Monthly Archives: May 2012

Options for Large Scale Professional Development

Today, I’m presenting at the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists’ Curriculum Council.

I’ve been asked to share possibilities for running a NAD-wide Professional Development Day. That would include some 1000 schools connecting in, and over 6000 teachers.

We’re exploring these concepts and models:

  • The 123 VC: Jazzing Up Your Curriculum with Videoconferencing model
  • The broadcast model supported by Web 2.0
  • Lessons from Personal Learning Networks
  • Michigan LearnPort
  • Global Education Conference
  • Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Download the Division Wide PD Day.

Moving Intersubjectivity from Margin to Mainstream in Threaded Discussions

Live blogging the last session at USDLA2012

Moving Intersubjectivity from Margin to Mainstream in Threaded Discussions
Presenter: Dr. Barbara Hall, Instructional Consulting Group

Getting Started

Barb is passionate about the quality of threaded discussions – and is on a mission to help us all understand intersubjectivity.

She believes that when we say we want more interaction, we really mean that we want more intersubjectivity.

We had an interesting side conversation about courses that are built around discussion, and courses where the discussion is a small piece of the course. This is an area that I’d like to think about further…

She had a great slide with a stack of research about the lack of quality in discussion… My question though is about the differences in the type of knowledge being learned – i.e. undergraduate chemistry vs. a graduate level education course… some knowledge is better suited to socially constructed knowledge?

We got into another great side conversation on questions that ask for a “right answer” vs. “multiple perspectives”. Low level Bloom’s taxonomy aren’t good for discussions.

Interaction

Solitary puzzle pieces, passing the conversation back and forth, but not building anything new

Intersubjectivity

Interlocking puzzle pieces – they are connected to each other – something new is built

“the representation of knowledge construction achieved through a synergistic progression from individual contributions to sequences of interdependent contributions” Hall 2011

Facilitating for Intersubjectivity

  • It’s the format of the discussion question
  • It’s also how the discussion is facilitated
  • Summarizing at the end of the discussion – how has your learning changed based on what you heard from your classmates during that week
  • You need time for these type of connections to develop
  • Facilitator needs to refer back to other students and other posts from previous weeks and different students – i.e. Joe said… and Linda said… and how do those two connect?
  • Repeating the other person’s name so you know whose idea you are building from; using names is critical
  • Facilitator needs to MODEL intersubjectivity

Interesting Side Conversations

  • The medium: threaded discussion vs. blogs vs. VoiceThread
  • The issue with texting type writing in the discussion board; teaching academic writing; someone shared that there is research on the language of discourse vs. the language of intimacy. Teach students to use the language of discourse, use APA in the discussion area, etc.
  • References I shared with Barb to connect to her work: the Listening Taxonomy and More Than Words papers from AERA that I blogged here.

When Might Interaction Be Sufficient

When is it less critical for intersubjectivity and interaction might be sufficient?

  • When consensus isn’t necessary or isn’t the goal
  • When time is short
  • With lower order thinking skills: applying, understanding, remembering (side note that applying can easily jump to creating with a little tweaking)

Finally

Finally she suggests that threaded discussions are social constructionism because the threaded discussion is actually an artifact (Papert).

Graphical Representation

To close, each participant used the items supplied in a bag to make an illustration of the concept of intersubjectivity.

Onboard! Moving from Orienting to Us to Onboarding for You

Live blogging another USDLA 2012 session.

Onboard! Moving from Orienting to Us to Onboarding for You

Presenters: Susan Bartel and Tina Ehrhardt from Stephens College

Susan works with the graduate business programs.

Components of Orientation Modules

Things that can be included in the orientation module:

  • how to navigate Blackboard/LMS
  • can cause high stress to students who are new to technology
  • academic dishonesty
  • do you have the technology needed?
  • policies
  • how to use the IM, how to post on the discussion, how to use VoiceThread (etc)
  • practice
  • a discussion board place for any type of question

Who Owns Online Orientation?

Discussion of who owns the orientation – academic? student success? technology people?

Definitions

Definitions of orientation from the audience: exposure, acclimation, getting started
Definitions of onboarding: getting buy-in, similar to orientation, making employees part of the team

“the process of helping new students adjust to social and performance aspects in their academic journey quickly and smoothly” “organizational socialization” – source: Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time

Building Blocks for Onboarding

  • Compliance (like grading scheme and things like that)
  • Clarification (role clarification, etc.)
  • Culture (no extra credit etc.)

Benefits: Students feel welcome and know what their responsibilities are.

Outcomes (Bauer 2010): self efficacy, role clarity, social integration, culture knowledge = successful onboarding. (with a little hunting, I think this might be the document referenced)

They include a test on the APA format. Thinking of the School of Ed online programs that could use this idea.

Students liked the orientation as self-paced.

They also included: How to write with academic integrity (what a great idea!)

Reflection

This gives good food for thought as I consider the online degree programs we have at Andrews University and Griggs University – with varying degrees of how they currently orient students to their online programs.

It’s something we definitely need to work on – and this gives us some good resources and references to get started.

Leap of Faith: Trials and Tribulations after Converting to Moodle

Live blogging another session at USDLA 2012: 

Leap of Faith: Trials and Tribulations after Converting to Moodle
Presenters: Charlene Stubblefield, Stephanie Holmes, Major Stewart, and John Williams from Prairie View A&M University
This is a follow up session to a session they did last year on their implementation process.
They are on Moodle 1.9. Someone in the audience highly recommended upgrading to 2.x.
Leap 1: Deciding on Moodle as the LMS
Leap 2-4: Uploading the student information from Banner into Moodle; Setting up LDAP for single sign-on; They update twice a day at 11 am and 11 pm. They ran into issues as they merged the student accounts for single sign on.
Leap 5-20: Training, Training, Training
  • Training for the office of distance learning staff
  • Training for students – students didn’t show up to the trainings; they had better attendance if the training was embedded into the actual course time (had to deal with students asking for the ODL staff to train the instructor to use it certain ways)
  • Web based documentation online for students and faculty – text with screenshots and Flash video
  • Faculty training: they do certification for teachers to be able to teach online; phone and email support is provided on a regular basis; the provost supports the online certification process for when the faculty are resistant to it; at the beginning of each session they have a 5-10 minute gripe session to let them “get it out” – and then they go on with training; they see the key as building a relationship with faculty of support and technical expertise
  • The web based certification is 10 weeks with 3 modules, but some finish it in a few days; the face to face is the same training, but is in three two-hour sessions
  • They’ve had this certification in place for 10 years; and at the very beginning there was an incentive ($1500); but now the online course is considered part of the regular teaching load and the online certification is considered normal practice
  • There is also a test at the end of the certification that the faculty have to take
  • They do a face to face meeting to see how the faculty use the computer – and then from that they do an assessment to see if the faculty member should go to the online training or the face to face training.
  • They have significant buy in from the provost and the deans for certification for teaching online
  • They have a self-study document for the faculty member to review the course before it is taught online (it’s a 10 page document that includes what should be in the course and what types of learning experiences)
  • Faculty sign a release form that their course materials are owned by the university
After this, they did a pilot with Moodle…
  • They piloted with one course – with a high level instructor – and there were no issues. The problem though was they needed to hear from less savvy faculty members to get better feedback on the issues.
Leap 21: Based on the pilot, they pushed the implementation from the fall to the spring.
Leap 22: Significant work to convert course materials, quizzes, etc. from Blackboard CE6 to Moodle.
Side conversation on why they moved: the major reason was the cost; they also liked the open source model; concerns about the monopoly; interesting conversation through the room on hosting etc.

Leap 23: They worked on adding other plug-ins:
She mentioned a Moodle XML builder as a tool helping with the conversion process.

The benefits of Moodle plug-ins and extras is that faculty can beg for a feature, and then you can find a plug-in or module, install it, and two weeks later you’ve given the teachers what they need. Instead of the vendor saying – well that will be in the next version next year.
They have four instances of Moodle: For courses/production, for development, for outcomes, and for the school of education for NCATE. Very interesting way of using Moodle for multiple uses on campus.
Their hosting company is Remote Learner. They are really flexible; they will offer service whatever you need – training for your IT people; you can create your own contract, etc. (That was feedback from the presenters. Good to know – sounds like a great option.)
They like hosting because the hosting company is very quick to implement what is needed.
Reflection:
It’s so wonderful to hear the trials and tribulations from another institution and their experiences of