Jared Stein – Education, Technology, Culture, and the Internet

It’s not news that teaching an online course does not necessarily mean less work for the instructor–just different work. At least it should. Nor does it necessarily mean more work. We’ll get to that. In my mind, online courses are a challenge primarily because they front load course preparation, but often with additional resource expenditure to ensure engaging learning design. Faculty may suggest that teaching an online course is itself more work, too, but I don’t believe that’s typically the case (more…)

…and kicks off with a bangin’ new promo:

A nice homage to Apple--clearly one of Instructure’s design inspirations.

If you didn’t pick it up in the video, this release coincides with Instructure’s announcement that they’ve just opened their source code under the AGPLv3 license.

We just selected Canvas as our State’s LMS here in Utah, and this news only reinforces my opinion that the guys at Instructure are looking a lot farther ahead than anyone else in the LMS business. This isn’t to take any credit away from Moodle, which will always have a special place in my open source heart, but, well, if you haven’t tested Canvas--from either a “traditional” LMS or un-LMS perspective--it’s pretty easy to hop in and give it a test drive.

And now my Canvas package download is done. Expect some installation notes later on.

Instructure Canvas allows teachers to record video from a web cam directly into course pages, discussion posts or even as assignment feedback. It occurred to me that I can easily record my desktop activity instead of my web cam using a similar set-up to what I’ve used to live-stream conference presentations. A 3rd-party desktop app allows you to delineate video sources in place of the web cam, including the user’s desktop. While I still use the commercial software WebcamMax, this time I tested a free software called ManyCam (more…)

I’ve got to take a minute to plug the software WebCamMax ($50), which lets you alter your (Windows) computer’s webcam input. I used it this week to facilitate quality, DIY streaming and recording of two WCET09 presentations using a laptop (with distinct graphics card), a lavalier mic ($50-$500) and Ustream (free). Here’s how it worked (more…)

Mike Caufield asked that I put up a screencast on the OpenShare mod for Moodle. Here’s one that comes in just under 8 minutes–shorter even than my hatcheted and curtailed preso at MoodleMoot ’08 SFO (more…)

Chris Lott, commenting on his institution’s acquisition of Elluminate video-conferencing platform as a teaching tool concludes,

The real issue with any of these tools isn’t finding one that works, it is learning– and then teaching colleagues– how to teach in a way that takes advantage of the capabilities and doesn’t merely replicate the lecture mode in a distributed format. That’s deadly. As I always say, the only thing more deadly than the PowerPoint drone and lecture model is that same model through a mediating tool like Elluminate…About Elluminate

I agree that when video-conferencing avoiding replication of ineffective lecture modes is important; however, always the devil’s advocate (well, at least 50% of the time), have to ask, first, if this is a blanket condemnation of the lecture mode regardless of delivery method, or if the technology itself interferes with, disturbs, or detracts from the traditional lecture (which may in a classroom actually be effective).

I’m guessing most folks in educational technology or instructional design lament the continued use of straight lecture format (“sage on the stage”) regardless of delivery environment, but I, having been a student in more than a handful of damn good and several quite memorable lectures (from which I still retain a significant amount of information), causing me to assert that straight lecture is not de facto a bad thing.

At this point I have absolutely no empirical evidence that suggests straight lecture is or can be highly effective, but now (from this small comment tacked onto the end of a technology tool review, no less) I’m inspired to look into it. Comparitively speaking how effective is lecture for learning? What makes lecture more or less effective? There has to be a good deal of research on this already. (Any recommendations on salient books/articles are now being accepted!)

I can name some ailments of lectures delivered via video conferencing that I have witnessed. In both edtech informational sessions and in vendor presentations delivered via video conferencing, presenters do tend to follow a simple, generic pattern (much informed by PowerPoint) which centers on providing text-and-talk-heavy information in tedious spurts with brief pauses for “questions” (which, in and of themselves, often occur too late or at moments so ill-planned moments that they actually increase the presentations/presenter’s anesthetizing qualities). Any questions posed rarely lead to real dialogue or discussion; rather, questions are merely a challenge that the presenter must overcome before being allowed to continue with his/her script.

And though these ailments can certainly be present in a live, in-person classroom-style lecture or presentation, my instinct tells me that there’s something about phsyical human presence that either reinforces the delivery of the information, or provides for better audience attention through either overt or more subtle person-to-person engagement.

The next question, then, would be how does technology deliver methods affect the effectiveness of lecture? Video conferencing in particular should be examined, though of course some common attributes will need to be agreed upon so as to include a live fiber-optic system like we have at UVSC, or an Internet-delivered system like Elluminate.

I would hypothesize that a boring lecture in the classroom becomes worse when video-delivered, either because it becomes (a) less interesting for lack of physical presence (for whatever reason…engagement?), or (b) less compelling to one’s attention when technology-delivered (possibly because of the presence or availability of more distractors, or because of the absence of social pressure to show interest/passively participate).

It would be interesting to brainstorm presentation effectiveness on tech-delivered platforms with some ed researchers and public speaking experts. How does one leverage the live delivery method so that the end results are superior to static information delivery? How does one construct information to affect better learning? How does one engage with the audience and make an impact that may stimulate memory a la the affective factor?