I spent a beautiful fall weekend inside windowless meeting rooms surrounded by enough Post-It notes, flip charts and colored markers to stock an Office Deport Store.  For me, this is usually a cruel form of torture.  But the event was organized and attended by a group of dedicated, experienced, thoughtful and genuinely nice practitioners from all facets of higher ed.  It was an international group of faculty, senior administrators, facilities managers and instructional technologists.  Several architects who have worked on innovative learning space projects also participated.  And yes, there were even students present who spent Friday night sharing their perspective on how the physical environment affects learning.  The collective wisdom of this group was impressive.

The workshop focused on four fundamental questions:

1. What are the qualities that we want to see in our students and graduates?
2. What kind of learning spaces will support development of these qualities?
3. How can we know what works and share that knowledge?
4. What are we going to actually do about all of the above?

What are the qualities that we want to see in our students and graduates?

This was an important question to start with and brought out terms like

• creative
• curious
• resourceful
• adaptable
• action-oriented
• problem solvers
• good communicators
• effective users of technology

Notably absent from this vocabulary was “well informed.”  The implicit assumption is that if students are all of the above, then “well informed” will naturally follow.  This is an assumption that needs to be questioned.

These qualities stand in sharp contrast to the tone of many traditional lecture classes and the spaces in which they happen:

• sit still, eyes forward
• be quiet – don’t speak unless spoken to
• do what you’re told to do – no more and no less
• refrain from using the technology that is so integral to everything else you do

What kind of learning spaces will support development of these qualities?

 We discussed a variety of formal and informal learning spaces – classrooms, labs, libraries, lounges, etc.  For me, the biggest attraction were the “active learning” or “collaboration” style classrooms, many of which are based on the Scale-Up format (Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs  http://scaleup.ncsu.edu/).  These rooms can support a variety of subject areas, but I am especially interested in how they are being used in the sciences.  I was surprised to see the extent to which the pedagogy and facilities have been refined and disseminated. Both the rationale and the results of this format are compelling.

A video from University of Minnesota provides a concise testimonial

Many of the students present at our workshop have taken chemistry classes in a similar facility at UMBC  and  provided the same kind of comments about their experience.

How can we know what works and share that knowledge?

This tough question is at the core of  the LSC’s work.  We reviewed several aspects of effective assessment processes.  Again, I was impressed by the extent of existing information about the efficacy of active learning strategies, best practices, and lessons learned through experience.  Many good links are posted on the LSC resources page and through the SCALE-UP site.

A detailed report from University of Minnesota provides quantitative evidence of positive effects on learning outcomes, and supports the anecdotal information presented in their video.  Read the report from Educause Quarterly, 33, 3, 2010. 

“…our evidence strongly suggests that when controlling for nearly every other factor, the [active learning classroom] had a significantly positive effect on student learning outcomes as measured by course grades.”

What are we going to actually do about all of the above?

Another tough question, but one for which I (hopefully) have an answer.  In my job I have the opportunity to work closely with some of our leading faculty, our senior administrators, Penn’s Center for Teaching and Learning, the Provost’s Classroom Committee and the Penn Libraries – especially the Weigle Information Commons.  I want to develop a partnership among all these groups to concurrently explore the pedagogical value of active learning methods along with the facilities and technology requirements, the administrative, financial and practical realities of operating active learning classrooms.  My goal is not to promote a specific vision of how education ought to be done, but to help make sure that we collectively make well informed decisions about how to build our teaching spaces going forward.

The time for this partnership is ripe since we are at a point when we can move beyond meeting the minimum requirements for traditional classrooms.  By September 2012, all of Penn’s Central Pool classrooms will have at least basic computer projection capabilities.  SAS will soon begin architectural design of a new life sciences building for Biology and Psychology.  A little further out, we will be looking to improve facilities for Physics and Math.  All of these opportunities require a forward looking approach to both pedagogy and classroom design.

None of this is simple or easy to accomplish.  But given everything I learned this past weekend, I can’t sit still, be quiet, and do only what I’m told.  That’s not what we want to promote at Penn.

Online Voting open

The Weigle Information Commons has conducted annual mashup contests for many years now. We’ve just opened up online voting for the 18 videos in this year’s Mashup Contest.

You can view the videos and vote for your favorite three mashups online through May 23.

The rules for our contest are simple – make a mashup video that is attractive, engaging, technically savvy and no more than two minutes long. All Penn students are welcome to submit entries, and the world is welcome to vote online for the Popular Choice award.

Personally, I’ve enjoyed watching the videos over the years – I find our expectations for fancy editing grow higher each year!

Overall, I thought the technology worked quite well! We received 19 responses to the first question and 23 to the second. One highlight was students giving “shout out” messages to their favorite professors. Another was the surprising depth and thoughtfulness of the texts received! Here are two examples in response to the second question:

“Its important for us to think about the power of the individual to solve the problems society faces. Democratic devolution is pivotal.”

“…highlighting the importance of lead poisoning testing for kids since the symptoms are so typical of other illnesses.”

I see this type of open-ended response as potentially much more powerful than the multiple-choice options that clickers offer. Texts could be sent in by cellphone or through a web form that worked well on the iPad from our Media Lab. With more than 60 people in the room at one point, and a browse-and-wander structure, the Poll Everywhere solution was also a cleaner one that trying to give out, and later collect, clickers. I think I will try this technology again.

The iPad has changed the way that I work, and it has truly become the computer device that I have always wanted. It is allowing me to be more focused on my work, keep organized, and feed my insatiable need for information, as it has become known my “media diet”. The iPad like all computers is just a highly designed frame and platform, although out of the box it does allow for email, web surfing, and a few other basic tasks what drives the iPad are apps downloaded from the integrated app store.

The first app that I want to discuss is Evernote, a cloud based note-taking app. I have used Evernote for more than two years, well before I owned an iPad. The app allows for note taking, web clipping, and multimedia storage. (you can take a look at my WIC tutorial for Evernote here). Before I had an iPad, I would lug a laptop to meeting and be that guy clicking away while everyone else talked, or I would carry a variety of paper based notebooks which would then pile up on my shelves rarely referred to once they were full.  On the iPad Evernote really shines, for the first time I can really have all of my notes, files, and ideas in one easy place for meetings I hold in and out of the office. Since Evernote syncs with the notes that I take on my iPad they appear on my desktop, and are easily tagged and searchable allowing me to find ideas or thoughts in a neatly complied and accessible format. Evernote is free to download and use, on all platforms.

Next up is Goodreader, the ultimate article reader app for iPad. This intuitive app provides me with one place to read documents in almost any format, Word (.doc), Excel (.xls), Acrobat (.pdf), and even images and movies. What amazes me most about the app is its ability to provide a number of access points to load documents. It can connect to almost any cloud based server (Dropbox, Google Docs, etc), you can generate a Wi-Fi session and load documents directly from your desktop/laptop, or you can connect directly to your email account(s) and Goodreader will automatically pull only the messages with file attachments. On top of all this you can import a zipped file. The app will automatically unzip and prep the files for reading. Goodreader is just as it’s name implies a reader, you cannot edit a document.  But, you can annotate (only pdf docs) by highlighting, adding notes, and using other common tools for marking up a document. This makes the app perfect for reading academic articles and even grading student work. A recent update has allowed for your annotations to be sync’d back to the file server you have the document on, or you can always email the document right from the app as a file attachment. Goodreader does cost $4.99 (about the price of a grande soy latte)

I love my iPad! I am not ashamed to admit it, well I am a bit I did remove the “Sent from My iPad” from the mail program.

I recently created my first .epub file. This is a type of e-book file that can be read on Android devices, the Nook, Sony Reader, and portable Apple devices among others. The files are a little odd in the way they need to be formatted. Here are a few resources I found helpful when creating my first document.

http://calibre-ebook.com/
Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. This program allows you to convert between several different formats.

http://code.google.com/p/sigil/
Sigil is Google’s free multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor.

Adobe TV ebook creation using InDesign
This is a link to a series of three videos on Adobe TV about ebook creation using InDesign. These are what I primarily used to get started, and they helped a lot, although you need a little bit of an InDesign background to get started. You also need to be using InDesign CS4 or CS5 to export the .epub file.

This year we’ll be demonstrating a mixture of hardware (iPad 2.0, LiveScribe pens, Smart phones) and software (Evernote, Facetime).

For more information, including a detailed schedule, see:
http://wic.library.upenn.edu/wicshops/gadget03182011.html

• Evernote is a very popular utility for keeping track of notes, to-do lists, snippets from web pages, documents and just about anything.  It is available for Mac and Windows PCs, but its real advantage comes when used on a mobile device.  It’s free, easy to use and a real productivity booster.  Lots of people love it; I’m a little late in getting to the party, but I am not starting to use it on a daily basis.
• Sigil is a free, open source utility for creating documents in the ePub format for display on iPad, Kindle and other readers.  Available for Mac, Windows and Linux, easy to install; good documentation available.  Jutoh  is another inexpensive ($40) option for creating ePubs.
• Google Document Viewer is a free utility for presenting PDF documents in the format the Google uses for its online books.    It’s not really all that useful, but it’s dead simple to use and lets you claim the moral victory of having published something in an electronic book format.
• Sophia is a brand new system intended to help people easily share tutorials and other instructional materials in brief “packets.”  It’s an intriguing tool and I’ll be curious to see if it gets much traction.  Be sure to read the Terms of Use carefully before posting any content, or inviting your students to do so. When posting content to the site, you are effectively giving the site operators license to your material.  From their Terms of Use statement: “… we ask that you not send us any User Generated Content that you do not wish to license to us, including any confidential information or product ideas.”
• CMap Tools is  a free, intuitive tool designed to generate concept maps.  Concept maps are a good way to visualize complex relationships among a variety of factors.  It is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, and include collaboration features. The CMap site includes good information about the tool itself, and the theory of concept mapping in general.  After just a few minutes of playing around with CMap, I was able to generate this simple chart which I’m using to help me understand how to get better outcomes from technology initiatives (click the graphic below to expand to a bigger size).
  

Dan will speak in the Class of ’55 Conference Room on the second floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center on Friday February 25 from 10:30 to 11:30 am. Then he will join some members of the Weigle Information Commons Faculty Advisory Group and Program Partners Group for an informal lunch.

This will also be the Weigle Information Commons’ first event to be simulcast via a web broadcast with a twitter back channel for questions. It will be interesting to see how that works out! We are asking folks watching online to use the hashtag #dancohen to send in questions during the live lecture. Go to this page to watch the live broadcast.

The Weiss Tech House put up PennLaunch the week of March 11 and began advertising it the week of March 18.” – Philadelphia Business Journal

PennLaunch was developed by “A group of individuals at the Weiss Tech House [so that] members of the Penn community can connect with each other to ‘develop projects, products, services, ideas, anything,” said Wharton and Engineering junior Abhiraj Modi, one of the PennLaunch creators (Daily Pennsylvanian).

Several members of the Penn community had discussed the idea of a collaboration platform for people with similar ideas at the “A Whole New Mind-Inspired Event entitled Creating and Collaborating across Universities” back in October.  I’m really excited to see that someone has felt the need for a similar service and took the initiative to see it through – I’m especially excited to see that the initiative involves Penn students.  Thanks to Mary Conger from GSE for sharing the following resource:  New Penn website connects projects and people.

• Penn UICONF 2010 – July 21 & 22 – Higher Education Web Symposium
• HigherEdCamp Philly – A day long higher education technology unconference on Friday July 23rd

The session lineup for the Penn UICONF looks amazing and highly representative of current technology trends in higher education.  I’ve attended past versions and have always left with useful information that I could apply to my job.

As for the HigherEdCamp, I also had a great time at last year’s event.  The unconference style allows for creative sessions that lead to unexpected positive ideas and conversations.