EDUCAUSE 2008: Getting Psyched Up

These are my notes from the Wednesday, October 29th EDUCAUSE 2008 general session with V.S. Ramachandran, Professor and Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition from UC San Diego, on “The Unique Human Brain: Clues from Neurology.” This session worked for me and was a pleasantly surprising choice by the conference planning committee. Normally, you get a keynote speaker who is one of the following:

• A celebrity who can tell a good story and make the audience laugh
• A technologist who can give a good history lesson and make the audience proud
• A politician who can sound the alarm and make the audience anxious

Ramachandran did none of these things, although he did have some funny bits (e.g., “How can Bush believe in intelligent design when he is a walking contradiction of the theory?”). Instead, he spent a good 45 minutes describing several of his research programs in cognitive neuroscience. This was a brilliant professor delivering a solid lecture that would have been right at home in an undergraduate psychology course.

The content was relevant in a subtle, but powerful way. If you consider the number of neurons in the brain, the number of connections those neurons make with one another, and the fact that each connection can be one of several types (e.g., exitatory, inhibitory), the number of possible brain states may exceed the number of particles in the known universe. How would you use a model of this complex system to explain prosopagnosia or face blindness, where the afflicted can’t recognize other people, even family members, by looking at their faces, yet have no difficulty recognizing their voices? How would you explain why amputees feel cramps or movement in their “phantom” limbs? Long story short, Ramachandran and his colleagues have made great progress in answering these questions using the scientific method, reliable measurement tools, and a good working model of the human brain. They have developed elegant explanations and have tested their hypotheses. Armed with those findings, they have devised practical solutions (e.g., therapies for amputees that can help relieve phantom limb pain). Basically, they have been good researchers.

Are we good researchers? I think we are good engineers, but we could improve as researchers by:

• Using theoretical models. We tend to apply the “whatever works” principle without identifying the formal models or theories that can explain our results. We often use the term “model” not in the theoretical sense, but to describe techniques or solutions, many of which we discovered either by accident or guided by personal expectations about what should work (i.e., naive theories).
• Better understanding the principles of measurement. Our understanding of measurement and research methods needs improvement. This will lead to better measurement tools and better tests of our formal theories. Anyone can create a questionnaire, but is it a valid and reliable indicator of the variable of interest? How do you know?

I also appreciated the fact that Professor Ramachandran delivered a traditional lecture, albeit with PowerPoint slides, to a very large classroom of IT professionals and he did not pull any punches. He used words like “sagittal” and “gyrus.” As I looked around the room I recognized the classic “Crap! I didn’t read the chapter.” and “Is this going to be on the test?” looks on some faces. On others, I saw the, “Is he kidding me with this? What does this have to do with anything?” look. We could all benefit from auditing some classes on our campuses taught by master teachers. Ramachandran reminded us who’s in charge and why faculty deserve our respect.

Ken

EDUCAUSE 2008 – My Goals for the Conference

I am sitting in a large conference room waiting for the start of the EDUCAUSE 2008 General Session that will kick off the first big day of the annual meeting. In thinking about my strategy for the conference this year, I would like to learn more about the following:

• Learning space design, both formal and informal. In addition to building the new Maxwell faculty-staff development center and its experimental learning spaces, we need to focus on improving our classroom infrastucture and the informal spaces where teaching and learning takes place. I would like to learn more about how others are meeting these challenges, how they support the professional development that unleashes the power of these spaces, and how they are assessing the impact of environmental variables on learners.
• Mobile teaching and learning. We have been talking about this with respect to laptop computing for a long time, but it’s hard to use an iPhone without thinking that such devices will change everything. I am interested in finding out more about all things mobile, how we can better leverage our laptops both in and out of the classroom, and how we can begin to explore applications of next generation devices.
• Instructional multimedia content management. Whether it’s live lecture capture, iTunesU, the multitude of Web 2.0 applications that support easy content creation and sharing, or simple narration over PowerPoint, we have an urgent need to effectively manage instructional multimedia and support local authoring of content by our students and faculty. I want to learn how others are meeting this need, how they selected the commercial and open source tools in their toolboxes, and how they went about planning around this issue.
• Strategic planning, organization, and leadership that is both innovative and supports innovation across campus. We are building a new, collaborative division at WSU that has the potential to be a model for the system and beyond. I am looking for examples of innovative structures, practices, and services that might guide us as we rethink how we support our own campus community.
• Supporting collaboration across the enterprise. In all that we do, we will be working together differently. We have a number of applications in place already (e.g., SharePoint) that can support this. How are others using such tools and are there other applications and practices that we might spin up at WSU?

I hope I can make a dent in this in two days.

Ken

Social Networking and the Unidirectional Drive Upward

I was inspired to blog tonight by Rachel Happe’s latest post on The Social Organization, which I just learned about from one of Lawrence Liu’s tweets. I started following Lawrence on Twitter yesterday. I saw his tweet on my NetVibes homepage as I finished my bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. So, let’s review. I am writing something that I would probably have never written based on several seconds of very minimal social contact with two people I have never met, contact mediated by simple tools that allowed all this to happen in seconds while I was happily eating my ice cream. For me, that’s a successful application of social computing.

Rachel’s post related to the difference between social networking tools and computer-supported collaborative work tools or groupware. If you ask people why they use groupware like SharePoint, Domino, ThinkTank, and WebEx, the easy answer is, “to accomplish group work and increase productivity.” When you ask people why they use tools like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, the easy answer is, “to socialize.” As Rachel describes, these two broad goals share a set of common processes that can be facilitated by tools from both categories. Also, the boundary between these categories is getting blurrier by the day.

Of course, the motivation to socialize is very complex and I am going to focus on just one aspect of it here. Outside of improving productivity and finding the love of your life, why do we seek the company of other people? Leon Festinger (1954) had some ideas about this that he developed into his Social Comparison Theory. Although subsequent research has indicated that things are much more complex than Festinger theorized, the basic principles of social comparison have held up and have implications for online social networking.

Festinger argued that the only way we can evaluate our own abilities in the absence of objective standards is to compare ourselves with others. Am I a good eLearning Director? Do I have a good understanding of new and emerging technologies? I ask myself these questions every day. I try to answer them by finding others with whom to compare. Who do I choose? Festinger held that we sometimes choose people or groups that are clearly worse than us. This downward social comparison is quick and reassuring (e.g., “At least I know more than that guy”). However, if all we did was compare downward, we would never improve. Festinger suggested that human beings are motivated by a unidirectional drive upward. We want to improve our abilities, so we must evaluate ourselves against others who are better than us – not light years better, but just a little bit better. This way, we gain some sense that we are improving. Of course, those people with whom we compare are improving right along with us, so we may end up comparing ourselves with the same person for quite awhile, locked in a friendly and mutually beneficial game of leapfrog.

That’s one reason why applications like Twitter are so valuable and so different from other workplace collaboration tools. They appeal to different motives and satisfy different, but equally important, social needs. Second, the people with whom I compare myself are often not working for Winona State (no offense WSU colleagues). Of the top five most influential people on your Twitter list, how many work inside your company or institution? Of those on your list from within your organization, are you following them for social comparison purposes or for other reasons? I think we purposely pick people who don’t work inside our organizations in hopes of finding new partners, new ideas, and new standards of comparison that will challenge us to move upward. Facebook and Twitter, as open, free, accessible tools are more appealing for social networking than enterprise collaboration systems like SharePoint that are currently more difficult for external friends and colleagues to access.

Finally, both of these implications suggest that using Facebook for enterprise collaboration purposes is probably not such a great idea. I am guessing that this is not even an issue in the corporate world, but it is in higher education as faculty and administrators take their first steps into the great Facebook abyss. Fortunately for our students, this sort of thing usually happens long after they have left and moved on to something else. In fact, I sometimes think that faculty using tools like Facebook to support exam review sessions signals to the last remaining students that the tool is officially lame. I think there is a lesson here for any organization. As important as social networking and communities of practice are within an organization, people are venturing out into the blogosphere for good reason – reasons that will benefit them and your company. Don’t follow them and don’t let the worlds collide.

Ken

DyKnow’s Future in the Mixed Laptop Classroom

The Tablet PC has potential for transforming the laptop classroom, but what if not every student in class has a tablet? Although some schools (e.g., Villanova) limit students to one laptop model, many others see choice as an indispensable feature of their laptop mandate programs. As the laptop market diverges with its emphasis on either power or portability, it will become increasingly difficult to please everyone with just one model. Currently, WSU students and faculty can choose between two laptops: an MPC (Gateway) M285 convertible tablet or an Apple MacBook (more). Because tablet functionality has become aligned with portability, with most vendors not offering anything larger than a 12″ tablet, one of the possible outcomes of our 2008 Laptop RFP is the introduction of a second PC choice: a larger, more powerful, non-tablet model in addition to a thin-and-light or ultra-portable convertible tablet.

Such a decision would have an impact on our plans for supporting the use of tablets in the classroom. WSU is already a mixed laptop environment. Although the majority of our students currently opt for the tablet and Macs tend to be more popular with certain majors, WSU instructors can already expect any class roster to include a substantial number of Mac users. The addition of a traditional, desktop-replacement laptop as a third choice would further reduce the number of tablets in a given classroom. Tools like Microsoft OneNote retain their value as end-user applications in a mixed environment. However, the value of groupware applications like DyKnow Vision and Monitor would need to be revisited. Although the full power of DyKnow to transform a laptop classroom is unleashed when everyone is using a tablet, it still has considerable value if just the instructor and a group of students have tablets. 

• Instructors can capture their own board work and monitor student screens. Instructors can still use all of the features of DyKnow Vision and Monitor themselves to display and capture their own work and monitor/control student laptop activity. Although instructors would be able to approximate this using a shared OneNote session, this would not allow students to take private notes and annotate the instructor’s work. They would also not be able to replay the instructor’s notes stroke-for-stroke, a feature of DyKnow with considerable educational value. Finally, OneNote does not have any capacity for student screen activity monitoring/control.
• Group tablet-based activities are still possible. Although some collaborative work will no longer be possible, many group activities can still be conducted if at least one student in each group has a tablet. For example, a group can elect a scribe and work together on a problem. Although instructors will not be able to depend on this, the chances are good that enough students in any given class will have tablets. There are also other collaborative features of DyKnow that do not depend on digital ink (e.g., polling).  
• Students can capture, annotate, and replay instructor notes. Students without tablets will still be able to use their keyboards and pointing devices to annotate the instructor’s work. They also will be able to save, replay, and annotate their notebooks at any time after class.

I think DyKnow Vision and Monitor will remain valuable tools for the laptop classroom, even in a mixed laptop environment. Using Boot Camp and running DyKnow in the Windows partition, WSU Mac users were able to participate in DyKnow class sessions quite easily last term. The same will be true for students who opt for a traditional PC if that choice is introduced. It will probably be essential for instructors interested in using DyKnow to opt for a tablet, but I think this can be communicated effectively through an informational campaign and training. Helping students determine which of the three models is best for them will be the big challenge.

Ken  

The 2008 Laptop RFP – A Tablet PC Referendum

With close to 7500 convertible tablets deployed across campus, should WSU change course and move away from digital ink? WSU has had a fully implemented laptop mandate program since 2003. Students and faculty lease one of two laptop models: an MPC (Gateway) M285 or an Apple MacBook (more). The majority opt for the PC and everyone receives a new laptop every two years. We standardized on the convertible Tablet PC in 2004. Three months after the first batch of tablets were distributed, we asked faculty to describe how they were using digital ink. Approximately 50% reported using their tablets to do one of the following: 

• Mark up Word documents (e.g., student papers) outside of class
• Annotate PowerPoint slides in class
• Use OneNote in class in place of an overhead projector

In spring 2007, we invested in DyKnow Vision and Monitor. This fall, we rolled out Office 2007 and the new version of OneNote, a much improved app. In short, our move to tablet computing has been relatively smooth. We did not need to adjust the cost of the lease, the move was well-received by students and faculty, it helped our laptop program maintain its edge over the past few years, and it opened up opportunities for academic innovation. 

This semester, we are preparing for a laptop vendor RFP. One of the major questions on the minds of the members of the RFP team is, “Should WSU continue to standardize on the convertible Tablet PC?” We are currently gathering feedback from faculty and students. Here is what’s on my mind today: 

• Tablet computing is not a flash in the pan. I always feel silly saying this because it’s so obvious to me, but I feel as though I sometimes need to defend digital ink as a serious educational technology. According to the 2007 Gartner Hype Cycle for Higher Education, the Tablet PC is steadily climbing up the “Slope of Enlightenment” to the “Plateau of Productivity.” Good tablet tools are maturing. DyKnow Vision is a very exciting application, designed not to simply support lecture capture/annotation and later playback like Tegrity, but to allow instructors to transform the classroom and engage students in collaborative learning activities that would be very difficult to manage otherwise. We have only started to tap the potential of OneNote 2007 as an academic application. Inking on Web pages is coming (see Silverlight InkPresenter). Good practices are being disseminated. There is still a lot to be learned and gained from a university-wide tablet deployment. If innovation is one of the major goals of the Laptop Program, then I think returning to standard laptops would be a step backward.
• An all-tablet, cross-platform campus may soon be possible. WSU is a cross-platform environment. Mac users do not have tablet functionality and there are enough students who opt for MacBooks that the probability of having at least one Mac user in class is relatively high. This complicates an instructor’s decision to adopt tools like DyKnow for classroom use, although students with MacBooks configured with Boot Camp can run DyKnow in the Windows partition (albeit without the stylus). This would seem to be a strike against the tablet. However, a Mac tablet may not be far off. The ModBook, an after-market hardware modification, was demonstrated at Macworld Expo in January and there are rumors circulating that Apple already has a tablet of its own. Tools like DyKnow and OneNote are also still quite useful using the keyboard instead of the stylus.
• Changes to the Laptop Program take two years to implement. Half of all WSU students and faculty receive a new laptop every summer, meaning that any change to the laptop program takes two years to implement fully. It would take two years to phase the convertible tablet out and two years to bring it back if we change our minds again. These transition periods can be difficult for IT and elearning support units.
• Changing the direction of the Laptop Program is a strategic decision. All too often, I think decisions like this are made in the heat and chaos of the moment, without adequate consultation, representation, and collaboration. Our decision about whether or not to continue with tablets should not rest on the shoulders of the RFP team. It’s a university decision that must take faculty and student input into consideration and align with the university’s mission, vision, and strategic goals. Moving away from tablets may allow us to reduce the cost of the lease and offer more than one PC option (e.g., an ultra-portable and a desktop-replacement). Continuing with tablets may allow us to remain distinctive, teach our students new skills, and explore new educational applications of digital ink. How do these outcomes (e.g., choice, cost, distinctiveness, innovation) stack up as strategic priorities for the Laptop Program? For WSU? How do they align with WSU goals and objectives? Most importantly, how do you engage students, university administrators, and academic leadership in a process that has historically been left up to IT?

More on this journey later and please don’t hesitate to comment if you have any words of wisdom.

Ken

EDUCAUSE 2007 – A Personal Summary

Each year, I leave EDUCAUSE with impressions of the state of academic technology in higher education that are extremely biased by my own interests and preferences, the specific sessions I attended, and even the physical environment in which the conference took place. This year, EDUCAUSE was in Seattle, so I was well-caffeinated for most of the sessions. Apparently, there is a city ordinance that you must have a Starbucks cup in your hand at all times, that your coffee order must take at least 5 minutes to describe to the barista, and that it must include the word “pumps.” Taking this into account, here are my personal impressions from EDUCAUSE 2007:

• I dream of Spellings. Last year, Blackboard’s self-destruction, the emergence of Moodle, advances in open/community source initiatives, and the continued development of open educational resources gave me hope that higher education was finally taking care of its own business. This year, I felt bombarded by the message, “Something’s coming, you aren’t ready for it, and you better get your act together.” We are being pushed and pulled by external forces that all seem to include the word “outcomes.” When I close my eyes, I see Margaret Spellings chasing me down the street with a ruler. She is yelling, “Show me that the money you just spent on DyKnow has led to the achievement of learning outcomes!” “No…no…you just have to trust me,” I scream. But it’s too late.     
• Is the commercial LMS doomed? I left EDUCAUSE this year with the impression that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the comprehensive, commercial learning management system (LMS). In trying to do everything, these applications have never really done anything particularly well. For awhile, these tools were the only game in town and institutions were forced to pick their poison. Now we have choices and tools like Blackboard and Desire2Learn are looking very 20th Century. Rapid growth in the adoption of these tools has uncovered major scalability problems. An emerging service-oriented model is allowing us to modularize the functions that were always bundled in a comprehensive LMS (e.g., content management, asynchronous collaboration, virtual meetings, testing) and invest in those modules that are most important to us. The Web 2.0 shift has reminded us that software can actually be usable, inexpensive, and fun. Today, it’s much more difficult to answer the question, “So why are we paying 100K a year for Blackboard?” I don’t think there will be a reasonable answer to this question in a few short years. These tools have served their purpose and now it’s time to move forward.
• No faculty bashing. At every previous EDUCAUSE, there has always been at least one session where the presenter said something like, “Well I work with faculty…and you know how they are.” The audience then chuckled/groaned and there was much eye-rolling. I am pleased to report that I witnessed none of that this year. In fact, I have never seen more faculty in attendance. I think most IT professionals understand that instructors actually know what’s going on and that there would be no servers or student information systems to manage if it wasn’t for faculty. I think most faculty understand that there is a wonderful world of reliable and potentially beneficial tools out there and that IT professionals are motivated to help them leverage those tools to support learning. 
• The promise of the commons. Just about every session that I attended this year had something to do with creating, integrating, combining, and sharing resources within a virtual community. As is our tendency in higher education, many of us have been talking a good game for years but have been either too frightened or too confused to take action. This year, I left EDUCAUSE believing that the learning commons was actually taking shape and that WSU could participate. Technologically, it has never been easier to create and share knowledge. Psychologically, I think we are closer than ever before to finally shaking free of the anxieties and insecurities that have prevented us from realizing our full potential as a group. My major take-away from the conference was a renewed commitment to help WSU join the learning commons, make meaningful contributions of our own, and find ways to share, partner, and collaborate with others within the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system and beyond.  
• I must have an iPhone. There must be some academic justification for me to have an iPhone. How about someone collaborating with me on an “Impact of the iPhone on Higher Education” project? Seriously…if I could just have an iPhone, I won’t ask for any more technology for the rest of the year.

The call for pre-conference sessions and presentations for EDUCAUSE 2008 in Orlando is already out. Deadlines are January 14th and February 11th, respectively. Maybe I will see you there.

Ken

EDUCAUSE 2007 – Xavier’s Virtual Learning Commons

These are my notes from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference session, “Xavier University’s Web 2.0 Strategy: The Virtual Learning Commons,” delivered by David Dodd (VP for Information Resources and CIO, Xavier) and Doug Ruschman (Web Director, Xavier) on October 24th, 2007. Despite David’s cold, this was an excellent session and a great example of an IT department that listened, faced their weaknesses and challenges with an open mind and without getting defensive, and collaborated with campus stakeholders to develop a new, learning-centered digital commons.

David described the challenges faced by Xavier over the past five years, a list that sounded all too familiar:

• Lack of planning and leadership. Prior to David arriving in 2005, Xavier had four CIOs in four years.
• A traditional IT organization arranged into insulated silos of activity.
• A rudimentary set of tools with only modest Web and research services and high student demand for more Web versus face-to-face services.
• Pressure on IT to help address recruitment and retention challenges.

David and Doug described two early projects that have since converged into their current Virtual Learning Commons (VLC) project. In 2004, Xavier attempted to create a physical “Learning Commons” inside the library. They also created a virtual admitted-student orientation site called “Road to Xavier” in 2005. This virtual orientation site could be customized by students and included a number of personal broadcasting and social networking features. Students could upload photos and watch videos. Messages from advisors were posted to the student’s in-box. Events and activities were hosted that connected admitted students with current students, such as a video production competition where admitted students reviewed movies created by current students using Ming. Road to Xavier was used to create points of engagement or interaction that would not have happened in the past. Doug told a great story about a prospective student who had some questions and connected with a current student via the Road to Xavier application. The current student offered to meet her at the airport and put her up overnight at her home. She fell in love with the campus and enrolled at Xavier.

While this virtual orientation succeeded, the idea for a library-hosted physical space was scrapped in favor of a more inclusive concept wherein the library space was only one component of the learning commons. Xavier restructured the library division as well as other divisions within the commons, developed a new case statement for a capital campaign, and developed a plan that integrated technology resources like Road to Xavier into the larger commons initiative. IT looked at how people were using the current Web services and took a very user-centered approach. Student focus groups were used to identify gaps and develop ideas for new services. Here are some VLC services either available or under development: 

• Student dashboard, including a list of important contacts (e.g., advisor, major-specific librarian, Dean)
• Research resources pushed based on major
• Tools for students studying abroad (e.g., Frappr application for photo-map mash-ups)
• A courses channel that provides direct access to current courses
• Online training videos and a technology training calendar
• A knowledge bank

One of the comments that stuck with me was David’s contention that the VLC needed to be, “better than Google,” when referring to students doing academic research on the Web. Rather than starting at Google, David looked forward to the day when students would use the library research services built into the VLC as their preferred entry point. I can certainly relate to this sentiment. We pay good money for campus portals with functionality that mirrors MySpace and Facebook. We read papers by students who use Wikipedia as their primary source of information while expensive online library research services go unused. It’s tempting to think that if we only presented these campus resources to students differently, perhaps as part of some Facebook-ish “one-stop” virtual shop, usage would increase. I think Xavier could create the dream academic portal and students would still use Wikipedia first, unless we see changes in certain factors beyond the control of IT. These include:

• Student information literacy and the development of clear, course-specific expectations
• Student motivation to engage in genuine research and scholarship versus finding the easiest path to completing a course requirement
• The institutional support of faculty who wish to engage students in genuine research and scholarship activities that cannot simply be Googled
• The degree to which student research and scholarship are valued and recognized within the institution and beyond

I think IT departments are setting themselves up for failure if they think that creating something that’s better than Google will change student and faculty behavior. In the end, I don’t think it’s an either/or proposition anyway. Rather than competing with Google or Wikipedia, it may be more productive to embrace these tools as two among the many in our toolbox and help our students better understand their strengths and limitations.

Ken

EDUCAUSE 2007 – Defining the Digital Commons

These are my notes from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference session, “Defining the Digital Commons: Abstraction of Enterprise Services and Policies Through the Use of a Unified Web-Based User Interface,” delivered by Mark McCahill (Architect for E-Learning and Collaborative Systems, Duke University) and Bob Price (Director of Academic Services, Duke University) in Seattle on October 24th, 2007. This was a fantastic session, my favorite of the conference. I knew I was going to like it when Mark played a little Steely Dan prior to the start. Most breaks between EDUCAUSE sessions are deathly quiet. They really need to do something to raise the energy level a bit.

A visual of a cave painting was used to kick off the session, emphasizing the notion that computers are used to tell stories, the authors of which may be unaware of the future value of their work. Mark mentioned that we are media sponges. We use the Web for cave painting, commenting on the paintings of others, and forming communities around the paintings that mean something to the collective. Mark and Bob presented what was essentially a conceptual map for a folksonomic repository that was less about the search engine and more about the social value of the learning commons as a context and a place to meet. Four important core services would be:

• bit bucket storage
• tags directory
• access logs and usage stats
• social association engine

Mark described his fantasy of creating a Marauder’s Map that students could use to see who was where and what they were doing (e.g., studying Physics in Krueger Library Second Floor). This reminded me of the MIT Random Hall Bathroom Server. They presented the NC State Virtual Computing Lab and Freebase as a sign of things to come and initiatives that capture many of the qualities that they were describing. Here, students assemble the applications and information they need to accomplish specific tasks. This also reminded me of Popfly, Microsoft’s mashup engine that provides an interesting interface for weaving data sources together to create something new.  

This combination of a flexible, virtual toolbox/repository with a “learning commons” is very appealing from an academic perspective. As I listened to this session, I wondered what this meant for our investment in SharePoint for our campus portal and small group collaboration needs. On one hand, SharePoint 2007 has some of the qualities that Mark and Bob described. It is an interesting mix of functionality that combines file handling and workflow with social interaction and teamwork. Most importantly, the basic control of SharePoint sites can be placed in the hands of faculty, staff, and students versus IT admins. On the other hand, it’s clear that SharePoint wasn’t built to support teaching and learning. Its very broad sweep within an enterprise is focused primarily on administrative applications. In addition, deep customization of SharePoint sites and the development of new “Web parts” is something that is beyond the reach and interest of most academic users and SharePoint isn’t really intended to be an authoring tool. Although there is a WYSIWYG HTML editor for posting brief text-based content, faculty and students still need to use other tools to create content to place into SharePoint sites.

Could SharePoint be the foundation for a campus learning commons? Possibly. The thing that concerns me the most about SharePoint and what I see as the major difference between SharePoint and the learning commons that Mark and Bob were describing is the same challenge that we have been facing with our learning management systems for years: the monolithic, proprietary, and relatively closed nature of the tool “traps” content and inhibits participation in the open sharing, flexibility, and innovation that is driving the Web 2.0, open/community source revolution. It is nice to see tools like Socialtext developing SharePoint connectors. Maybe that’s the answer. I would be very interested in collaborating with other SharePoint campuses to push the limits of the learning commons concept using SharePoint as a foundation, but integrating other open tools and resources. Any interest out there? 

Ken

EDUCAUSE 2007 – Using Student-Centered Technologies

These are my notes from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference session, “Using Student-Centered Technologies to Enhance the Curriculum,” by Chris Penniman (Director of Instructional Technology, Director for Instructional Technology, Connecticut College) presented in Seattle on October 24th, 2007.

In this session, Chris described a research program at Connecticut College called the Digital Enhanced Learning Initiative (DELI) that focused on how students use common technologies for instructional purposes. In the study, students in selected classes were provided with a “technology kit” that included such items as a digital camera, iPod, and all necessary peripherals. Students and instructors participated in an orientation session where the data gathering expectations of the study were set. Students then reported out during the semester via focus groups. Chris shared some interesting examples of student work and provided some preliminary results indicating that the technology may be enhancing learning and improving overall retention.

I attended Chris’ presentation primarily because I am very interested in what she called student-centered technologies: those tools that most of today’s students bring with them to campus (e.g., MP3 player, cell phone, camera). Although she provided all DELI students with the same tools, the underlying assumption was that such tools could eventually be integrated into the curriculum based on the expectation that all students already own them. This raises familiar issues that institutions with existing device mandates have been wrestling with for years, such as the digital divide and the cost of supporting a wide variety of personally-owned devices. WSU is a laptop mandate campus that requires most of its students to lease one of two laptop models from the institution, paying $1000 per year. Are we approaching the point where these devices are pervasive, affordable, and standardized enough that we no longer need to mandate specific devices or ask students to purchase devices from us?

It seems that there are still compelling reasons to maintain an existing device mandate program. I think it’s still the best way to ensure…

• Standardization on a specific hardware configuration that meets predetermined academic needs, creating a predictable and supportable academic computing environment.
• Continuity of functionality and performance across a student’s entire career, including maintenance, updates, and technical support.
• Complete ubiquitous access for all students at all times.

However, I am looking forward to the day when all of these goals can be achieved by relying on personally-owned equipment that students are free to select themselves and bring with them to campus.  I think we are getting closer.

Ken

EDUCAUSE 2007 – Teaching and Learning in Second Life

These are my notes from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference session, “Teaching and Learning Experiences in a User-Created Virtual World,” by David Antonacci (Educational Technology Liaison, University of Kansas Medical Center), Stephanie Gerald (Web Designer/Developer, University of Kansas Medical Center), Ed Lamoureux (Associate Professor, Bradley University), Dave Thomas (Lecturer, University of Colorado at Denver), Randolf Hollingsworth (Assistant Provost, University of Kentucky), and Nick Noaks (Director of the Center for Enhanced Learning and Teaching, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) delivered on October 25th, 2007.

The panel covered a good range of applications and issues. Ed participated from the floating “Board Room” on the NMC Campus in Second Life (SL) and used the new VOIP functionality to deliver his presentation. This was moderately successful as the sound kept cutting out, probably due to bandwidth issues in the conference ballroom. There were well over 150 people in the room, all armed with multiple wireless devices. David Antonacci led off by defining three major categories of instructional SL applications:

• Using SL in a course where the tool itself is the focus. For example, Ed described a course in which students learn methods for conducting ethnographic research in virtual worlds.
• Using SL to support course-related communication and collaboration. Randolf described several collaborative applications, including supporting student-student interaction. She mentioned working with a group of students (Blue Satin Jackets) who will meet and greet new SL members and help orient them to the planned KU SL island.
• Using SL to support course-related simulations. Dave Thomas described using SL in his Urban Planning and Environmental Design courses to allow students to explore course concepts. Randolf described students role-playing in SP to better understand what it means to be a scholar.

The panel addressed several interesting questions. When asked how to convince conservative, naive administrators to support SL investments, members of the panel recommended emphasizing the exploratory nature of the tool and allowing faculty and students to lead. Ed reminded the audience that SL is to some degree a microcosm of real life (RL). In other ways, SL is a more sheltered environment than RL. He argued that there is probably much more happening that should be cause for administrative concern in the typical college dorm than in SL. Also, SL may offer more intercultural and multicultural opportunities for students than RL.

Interestingly, there was very little discussion about building or scripting in SL. Most of the panel members used existing areas in SL to meet with students and stressed that SL could be used effectively without a large investment in programming and development. Dave mentioned how awkward it is to build in SL compared to other, higher-end 3D authoring environments. I left the session with a couple ideas for further consideration:

• We have definitely turned the corner in higher education when it comes to virtual worlds. Just about everyone in the audience had an SL avatar and some even entered SL and wandered into the room where Ed’s avatar was sitting during the presentation. I (aka Hoptoad Flan) flew around the floating board room and peeked into the window. At least two people on the panel used the phrase “in world” to describe their travels in SL. The SL “novelty effect” has dissipated, terms like “avatar” are well established in our lexicon, and people are now anxious to determine exactly how tools like SL can impact learning.
• We are starting to see the next generation of SL academic applications. While the first generation projects seemed to focus on the representation of RL physical environments (e.g., campus buildings), these new applications focus on social interaction and the simulation of concepts that would be difficult or impossible to implement in RL. I am guessing that this is where the academic action will be in the near future.
• I was intrigued by Dave Thomas’ observation that his design students were better able to “abstract” themselves when evaluating SL versus RL environments. When asked to evaluate RL environments, Dave said that his students often fall back on simple, superficial observations (e.g., “I liked the building because it had a pretty fountain.”). In SL, their observations of the often bizarre designs found in world are more abstract. One potential benefit of virtual worlds that is often mentioned is the ability to shed the social constraints of RL. Dave’s suggestion indicates that students may also be able to shed cognitive biases and limitations and learn to see and think about the world in new ways. This is a very interesting idea.

Ken