, Education, University | Leave a Comment

This is intended to be a more thoughtful response to Laura regarding Course Management Systems and the need for innovation.

Currently, Course Management Systems are bloatware. They got this way by trying to provide everything to everyone. One instructor wants a feature, the university presses for this feature, the CMS programmers put in the feature. Okay, maybe not even 1/2 the time, but given that we have about 15,000 instructors, even a tenth getting a tenth of what they want adds up very quickly. Where they overlap is where companies feel the pressure to add these features.

In my experience, people have found CE and Vista clunky and difficult to use since 2001ish. Basically, that was when the shiny newness wore off at Valdosta State. If anything, then its gotten worse over time. Personally, I think this is the case because its not easy to use. Part of this lack of ease is because of the sheer number of possible actions required to accomplish frequent tasks. Another part is the overwhelming possible branches one might take [1] in the decision tree. Part of what makes us intelligent is visualizing the goal and taking the steps necessary to get is there. When software is not easy to use, the users feel stupid because they cannot figure out how to get to the goal.

Think about the complaints we have been seeing about CE6 from people using CE4. They are griping about features they are used to using disappearing. No one wants to lose the features or options they frequently use. They also wish the features or options they never use would disappear.

From what I’ve seen, instructors will make use of what the university
provides. When universities don’t provide what instructors want, then
these instructors will find what they want elsewhere and make use of
it. Large companies take a long time to integrate new features. By the
time they figure out the user base wants something, incorporate it,
release it, and customers implement it, the users have become used to
using it elsewhere are not attracted to a feature they’ve been using
for years elsewhere. So then we invoke FERPA and whatever to move them
to the CMS which is more clunky than what they were using already.

So enough with my griping… What is the solution? Well, maybe we should think about what a Course Management System should do?

  1. Course management: This means it provides the university administration means by which they can control access to classes. Its not for the faculty so much as provosts, vice presidents, and registrars to be comfortable the university is not allowing students to take something without paying the institution.
  2. Learning: Specifically, these are communication of concepts and evaluation of concept comprehension.

In a nutshell, #1 is the course list and administration screens while #2 is the course internals. If our focus is recreating the university in an online environment, then the CMS is the right approach. By importing the data from the student information system, we build a hierarchy just like the course catalog and put students into virtual representations of these classes. This mindset is where instructors want to build classes that consist of their lectures, the assignments, and the assessments. Its the face-to-face class online. Thankfully, online classes are moving to using tools to better utilize the advantages of the WWW. However, the focus is more towards improving peer discussion.

Maybe this approach isn’t the best one for learning? Last month I read a few articles off a web site advocating a different model: students gathering and creating information themselves (Personal Learning Environment). The instructor in this model becomes more of a mentor like independent study or how universities functioned at the time of our Founding Fathers. I’ve been hearing this is the direction education ought to take for over a decade now. However, I think its unlikely as its easier on the instructor to use the bird shot approach. :)

My Approach: The CMS is only an integration framework to provide access to tools. It doesn’t try to provide these tools at all. There are hundreds of wiki products who are better at some things depending on how its used. Why should the CMS think it can do it better than all of them? Same thing applies to blogs, social bookmarking, file sharing, etc. This means universities will provide a number of these tools and support dozens of different applications and integrate them all. We will have to better understand data flow, security, how all these pedagogically work well together. It’ll be a nightmare.

[1] One of things I unfortunately still do is recreate the user’s actions by figuring out what they clicked on in the recorded session. Much of the problems we see are user error, probably through not understanding the ramifications of the action.

Dec

15

Are Books the Only Way to Learn?

Filed Under Education, Interweb, Philosophy | Leave a Comment

Is the Internet really a bad invention? According to Doris Lessing, yes.

We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.

What has happened to us is an amazing invention - computers and the internet and TV. It is a revolution. This is not the first revolution the human race has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, transformed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: “What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?” In the same way, we never thought to ask, “How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?”

Very recently, anyone even mildly educated would respect learning, education and our great store of literature. Of course we all know that when this happy state was with us, people would pretend to read, would pretend respect for learning. But it is on record that working men and women longed for books, evidenced by the founding of working-men’s libraries, institutes, and the colleges of the 18th and 19th centuries. Reading, books, used to be part of a general education. Older people, talking to young ones, must understand just how much of an education reading was, because the young ones know so much less.

We all know this sad story. But we do not know the end of it. We think of the old adage, “Reading maketh a full man” - reading makes a woman and a man full of information, of history, of all kinds of knowledge. A hunger for books

Certainly I understand the perspective. We take the astounding availability of knowledge for granted. Instead of stuffing our brains with more and more information, we are content to waste our time online. I think creating a love of life long learning should be the goal.

Books are great. I love to read. Reading is important, yes. I also love to talk to others about what I’ve been reading. The prevalence of books created the Intellectual Movement in which people published books to discuss ideas. Except for Divine knowledge, ideas are refined through challenging weaknesses or problems. The printing press made it easier for people to publish books and get these ideas to the masses so more can read them and respond by publishing their own books. The Internet and especially blogging has improved the response latency from day to years to minutes.

Collaborative philosophical inquiry helps kids at an early age. These skills serve them well even into high school. This strikes me as similar to how the Intellectual Movement worked. Should this be adopted more broadly, then maybe our kids won’t embarrass Doris?

Dec

10

What is in a Program Description?

Filed Under Education, University | Leave a Comment

 

The B.S. in Professional Studies online program will enable students to acquire expertise in significant areas of contemporary professional life, and is equally relevant in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Coursework for the major is constructed around five areas of study - social science (understanding people in a diverse world), critical thinking, creativity, communication, and business. The curriculum is designed to enable students to become professionals in their field of choice, building on their prior education and experience. Drexel University Launches a Unique Online Degree For Professionals

Does this sound like BS to you too?

Last week I said “pretty much only your parents care about your major as bragging rights to their friends“. The critical explanation is the last sentence, which I read to mean This is your last shot at getting a degree and going out to the work force because you suck as a student.You are hopelss at Chemistry, Sociology, or even Philosophy. So… take this degree and go get a job. Thanks for the money!

Dec

9

Simple Form

Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment

Online classes can get a bad reputation when they are difficult to use. Jonathan has some excellent, simple suggestions appropriate form of materials for online classes. These are all suggestions I learned to make over my years attempting to provide support for CE and Vista. I now have 2-3 people between me and faculty members.

Following one of his links to Quality REACHE, I found a scoring rubric. I like rubrics.

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Dec

5

Love of Life Long Learning

Filed Under Education, University | 2 Comments

Found this quote interesting.

I’d guess the same is true for most college graduates. Tell me, what’s the point of spending 60-80 hours a week learning things that you immediately forget? Why I regret getting straight A’s in college

College is about developing a love of life long learning. Hopefully, after four years of intensive studying, the student should learn to love the acquisition of knowledge. They will continue with their education and earn graduate degrees as well! Wishful thinking, perhaps?

No one explains to students a major only really matters in some cases:

  1. Getting an engineering, a research, or another highly specialized job. Otherwise, pretty much only your parents care about your major as bragging rights to their friends. No one majors in Sales.
  2. Getting into a graduate program. Its easier to start a graduate program by having a related degree. Many will allow candidates to take senior undergraduate classes to catch up with the people who took the major. Why take them in grad school when you could have taken them as your major?

Students sadly expect picking a major to open the doors they need to get a job. The piece of paper mostly represents the former student’s commitment to working through the worst bureaucratic nightmare humans have ever created. Next, it represents the student’s mastery of basic concepts in an area (continue on through the Ph.D. / M.D. / J.D. / Ed.D to be an expert). College isn’t about getting you a good job. Its about helping you become a better person.

I figured this out my Freshman year as I was figuring out what I wanted to pick for my major. Explaining it to my friends really pissed off a few. They felt they’d were wasting their time in classes they would never use. Personally, I don’t think I’ve taken a class I have not used in some way. Of course, I really do have a love of learning, so maybe college worked for me.

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Nov

28

The Shot Heard Round the Vista World

Filed Under Blackboard Vista, Education | Leave a Comment

What is the worst possible outcome of an event from an admin’s perspective? You lose everything.

Next worst is lose a large portion of the data. Losing days worth of data, as Utah did, is huge. This is the biggest news since the merger of Blackboard and WebCT, I think. To Utah’s credit, they have done their best to let people know their SAN and not a Blackboard code error was the culprit.

Still, its a bad boat to be sitting in right now.

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