2013

Great ASSETT Tools

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Great ASSETT Tools Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/21/2013 - 00:00

Aside from sponsoring SPARC, ASSETT (Arts and Sciences Support of Education Through Technology) does a lot of other student-centered projects as well. Here are some of the neat tools that the neat people over at ASSETT have developed just for you! (Begin the shameless self-plugging, but really, these are pretty cool.)

1) Places

This tool is especially helpful for new or transfer students, or if you’re venturing to a corner of campus you’ve never been to before. It allows you to look up a building by its name and see a map of where it’s located, what classrooms it has, and what it looks like. This is great at the beginning of the semester if you don’t know where a building is, or so you can finally put a name to that building you’ve walked past fifty times, but never actually looked at the sign.

2) Syllabus Archive

Lost your syllabus? Look it up with this nifty syllabus archive. This is also useful for finding out what a course you may want to take will look like. You can get an idea about what books are required, what kinds of assignments there are, or what the reading load will be, before you even sit down in the class. The archive is somewhat limited right now, but new courses are being added often, so check it out.

3) Optical Character Recognition Service

I think this one is the coolest tool on the list. How many times have you opened a PDF for class and found to your utter dismay that it was images instead of text, meaning you couldn’t highlight it, search it or select it? Luckily, there’s a fix for that now! The OCR service allows you to upload PDFs and it will convert them into searchable documents, or right them if they’ve got any funny business. After that, you can re-download them and highlight or search to your heart’s content. No more squinting at a crooked PDF or trying to type-out a quote. Life is easy again! Note: OCR is ore compatible with Safari and Firefox than Chrome, so all you Google worshippers should hop over to a different browser to get the best use out of this tool.

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How to Understand Your Degree Audit

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 06:00:00 +0000

How to Understand Your Degree Audit Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/09/2013 - 00:00

We all need to understand our degree audit: it tells us what classes we have and which ones we need and keeps us from having to e-mail our advisor every other week. It can be confusing as all heck, but hopefully this little guide can help.

To access your degree audit, log into your myCUinfo and click the "Degree Audit/Transfer Credit Evaluation." If you are a transfer student, this is also where you can check how your credits from other universities have transferred.

Next, log in with your identikey and password in the new tab.

After you've logged in, you can choose to run a degree audit of your current declared major if you simply want to check your progress:

Or you can run a "what if" degree audit to see how many courses you would need in a new major, or to add a minor or different emphasis.

After you've made your selection, make sure to wait for the most recent audit to come up. This can take a little bit, and you might need to hit the "refresh list" button a few times. If you pick an old audit, it might not include your more recent courses.

After you open your audit, you should see a lot of red and green drop-down menus. These are all the different categories of requirements for your school and major. If the category has a green check-mark by it, congratulations, you have fulfilled that requirement! If there is a red "x" next to the category, you're missing something. Simply click the little arrow next to the category name to see a description of what you need and what courses satisfy that requirement.

You can also click on a course number directly from your degree audit to read the course description.

You can also keep track of your overall credit progress, making sure you earn enough credits overall, credits outside your department and upper division credit hours.

Now you know a little bit more about your degree audit, and it can be your best friend- the best kind of friend because it's the kind that makes sure you graduate on time!

On last nifty trick. If you're trying to find a class that fulfills a certain requirement within your college, you can enter that into your search criteria on the course search. Simply open the menu titled "Additional Search Criteria" and input the requirement you are searching for.

That will show you all the courses that the school of Arts and Sciences has approved to fulfill that requirement and are being taught during the semester you are interested in.

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Holly Gayley: Teaching Religion through Digital Storytelling

Anonymous — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Holly Gayley: Teaching Religion through Digital Storytelling Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/29/2013 - 00:00

When we introduce a new pedagogy into the college classroom, how do we know if it's working? In the field of Religious Studies, certain pedagogical approaches are considered tried and true. For example, a mainstay in teaching religion is to engage students in a close reading of a religious text, modeled in class and then undertaken by students in papers. Most of my courses on Buddhism typically employ this approach, since it fosters critical thinking and strengthens writing skills. Yet for a new introductory course in religion that I designed at the 1000-level, I decided to prioritize student engagement and harness technology to help.

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Yet for a new introductory course in religion that I designed at the 1000-level, I decided to prioritize student engagement and harness technology to help. The course is Ritual & Media, part of the Arts & Sciences core curriculum in Contemporary Societies at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. It has up to ninety students, mostly freshman who are being newly inducted into campus culture during the fall when I offer the course. For this reason, I try to offset the perceived anonymity of the lecture hall with interactive assignments, facilitated through technology.

In line with the adage "learn by doing," in this course, I have pioneered an assignment in digital storytelling that encourages students to participate in the very process we are studying, namely the interaction between ritual and media. The assignment is a hands-on collaborative project to create a documentary short and written analysis of a contemporary ritual.

In what follows, I investigate the effectiveness of this pioneering assignment with the help of student surveys conducted in Fall 2012 during the second iteration of the course. Through the use of technology in this class and examples of student projects, I reflect on the role of digital storytelling in teaching religion.

Course Design

I designed Ritual & Media with the immediate goal of exposing students to the myriad forms of ritual in civil society. Our definition of ritual in the course goes well beyond what happens in a church, temple, mosque or synagogue. Alongside classic genres of ritual like pilgrimage and rites of passage, we explore secular ritual, national holidays, and media events that demonstrate how ritual is integral to the way that contemporary societies publically enact their values and sanction sources of authority.

In my course, media becomes central to the study of ritual, both pedagogically and theoretically. I use film and news clips as a way to view rituals and to analyze the media's effect on ritual, i.e. what changes when a ritual is captured on film or staged as a media event. We also explore how mass media appropriate the role of ritual and its techniques to become a primary shaper of social values and shared realities in contemporary society.

In line with 21st century learning, I emphasize digital literacy and collaborative learning in the course. Michael Wesch has advocated for shifting the focus of the college classroom from mastering information, or becoming knowledgeable, to developing skills, becoming "knowledge-able" (2009). In Ritual & Media, this involves turning students from passive consumers of media into active producers of it. Students submit their written assignments on a course blog, comment on one another's writing, and collaborate on the final capstone project: a documentary short (3-5 minutes in length) featuring original footage of a contemporary ritual of their choice alongside a written analysis.

I view technology as a robust vehicle through which to facilitate interaction between students both inside and outside of the classroom. While I sometimes have used the discussion board function on CU Learn and Desire2Learn, I find a well-designed course blog to be a more powerful format for interaction between class meetings. Blogs appeal to ways that students already use technology in their ordinary lives, to read news and share opinions, and the layout facilitates longer entries and active commenting.

Are there benefits to teaching religion through interactive digital media? I asked the students, and here's what they said.

Survey One: Media & Technology in the Classroom

I conducted two surveys: one at the middle and one at the end of Ritual & Media during Fall 2012. The first survey focused on student perceptions of using media and technology in the course. And the second focused on their perceptions of what they learned from the final project.

With respect to the use of media and technology, the first survey inquired about three general areas: (1) the effectiveness of documentaries and feature films assigned for the course through e-reserves, (2) the effect on student writing of posting assignments of specified word count to a course blog for peer review, and (3) the enhancement of student learning through reading the written work of their classmates.

Two thirds of the students in the course responded to the survey, and most found the use of documentaries and feature films, watched outside of class as part of their homework, to be useful to understand ritual and its representation in the media. However, they were evenly divided on which of these two (documentaries or feature films) were more effective. Feature films were "more attention grabbing" and "a good way to spark conversation and debate" while the documentaries were "much more informative" and "able to directly touch on so many key points in the ritual."

Students submitted the two papers, assigned with a rolling due date, to a course blog for peer review in addition to comments from the Professor and TA. The topics for these papers were (a) a first-hand account of a rite of passage or coming of age experience and (b) a film review of a documentary or feature film that treats the topic of ritual. Only a few students reported dissatisfaction with comments like: "I deeply dislike blogs" and "I hate being peer reviewed." Otherwise, most found it to be "fulfilling" and "rewarding" to have their peers read and comment on their work.

For the majority of students, submitting papers online for peer review encouraged them "to make my writing as interesting as possible" and "to write an interesting paper as opposed to one that would grant me a good grade." This indicates at the very least an increased motivation among a number of students to write well for their peers. Some comments also indicted an enhanced sense of satisfaction with their written work. As one student put it, "it made me feel like what I wrote meant something."

Overall peer comments were perceived to be "gratifying" and "supportive" though sometimes "repetitive" and "forced." As one student said, "Comments seemed mostly forced but were a good way to actually get everyone involved." From comments along these lines, in the next iteration of this course, I plan to provide more guidelines for peer review, so that the comments are more substantive.

The major gain noted by students came out of reading the rites of passage and film reviews of their classmates. Many reported that this enhanced their learning by showing "a diversity of perspectives" and "alternative viewpoints" on ritual in contemporary society and its representation in the media. Students described the impact of reading one another's papers as a "broadened mind" and "widened horizons," making students more "aware of ritual in daily life" and providing "enhanced cultural understandings."

Most students reported that they did not significantly alter their writing style due to peer review and spent approximately the same amount of time on their papers as normal. Both assignments specified a word count of 800-1000 (equivalent to 2-3 pages double-spaced) and took students 2-3 hours on average. In the course, written assignments and the final project are supplemented by more standard forms of assessment for a large lecture course, namely a midterm and final exam.

One third of those completing the survey reported technological difficulties posting to their papers to the blog. They resolved these difficulties by various means: trial and error, logging off and on again, resubmitting work, and emailing the Professor or TA for help. Based on this feedback, in the future, I will allocate more time at the start of the semester to introducing the technologies used for the course.

Although students today are considered to be "digital natives," reared on video games and smart phones, they nonetheless need stepping stones toward achieving digital literacy in a variety of platforms. Certainly, assignments that employ digital media are one effective way to promote such literacy. More importantly, the midterm survey indicates that most students profited from submitting written assignments to the course blog where they could receive comments from their peers.

Having explored the interactive format and perceived benefits of the course blog, let's now turn to the capstone assignment for the course involving digital storytelling.

Learning through Technology

Digital Storytelling & Ritual Analysis

Digital storytelling has been heralded as a dynamic pedagogy that engages students as knowledge producers and empowers them as learners. In digital storytelling, students combine footage, photographs, text, voice over, and a soundtrack to create a multimedia narrative. The narrative could serve any number of purposes, such as to chronicle a historical event or to illustrate an issue using an example that personalizes it.

The approach in digital storytelling is consonant with other forms of teaching with technology that harness the capacity of Web 2.0 for user-contributed content. According to Catherine McGloughlin and Mark Lee, the "individual empowerment of learners" comes about by anchoring assignments in real-world contexts and encouraging students to create knowledge for the benefit of a learning community (2008: 641-645).

Digital storytelling has a number of benefits. As Robin Bernard has observed, students learn how to communicate effectively using multimedia tools, to illuminate theory through a case study, and to organize research into a compelling narrative and persuasive presentation (2008). In my course on Ritual & Media, students learn these skills interactively, by collaborating on the filming and editing of a documentary short and by viewing and critiquing the creative work of others.

In designing the capstone assignment for the course, it occurred to me: what better way to teach students about ritual and media than to have them get behind a video camera. By creating a documentary short, students come to understand the extent to which any representation of an event is shaped by the one documenting it. In other words, documenting a ritual involves a selective process on the part of the person doing the documenting—whether anthropologist, journalist, or film maker.

In creating a documentary short, students engage reflexively in this selective process: what is important to shoot and what gets included in the final cut? They work in teams to choose a contemporary ritual (religious or secular), shoot at least 30 minutes of footage, and then edit that footage down into a 3-5 minute video. They are supported by Dave Underwood and Tim Riggs at the Media Lab in ATLAS, who provide formal instruction on storyboarding and editing (using iMovie) and offer rental equipment and assistance throughout the process.

In the production process, students combine original footage of a ritual or ritual-like event shot onsite in the Boulder area with photographs, text, voice over, and a soundtrack. Once edited into the final cut, they upload their documentary short onto Kaltura or Youtube and then embedded it on the course blog alongside a written analysis of the ritual. The result is a richly layered multimedia project.

Student projects run the gamut in terms of how they conceptualize ritual. I encourage them to think broadly about ritual and to focus on any event or activity that involves a significant degree of ritualization. A big part of the intellectual work of the project is to explain how and why the event their team chose to document can profitably be analyzed within the rubric of ritual.

Students fan out across the Front Range in search of appropriate events and have created projects on the Zombie Crawl and Parade of Lights in Denver and Kirtan Chanting and the Pearl Street Stampede in Boulder. Many have found inspiration for their projects without leaving the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ campus in an array of events, such as Homecoming, the Gay-Straight Alliance Drag Show, and the Diwali performance by the Indian Student Association. Besides the staple fall holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving, each year presents different opportunities. The midnight release of the final Harry Potter movie inspired one team in Fall 2010, and the presidential elections became the focus of a project in Fall 2012.

Overall, I challenge students to think about how we define ritual in contemporary society and what their case study contributes to our shared understanding of ritual and media in the course. In the written analysis, students discuss the history and context of the event; its stages, symbolism and ritual elements; and the multiple meanings ascribed to it in official publicity and participant interviews.

Here are two examples of student work that illustrate the creativity with which they approach the category of ritual. Both share a theme, the role of ritualization in preparing for a performance, but take this theme into quite different arenas on campus.

In this documentary short, "Behind the Curtains" (2010), Elizabeth Schenk and Ben Levin explore the methods used by dance students on campus to prepare for a performance. They provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes view of invented rites: shared by the dance troupe as a group (passing the kiss), handed down from teacher to student (the roses on opening night), and observed individually by dancers to warm up and gather their concentration. As Elizabeth and Ben explain in their written analysis, these "quirky traditions" create a "strong sense of communitas" among the group and also allow its individual members to mentally and physically prepare in their own unique way.

Along similar lines, in their project on "Game Day Marching Band Rituals" (2012), Jamie Henderson, Megan Miller, and Sophia Grenier look at the game-day traditions of the Golden Buffalo Marching Band at CU. The documentary short toggles between interviews with band members and shots of the band warming up on game day, or in the words of one band member, "getting pumped up before going out to perform on the field." As Megan wrote in her section of the written analysis, "This is not as simple as merely reviewing the pre-game and halftime performances; because the band is also the core of student spirit at the games, Game Day Practice also needs to get the band ready to serve that function."

The comments on this project show a high degree of student engagement:

"Unlike the Stampede which is meant to be a spectacle for members of the CU and Boulder community, the Game Day ritual is much more private. The ritual is meant to bring about the feeling of excitement and preparedness to the members of the band and dance team rather than to the overall community (like the Stampede). In any kind of team, a ritual like this is a necessary function. In band or in dance teams during a show there is a reliance on each other to perform correctly and well. Establishing a feeling of communitas before such a performance is essential, and the Game Day ritual fulfills that role." – Nikki

"I particularly liked your last paragraph that discussed the ludic qualities of game day practice. It’s true that practice on game day is more light hearted and fun than a regular practice, which sets it apart in of itself along with the ritualistic chants and attire." – Danielle

"What I enjoyed the most about your video is the range of scenes that you included, such as personal interviews and clips from sunrise! You did a really good job at capturing the enthusiasm and dedication that goes into being a member of the band." – Tierney

"This was a very well done documentary, showing the inside workings of the Marching Band on game days. It was interesting to see that even within the larger ritual, each instrumental section had their own set of rituals that they participated in. Your analysis shows the importance of the band in CU game day as a whole." – Steven

"Great job on the cinematography of this film. I especially loved the shot of the director at sunrise. Being friends with a lot of people in band in high school I already knew that there were a lot of rituals associated with things like game day, but it was nice getting educated about the rituals of the CU band." – Joey

In terms of fostering student engagement, the interactive elements of this assignment include not only working in teams to shoot and edit the documentary short and presenting it to their classmates in recitation but also watching and critiquing the work of other teams as well as reading and commenting on their ritual analyses on the course blog (as above).

In this way, documentary storytelling engages students as producers of knowledge for their peers. Through the final project, students learn first-hand how the media transforms an event through the very process of documenting it. They also become engaged and discerning consumers, learning how to evaluate the production quality and content of the videos that they watch.

Is this approach effective? Let's look again at what the students had to say.

Survey Two: Final Project – the Documentary Short

I conducted the second survey toward the end of the semester on the day that each student team presented their documentary short in recitation. The survey explores student perceptions of what they learned from the final project and covers four general areas: (1) the collaboration process and distribution of workload, (2) surprises and challenges in filming and editing, (3) technological issues with film equipment, editing software, and video platform and (4) what they learned through the process. The members of each team filled out the survey independently while listing their project title so that I could compare and collate the information by team. All but two students in the course submitted the survey.

Almost every team reported equal distribution of the workload across the members of their group. Nonetheless, several teams praised one teammate as the steward of the project who organized outings or collected all the film for editing, and three teams identified a single outlier who participated substantially less than others. The teams were equally divided between those who did all the filming together and those who divvied up the labor or split up to cover different aspects of an event. At least four groups had film majors who insisted on doing most of the editing work, and those projects were more polished as a result.

While some teams reported good communication with comments like "we got along famously" and "everything went smoothly," many others expressed difficulty coordinating their schedules to find times to meet for filming and editing. Only one team could not surmount a breakdown of communication, and so the original group of four eventually split into two teams of two.

Challenges in the filming and editing process varied. Most common were complaints about dark night footage and background noise in interviews. A number of students expressed surprise that people declined to be interviewed or that there were certain parts of a ritual that no one would discuss. For example, the team that covered Black Friday encountered resistance on the part of Walmart employees to discuss the rush of customers at opening time and how staff were trained to respond. Another team found certain topics off limits when documenting a Quinceañera, the Mexican rite of passage for fifteen year old girls. Two or three teams changed topics after finding their initial idea unrealistic.

One case stands out as unusual in Fall 2012: one of the teams chose to document "The Naked Pumpkin Run," a Boulder-based event on Halloween, only to find out that it had been discontinued. They decided to forge ahead and do an investigative-reporting style of project on what happened to the event. I gave them special permission to use archival footage, and they also filmed interviews on the Pearl Street Mall on Halloween with police officers and by-standers who were anticipating the now-defunct event. The result was impressive.

In a lively documentary and clever analysis, the group ended up arguing that "The Naked Pumpkin Run" could be understood as ritual on account of its participation in the antinomian and guising aspects of Halloween as a "rite of reversal" (i.e. subverting social conventions by streaking and creating anonymity by wearing hollow pumpkins on their heads) and on account of its contribution to Boulder's identity in the "Keep Boulder Weird" campaign that tried to resuscitate the event.

A similar challenge confronted a team in the first iteration of the course in Fall 2010. A group of students chose to do their documentary short on Bikram Yoga, also referred to as "hot yoga." They sought permission to film a yoga class in Boulder and were denied. The students turned this challenge to their advantage and interspersed interviews with yoga teachers and practitioners with footage of a student on their team who demonstrated each of the 26 poses in sequence. This elegant solution made for a well-paced and intimate portrait of Bikram Yoga.

Returning to the survey, half the course reported experiencing technological difficulties of one sort or another. The biggest culprit by far was uploading their documentary shorts to Kaltura, a video platform integrated into Desire to Learn. Despite the best efforts of the Office of Internet Technology to facilitate the process, students found it onerous to use. Uploading was timely and the program often froze on students. Because of difficulties with Kaltura, many teams decided instead to upload their videos to Youtube instead. Finding the right video platform will be a priority in the next iteration of the course. Some groups expressed challenges editing with iMovie, particularly adjusting the volume on interviews and voiceovers.

There were a variety of responses to the question: What did you learn about ritual and media through making your documentary short? A significant number of students registered in one way or other their surprise at the pervasiveness of ritual in contemporary society. Students also described their discovery in practice about the influence of the media in representing events. As one student put it, there are "so many different ways to interpret footage that the story is really up to the eyes of the director(s)/producer(s)."

This comment and others like it dovetail neatly with a long-term goal for the course: for students to come away with a critical eye toward media coverage and the selective process involved in constructing a narrative of an event—whether in a news story, documentary or feature film. Insights along these lines, expressed by various students, constitute a important take-away from the final project and signal the difference between lecturing on a topic and giving students the opportunity to "learn by doing."

Conclusion

Is digital storytelling a pedagogy that can be effectively employed in college courses in the study of religion? I hope that these reflections, the examples from student projects, and the students' own voices suggest a resounding "yes." Through digital storytelling, students engaged first-hand in creating knowledge about ritual in contemporary society as they engage the events and activities in their immediate surroundings along the Front Range of Colorado and right here on the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ campus. Through digital storytelling, students "learn by doing" in a 21st century way, harnessing the collaborative technology of Web 2.0 to create and share their original research as a narrative in digital format.

References

McGloughlin, Catherine and Mark J. W. Lee. “Mapping the Digital Terrain: New Media and Social Software as Catalysts for Pedagogical Change.” In Proceedings Ascilite Melbourne. Melbourne Victoria Australia, 2008. Available at: www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/procs/mcloughlin.pdf.

Mishra, Punya and Matthew J. Koehler. "Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108/6 (June 2006): 1017-1054.

Robin, Bernard R. “Digital Storytelling: A Powerful Technology Tool for the 21st Century Classroom.” Theory Into Practice 47/3 (July 2008): 220-228.

Wesch, Michael. "From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments." Academic Commons blog. January 7, 2009. http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/knowledgable-knowledge-able.

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Preparations for Teaching Online by Kathleen Ryan

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Preparations for Teaching Online by Kathleen Ryan Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2013 - 00:00

I will be teaching an online History of Documentary course this summer. It is the first time I've taught an online course and want to make sure to be able to use the technology appropriately to engage students and spur online discussions. For example, in the traditional classroom, one can watch a film and then create a facilitated discussion on the film's aesthetics, themes, etc. But that face-to-face conversation becomes more difficult in an online environment.

I'm initially thinking a combination of social media, online discussion boards and perhaps even remixing of films can help to engage students in the course. But I'm also sure that there are numerous other options which I haven't yet considered.

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Problem: Teaching an online course vs. a traditional classroom course
Changes over time: This is a new problem for me, but it presents interesting challenges because while I've taught history courses in the classroom, I have yet to to teach it online. For me these classroom courses are a combination of lectures, looking at media artifacts and small discussion groups. This will be changed in an online environment.
Factors that make it compelling now: The course is scheduled to run this summer. I need to have an engaging lesson plan for both graduate and undergrad students by that point. There is also a chance that if the students are not appropriately engaged for the medium that they will have lesser learning outcomes than in the traditional classroom.
Implications for not solving or addressing it: A bad class, poor learning outcomes, the class not be offered in the same format in the future.

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Video Coaching in Rural Teacher Preparation by John Hoover

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Video Coaching in Rural Teacher Preparation by John Hoover Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/15/2013 - 00:00

Project entails teacher coaching in rural Colorado serving approximately 30 educators in a large rural mountain school district. Project piloted the use of video coaching with one master teacher and one classroom teacher in an elementary school. Purpose of the pilot was test out equipment, identify potential issues with the video coaching, and engage in a simulated coaching session sufficient to test the entire process and make recommendations for more wide-spread use with all the educators in the project.

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Deliver more frequent coaching to teachers in a professional development research project; Engage participants in more meaningful self-examination; Provide more effective one-one coaching to improve teaching of English language learners in grades K-3.

I used two types of technology in my work in the mountain region of Colorado as a result of participation in this Seminar. The uses of the technology are:

Step 1. Video-Coaching Recording Equipment – This equipment will allow for more thorough and comprehensive classroom coaching sessions with teachers in the program. This technology will reduce travel expenses and time thereby increasng the number as well as quality of coaching.

Step 2. Google+Hangout – This technology will upgrade our coaching significantly by allowing both the coach and the teacher to review the video-recorded teaching activity simultaneously. It also allows for starting and stopping the video to identify teaching practices and the extent to which Action Plan items have been implemented in the video-recorded teaching session. Additionally, this technology allows for up to 10 individuals to participate in the same video-coaching session.

This technology will be used by both coaches and the teachers in the schools and include video cameras and microphones and Google+Hangout technology. The rural county school district and School of Education staff will use the video coaching. Once piloted, the video coaching will be implemented to occur once per semester for each teacher in the project.

Methods

A project colleague (e.g., grade level master teacher team member) assisted with the piloting of the video recording in the rural county classrooms. Two video sessions were conducted in the pilot with each video session including a recording of a complete activity or lesson. One was a small group and the other a large group activity. The video was shared with the coach and both the teacher and coach initially reviewed the video independently. Video was uploaded into Google+Hangout and reviewed together via distance debriefing, after the coach and the teacher had the opportunity to review the video individually. The coach summarizes the discussions and comments documented during the joint review of the video and shares with the teacher. Upon review of the video, an Action Plan detailing one or two suggestions for improved teaching will be generated for inclusion in the next coaching session and teaching video activity. While action items were not generated during the pilot, the implementation of this aspect of the process was discussed and will be included in the full implementation beginning in the Fall, 2013.

Results and Reccomendations

Two objectives were measured in this project:

Purchase and deliver video equipment to the targeted schools
Develop and pilot a process for incorporating video coaching into the overall coaching plan for the research project.

The following evidence was gathered to determine completion of the objectives:

Documentation of the purchase of the video equipment and delivery to the schools
Copy of the piloted video uploaded into a project file for use in video coaching

The video equipment was purchased and delivered to the targeted schools during the Spring, 2013 semester. The master teacher completed two videos as part of this project. The first recorded a small group instructional situation, and the second recorded a whole class lesson. Both videos were successfully uploaded into the project e-file in a manner that was password protected and secure from unwanted distribution. Subsequently, project staff engaged in a simulated video coaching process using Google+Hangout. The video was successfully uploaded into Google+Hangout and a group of four people participated in the hangout discussion.

Given that this was a pilot project, the primary purpose was to explore the process, test the video equipment, engage in the Google+Hangout and generate recommendations for scaling up to begin in the Fall of 2013. The following recommendations are suggested as a result of the pilot:

Each educator requires brief training in the use of both the video equipment and the process to log on to a google+hangout;
Each educator should initially record a small group session of approximately 15 minutes prior to longer recordings to become familiar with process, equipment and potential issues that may arise (e.g., proper positioning of the camera, sound checks, on-off malfunctions, etc.);
Although not essential, if possible, a second person should be available to assist with the video equipment during the recordings;
Sufficient time should be allotted for completion of the google+hangout video coaching session, since the session may last longer than anticipated (i.e., in our trial runs the sessions extended several minutes beyond anticipated timeframe); and,
The use of a simple form to document action items to strengthen the teaching seen in the video should occur.

Conclusion

The pilot project was a success in helping both the project staff and the educators in the rural district become familiar with video coaching as an integral component of the overall coaching process to improve teaching and learning. Next step in this process is to assist the other educators in the project with the video equipment, Google+Hangout, and procedures for uploading the recordings into the project folder for use in the video-coaching. A schedule to implement these steps is currently being developed and will be ready for full implementation in the schools by the beginning of the Fall, 2013 school year.

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Petger Schaberg: Using Technology to Teach Multimodal Persuasive Writing

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Jul 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Petger Schaberg: Using Technology to Teach Multimodal Persuasive Writing Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 07/14/2013 - 00:00

I would like to help my students develop the paradoxical ability to write clear, creative, logical reasoning and evidence simultaneously with powerful emotional writing, while recognizing the interplay of visual images, video, sound, and social media—as these multimodal media influence the persuasive performance of both logical and emotional writing. Obviously there are many options here for 1st year 1150 classes: the two I am considering for this TWT project are 17” X 11” poster design or Digital Storytelling Multimodal persuasion.

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Identify Challenge

I would like to help my students develop the paradoxical ability to write clear, creative, logical reasoning and evidence SIMULTANEOUSLY with powerful emotional writing, while recognizing the interplay of visual images, video, sound, and social media—as these multimodal media influence the persuasive performance of BOTH logical and emotional writing. Obviously there are many options here for 1^st year 1150 classes: the two I am considering for this TWT project are 17” X 11” poster design or Digital Storytelling Multimodal persuasion.

Change Over Time

In the last decade, the field of Rhetoric and Composition has responded to the explosion of cell phones, digital social media, and mobile internet access with a deep concern for what it ultimately means for the teaching of college writing—especially with that generation of students to whom these modes of persuasion are as quotidian as pencil and paper. This presents myriad challenges to writing instruction specialists who seek to remain current with best-practices that ensure the relevance of Writing and Rhetoric instruction in the Digital age. There is a whole world of expertise that foundates great writing instruction, and yet it must grow and open itself to multimodal writing instruction IF IT IS TO MAKE THE CASE FOR ITS OWN RELEVANCE IN THE MOST PERSUASIVE MEDIA OF OUR ERA.

Description of Factors that Make it Compelling Now

If the cell phone is the contemporary tool of PERSUASION par excellence, then college Writing & Rhetoric classes must respond by allowing students to investigate the merging of image, video, audio, and text in assignments that build a deeper understanding of multimodal composition without losing sight of the importance of text communication in academia and beyond. Alongside other “pure text” assignments, I would like to explore this goal in a 1^st year assignment that unites text and image in a 17” X 11” standard poster design using photoshop, gimp, or powerpoint. This will have the dual benefit of allowing us to consider the compression of “academic language” into slogans and sound bites, etc, while embodying the merging of pathos and logos, visual image and alphabetic text. A powerful 2-page written evaluation of rhetorical strategies will ensure compliance with alphabetic text curricular goals and strive for the highest level of audience relevance.

Implications for not Changing

Since Writing Programs are not huge grant earners (as are some of our counterparts are in the physical sciences) it is incumbent upon us to stay relevant to a changing society and its changing norms of persuasion. Irrelevance is not an impossible outcome—if we remain unable to merge greater skill in digital composition with academic textual instruction. Since this obsolescence can be avoided with real growth for writing instructors, we should set fear and doubt in approaching the ever-changing rush of new media and gain greater comfort as genuine explorers in an astoundingly vital and creative time of communication and new-media persuasion.

Plan for Implementation

Poster Design and Written Analysis in First-Year Writing & Rhetoric

Learning Evnironment:

Since the University of Colorado’s WRTG 1150, “First-Year Writing & Rhetoric” classes are intimate learning spaces in which CU students gain their introduction to university writing, it is essential to introduce innovative and effective technological pedagogies at this level. That Writing & Rhetoric courses invite the creative interplay of written, visual, and sound communications, further emphasizes the need for powerful multimedia pedagogies—not as add-ons or filler—but as a fundamental aspect of course content. The small class size of 18-20 students will allow us to achieve these goals with hands-on experiential learning that encourages a fearless attitude towards exploring new technologies in relation to persuasive writing and the extent to which they can help meet the overarching goals of WRTG 1150.

Purpose:

To help students in WRTG 1150 develop the ability to see persuasive communication as the interrelationship between LOGOS and PATHOS across a range of interacting contemporary media: written, aural and visual. We hope to foster the perception that written persuasion must work to establish a creative interplay with visual images, video, sound, web 2.0 technologies, and social media, all of which have such a pervasive influence in contemporary social persuasion.

Technology & Method:

I have designed a short 3.5-week unit of Poster Persuasion and Written Reflection to meet these complex rhetorical objectives. For this Unit Two assignment, students will design two different 17” X 11” poster treatments of a specific and original organizational “call to action,” as well as a powerfully argued 3-page Analysis/Reflection of their poster goals and rhetorical strategies. Outcomes will be determined by asking students to submit all drafts of their posters, and more importantly, by emphasizing that students will be graded 50% on their ability to reflect and analyze their overarching persuasive concept in written form, rather than exclusively on the profession quality of their final text/image design.

Specific Technologies:

Working in the design medium of their choice—Powerpoint, Gimp, Photoshop, In Design, etc—students will gain an understanding of “persuasive composition” as the skillful manipulation of text slogans (or “call to actions”) in relation to their 11” X 17” poster images. The holistic nature of human sight demands that these two seeming distinct forms of persuasion—TEXT SLOGAN and IMAGE—must be merged if the students’ chosen audience is to be persuaded in poster form. During this 3.5 week project, we will consult numerous real-world poster models; hold in-class seminars in image/text poster design; create small group feedback teams; and discuss our developing work—both the written analysis and the two 11” x 17” poster treatments—in large group workshops. Atlas labs are available if students need them, as will the mentorship of graphic designer Dave Underwood in OIT.

Indicators of Success

How will you know if your students have achieved the intended outcome?

Since my pedagogical outcome is, “to help my students develop the paradoxical ability to write clear, creative, logical reasoning and evidence SIMULTANEOUSLY with powerful emotional writing, while recognizing the persuasive interplay of visual images, video, sound, and social media in contemporary society,” I am designing a short 3-week unit of Poster Persuasion and Written Reflection/analysis. For this Unit two assignment, students will design two different 17” X 11” treatments of their original organizational call to action, and craft a powerfully argued 3-page analysis and reflection of their poster. Outcomes will be determined by asking students to submit all drafts of their posters, and more importantly emphasizing that students will be graded on their ability to reflect and analyze their persuasive concept, not the profession quality of their visual design.

How will you know if the changes you made in your teaching made a difference?

I hope to gather written evidence in their 3 page reflections of how the assignment meets course goals by determining how well students are able to argue for the overall concept of their work according to several explicit categories: 1) Storytelling, 2) Irony, 3) Thematic contrast, 4) Humor, 5) Shock or Fear, 6) Rhythm, 7) Tribalism, 8) Rhetorical content 9) Audience and 10) Call to action. The creation of short poster slogans also constitutes and important aspect of evaluation, as students are asked to discuss their slogan-designing process in detail, especially as pertains to how word and image conjoin to create their call to action. The quality of the writing in this short assignment, in its power of voice and narrative skill, will also offer insight into whether of not the assignment has given them a greater ability to generate powerful writing that merges logos and pathos and to make persuasion choices, “recognizing the persuasive interplay of visual images and texts.”

How will you identify/measure growth in your students or in your teaching?

I’m not sure how this is different from above, as I have tried to specify in Q #2 that “know[ing]” whether or not the pedagogical changes worked, can only be assessed or measured subjectively through an evaluation of the student analysis/reflection. Although the quality of the poster design will give some imput as to the ‘real world” success of the assignment, it will really be judged bases on their written ability to discuss the rhetorical strategy of persuasion in a lucid and powerful way. It does strike me, however, that growth could also be measured in an interactive presentation in the public sphere. If the most successful 17” x 11” posters were displayed on campus, either solo or in a large group, each with a brief, typed passage of high quality, engaging student reflection, it would be fascinating to gage public (or administrative) reaction as a further example of measuring growth.

Reflection

What worked well?

As evidenced from the current Norlin Library exhibit, Poster Propaganda & Persuasion, the assignment was extremely successful both for my students and for the broader curricular goals of the PWR. These 31 posters and paired written reflections robustly argue that this short assignment significantly exceeded the assignment goals that I envisioned. A visit to CU’s Underground East Gallery in the Norlin Library should confirm the project’s success in meeting the goals of our Program for Writing & Rhetoric curriculum. In fact, the project has gained extended influence in its currently being used as a pedagogical tool for PWR classroom visits in the teaching of visual rhetoric for 1^st -year Writing and Rhetoric courses.

What did not work well?

To be honest this was a rare case of technological risk-taking that was extremely successful in all regards.

What would I do differently in future implementations?

Once again my students’ response to the assignment embodied such commitment and dedication that there is nothing I would do differently.

What feedback did I get from students?

The feedback exists in the form of their elegant written statements, which are visible next to the posters they designed. Asked to merge the triple goals of powerful style, personal narrative, and rhetorical analysis, these student writers beautiful explain their extended rhetorical battle to persuade their chosen audience of their call-to-action. In addition, I am beginning to gain feedback from a “Gallery Visit” assignment I created to encourage PWR classroom visits in the teaching of visual rhetoric. This data will be very interesting to assess over the coming year.

Examples of Student Work

Please see Norlin’s Underground East Gallery exhibit which opened in early March, 2013 and will be running for the next year. I include my Curator’s Statement below:

Curator’s Statement
Poster Propaganda & Persuasion

Although writing & rhetoric instructors disagree about which types of writing best help students to become better writers, they largely agree that students read and write alphabetic texts. That this fierce tussle with the conventions of academic prose and argumentation remains of vital importance, cannot be doubted. Yet with the coming of the internet, mobile devices, and social media such as Facebook, Flickr, and Streamzoo—writing & rhetoric instructors have an exciting opportunity to extend what it means to “write” persuasively in the 21^st century classroom.

Amidst the onslaught of Google images, the YouTube extravaganzas, the bloggers flailing late into the night—university graduates must now be able to persuade with texts and digital images if they are to get ahead. Based on the premise that good, strong first-year college writing is enhanced by the creation of persuasive visual images—Poster Propaganda & Persuasion—invites you to reflect on the interaction between these 17” X 11” persuasive posters, and the designers’ powerful written statements.

We do not expect you to agree with all these posters, but even if they get your goat, we hope you will pause long enough to read the writing on the wall—for the 4” x 5” texts before you are just as essential to our overall goal. These authors care deeply about our democratic society: its relationships, its institutions, its laws. And their writing eloquently expresses both their fundamental values and the rhetorical strategies they have used to cajole their fellow citizens to take up their cause.

So please shoot us an e-mail, or drop an anonymous note in the box, or hit the hashtag: #posterprop with a tweet that lets us know what’s on your mind. Do these posters belong in the contemporary writing classroom? Or should we hold on steady with the written word? Which ones really catch your interest? Which ones spark your ire? And what of the old-fashioned, blocky, 4” x 5” chunks of alphabet soup? Are they really emblems of a dying language?—of a medium bereft of fundamental force? Or do these writings hold their own against the visual posters, contributing a vital generational voice? If so, then these talented first-year writers flip the goal of “visual persuasion” on its head and offer us a hold between the flooding images where we can pause a moment—right here, right now—to affirm the power of the written word.

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Moonhawk Kim: Collaborative Reading of Academic Articles

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Moonhawk Kim: Collaborative Reading of Academic Articles Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/08/2013 - 00:00

Reading and understanding academic articles are critical parts of social science education. With the onslaught of information that students confront everyday, their attention span is likely getting shorter increasingly. Yet, the benefits that they would reap from actively engaging with academic articles remain high. This presents a compelling reason for instructors both to increase the attractiveness of reading academic articles and to facilitate students’ attempts to critically engage them.

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Reading and understanding academic articles are critical parts of social science education. Academic articles help students’ learning in the following ways. First, they complement instructors’ lectures, sometimes by providing some redundancy and at other times by providing supplementary materials. Second, they promote critical thinking by tracing through scientific investigative processes, which students can evaluate. Third, they promote reading skills by helping students learn to read efficiently and productively.

Despite these benefits, students do not engage with their reading assignments effectively. Most students read at a level too cursory to reap the benefits I outline above, and their absorption of the material is minimal at best. However, instructors teaching classes larger than small seminars cannot devote significant time to reading and dissecting reading assignments in class, as such an endeavor would be both highly time consuming and have uncertain payoffs for students.

While I do not have data to support my intuition, I suspect that students’ engagement with reading assignments has fallen over the years. (There is certainly data that students spend less time on coursework than they used to.) One possible factor is instructors’ increasing reliance on digital forms of academic articles as opposed to printed and bound readers. The former makes it difficult for students to grab a pen, mark up readings and actively engage with the reading. Students are more likely to passively skim the readings on their computer, simply clicking or scrolling to turn the pages.

Technological tools have emerged and are emerging to address these deficiencies. Touch-screen-based tablet computers and e-readers, in conjunction with good software, can closely emulate the experience of reading printed articles with a pen and a highlighter. The affordability of these tools, however, is likely to be still too low for most students. A contrasting approach is taken by tools that transform reading into a more social experience. For example, NB (nb.mit.edu) allows users in a group to collaboratively mark up any PDFs uploaded. Students can mark up a reading by highlighting passages, posting questions or remarks linked to the mark-ups and respond to one another’s mark-ups, questions and remarks. The tool turns reading away from being a solitary endeavor to a collaborative one.

With the onslaught of information that students confront everyday, their attention span is likely getting shorter increasingly. Yet, the benefits that they would reap from actively engaging with academic articles remain high. This presents a compelling reason for instructors both to increase the attractiveness of reading academic articles and to facilitate students’ attempts to critically engage them.

Plan for Implementation

In the initial post, I explored the need for using collaborative reading as a way to facilitate students’ absorption of academic articles. In the follow-up post, I examined the learning outcomes that collaborative reading could produce and how any improvements in the outcomes could be linked to the use of the technology. In this post, I outline a plan for implementing collaborative reading via NB—an online tool enabling students to collaboratively mark up and annote PDF-based readings—in my two courses next semester (Spring 2013).

One course I will be teaching is Political Science 4193-705 “International Political Economy.” A particular challenge for this course is that it is a Global Residential Academic Program (GRAP) course, to be facilitated in a residence hall for 18 mostly freshman students. Although the freshman students will be in their second semester of college education, they will have had significantly less exposure to reading academic articles than upper-division students. This challenge, however, will also provide an opportunity to teach students how to read academic articles not simply to read collaboratively.

Despite the unconventional setting, composition and size of the course, the overarching aim of the course remains the same as other versions of the same course I teach—for students to understand and become knowledgeable about the political and economic causes and consequences of how the international economy functions. To achieve this goal, I will incorporate collaborative reading (through NB or other comparable technological solution) as one of pedagogical tools. Starting in the third week of the semester, I will assign one article a week for students to read collaboratively. Actively utilizing the collaborative reading system will be mandatory, and students will be required to make at least one comment and pose one question per assigned reading. Successfully completing this requirement will constitute 10% of their course grade. Instead of immediately jumping into complex academic articles, however, I will slowly ratchet up the difficulty of the reading. During weeks three, four and five, students will collaboratively read relatively short journalistic accounts about some international economic phenomena. This will get them used to using the tool and to exploiting the social and collaborative aspects of the technology. Then, during weeks six through ten, students will collaboratively read popular academic writings—for example, those contained in the journal _Foreign Affairs_. I will encourage students to identify authors’ central argument and evidence that they advance to support their argument. Lastly, during weeks eleven through fourteen, I will assign articles from top academic journals. By this point, students should be accustomed to collaborative reading and to looking for argument and evidence and thus ready to take on a more difficult task.

The other course I will be teaching is Political Science 7073, a graduate seminar on “Global Political Economy.” Although I have been piloting collaborative reading and developing plans for using it in the context of undergraduate courses, the technology can be usefully implemented in a graduate seminar. Running an effective graduate seminar poses a challenge in that faculty members usually do not know how much of the assigned readings students absorbed and what overlapping concerns, comments or questions students have about the readings and the topics for the week. Collaborative reading will facilitate everyone coming to class in agreement about what the agenda for discussion should be. A possible resistance for implementing the collaborative reading system at the graduate level might be that students have developed their own preferred way of reading, from which they are unwilling to deviate. To acclimate and persuade students of the utility of collaborative reading, I will start with minimal requirements during the early weeks—one comment and one question per reading—and slowly ratchet up the requirements throughout the semester.

Indicators of Success

In my previous post, I explored the need and value for exploring new models of facilitating students’ reading of academic articles. In this post, I examine some specific learning outcomes that we can pursue through collaborative reading.

The broad outcomes I strive for in incorporating collaborative reading into my class are greater breadth and the depth of students’ reading. I would like to see a higher number of students meaningfully engage the assigned academic readings and students engage the readings beyond the shallow level at which they typically do the assigned readings.

If collaborative reading in fact promotes these outcomes, I expect to see more students coming to class having done the reading and students coming to class prepared to engage in discussions and debates beyond the superficial main points of the reading assignments. I expect parallel outcomes in online venues as well. On both the NB collaborative reading system and course discussion forums on D2L course website, students who do not typically participate in class should be more likely to comment on and raise questions about the readings. Moreover, I expect the quality of students’ posted comments and questions to be higher than what they raise in the classroom. More formally, I anticipate that students will be better able to incorporate readings into their exam answers, because they will be more likely to have done the readings and to have understood them better.

An ideal research design would involved a randomized experiment. Students would be randomly divided into two different sections. In one of the two sections (the treatment section), students would utilize the collaborative reading system. In the other (the control section), students would do the assigned readings in the traditional manner—individually. Then I can compare the breadth of student participation in class discussions and compare the mean exam scores between the two sections.

In lieu of this ideal design, I can employ a research design that exploits over-time variation in each of my two sections. Prior to the midterm, students did not use the collaborative reading system because of the technical barriers of incorporating the system into their workflow. After the midterm, I provided an extra incentive to help students overcome the barrier and to begin using the collaborative reading systems. Although the nature of the material covered is substantially different between the two periods, I can attempt to crudely compare students’ engagement and performance.

The formal assessment tools are numerous:

Count of students actively participating in discussion in each class session
Count of students who do not participate in class but posting comments/questions on the collaborative reading system
Extensiveness of classroom and online discussions, where extensiveness is measured by back-and-forth exchanges among students on a topic
Quality of student responses on exam questions—students’ summary of readings should be more accurate and students should be able to refer to parts of the readings beyond the main point.

Reflection

As I argued at the beginning of the academic year, reading is an important part of social science education. However, most students typically do not read the assigned readings with the frequency, interest and depth necessary to provide the foundation for further learning in the classroom. There are certainly “low-tech” solutions, such as the the “poker chips in the classroom” that Will Moore implements. I have, however, pursued a different solution during this year, using a novel tool for collaborative reading called NB .

In short, NB allows users to collaboratively mark-up readings that instructors upload to the shared class space. While the discussion interface looks very similar to that of most online forums in existence, the innovation of the service is that students can highlight and annotate whatever parts of readings that they would like comment on. My goal in using this system was that by making reading more collaborative and social, students would engage more with assigned readings and come to class better prepared to participate in discussions.

After pilot-testing the service in my two undergraduate lectures during the fall 2012 semester, I fully incorporated the NB service as part of my undergraduate and graduate seminar during the spring 2013 semester. In this post, I discuss the successes and the lessons coming out of using the service in the undergraduate class.

The undergraduate class in which I implemented the NB service provided a challenging context. While the course and the substance—international political economy—were generally for upper-division students, I taught the class to a small group (18 students) of overwhelmingly first-year students. As part of a residential academic program (RAP), the class was taught in a special classroom in a dormitory that housed the program.

To specifically target the audience, I built up the difficulty of reading assignments throughout the semester. For the first seven weeks, I assigned a news article from the New York Times or the Economist each week. During weeks 8 through 12, I assigned popular academic/policy articles from Foreign Affairs . Lastly, in weeks 13 and 14, students read technical academic articles pertaining to the topic of the week. Students' usage of the NB service—indicated by their annotations on each reading—constituted 10 percent of their course grade.

Students generally enjoyed and appreciated using the NB service. 7 out of 12 respondents chose 4 or 5 on a five-point scale on the question of how much they enjoyed using the service, and 7 out of 8 respondents chose 4 or 5 on the question of how much they appreciated using the service. Providing a more convincing response on the usefulness of the service, 9 out of 12 respondents wanted their future instructors to use the service.

The overall effectiveness in the NB service facilitating students' understanding and absorption of the readings was inversely proportional to these levels of difficulty in the reading assignments. When asked about what types of articles students felt more confident about reading and understanding compared to the beginning of the semester, among 12 respondents, 10 students selected newspaper articles, 8 students selected policy articles and 5 students selected academic articles.1 6 out of 12 students either agreed (3) or strongly agreed (3) that the NB serviced increased their likelihood of doing the reading assignments, whereas 3 students disagreed. 5 out of 12 students either agreed (3) or strongly agreed (2) that the serviced helped them better understand the readings. 6 students neither agreed or disagreed, whereas one student disagreed. Although these numerical results do not indicate an overwhelming success, they do provide sufficiently positive effects to build on in my future classes.

Students' written feedback, however, indicate that I achieved some of the goals I sought to achieve. For example, one student wrote “I liked seeing everyone thoughts about the article. It allowed me to see it from a different perspective.” Similarly, another student commented “I was able to read the comments from others and see how they were reading and understanding the readings so it helped get my brain working in different ways.” Another student commented “Posting the questions and comments allowed me to understand the reading better and feel as though I was part of the discussion instead of just reading an article online and not being able to mark it up.” Not all written comments pointed to the effectiveness of the service, however: “I didn't really read my peer's comments.”

The written comments in the survey also pointed to areas for improvement, although some of the deficiencies are inherent to the technological tool itself. One student commented on the inability to physically take notes on the readings: “The NB system was an interesting tool, but I am better able to complete readings, especially those which are rather lengthy, when given hard copies which I can physically take notes on.” Despite the ubiquity of PDF-based readings, many students still prefer to print out articles to read and mark up. More generally, one student found reading on a computer screen difficult: “With the longer readings, the system maybe even decreased my understanding, due to my lack of concentration for reading things from a computer screen.”

One actionable area for improvement is increase interaction in the comments and questions. While some students responded to one another's questions and comments, most annotations on the readings were singletons, without any further comments following up on them. Although I intentionally chose to not participate in the discussions and annotations, at least one student thought it would be helpful if the instructor participated in the comments and replies. In my future classes utilizing the NB service, I will require students to respond to at least one comment or question in addition to raising their own.

______________________________

Note: Each student could choose multiple answers for this question.

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Screencasts for a Flipped Classroom by Jeffrey Knutsen

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Screencasts for a Flipped Classroom by Jeffrey Knutsen Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 07/07/2013 - 00:00

This post summarizes my continuing pursuit to move lectures from my classes into short screencasts and reading assignments. It was inspired by my participation in the Fall 2012 Teaching with Technology seminar series and has been an ongoing project since that time.

Teaching and Learning Challenge

In class, students are making calculations using new equations that I never once wrote on the board. After iterating and refining my approach I am finding that students are arriving in class with the intellectual tools needed to participate in conceptual discussions and solve example problems on their own in class. It’s been eye opening for me.

Instead of writing down equations and performing derivations, I spend class time focusing heavily on the discussion of concepts, facilitated in large part by clicker questions and student-worked example problems. Students spend their time before class watching screencasts, reading the material, and performing rudimentary calculations using equations that are central to that day’s discussion. I incentivize them in two ways: 1. I try to make each class heavily modular, with very specific instructions on which screencasts to watch, which book sections to skip, which sections to skim, and which sections to focus on and aim for a thorough understanding. 2. I assign online reading quizzes that are long-answer and conceptual in nature.

Screencasts: What and Why

Screencasts are short 5-7 minute videos that record the screen of a tablet computer along with audio commentary. An instructor typically uses them to introduce material, formally describe complex derivations, and work example problems that are more sophisticated than ones that can be effectively solved during a class period.

One of my primary motivations for this project is feedback from students who suggest that I somehow knit the conceptual nature of class time with the problem solving skills needed for the homework assignments and exams. In this regard I’ve found that screencasts are very favorably received. At the end of the Fall 2012 semester I gathered some direct quotes from students, using a survey administered on D2L:

“Having the problem on the screen and the instructor making annotations and arrows as well as writing out equations was extremely helpful in understanding the concepts. The screencasts to me were an extension of lecture, where Professor Knutsen was able to more thoroughly explain and go through a more complex problem. Also, the screencasts were a complement to the textbook, it gave me more practice and further understanding of the concepts I read about in the chapters.”

“I like clicker questions during lecture and screencasts outside of class. Screencasts are a way to go through more in-depth problems at my own pace outside of lecture. Whenever lengthy problems are presented during lecture I tend to get lost and lose attention whereas, if they're presented in screencasts, I can work through them at my own pace.”

“I really liked how the professor could slowly work through a problem step by step in a way that class time just can't afford to do.”

“I like the screencasts for its flexibility, because we can watch whenever and wherever we want.”

“I really like everything about screencasts because they really help me learn how to actually do the calculations to solve a problem. I like the problems that are similar to the homework so that I can watch the screencast and get help solving the similar homework & exam problems. I feel like example problems are what is missing in lectures, but the screencasts make up for that and I think that is perfect because then lectures can be conceptual based. Screencasts are a better solution than working out examples in class because I can do them on my own time and pace rather than following along in class.”

“I like how they can contain a lot of detail while solving a lengthy example problem. These lengthy problems can be tedious in class, but the screencasts help provide the numerical details that are needed to solve the problems. The problems are no longer tedious when I can watch them on my own time, because I can also pause and rewind if I miss something.”

“In class, our professor can't cover all the steps of complicated problem simply due to time constraints. With screencasts, he can go over all the nitty-gritty details that need explaining but would use up too much class time. They have been essential in my understanding of the material.”

This brief screencast also describes some of the benefits of using them:
Why Prepare Screencasts? (YouTube video)

Reading Quizzes

Various types of reading quizzes can be developed in classroom management software such as D2L. Although they take more time to grade, I am a fan of long-answer conceptual questions, such as:

“Describe a fluid to me. How is it different from a solid? List a few examples of fluid mechanics in everyday life.”
“What is your understanding of a shear stress? How is it similar to pressure, and how is it different?”
“Describe to me a velocity gradient (some people also call it a shear rate).”
“A flat, 10 cm by 10 cm square plate slides over another flat plate, separated by a film of fluid that is 1 mm thick. The viscosity of the fluid is 10 Pa-s. The velocity profile of the fluid is linear. What force (in Newtons) is required to move the upper plate at a speed of 10 cm/s? You don't have to, but typing some work will help justify partial credit.”

I assigned these questions prior to the first day of class. Question 1 provided a great deal of material to foster a discussion on why engineers might want to learn fluid mechanics. Questions 2-3 required students to re-assimilate what they just read. Question 4 is a relatively simple calculation, but one that definitely required some conceptual understanding of the material. What I found remarkable was that the wide majority of students correctly solved Question 4 before we even met for the first time. It suddenly became clear to me that I did not need to “cover” things in class to ensure that students learned it. They were learning this stuff on their own.

Reflection

Incentivizing students to actually watch the screencasts and accompanying reading assignment can be time consuming, especially for 50 minute class periods, which meet 40+ times each semester. It does require preparation several days in advance (barring this need, I often prepare my classes less than two hours prior).

To make this strategy work, consistency is very important. I’ve found that at the beginning of the semester I’ll prepare reading quizzes and assignments for each day of class. However, as the semester progresses, my quiz writing and assignments become more intermittent, and students don’t know what to expect. They then view reading quizzes as a surprise chore that could hurt their grade instead of a useful tool.

The following are some suggestions from students:

“Sometimes the screencasts went too fast and I could not keep up. Luckily I can pause them quickly, so that really isn't that much of an issue. However, because of the speed, I could not understand the problem statement and I would get really confused. I think the beginning of some screencasts should be slowed down and be a little more descriptive on what is going on to start it off.”

“[Screencasts] should have been more promoted. I did not know them until the end and I really regret not seeing them before.”

“Unlike in lecture, a screencast cannot answer questions on the spot. By the time I might get to the professor, I will likely have forgotten my question or found more pressing things to ask.”

“I didn't like the fact that they were the only real example problems worked out for us. So, I felt as if we were required to watch them to have any idea how to work problems similar to homework and exams.”

“Knowing that there are screencasts available makes me lose focus in class because I know I can always just go back and watch a screencast.”

I consider this the last comment a success. By providing students the means to revisit concepts after class with a fresh perspective, I have made their lives easier.

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Using Synchronized Video Feedback by David Rickels

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Jul 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Using Synchronized Video Feedback by David Rickels Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/05/2013 - 00:00

Teaching and Learning Challenge

In the education of preservice teachers, there are two generally agreed-upon main objectives: (1) developing the candidates' ability to engage in self-directed reflection, and (2) developing the candidates' adoption of pedagogically appropriate behaviors. The first goal is typically addressed through giving students frequent structured opportunities to assess their own work, usually through written self-critique and goal-setting. The second goal is typically addressed through a plethora of classes that attempt to convey teaching "methods" rooted in specific content areas, but this is problematic. Teacher educators must ensure that preservice teachers actually adopt the methods conveyed by these courses by not only providing structured experiences to apply the desired behaviors, but also by providing quality feedback to the candidates that will shape their continued development.

Methods

The idea of "methods" courses in teacher education goes back to the roots of the normal school movement in the 19th century. Practicum experiences have also been associated with these methods classes, where preservice teachers have a sheltered opportunity to practice the teaching behaviors learned from their methods classes in an authentic school setting. The separated nature of the relationship between higher education and K-12 schools makes the quantity and depth of these practicum experiences very limited, however, and it is not clear that these experiences always have an impact on adoption of the desired methodological behaviors. Working with mentors from the K-12 environment also confounds the developmental trajectory, as these mentors may not always model the methods from the content of teacher education courses. Indeed, research in the past several decades has repeatedly shown that early career teachers have a high propensity to revert to methods rooted in the way they themselves were taught, rather than utilizing the methods they were taught to use as teachers.

Mere delivery of the methodological content, even with practical opportunities to apply that content, does not guarantee that preservice teachers will utilize the desired behaviors in their own teaching. A more robust system of communication and feedback is needed to allow the teacher educator to guide the preservice teacher in demonstrating these learned methods and teacher behaviors. Traditional feedback models rely on one-on-one verbal or written exchanges, typically occurring immediately or soon after a candidate executes a practice lesson in a course or practicum environment. These modes are limited because the written and verbal comments may not penetrate the layers of meaning that the candidates have constructed from the actual experience of that practice lesson. An examination of feedback modes is compelling now because technology currently affords teacher educators more options for feedback than simply these verbal and written formats. Teacher educators could use technology to engage the preservice teacher through mixed media that includes video, audio, pictures, text, and graphical markings. These elements can be combined in a synchronous delivery that increases the immediacy and authenticity of the feedback when consumed by the candidate.

Implications

The implications of this problem are evident: if the behaviors of preservice teachers are not impacted in some measurable way by the large number of courses and practicum experiences required of them, then the entire exercise becomes futile. Teacher educators must find ways to not only assess the learned behaviors of preservice teachers, but also to communicate that assessment through means that have an effect on future behavior.

Video Presentation

The video linked below contains a summary of the background, methodology, and results of a project examining a novel approach to delivering feedback to students in a preservice teacher education course.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfI-43w1JAI]

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Online Learning Environments by John Crimaldi

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Online Learning Environments by John Crimaldi Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/01/2013 - 00:00

The use of online course-management platforms and interactive learning environments is gaining traction at many Universities, but the use of these systems is certainly far from the norm. In this document, I discuss possible barriers to successful implementation of these systems for technical courses in engineering and science disciplines.

Objectives

1) Enhance learning through peer-to-peer learning and communication

An effective learning environment will facilitate peer-to-peer communications between students. Students can ask, answer, and discuss questions related to lecture, readings, concepts, and problems. The use of a social-media type interface for this purpose is advantageous in the sense that most students are already familiar and comfortable with it. In addition to asking and answering questions, students can provide feedback about the quality of previous answers, resulting in a dynamic environment. The environment can have the additional advantage of encouraging students to work in a collaborative mode.

2) Facilitate student-faculty communication outside of lecture

An effective learning environment will also enhance the instructor’s capabilities to respond to student questions in an interactive manner. This can supplement the interactions that take place in traditional office hours.

To achieve these two objectives for a technical course, however, requires attention to the special languages that are used for communicating in technical environments.

Three Languages for Technical Communication

1) Words (the spoken or written text language)

For many students, this is the most natural way of communicating, and it can be effective in many situations. However, it can be extremely limiting for many types of technical descriptions, which is why it is only one of three “languages” that we use.

2) Pictures (the language of illustration)

The mantra “a picture is worth a thousand words” is especially true in technical fields. Pictures can show the geometric configuration of a physical object, easily conveying spatial relationships. Graphs and other technical plots are special types of pictures that can (when properly prepared) serve to effectively demonstrate the relationship between a range of variables in a problem.

3) Equations (the language of mathematics)

Many complex ideas and relationships in technical fields are best described in the language of mathematics. This is a rich language, with well-understood conventions and nomenclature that transcends individual disciplines.

I teach my students that almost all forms of technical communication can be enhanced by the synergistic use of more than one of these “languages”, and that many situations call for the use of all three.

Plan for Implementation

Each of the aforementioned objectives for adopting an online learning environment involve strategies for enhancing communication. However, technical communication involves multiple “languages”, including words, pictures, and equations. The words part is easy: all online systems (e.g. email, web pages, social media) are developed with a text requirement as a fundamental feature. For many types of communication, the use of words alone is satisfactory. But for technical disciplines, effective communication often requires the use of pictures and equations in addition to words, and this is where many online systems fall short. An ideal platform will not only support the transmission of image and equation data, but it will support their native creation. Users should be able to make a quick sketch using a built-in feature of the application, and they should be able to quickly type an equation using standardized conventions. And then a user should be able to quickly annotate a picture or equation sent by another user.

With regards to implementing a solution for incorporating equations into online content:

There have been many piecemeal approaches to typesetting equations in word processors, html, and the like; most approaches are unsatisfactory. The one method for typesetting equations that has begun to approach a standard is LaTeX. LaTeX is a document markup language for the TeX typsetting program. Equations are typeset using a text-based series of commands. There is a relatively small learning curve, but the quality of the output is superb (see Fig. 2, prepared with LaTeX).

LaTeX commands can be incorporated into an online learning environment. Any text that is typed between a special set of markers (typically dollar signs, e.g., $a+b=c$) is interpreted by the system as a LaTeX command and displayed as a typeset equation. I am aware of one online learning environment called Piazza that has taken this approach. I plan to test this environment in the next academic year with a large (120 student) undergraduate class in fluid mechanics.

Conclusion

The goal of the test will be to see if the environment can accomplish the stated objectives (enhance student-to-student communications and faculty-to-student communications, both in interactive settings), while permitting users to communicate in all three of the standard “languages” (words, picture, and equations) used in technical communications

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Great ASSETT Tools

1) Places

2) Syllabus Archive

3) Optical Character Recognition Service

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How to Understand Your Degree Audit

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Holly Gayley: Teaching Religion through Digital Storytelling

Survey One: Media & Technology in the Classroom

Digital Storytelling & Ritual Analysis

Survey Two: Final Project – the Documentary Short

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Preparations for Teaching Online by Kathleen Ryan

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Video Coaching in Rural Teacher Preparation by John Hoover

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Petger Schaberg: Using Technology to Teach Multimodal Persuasive Writing

Identify Challenge

Change Over Time

Description of Factors that Make it Compelling Now

Implications for not Changing

Poster Design and Written Analysis in First-Year Writing & Rhetoric

Learning Evnironment:

Purpose:

Technology & Method:

Specific Technologies:

How will you know if your students have achieved the intended outcome?

How will you know if the changes you made in your teaching made a difference?

How will you identify/measure growth in your students or in your teaching?

What worked well?

What did not work well?

What would I do differently in future implementations?

What feedback did I get from students?

Curator’s StatementPoster Propaganda & Persuasion

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Moonhawk Kim: Collaborative Reading of Academic Articles

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Screencasts for a Flipped Classroom by Jeffrey Knutsen

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Using Synchronized Video Feedback by David Rickels

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Online Learning Environments by John Crimaldi

1) Enhance learning through peer-to-peer learning and communication

2) Facilitate student-faculty communication outside of lecture

1) Words (the spoken or written text language)

2) Pictures (the language of illustration)

3) Equations (the language of mathematics)

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Curator’s Statement
Poster Propaganda & Persuasion