Merlot session notes: Hybrid Courses and Collaboration

• Hybrid Course
  • Cathy Simpson - http://tac.nvcc.edu
  • Laura Franklin - http://www.nvcc.edu/home/lfranklin
  • Northern Virginia Community College
  • Powerpoint online at nvcc
  • a course where a significant portion of the learning activities are moved online, in addition to f2f learning
  • Blended learning
  • advantages
    • integrate out-of-class and in-class activitites
    • promotes self-directed learning
    • presents learning materials in a range of formats (for various learning styles)
    • promotes greater student involvement and engagement
    • flexibility
    • maximize physical resources
  • types of hybrids
    • synchronous f2f with asynchronous online
    • synchronous online (centra) with asynch. online
    • highest mix for a "hybrid" course is 50/60
  • types of activities during course time
    • didactic - lecture
    • discursive - exploration
    • ....
  • F2F and online are "symbiotic"
    • each feed each other
    • classroom time acts as ice-breaker, enhancing online
    • F2F --> online --> F2F coaching --> online --> F2F performance and feedback --> online feedback
    • online bits could be learning objects
    • online != "homework"
  • Challenges?
    • Time invested in course redesign
    • integrating online activities with F2F meetings
    • designing online activities to meet objectives
    • course management
    • developing new teaching strategies
    • ensuring appropriate course load (don't turn it into a course-and-a-half)
  • Buffet vs. meal
    • let users pick the bits that are best for them
    • "you can serve the best roast beef, but a vegetarian won't have a good meal"
    • buffet metaphor allowed by hybrid course gets around this. Veggies get veggie. etc...
  • "Hands-on is needed for Minds-on"
  • Match Merlot sites to learning styles
    • use LSQs
      • felder/solaman ...
      • VARK
    • helps student select LOs that may be best suited for their needs
  • Use personal collections in Merlot to present sets of LOs
  • Activity
    • students find 3 LOs, and share with group in F2F
    • students find a variety of resources and modalities, share with group
    • use the Merlot Editor's Choices as starting point
  • Focussing on the social aspect rather than the technological
• CamerONline
  • Karen Hardin
  • www.cameron.edu
  • blackboard.cameron.edu
  • studied standards used
  • interoperability of courses, but easier for students who can move from course to course...
  • faculty are trained in use of blackboard (using Bb courses, some created by faculty)
    • tutorials on Bb, Windows, Netscape, IE, ... basics needed to get up and running
  • Communication in courses
    • email
      • only for personal questions
      • if it's anything else, it goes into discussion board to share with class/group
      • filter with subject (course number) to group messages for instructor
      • appropriate communication rules
        • outlined in prep. course
        • attempt to manage effects of perceived anonymity from the "chat generation"
        • punctuation, grammar, speling are important.
        • professional conduct
        • don't forward jokes...
    • Discussion board
      • student questions board
        • used for questions on course content
        • students responsible for all content in this forum (must read it all)
      • introduction board
        • fosters learning community - able to "meet" other learners in the class
        • good to have a back-room channel
        • becomes a "coffee house"
      • require participation
        • not passive recipients...
        • receive credit for participation in forum
      • Discussion administrators for group discussions
        • "list mom" - moderator
        • provides summary to other groups, so all students in class know what other groups are doing
      • Devil's advocate - have people take alternate viewpoints in discussions
      • Archive old discussions - available after "class"
        • also works to clean out old topics so students can focus on "current" topics and discussions
    • Chat
      • can't require it, due to time zone variations
      • optional tool for collaborations
      • optional material reviews
        • synchronous, scheduled "events" where students "meet" to review content
        • lecture notes...
      • rules of conduct during chat.
      • chat archived and stored afterwards

Notes from Merlot session: Tools for transforming curriculum

• Laurie Harrison - adaptive technology resource centre, U of T
  • Supporting learner-centric transformation of content
  • needs to personalize:
    • accessibility (disabilities)
      • lack of access to
        • printed material
        • speech or audio
        • visual material
        • note taking
        • class dicsussions
      • Use of adaptive technologies
        • screen readers, magnification, keyboards, voice recognition, text-to-speech
      • Different technologies/clients
        • pda
        • wireless
        • google...
    • background knowledge
    • learning preferences
    • pace and path
  • TILE Project
    • The Inclusive Learning Exchange (TILE)
    • http://www.barrierfree.ca/tile
    • goals
      • reusing and repurposing learning objects
      • customization by educators
      • use of IMS Learner Information Profile to accomodate individual learner preferences
        • preferences in profile used to set content and system display
  • Strategies
    • Independence of content and structure from presentation to accomodate learner preferences
      • flexible display
      • flexible content aggregation
      • set profile to determine preferences for transformations
      • content separate from preferences
      • examples
        • change css types of things
          • colours (background and text) to make it more readable for visually impaired users
          • navigation and content affected by change to stylesheet selection
          • Q: How to enforce use of CSS in content?
        • Aggregation details
          • flat (simple) vs. details
            • allows "beginner" and "expert" views of a content aggregation
    • Independence of function from control
      • flexible input
        • onscreen keyboards instead of regular keyboard
      • flexible navigation
        • flatten hierarchy (one level at a time) or deep hierarchy (whole tree)
    • Increased granularity of learning objects to allow presentation of alternative formats and modalities
      • captioning
      • ASL
      • described video
      • range of modalities supported by same content (text tracks in video...)
      • graphic and textual presentations of same content (image vs text intensive presentations)
      • video with optional closed captioning and sign language translation, or audio description
    • Session-specific preferences
      • learner outcome goals
      • topic exclusion
      • placeholders/bookmarks
      • review vs. self test ...
    • Implementation of accessibility guidelines and interoperability specifications
      • access system friendly interfaces
      • every learner with a disability is potentially a different external "system" that needs to inter-operate
        • use IMS specs to interoperate with people as well as software systems
  • Guildelines and specs
    • W3C web accessibility - WAI/GL
    • W3C Accessible Authoring Tools - WAI/AU
    • IMS
      • implementing IMS specs as they are being developed to provide feedback on accessibility needs
      • Accessibilityy extensions to the LIP (ACCLIB) - encodes learner preferences
      • Metadata - develop extensions to allow identification of resources that meet the criteria indicated in the learner's prefs.
        • "is screenreader friendly"
        • "has closed captioning"
        • ...
      • Content Packaging - packaging content into modules. Identification of alternate resources
        • package text-oriented vs. image-oriented depending on learner's prefs
        • will in in next CP spec
      • ACCLIP
        • accessForAll element
          • • display
              • screenreader
              • screenEnhance
              • ...
            • control
              • keyboardenhanced
              • onscreenkeyboard
              • ...
            • content
              • alternativesToVisual
              • alternativesToText
              • ...
        • Interoperability with IMS
    • Dynamic retrieval and transformation of stuff to hide complexity from users
  • Demo
    • Preferences
      • I would like...
        • text on screen easier to see
        • preferred language
        • navigation options (depth vs breadth first)
        • alternatives to audio
          • captions (incl language)
          • sign language...
        • ...
      • Define bits of style sheet (font, size, colours)
    • Whole point of LIP is that the profile is interoperable - can be shared with other systems
• James McClellan - automated creation of resources for HTML based Concept Maps
  • Introductory engineering course that links resources together via concept maps
  • hundreds of LOs
  • students need to know where the LOs are, and how should they use them
  • students need to know that a LO belongs to a particular part of a course
    • adding context to help them know what/when to study
    • develop LESSONS that use the LOs as part of the lab
  • "If you build it, they will come" DOESN'T WORK! They need guidance on what/when to use LOs
  • Hierarchy of organizing information (read from bottom to top)
    • Courses
      • books
        • units
          • chapters
            • lessons
              • labs
                • learning objects
  • How does this relate to concept maps?
    • task of processing incoming info is made easier if info is presented in visual formats
    • concept maps present relationships in graphical form and allow us to understand complex info.
    • show items (LOs) with relationships indicated
    • concept maps used to structure information in academic courses (other uses, but this is the context here)
    • software at
      • http://cmap.coginst.uwf.edu/info/
      • java app
      • allows the user to add resources
        • web pages, videos, pdf docs, etc...
        • they add the items, and describe the relationships
      • IHMC CMAP Software
      • looking at automation to link resources
        • linking database of all 12 chapters of the textbook into the map
        • concept map --> template HTML for concept map --> HTML concept map with resources
      • create a basic concept map template
        • perl scripts used to convert the template html file to a concept map html file with more resources and resource types
      • HTML map runs only in IE/Win (DOH!) he's a mozilla freak, so that will likely change
      • Working on dynamic creation of concept maps using PHP and database, rather than pre-canned, massaged maps from the perl pre-processing technique
  • GUI Movie Making
    • 3 movies are create for each GUI
      • tutorial - how to use
      • theory - explains theory and its applications
      • lab - examplifies problem solving techniques using GUIs
    • Use Camtasia Studio and SnagIt software --> 10 MB AVI movie files (WTF?)
      • can export to better formats
    • Camtasia does screen capture with narration
    • Talks a LOT about Camtasia - not sure how that relates so tightly with concept mapping...
    • Uses its own codec - looks like windows only?
    • Used as media-rich instruction manual for how to learn individual learning objects as part of a lab

Merlot session notes from the 2:30 session on Learning Communities.

• Communities in Merlot
  • go to "communities" tab --> Teaching_and_technology
  • still a little rough, so it's ok that stuff is hard to find.
  • adding resources to support faculty
  • Patricia McGee
    • LOs require standards, collaboration and cooperation
    • www.educause.edu/nlii
    • NLII - National Learning Infrastructure Initiative
      • LOVCOP - Learning Objects Virtual Community of Practice
      • Learning Objects Survey - developers, repositories, users
        • what are people actually doing, needing?
      • "What we want to know"
        • Fall focus session on Learning Objects (at Columbus Ohio)
        • http://www.educause.edu/nlii/meetings/nlii034/
  • Discussion
    • Should we really be focussing on Learning Objects?
      • If everything is working right, nobody will even know they're dealing with LOs
        • students will just get the right bits of stuff in place
        • teachers will just find the right resources
        • content producers will just integrate it into their workflow
    • Need to have concrete, real-world examples of LOs being actually USED in practice
      • by students, instructors, etc...
    • how to transfer comfort level with software like gaming into LO-related tech?
• Building Learning Communities through Learning Object Development
  • CLOE @ Queen's University
  • def: a learning community consists of individuals who are working towards the primary goal of building knowledge.
  • presentation will be available on the Merlot website
  • community is created when
    • participate in common practices
    • depend on one another
    • make decisions together
    • identify themselves as part of something larger than the sum of their individual relationships
    • ...
  • CLOE = 17 universities across Ontario
    • members develop and reuse learning objects
    • all los are developed in a collaborative approach
    • similar to an inter-library loan system
  • Teams include Instructional Developer, Tech support, and 3 senior undergrad students
  • Queens has a Learning Objects course in Computer Science! What a great idea!
  • Examined existing LOs - pillaged the Merlot database
  • co-developed 2 learning objects (doing 4 more this summer)
  • have found the learning community to be a sustainable model for LO development
  • Documentation is part of the community
  • http://www.queensu.ca/cloe
  • has learning communities databsae (text and graphic search)

Brian mentioned something over lunch, and I think it's a great idea. It seems like there is a Metric Busload of EduTech bloggers here at Merlot. Why not have some kind of get-together?

Thursday at lunch? After sessions? Any better time? Any takers?

Merlot session notes: Long Distance Collaborations - Connecting to build an Open-Source Authoring Tool

• Lou Zweier does intros
  • Larry Johnson - NMC
  • Mike Mattson, U of C
  • Kathleen Willbanks - Cal State U.
• Larry
  • SFMOMA introduced NMC to Pachyderm - a tool to create "visitor experiences"
  • Making Sense of Modern Art
    • www.sfmoma.org --> Search "Making Sense"
    • flash interface generated by Pachyderm authoring tool, from database on back end (learning objects...)
    • interface to show details, relationships, timelines, history, in a way that answers questions
    • streaming QT video pops up in new window from flash interface (not played embedded)
    • Pachyderm based on templates, letting curators to pull content from SFMOMA collection and combine it in a curatorial approach to create presentations
    • template used to compare/contrast learning objects (example: brushstroke techniques of 2 painters, but could be extended to be applied to any topic)
    • Demo of a few templates, content areas. Pachyderm does a great job of creating rich sets of learning objects!
• Kathleen
  • need to forge partnerships - we can't all do this alone
  • communication is key (f2f and online)
  • project management important - facilitate stuff
    • using www.opensource.org for collaborative project management software
  • build on strengths of each partner (individuals and institutions)
  • used online collaboration to make f2f more effective (get memorization of names out of the way... ;-)
• Mike
  • Presentation is important
    • has a personal hate for current state of LMS - presentation isn't flexible, not rich.
  • interface innovation not as common now as in the "early days of multimedia"
  • we're stuck with "weapons of mass instruction" now
  • must be a better way
  • Pachyderm, tied in with standard tools (like EduSource is building) may be a solution
• Larry
  • Partners, roles, etc... Big project. Big. BIG.
  • 15 people on steering team
  • several hundred participants in total
• Open to Q & A, Discussion
  • authoring tool info available at http://www.nmc.org --> search "Pachyderm" --> first link on top of page
  • How to modify software and templates?
    • Pachyderm 1.0 --> can't do this. 2.0 will have this as a goal
    • Lou: an API or plugin system to allow addition of templates
    • probably not a built-in template building interface
  • Is there a way/templates for learning activities (as opposed to just media presentation?)
    • pedagogical templates, stuff for activities (how to engage students in an activity WITH the content - quiz templates, matching items templates...)
  • Target client? technology...
    • is it flash, or thin client
    • answer: flash, because of a few reasons
      • works on several platforms (web, kiosk, desktop)
      • high quality display
      • some rudimentary copy protection
      • rich environment
  • Timeline for people to start having access to Pachyderm 2.0?
    • problem is the project is rather open-ended, but we're going as fast as we can.
  • End users?
    • Aimed at instructors AND students
    • way for everyone to create/aggregate sets of learning objects - VERY IMPORTANT to be able to push resources back into the system, not just a top-down dump of resources onto learners

Merlot session notes from the Digital Libraries sessions.

• GSDL

• http://gstl.enc.org
• digital library for K-12 students, teachers, adult learning...

• Web use and textbooks = the 2 most relied upon resources.
• Resources used for background info, not integrated into the classroom
• survey for developers

• http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=32220185416

• http://www.michiganteacher.net
• 17,000+ page views per day
• started in 1998 for Michigan educators
• analysis of search patterns used by students against their collection (google referrals)
• Majority of searches are curriculum- or professional-development-related
• Top search BY FAR was on "Classroom Management"
• "Lesson Plans" also places high in search queries
• Many queries were for items that were presented in the interface, but users habitually search for keywords (even when handy nav links are presented on the "main page")
• Science related topics are BY FAR the most popular curriculum-based searches

• why so many searches on science?

• search for items beyond scope of collection
• seem to be expecting to search site text, not metadata
• perform searches on browsing categories
• TEACHERS DON'T CARE ABOUT METADATA (when they're searching)
• Searches most often occur after school (1:30pm - 4pm), dropping off after 4
• Users search either VERY broad or VERY narrow search criteria

• http://www.mathforum.org
• Math Forum site was ground-up, based on user interests (a community of practice?)
• collections came later, as a need --> digital library for math stuff
• Interactions and collections are both important - a strong community
• A "Gift Economy" - utopian system of generalized reciprocity - users "give" stuff to the Math Forum to help make it better
• Evaluation of the Math Forum to assess possibilities for social interation and resource development
• Community was central to success of the Math Forum
• MF strategy for building resources gave people "buy-in" as well as creating a "rich site"
• Community supported by f2f and online activities (blended community?)

• People need the F2F to get a proper sense of "belonging"
• After F2F builds foundation, a tremendous amount of work can be pushed online
• Easier/faster to determine roles in a team in F2F - takes much longer online (why?)
• Emotional attachment to the community is fostered

• Novice, Intermediate, Expert (duh?)

• Novices contribute questions (Ask Dr. Math) - FAQ-ish resource built by users
• Intermediates contribute some questions, some mentoring/answers, some ideas in discussions
• Experts become leaders. Join projects. Presentations. Mentoring...

• Younger Males & Older Females tend to use MF more often. (why? no real idea)

• Standardized way to enter/set metadata across states and institutions?

• Must have human interaction, with tools to support this.
• How to tie into state/national learning standards
• Teacher Source (pbs.org --> Teacher Source)

• lesson plans etc... tied to learning outcome correlations standardized by states and some national standards

I've set up an AIM group chat room for back channel conversation etc... during Merlot 2003.

In any AIM client (like iChat or whatever floats your boat) just head to chat room "Merlot2003"

I'll also have a Hydra document open for sharing notes on the LAN as I take them (if I take them...)

UPDATE Here's the URL for joining the Hydra document if you're not on the LAN.

UPDATE 2: Wireless coverage turned out to be spectacularly spotty, at times making WWDC2003 look absolutely flawless. Oh, well...

Mike and I just had a quick conversation with Dawn Mercer, and she was telling us of some of her needs for entering metadata for learning objects in CAREO.

They have a bunch of flash movies, and need to have several versions available online. A "Presentation" version, with a URL pointing to an .html file, a "download" version, with a URL pointing to a .swf file, and a "source" version, with a URL pointing to a .fla file.

It's a little freaky. Everyone (and I mean everyone) is talking about RSS here. Merlot apparently even demoed RSS feeds from it's collection (I guess that makes our presentation on Friday rather moot. oh, well...)

Garry flew in from Oz, and is going to be showing some cool stuff they're doing with RSS to syndicate stuff all over the place. He's going to be in Calgary on Monday, after the conference, and we'll be talking more then.

I'm heading to UBC today (along with Alan) to get Brian and his folks up and running with their own copy of CAREO. Should be fun! They've got a spanky new XServe just waiting. Chomping at the bit, as it were. Judging from Brian's recent post, we may need to stage an intervention for him. Sad, really.

We'll be spending the day on campus, then heading back to the Hyatt for the Big Fancy Reception for the Merlot folks. Curious to see how many people are here.

I've just arrived in Vancouver for Merlot2003. Pretty painless flight (just over an hour - and the eTicket express checkin freakin' ROCKS!)

I'm sitting in the Hyatt lobby right now, checking in with the rest of the world (going offline for a whole weekend left me with the shakes. ick). I'll try checking in again after 4pm, when the rooms with internet access will be available.

Now, I'm going to Go Tourist, complete with digital camera. Want to head down to Canada Place and check out the cruise ship dock (sigh), and then maybe head over to Stanley Park.

I'm going to the Merlot conference next week, and am planning on being pretty unplugged this weekend. This means I may not be posting much until the middle of August. That may change - they apparently have wireless access in the Hyatt for Merlot, so I may be blogging the presentations live...

Turns out, I was a little stupid when I booked my flight to the conference.

Every conference I've ever heard of, and every conference I've been to (WWDC, CADE, ...) has actual sessions on the first day, so I assumed it was a Good Idea to get there the day before (i.e., on Monday) so I'd be able to catch it all. Turns out that no, in fact, the Merlot conference has pay-only semi-private sessions on the first day (Tuesday).