PennEduTech

Editor’s note: This blog entry was written by Lisa Minetti, Curriculum Design and Assessment Specialist at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies.

Consider this blog post an advertisement of sorts for a great resource I think anyone interested in educational technology should be reading whenever they get the chance!

Educause Learning Initiative: 7 Things You Should Know About

The “7 Things You Should Know About…” series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

This month’s brief examines backchannel communications, which I mentioned in my recent post on designing interactivity into live web conferences on the Adobe Connect Professional tool. While our online faculty harness the power of the backchannel to foster participation and drive lecture content, I wonder whether others here at Penn are experimenting with using backchannel tools in their face-to-face teaching.

Anyone out there using chat, IM, Twitter, or Google Wave for group participation in their face-to-face classes? If so, would you consider sharing your activity with us here?

If not, what do you think are the potential pros and cons of enabling backchannel conversations to become a part of the student experience in face-to-face classes at Penn?

Editor’s note: This blog entry was written by Lisa Minetti, Curriculum Design and Assessment Specialist at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies.

Faculty and staff at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) have been using web conferencing software for the delivery of live lectures in online courses and web-based orientation and information sessions for the past three years. As more folks at Penn start using web conferencing tools, I wanted to share some of what we’ve learned about best practice in the design and delivery of real-time, online sessions.

1. Design your presentation mindfully; plan interactive moments.

Use the interactive features of your web conferencing software to keep your audience connected to your topic and each other.

• Provide a warm-up activity. Share a map on the whiteboard and have participants identify where they’re located, for example, or have participants play a simple word game, like Hangman. Getting participants to use the interactive features right from the start helps set the “ground rules” for interactivity throughout the session.

• Design moments for guided reflection. In her undergraduate World Music course, Dr. Carol Muller plays unfamiliar music to her students and prompts them to describe in few words their initial response to that music using the direct messaging tool. As the written responses come in, she continues to speak, rephrasing student thoughts using the academic register of her field. Within a few weeks, she notices that students start to use the language of ethnomusicology in their chat sessions.

• Design question and answer sessions into your talk. While Dr. Peter Struck delivers lectures in his Greek and Roman Mythology course, for example, students are encouraged to participate in backchannel conversations with the Teaching Assistant via the chat tool. Every 10-15 minutes, he pauses his lecture, allows the TA to report on what students are commenting on in the chat, and then extends the conversations with the students via the voice and video tools before returning to his lecture.

• Design small group work into your presentation. In Academic Writing and Research Design in the Arts and Sciences, a graduate seminar, Dr. Kris Rabberman uses breakout rooms for close reading and group discussions. In these private spaces, students work with a select number of their peers on an activity aligned with instructional goals. Dr. Rabberman visits each room to provide guidance/feedback. After the group exercise, students then return to the main room to present their findings/conclusions to the larger group.

• Use polls (quizzes) to check for understanding and track participation. You can design these in advance, or create them as you deliver your content. In the LPS information session for online students, for example, we ask how many users have taken an online course before, whether or not they’ve used the web for real-time interaction, and, if so, which tools they’ve used (Skype, Google Talk, etc.). We then use that data to drive our conversations about how online courses work at Penn.

2. Create visuals that enhance your verbal delivery.

• Share your screen with users. Take participants on a web tour or show them how to use online tools. As a guest lecturer in a graduate seminar, for example, David Azzolina from Penn Libraries introduces students to key databases and resources available in Penn’s extensive library system.

• Create a whiteboard where participants can work collaboratively. Dr. Kris Rabberman uses the whiteboard to help students identify writing conventions and develop peer editing skills. She uploads samples of text to the whiteboard and asks students to use the marking tools to highlight/circle key issues.

• Pre-load images or include them in your lecture slides. In a lecture describing the history of parliamentary land enclosure in Britain in the eighteenth century for her Introduction to Romanticism course, Myra Lotto includes historic maps and images of a pastoral countryside to convey the mood of that period.

• Use PowerPoint strategically. In Calculus 2, Nakia Rimmer uses animated slides to guide students through solutions to complicated problems. Read Edward Tufte’s work if you want to learn more about the effective use of Power Point and the design of visual information. He’s bringing his one day course on Presenting Data and Information to Philadelphia on March 16, 2010.

3. Control your verbal delivery.

• Speak a little bit slower and a bit more emphatically than you might normally speak in a face-face lecture session.
• Vary the volume, rate and tone of your speech.
• Incorporate pausing to highlight key ideas, transition between points, and/or recapture the audience’s attention.
• Worried about whether or not your participants are following along? Establish techniques for collecting frequent feedback from participants. Have students use the “My Status” tools (shown on the right), for example, to let you know whether you need to speed up or slow down, speak louder or softer.

To learn more about effective practice in designing presentations using Adobe Connect Professional, visit:

RIT Online Learning, winner of the New Media Consortium’s 2008 Center of Excellence Award.

• Student Engagement Strategies
• Best Practices and Technical Tips

Adobe’s Resource Center provides tutorials on features and best practice advice:

• Read through the User Quick Guide or watch a video about how the web conference tool works.

• Best Practices for Delivering Virtual Classroom Training

Please consider sharing what you learn by submitting comments below.

On Monday I taught my first hands-on workshop completely online using Penn Libraries’ new Adobe Connect room. I chose to teach Excel Pivot Tables under the logic that anyone interested in pivot tables would be comfortable enough with juggling multiple windows and handling sound problems. This was a good assumption – the seven participants handled the platform well.

I found it interesting – but difficult - to teach this way. I spent much time preparing handouts (sample spreadsheets of “before” and “after”) and worrying about pace and structure. I chose a traditional approach where I shared my screen and manipulated Excel and then asked participants to “watch and repeat” on their own computer.

The technology worked quite well and the participants all seemed to keep up, and be eager for more. But being the presenter, I had this odd sinking feeling that I was shouting down a deep, empty well.  I have presented at several conference sessions online – but I have no expectation of audience participation when I am lecturing. It felt much stranger to conduct a small-group hands-on workshop completely online. We are planning to try this again in January and suggestions for how to structure the activity to be more interactive and less didactic would be most welcome!

Lately I’ve come to realize that there can be a strange difference between knowing and believing – that faith arises out of a different facet of humanity than knowledge.  For years, I knew in some way that I deserved the good things that seemed to serendipitously enter my life but I couldn’t rise above my own insecurities to believe it.  Instead I cowered in the shadows of self-doubt, afraid to accept my own light and though I have made marked progress in this area – I feel that I have only begun to experience the warmth that belief in oneself can bring.  On that note, I want to tell you a story about POTENTIAL.

This whole metaphor reminded me of how I have experienced simulations thus far.  They are these magnificent learning tools full of potential, yet seemingly unaware of their capacity for reaching the masses and literally changing the way that we educate.  The world KNOWS that simulations have potential, but do we BELIEVE it?  I’ve been lucky enough to experience it and believe it from the first time I ever tested a Learning Lab application – completely lacking knowledge of investment terms & strategies and possessing nascent technical skills, I plunged into the world of the Online Trading and Investment Simulator (OTIS) and thought to myself, wow this thing has possibility!  Little did I know that OTIS and I were destined to become friends and that my knowledge of simulation potential would grow into a solid belief of what they can do for education.

Several years after the experience with OTIS, I have now witnessed that simulations can not only change a class session, but they can also change an entire curriculum and can have an educational impact reaching approximately 850 MBAs!  Conceived by Professors Nancy Rothbard and Sigal Barsade, developed by Forio, and carried through successfully by a number of different Wharton departments (including the Learning Lab), the Wharton Teamwork and Leadership Simulation (WTLS) for Management 652 changed the idea of simulation scale and magnitude at the Wharton School.  Equipped with approximately 180 laptops, 288 lab computers (for each wave of students), 288 headphones, and at least 120 Wharton employees, and almost the entire Forio technical and support team – the four day simulation was an overall success and an example of realized potential.

A little bit about the simulation:

“Through a business simulation that has been written by Professors Barsade and Rothbard and designed especially for Wharton students, we [the teachers] will cover both theoretical and practical aspects of leadership and teamwork.  In this class, you [the students] will take on the role of a senior management team and in doing so learn how to negotiate with and influence other team members, make team-based decisions, and deal with group dynamics and organizational change – all as part of running your organization.”

Because of the purposely ambiguous nature of simulations, I cannot offer details about the simulation’s storyline or the details of the daily activities in each round – but I confidently say that I witnessed intense engagement.  The students truly assumed their roles in the organization and really got into character – often crafting back stories about how their organization started, even though it wasn’t required.  I even heard a group tell a tale demonstrating the closeness of their company:  “Two members of our senior management team are actually married – that’s how close our company is.”  I witnessed imagination, creativity, and teamwork and found it fascinating to watch as each group seemed to have an internal leader emerge as the four days of the simulation progressed.  Not surprisingly, the leader often seemed to be the person who believed the most in the potential of his/her company and his/her teammates.

As a Psychology major, I saw countless potential for personality studies through the daily surveys and questionnaires that the students answered.  I also enjoyed (which I enjoy through Learning Lab applications as well) the experiment-like nature of running a simulation.  Perhaps WTLS was even more experiment-like than most simulations in that it was the first time carrying out such a large scale simulation project.  Running a simulation is also much like an experiment in that it is laden with a multitude of variables and random events that slightly alter the experience of the students from one classroom to the next.  After the simulation finishes, there’s usually a debrief session in which the true goals of the simulation are revealed.  I sat in on a debrief class after one of the WTLS test runs and I learned all about more concepts that pique the interest of a former Psychology major.  There is a lot to be learned about the potential of the human psyche by analyzing the way that people lead and work together as a team.

Although The Wharton Teamwork and Leadership Simulation may have been designed to teach teamwork and leadership to the students, I think every single staff member involved in the process learned valuable lessons in those areas as well.  Some emerged as leaders themselves – either by putting in extra work hours/effort to ensure the success of this inaugural simulation (I can think of a few people who deserve recognition for this!) or by signing up for a highly involved role.  There were lab leaders, lab support, classroom technical support, network connectivity monitors, software installers and testers, crisis response teams, classroom support/food/logistics/supplies, business and simulation experts, leadership fellows – needless to say WTLS was a huge group effort.  It was at once a bit scary yet extremely liberating to be a part of such a large undertaking and interacting with colleagues from different departments in a way that isn’t usually done on a daily basis at most universities.

I want to include a quote that I read about teamwork in the Pfeiffer Book of Successful Team-Building Tools by Elaine Biech (2008) because I think it describes something that both the students learned as well as the faculty and staff that made the event successful:

“Probably the key advantage of teamwork is a better end result.  Organizations find that teams can be more responsive to the changing needs of the marketplace.  Teams can be closer to the customer’s needs, more informed about advanced technology, and faster to respond than traditional hierarchies.

A team working together has more and better input than individual’s working alone.  If everyone who works and in the process is involved, it is less likely that steps will be missed.  This results in better ideas and decisions and higher quality output.”

Those words speak to the success of the teams, but what about the people who rose as leaders through the entire experience?  Taken from Volume IV of What works, what matters, what lasts by Alexander and Helen Astin from the University of California (2007):

“We believe that leadership is a process that is ultimately concerned with fostering change.  In contrast to the notion of ‘management,’ which suggests preservation or maintenance, ‘leadership’ implies a process where there is movement – from wherever we are now to some future place or condition that is different.  Leadership also implies intentionality, in the sense that the implied change is not random – ‘change for change’s sake’ – but is rather directed toward some future end or condition which is desired or valued.  Accordingly, leadership is a purposive process which is inherently value-based.

Consistent with the notion that leadership is concerned with change, we view the ‘leader’ basically as a change agent, i.e., ‘one who fosters change.’  Leaders then, are not necessarily those who merely hold formal ‘leadership’ positions; on the contrary, all people are potential leaders.  Furthermore, since the concepts of ‘leadership’ and ‘leader’ imply that there are other people involved, leadership is, by definition, a collection group process.”

In essence, everything that I have just said culminated into a story of realizing potential:  recognizing one’s own potential, recognizing the potential of teammates, recognizing and then taking action on the potential of an idea (as Professors Barsade and Rothbard have done with the simulation), and recognizing potential of the tools in an environment that can lead towards success (such as using simulations for education).

The funny thing about potential energy in physics though is that it really means nothing unless it becomes kinetic energy, and kinetics implies some kind of motion – the same way that “‘leadership’ implies a process where there is movement”.  The actions of everyone involved in the simulation took something with potential and transformed it into a movement that not only taught the value of leadership and teamwork, but it demonstrated it.

This is my first official post on the Penn Engaging Students through Technology blog so I’d like to quickly introduce myself.  My name is Erin Murphy and I work for a group at Wharton Computing called the Learning Lab.  Each year the Learning Lab receives proposals from Wharton professors to develop web-based applications that extend the reach of learning in the classroom.  Some of these applications would fall under the category of simulations that allow students to engage in real-world challenges without assuming the real-world risk (e.g., The Online Trading and Investment Simulator allows students to experiment with different trading methods without losing real money). 

Through my experience with the simulations, I’ve come to realize that game theory in general is a particularly useful concept to understand and can be applied to different segments of life that one would not ordinarily associate with game theory.  In fact, I’ve been following a blog online (Mind Your Decisions blog) that is entirely dedicated to game theory and how it can be found in interesting places.  In this particular post from several months ago, the author details how game theory played a role in significant events like the financial crisis all the way to more trivial daily activities like waiting for the bus in the morning.  It is also being used to predict political events – see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on TED.com using game theory to predict the future of Iran. 

Technology (especially simulations) is great at capturing game theories because they often deal with the actions/interactions/and negotiations of two or more players in a closed system.  As Bruce Bueno de Mesquita mentions in his TED talk, computers successfully keep track of these actions/interactions/and negotiations much better than people and we can then analyze the data to predict a player’s future actions.  On that note, I’d like to discuss two of the most frequently used game theory types in Learning Lab applications.

• Tragedy of the Commons:  The notion of tragedy of the commons developed from an article of the same title written by Garrett Hardin in the journal Science in 1968.  “The article describes a dilemma in which multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen”(Wikipedia, 2009).  The tragedy of the commons scenario can be used to demonstrate the effects of any group’s actions on a limited resource in a closed system from specific things like oil or TUNA to more complex resources like the environment.  
• Prisoner’s Dilemma:  “A game frequently displayed in television police dramas. Two partners in crime are separated into separate rooms at the police station and given a similar deal. If one implicates the other, he may go free while the other receives a life in prison. If neither implicates the other, both are given moderate sentences, and if both implicate the other, the sentences for both are severe. Each player has a dominant strategy to implicate the other, and thus in equilibrium each receives a harsh punishment, but both would be better off if each remained silent. In a repeated or iterated prisoner’s dilemma, cooperation may be sustained through trigger strategies such as tit for tat” (GameTheory.net, 2009).

For more information on game theories, check out gametheory.net. 

The US Department of Education released a new report on 6/26/09 concerning the effectiveness of online learning.  This report is a meta-analysis which analyzes the results of prior studies.

The attention-grabbing headline of this report states, “The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes…was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face.”

However, the authors provide this important caveat:

“Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium. In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction”

Later in the report the authors mention,

“Studies in which analysts judged the curriculum and instruction to be identical or almost identical in online and face-to-face conditions had smaller effects than those studies where the two conditions varied in terms of multiple aspects of instruction” (page xvi)

and

“In terms of instructional features, the online learning conditions in these studies were less likely to be instructor-directed (8 contrasts) than they were to be student-directed, independent learning (17 contrasts) or interactive and collaborative in nature (23 contrasts). Online learners typically had opportunities to practice skills or test their knowledge (42 effects were from studies reporting such opportunities).” (page 17)

In my humble opinion, this study validates the effectiveness of a variety of pedagogical techniques and thoughtful course design.  These techniques can be applied to both online and traditional courses; the pedagogy matters more than the medium.

An article which summarizes the findings of the report is available at

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/29/online

and the full report is available at

http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

Like the social network 2nd Life, Facebook has gained in popularity not only among recreational users but also among educators and their students. Traditionally, members use Facebook to update personal profiles and notify their friends about each other. However, we now see Facebook being used in language classes  to create communities of online learners who can interact with each other outside the classroom in different ways and for different purposes .

Facebook is particularly suited for extra language practice. During the 2008 – 2009 academic year,  I implemented a Facebook project for GRMN 101 and GRMN 102. The original thought behind the project was to have students create online portfolios for their written work which they could share with each other and comment on. In the past,  Bb’s Threaded Discussions and Blogs adequately served this purpose, but this time I wanted to expand the project to a more socially authentic environment that  most students were familiar with as a means for communicating and circulating information. It was my hope that students could then experience language practice as a meaningful exercise designed for them to become acquainted with each other in a less formal setting. Below is a screen shot of a short writing sample from one student’s post in Facebook.

click on image to enlarge

You may notice that the author of the above post uses an alias. In this instance, the alias is that of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. For this project, students were required to choose an alias that referenced a known German artist, philosopher or scientist. Students were not permitted to invite personal contacts to join the group. Membership was limited to only students from the class.

Students frequently combined their knowledge of the personalities they adopted in Facebook with details of themselves. This combination seemed to foster a playful use of the language even at the elementary level. Furthermore, the images that students used to illustrate their ideas may have contributed to stimulating their creativity and imagination. The translation of Goethe’s post in the example above is: “When I was still young and innocent, I was amazed about a lot. I thought that this world was exceptional. I laid in the sun and had fun in the present.”

Students also posted longer writing samples. As was the case with most of their written assignments, students were encouraged to illustrate their stories through images. In the story below, the student describes a fictitious battle that he imagines between himself and the monsters floating in his cereal bowl. The story gradually develops into a modern day fairy tale.

It was difficult to prevent inaccurate uses of the language since most posts were not checked before appearing in Facebook. However, there were opportunities in class to review student posts, make suggestions and do corrections. On the whole, there were few instances in the Facebook exchanges between students that caused communication problems. More importantly, the tasks for the students in Facebook did not have a particular grammatical focus but rather aimed at providing students with meaningful and creative opportunities to communicate with each other about themselves outside the classroom.

Besides providing students the opportunity to share their written work, students were also able to notify each other in the target language about their current status. Moreover, students were able to comment on each others’ posts and ask questions;  e.g., in the post below, Goethe wrote that he “is dreaming.”  Heidi Klum asks later: What are you dreaming?” Goethe responds: “I dreamt that I was a goalie in the NHL.”  The illustration below shows other status updates and posts by students .

click on image to enlarge

In the example above, we see how students outside the classroom are able to correspond with each other about their daily activities and thus personalize their language experience. In addition to describing what they were doing at a particular moment, students also described their hobbies and personal interests in art, music and culture. Students were able to provide examples of their interests not only through images but through other forms of multimedia such as video and links to other web sites.

Facebook also provided students with opportunities to learn new vocabulary. Students could easily switch the language of the interface to German and change all menus and instructions to the target language.

click on image to enlarge

Facebook was perhaps a factor in changing some of the dynamics of the course by facilitating a peer learning environment, in which the students could teach each other content. Although German rock music was not on the syllabus, students initiated their own discussion of German rock bands by posting music videos in Facebook that they found on YouTube. On occasion, students not only exchanged music videos but also shared the lyrics for each other to read which the lengthy text in the post below illustrates

click on image to enlarge

Finally, Facebook developed a community of learners, who learned about each other in ways that may not have otherwise occurred. Frequent users of Facebook use it as a means to quickly and simultaneously connect and network with friends, family and colleagues from around the world. It was namely Facebook’s networking aspects that hopefully helped the students to change their perception of language learning from that of an individual activity to that of a more dynamic group activity.

In a previous post, I described some free, commercial tools that instructors and students can use for creating web sites for course projects. But planning a web project requires more than just finding the right technology platform. As an instructor, you  need to consider what type of material is – and is not – appropriate for their students to post on open web sites.  You need to be mindful of  your students’ rights concerning the privacy of their personal information and academic work.

Privacy of student information is a complex topic. Technical, pedagogical, cultural and legal factors will all impact how your students share their work in public forums. Educause published a very helpful guide on one type of public web assignment – student blogging. See http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI8006.pdf

U.C. Berkeley  has a concise and helpful page with suggestions to instructors planning online projects. Please see http://teaching.berkeley.edu/onlineprojects.html

What follows is a very brief overview of some issues you should consider when planning assignments. I’ll be working with privacy experts and other instructional support staff at Penn to provide more detailed guidance in the future.

Be clear about activities and goals. Students are usually enthusiastic about the opportunity to publish their course work on open web sites. They welcome the opportunity to have their work contribute to the community or advance scholarship in their field. Make it clear to your students from the outset what aspects of their work will be posted publicly, and why. Discuss issues of appropriate content and ask your students to let you know if they have concerns about posting their work publicly. If at all possible, review the plan for these activities at the start of the term so students will know what to expect and can decide if they want to continue with the course.

Offer alternatives. Your students have the legal right to control how their academic work is shared. If students express concerns about the privacy of their work, be prepared to offer alternative ways for them to complete the course requirements.

Avoid discussing sensitive personal information. Avoid activities which might lead students to disclose sensitive personal information about themselves or others. Caution them not to post information which could lead to identity theft (home address, date of birth, etc.) or compromise the privacy of their family, friends or classmates. This is especially important when medical or psychological history may be involved. If you have an activity that might lead students to disclose personal information, plan to conduct those activities using Blackboard or other systems provided by your school which will restrict access to students enrolled in the course.

Protect the identityof individual contributors. It may be possible for students to include their work in a course site without publicly disclosing personal identifying information. For example, you may have students composing the contents of a web site in a wiki on Blackboard or another protected system. The wiki will allow you to see and evaluate individual contributions, then export the final draft to a web-ready format which won’t reveal who contributed what. In other cases, you can have your students post to blogs or other forums using pseudonyms to protect their privacy.

Get permission from people who appear in photos or recordings. If your students will be posting pictures or audio/video recordings to publicly viewable sites, they need to get permission from the people who are seen or heard in those pictures or recordings. This is especially important when dealing with telling personal stories or commenting on controversial issues.

Respect copyright and provide citations. Appropriate use of copyrighted material in educational activities is a very complex subject in its own right. If you’re planning activities in which students might want to re-purpose copyrighted materials you need to become familiar with the principals of “fair use” and review those guidelines with your students. Of course, the usual rules about citation for academic work also apply to work posted on the web.

Encourage students to save their work. Commercial services such as Blogger, Wikipedia, Google Sites and others offer great functionality and convenience. But you and your students have little control over what will happen to these sites over time. Whenever possible, students should save personal copies of the materials they post to these sites. This can help protect against possible loss and assure that they will continue to have access to their own intellectual work products.

I encourage instructors of courses in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences to contact me if they have questions about issues concerning privacy of student work, or if they are planning assignments in which students will post their work to publicly viewable web sites.

Instructors at other schools should contact their instructional technology support providers, or school privacy officer.

-John MacDermott

SAS Computing