Many of you know I’m one of the people behind the Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange, commonly known as TTIX.
Registration for TTIX 2010 has just opened, so visit the site now and sign up for free. The conference runs June 10 & 11 in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is a great little city in a beautiful environment.
Hope to see you there!
Chris Lott captured most of my thoughts and feelings about the Personal Learning Environments All-Day Workshop that we conducted with Scott Leslie, however I wanted to reciprocate to my co-presenters and the participants by posting a few comments and observations (more…)
I’ve been itching to write a post on “edupunk” since Jim Groom first added the term to our edtech lexicon. The term “edupunk” is both provocative and deeper than it seems, and so it deserves the benefit of a close analysis. My problems with “edupunk” have been:
There might be other reasons for my distaste. I may be taking the term in an altogether too personal context, for as a youth I was pretty active in the punk music scene, but I wasn’t ever on the inside of punk. You see, my friends who were into the cookie-cutter punk politico dug a lot of my libertarian ideals, but didn’t understand my capitalism, and my Brave New World “elitist” interpretation that conservative/traditionalism is served by (if not necessitates) punk-type counter-culture just as punk-type counter-culture is served by conservative/traditionalism. Even if we had a utopia (by anybody’s definition), we would always need an other, and some other’s are more harmless than others. Also, punk itself is not so punk as it would like to think it is–as I suggested, it’s often cookie-cutter, it’s often whiny or anti-corporate, and not because of strong ideals as much as it is because of failure or missed opportunities to exploit the corporate system for it’s own benefit. Most “punk” bands will “sell-out” if they get the chance. Sell-outs are sell-outs, and “true punk” treats them as such, maintaining a superficial fraternity with the black-white-black-sheep punk bands through artificial sub-labels like “pop punk”.
It may be that some edtech’ers feel the same way about educators who toe the corporate line, and thus find “edupunk” a great metaphor for their societal angst. While I have plenty of of my own societal angst, it rarely fits under any the de facto “edupunk” political posturing. At the same time, I’ve found that I can sit down with edtech’ers on the other side of the political fence and agree a lot on issues of educational strategies and philosophies for technological adoption, which makes Ken Carroll’s suggestion the more useful and bridge-building: “I would not recommend that we politicize learning 2.0″. Let politics stump us when it can; I’m here to make teaching and learning better and easier.
But at the same time, the DIY, question-authority aspect of edupunk is not only attractive to me, it resonates with my daily activities–to an extent. Martin Weller nailed the middle path (my emphasis):
it’s not about being an edupunk, but rather preserving some area of what you do where you can do edupunk kinda stuff … universities and educators need to have edupunk time – a period when you can explore stuff away from the mass of concerns that arise.
Martin suggests 10% of your day for edupunk time, i.e. innovation, experimentation, DIY, whatever. I wouldn’t do it for less than 33.33333%.
In Jennifer Jones‘s latest post My DIY Publishing Roots she relates the very impressive story from her childhood of her mother authoring a piano book for children, adding that her father, too, was very much a DIY-er. My parents were the same way, from home-made clothing to fruit and vegetable gardening, car repairs (my psychologist father even painted our cars in the old barn), house repairs, summer Olympic games for my brother and me, hand-drawn comic books, etc. It just came back to me that my father even made our living room furniture while he was doing his PhD practicum; while he was doing all that wood cutting he fashioned a huge set of Lincoln logs for us kids! And, no, we weren’t hippies living in a commune.
I know this very active practice rubbed off on me, from my willingness to do car repairs, to the palpable responsibility of doing house fixes myself, to doing any sort of grunt tasks on all sorts of projects at work. But I worked on the most memorable DIY projects as an undergrad in college: a self-published collection of poetry by amateur writers from my region in Utah. The project took about a year, but I ended up with an amusing collection of poems with audio recordings featuring the writers themselves that I called “Speak Black Spots”.
As I reflect on this project, my thoughts steer me to consider my motivations for DIY–with things like car repairs and house work I admit it’s largely been a matter of finance; with other things my DIY attitude is often born of a “If you want something done right…” mentality–execution of ideas, to me, is sometimes too precious to hand off to someone else; with “Speak Black Spots” my motivation may have been altogether different: I believed that what I wanted to do had no place in the traditional publishing outlets, and DIY would let me provide freedom of expression, creative control over the product, and immediacy. At the time I thought I was very punk, in fact too punk for punk. The end result was nothing famous or exemplary, but looking back at the last decade I realize this project predicted the attraction and power that self-publishing on the Web would hold for me.
So this all goes far afield of Jennifer’s questions (the most important one, I think, “If we speak and don’t do, who will?”), so let me refocus on the idea that DIY happens for good reasons, one of those being because the institutions or traditional processes don’t always serve the users. I think the sluggishness and bureaucracy of these institutions is born of cautiousness and self-protection–arguably acceptable reasoning when taxpayer/investor dollars and learning outcomes are at stake (this is essentially the conservative point of view which reacts against what may appear to be knee-jerk demands for “change”), but this reality also ensures that there will always be a place for–no, a need for DIY.
After a year-long developer famine, we now have a new Web developer who is assisting us on revivifying the Moodle Open MetaMod project as part of his duties.
In a nutshell: the primary goal of the mod is to allow individual resources OR activities within a Moodle course to be “open” to either non-authenticated visitors or a custom role called “Open User”. There are a number of secondary goals related to intellectual property metadata (e.g. Creative Commons). Much of the information posted here is based on the “official” Open MetaMod page at our Meta Web site.
Users interested in testing the latest released beta version of the Open MetaMod may download the following ZIP file:
Note that this version of the mod works only on Moodle 1.8x installations on mySQL. A PostgreSQL version is forthcoming. Additionally, unlike previous versions, this version of the mod does not have an installer, and files must be modified manually. In short: use at your own risk!
Open MetaMod is a modification for the Moodle learning management system that provides instructors and designers with the ability to mark individual Resources or Activities within a Moodle course as “private” (only visible for registered students) or “shared” (allowing anonymous guest viewing).
A new third option for Moodle Activities, “open”, allows registered non-student users to interact with the class in Moodle activities. This is different from “shared”, as it allows authenticated users on the Moodle system who are not officially registered for the course to interact with students and instructors on the discussion board, take quizzes, complete activities, contribute to wikis, etc.
Instructors and designers can mark resources or activities as “Copyright cleared/Creative Commons” and as “shared” either individually through the normal course module/block interface, or en masse through the Open Settings in the Administration block. All Creative Commons license types are supported in the latest version of the Open MetaMod
Note: The default tag of all resources and activities is copyrighted. This is done intentionally to inhibit the accidental sharing of copyrighted course materials.
Note: Changing the copyright status of a resource marked as “shared” from “CC” to “C” will automatically disable the shared status.
Tagging and marking individual resources seems pretty onerous, right? Well, this is purposefully the case so that instructors/designers are forced to consider the copyright status of each and every resources or activity.
However, we’ve also accomodated the need to tag and mark multiple resources and activities simultaneously with the OCW Settings link, found in the Administration block.
This indicates that a resources or activity is protected by copyright law, and should not be made available to the general public. For one’s own protection, one might best assume that all resources or activities are de facto copyrighted<./dd>
This refers generally to the idea that a particular resources is legally eligible to be made available to the general public. Ensuring the Copyright Cleared or Creative Commons license status of a resource and activity is solely the responsibility of the instructor or course designer. Indicates that a resource or activity should only be available to registered Moodle users who are also enrolled in the course. Indicates that a resource or activity should be viewable to both registered Moodle users who are also enrolled in the course as well as anonymous Moodle guests. Indicates that an activity should be fully accessible to registered Moodle users regardless of whether or not they are officially enrolled in the course. If a course allows “Guest access”, anonymous Moodle guests may view but not interact with “open” activities. Note: This feature is not available in the current version of the Open MetaMod for Moodle.John Krutsch posed the following 8 questions to instructional designers/technologists on his Technagogy blog; here are my responses:
In the mode of an instructional designer I either work with instructors directly or I work independently.
When I am working with instructors, I am probing and listening. We are discussing their teaching objectives, their mode of instruction, their activities, and their assessments. I am trying to gauge their teaching philosophy, and looking for ways to replicate their teaching activities in a technology-enhanced or online environment without abusing or neglecting the realities of that environment. While I believe that online teaching should be fundamentally different than traditional classroom teaching, that belief can not be forced upon traditional classroom instructors in it’s totality.
When I am working independently as an instructional designer, I focus on the student experience. I match desired outcomes to available tools and technologies, avoiding any significant negative impacts on usability, accessibility, or facility. Then I prototype activities, materials, assessments for one lesson and test. I reflect, considering the student’s perspective regarding the usability of the tools, courseware, and environment. I attend to completeness and clarity of the instructions, the materials, the activities, the assessments through revision. I imagine the course from the point of view of an hour, a day, a week, a semester. Then, having spent as much time as is reasonable on the first draft, when I am satisfied with a prototype, and when I am assured of the instructor’s satisfaction, I call on one or more of our student developers to assist me in replicating it to complete the course.
In the role of instructional techologist I focus on rapid development of educational tools that are usable and enhance the teaching/learning experience. To this end I try to focus on the creation of new tools or modification of existing tools that can amplify a pedagogical principle or provide improved facility. By principle I mean an aspect of one’s teaching philosophy or the actualization of a teaching objective/learning outcome. By facility I mean simply the ability and the process: how we make this happen, and in the easiest possible way for both instructor and learner?
I am enthusiastic about technology, I believe in the power of learning, I am committed to improving teaching, and I want to make education accessible to folks who are at geographical or temporal disadvantages. My profession in distance education fits.
And while “distance education” is morphing from it’s roots as primarily an “independent study” mode to one that is more centered on the idea of a “classroom community” I have, in my own life, benefited from and enjoyed independent study, and believe that the relatively small niche of learners who thrive and can excel in independent study modes of learning are important and worthy of the support of our educational institutions.
I began as a student Web developer and technical writer for FACT at Utah State University in 1997, where I converted paper-based independent study course to a relatively new mode of delivery: The World Wide Web.
I then moved up to a position with Distance Education program in 1999, working with faculty in the department of Special Education to develop technology for and produce live, 2-way audio/video, Internet-delivered distance education courses with online course supplements.
After completing my Masters degree and spending some time abroad teaching, I returned to instructional technology as an instructional designer for Distance Education at Utah Valley State College in 2002. Since that time, I have created UVSC’s Technology Enhanced Teaching Center, created dozens of new online courses, and been promoted to Director of the Instructional Design Services unit, where I oversee all aspects of Distance Education course production and educational technology development.
One aspect that still surprises me is faculty and student preconceptions of distance education. Instructors still want to believe distance education is only independent study and it doesn’t deserve the same attention, committment, and rigor as their on-campus classes; students still want to believe that distance education is self-paced and, unfortunately, easier or less rigorous.
But, in general, the most positive surprise has been to witness how effective distance education can be when Done Right. With a committed instructor, sound technology choices, and some sense of adventure in the students, a fully online course can be as productive, as effective, and more engaging and fulfilling than a traditional face-to-face course.
This would have to be the persistence of ignorant or just plain negative attitudes amongst some instructors and administrators toward distance education. This is not just prevelant in the handful of distance education naysayers, but also present in some of the distance education instructors, who, as I mentioned above, still maintain wrong perceptions or inadequate committment to their distance education courses and students. There are plenty of motivated, interactive, and engaging instructors involved in distance education, but I am still discouraged in the numbers of underprepared, undercommitted, or underenthused instructors as well.
I wouldn’t change much about my job, though I would happily take advantage of additional human resources. In higher education, and in educational technology particularly, even if one has open positions (which itself is a rarity), skilled educational technologists, seasoned instructional designers, and creative multimedia producers are hard to find and harder to hold on to. I am lucky to have a handful of exceptional professionals working with me, but too often I notice that we don’t have enough resources to keep up with our ideas, the changing face of technology, and the needs of students and instructors.
Making education…
Looking ahead to conferences in 2008, I’m already planning on attending ITC’s elearning conference in Florida in February as a pure particpant/observer. And of course I’ll be co-hosting and probably presenting at our Teaching w/ Technology Idea Exchange in June. There are a few other conferences that I’m interested in presenting at:
I think more than anything I simply need to motivate myself to come up with a good presentation and submit by said proposal due date(s). If needs be, I can use a vague title and determine the specific content as the months pass. I also am considering collaborating with colleagues on a presentation, though I myself often disdain presentations with multiple and unnecessary “support” presenters.
Which leads me to consider the fact that attending a conference can be quite different depending on whether I go by myself or with comrades. I’m a loner by nature, so the solo experience is wonderful in that I tend to learn a lot and reinforce my internal motivation to strive for excellence. I also tend to explore ideas fairly broadly. And I’m always concerned with the bang-for-buck factor of conferences, and so going by myself means the department has more money to spread around at the other conferences.
When I’m with colleagues or comrades, however, the experience is substantiated by the affective factor, and my exploration of ideas tends to be deeper as we discuss possibilities and scenarios together. We also seem to develop a stronger team relationship, and return from such conferences more socially engaged, which is, of course, a natural agent for productivity and innovation in the workplace.
Regardless, I’ll sure to be practicing my own peculiar style of session attendance, which has gained the dubious label of “The Jared Method” by Mr. Hugentobler, where I pop into one session, grab the printed materials, listen to the opening lines as I scan the materials to evaluate the session, then (often) pop out to investigate another session in like manner. If colleagues are involved I can often verify or correct my first impression of the session later in the day.
(Originally posted on our Distance Ed unit’s IDS ‘blog.)
I and several folks on our team are currently in what our sister-in-arms Janel would rightly call “crisis mode” for a certain online course we’re producing. We have been for the past 10 weeks. It’s not a comfortable place to be, and much of the additional stress is my responsibility–in part through miscalculating the length of the project’s development cycles, and in part by acquiescing to the instructors’ wishes for an “on-time” delivery. However, now I’m beginning to reflect on the course of this project, and in fielding a number of complaints throughout the process I have returned to an article I read some years ago on rapid prototyping in instructional design:
Tripp, S. D., & Bichelmeyer, B. (1990). Rapid protoyping: An alternative instructional design strategy. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 38(1), 31-44.
(You can read a summary of the Tripp Bichelmeyer article here.)
The number-one complaint I’ve heard from folks on the team (myself included!) is that the scope of the project is not clear, and both the instructor and the instructional designer (me) are asking for changes to the tools and the learning media “mid-stream”–that is, as the students progress. But when I analyze those complaints, they lose a lot of their legitimacy.
Unlike other types of design, instructional design has as its highest priority the effectiveness and usability of the learning media for the outcome of learning. What instructional designers deliver to learners is not a product, but an experience. Unlike other media, effective learning media does not entertain, it engages. Technology-facilitated learning media has the potential of providing maximum return for minimal effort. And yet it is still a fairly a new “art”. Though there are principles and best practices, and though instructional designers likely know more about learning and cognition than ever before, there are no easy formulas for designing instruction, and no instructional design will “fit” all instructors, let alone all learners.
Instructional designers design and produce learning media with the assistance of skilled human resources, such as programmers, graphic designers, videographers, etc. In order to provide the optimum learning experience, instructional designers must evaluate the learning media for usability and effectiveness continually, and as early as possible, with the option of immediately revising, rewriting, recreating, or adding to the learning media in a cyclic pattern. As one cycle proves effective and usable, the next cycle begins, based upon the best-practices of the previous, and so on.
Even as the learning media goes into production, instructors should receive formative feedback from learners in each lesson. Formative feedback provides instructors with information as to whether or the not the students are learning, how efficient that learning is, and whether or not the tools that facilitate the learning are frustrating and over-encumbering. When a learner is over-encumbered by extraneous tasks, such as manipulating the technology, learning is inhibited, if not impossible. Such encumbrances must be eliminated as they are discovered.
Scope, therefore, is something that is only recognizably accurate in hindsight for an instructional designer. Scope is a forecast, not a definition.
This idea of instructional design through rapid prototyping may be most necessary when the learning outcomes are skills-based. If you remove the severe time constraints that we’ve been on, this online course is a perfect example of effective instructional design through rapid prototyping. It is also a perfect example of how it is nearly impossible to define scope all at once; the learners have four skills that they must develop, and each skill is dramatically different in how it’s learned and how it’s practiced. Not only that, but as the learners progress through the course, the learning outcomes change, their needs change, and the tools that will best facilitate their skills must also change.
Is there a point at which an instructional design is complete? Not necessarily. Sometimes we finish a project when we’ve shown that we’ve met our learning objectives, sometimes the conclusion is based on more arbitrary factors. Budget, time, personality conflicts—all of these are capable of providing sufficient justification for the conclusion of any given project. But the point is that we are open, we are zen in the way we accept change, we are focused on the learners their experiences, and we base our success on effectiveness more than efficiency.
And though we in Distance Education pride ourselves in outwitting the limitations of time and space, efficiency must still be a principle concern to any director and any project manager. At the same time the process of rapid prototyping and a focus on the learner’s experience will help us take learning media from bad to better to best. I don’t think the two are necessarily at odds; by practicing the process we can only learn from experience, and our results can surely become better, faster and more efficient. The pay-off is clear; it’s merely the mind-sets that are muddled.
