Trying Out the Fancy Lecture Capture Camera

 April 21, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  248 words

I just popped into TI 110 (Studio A) in the Taylor Institute, to try out the fancy new auto-tracking camera and to see how it works with YuJa on the podium computer. The auto-tracking thingy uses computer vision to detect the “teacher” or “presenter” in the room, and doesn’t need a tracking device to be worn (like the previous camera did). Which is great, as long as the computer vision stuff can figure out where you are, and as long as it doesn’t get confused by multiple people (or images that look like people) in a room 1. Read More
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taylor institute  lecture capture  yuja  1beyond  classroom 

On Shifting Toward Agility With Learning Technologies

 January 15, 2022  |  5 minutes  |  1063 words

I’ve been part of several initiatives on campus over the last year, looking at how we provide and support learning technologies as a university. Several themes have consistently emerged across all of these. Instructors need a baseline of common technologies to enable a consistent teaching experience across courses Instructors need flexibility, to be able to use different technologies that enable discipline-specific teaching and learning practices Students need to be able to access technologies, both within and outside of formal course activities Everyone experiences a course differently, depending on their role in the course, their connections to others in the course, and the various technologies that they use (both formally and informally)1 Universities tend to focus on the first point. Read More

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creston switcher collaboration carts in the TI
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learning technologies  classroom  taylor institute 

TI Resource: Connecting Remote and Face to Face Students

 November 17, 2021  |  1 minutes  |  63 words

The Learning Technologies and Design Team in the TI just produced this outstanding resource (with design by our Comms team), with strategies for engaging remote and face-to-face students. Top tier work by the entire team, and some really great collaboration as well, with instructional designers and learning technologists and graphic designers coming together to create highly compelling and useful resources. Best team ever.

TI Resource screenshot

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TI Resource screenshot
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taylor institute  resource  ltdt 

EDUCAUSE Panel on Competency Based Education

 October 28, 2021  |  6 minutes  |  1179 words

I was part of an online panel session “You get what you assess: Competency-based education in the digital era.” at EDUCAUSE 2021 this morning (or afternoon, depending on where people were). I talked about how we use competencies and learning outcomes at an institutional level, and some of the opportunities and challenges we’ve seen. It wasn’t a scripted presentation bit, but they turned on the Zoom auto-transcribe feature so I grabbed the transcript for my portion. Read More
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conference  educause  competencies 

The Time I Emailed Steve Jobs and Wound Up Visiting a Fruit Company

 October 5, 2021  |  4 minutes  |  762 words

This was over 20 years ago, and there’s no trace of any of this left so I figured I should write something before I forget it, too. This was before photos of everything. Before infinite digital archives. Another era. Back in 1999, I was part of a team at an elearning company called Discoverware, building a multimedia platform to train people how to use various software applications. One of the few traces of the company that remain in 2021, is a brief mention on Wikipedia’s History of virtual learning environments in the 1990s: Read More

Images used in this post:

discoverware nova
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discoverware  apple  steve jobs 

Associate Directing

 September 10, 2021  |  1 minutes  |  158 words

So this is kind of big news. I’m starting a new role at the Taylor Institute, as Associate Director, Learning Technologies & Design. D’Arcy Norman will be taking on a new role as Associate Director, Learning Technologies and Design, providing strategic and administrative leadership for and helping to advance learning technologies and design within and beyond the TI. I’ll be leading the Learning Technologies and Design Team, with both Learning Technologies Group (where I was manager prior to this) and Learning and Instructional Design Group, as well as our team of grad student Learning Technologies Coaches. Read More
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taylor institute 

Not as Advertised

 September 10, 2021  |  3 minutes  |  549 words

Our team is conducting 2 separate pilot projects this semester, to evaluate software that is used in a few faculties for potential use across the university. I’m not going to mention the products or the vendors. In both cases, the urgent requests for doing a campus pilot project were forms of “we need this in order to do [interesting pedagogy], and we need it to be integrated with our LMS so we don’t have to spend a bunch of time doing admin-y things to use it. Read More

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fragile
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On Social Game Environments for Teaching and Learning

 June 12, 2021  |  9 minutes  |  1773 words

There’s a bit of a common pattern for designing new and innovative online learning environments1, to make it game-like. Or, most often, to look game-like. Which often means “make it look kind of retro-y and vintage-y so I can pretend it’s something kind of sort of like a game and hey presto we’re innovating already!” Most recently, Google hosted their annual I/O conference in a video game environment. Or, more accurately, in an online conference platform that kinda-sorta looks like a video game, despite not actually being a game in any meaningful sense of the word, aside from instilling a fun sense of “hey everyone we’re totally inside a video game together isn’t this awesome and isn’t I/O innovative and aren’t we just so danged cool for being inside a video game together? Read More

Images used in this post:

crowded room in Google I/O Google IO Hey Google venue TI Conference 2021 session on games PLATO Trek Adventure habbo hotel, ca. 2008 second life NMC classroom, ca. 2006 minecraft on ipad, 2011 minecraft build of ST 148 a typical Zoom meeting brightspace game-based learning tools mozilla habs room inspace
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learning environments  video games 

I'm Hiring - Learning Technologies Specialist

 April 21, 2021  |  1 minutes  |  199 words

We have an open position in the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, as part of my team. I think it’s a pretty great place to work, with an amazing group of people, doing important work that has the potential to transform the university and improve the teaching and learning experience for the entire campus community. This is a Learning Technologies Specialist position, with a strong focus on “program innovation” - working with instructors on the development and implementation of new academic programs, providing consultation and expertise on the design and integration of learning technologies to support the pedagogical goals of each program. Read More

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screenshot of posting on UCalgary Careers website
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ucalgary  hiring  team 

In Media: WSJ Experience Report: Online Proctoring

 April 15, 2021  |  4 minutes  |  836 words

I was interviewed recently (via email) by Katie Deighton, from the Wall Street Journal’s Experience Report. She was writing an article on online exam proctoring, and wanted to follow up with me about the categories of proctoring software and to get a university learning technologies perspective. The article was published yesterday. I’m officially a critic. She wasn’t able to use the entire response, so I’m putting the rest of it here: Read More
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learning technologies  online exam proctoring  media  in the media  wall street journal  katie deighton