We have some enthusiastic faculty doing some very cool things with technology in ther classes on our campus, I am proud to say. We brought a group of them together last week to showcase their work for other faculty in a tech fair. We offered food, prizes, and a fun social atmosphere in a space close to the offices of most faculty on campus. In spite of the many promises I received from folks who said they would come, attendance was disappointing. Some of it is just spring fever, with faculty and students alike goofing off when they should be making work a top priority. I also think some of it is just faculty burnout on new technologies and new teaching methods - they could be doing far more interesting and dynamic things in their classes, but the tried and true, boring as hell traditional lecture method is just easier and safer. What could we do to get faculty motivated to think creatively about teaching and learning, and to really care about how their classes are impacting their student’s lives?

Today I’m sorting through a series of posts Rob sent dealing with the many implementation processes he’s taken on in the past month. We’ve had iTunes U for awhile now and have had minor successes with it so far, including a couple of brave faculty members who have posted interesting content for a language and a sociology of music class. It’s easy enough from the user perspective, I think, but it has been quite a challenge from the admin perspective. For some reason Apple never saw fit to make this easy to adopt, which I see as just plain nuts. Regardless, we are close to a full and proper rollout now with the authentication schemes one would hope to see in place; i.e. we can control access by user, group, class, insitution and world. We have some great stuff going on here at Linfield and it’s time to start bragging about it.

We are members of NITLE now, which means we get access to all sorts of goodies and resources that we small liberal arts types can share. Right now, the goodie I’m exploring is http://meet.nitle.org, which is a place we can go to get free video conferencing capabilities. We will have a Linfield room of our own soon (yes, Virginia!). That will give us the power to use video cams, audio, white boards, PowerPoints, or whatever else we want to share at a distance. Some of the EMS folks and I tested it the other day with a nice gentleman from the Grinnel English department, and were fairly impressed with it. It’s easy and reasonably good. Next up, classroom videoconferencing testing.

Anybody who appreciates the value of brainstorming will appreciate mind mapping tools such as Inspiration, which allows us to convert our brainstorms to Word outlines at the push of a button. What a great tool for helping to generate ideas, organize thoughts and “see” connections between concepts. Now comes mywebspiration.com, a free Flash tool that allows us to not only brainstorm just like Inspiration, but also to share our creations with others. Way cool! But how long will it remain free?

Interesting new approach to browser technology! It’s a super fast and spare download, with some new features I might like a lot. Very curiously it has a cloaked browsing feature - who knows what people get up to on the Internet, after all? More once I’ve used it for awhile.

I’m taking off to the New Media Expo conference in Las Vegas tomorrow. This is a new conference for me, and I hope to learn a lot about boosting traffic to sites, podcasting tips, and other timely stuff. I’ve been going to Educause, Syllabus (now Campus Technology), Ed Media and a few other misc. higher education technology conferences for years now. Frankly, I need to break out of the box a little bit. Rarely are the big conferences really able to provide much of use to small liberal arts colleges, I don’t really make meaningful connections to people who live thousands or even hundreds of miles away, and I’ve been doing this so long I don’t seem to learn much or feel challenged much anymore. New products by vendors are the main reason I still go - I get to talk to them about how their product might work in my environment, and that’s useful indeed. This conference has an education track, but it includes lots of new media professionals who actually do this stuff as a primary task for a living. It’s not seen as just some sort of education add-on, as so many faculty members see it - which is often disheartening for me since I see new media as transformative for those who really, truly want to engage in active teaching/learning. And if it doesn’t turn out to be as useful as I hope, then at least I’ll have visited Las Vegas, baby!!!

I’ve been serving on the search committee for our new Associate Dean of Distance Learning for the School of Nursing, and the process has me thinking once again about the qualities that make an online course successful vs. not. I started off as one of the first students to take web-based distance courses back in 1995, and I’ve taken 1/2 dozen more since then. Each of these courses shaped my opinion about distance learning far more than the 13 years experience as an instructional designer/instructor and an earned doctorate in educational technoly ever could.

While I can usually get online instructors to value the importance of clear navigation, consistency, expectations for participation, and so on, I have far less luck getting them to realize the value of an attractive web interface. Even some of our best online instructors have managed to create…ahem…less than appealing sets of course pages. Some are even stubbornly resistant to subtle and even not-so-subtle hints that their pages are ugly enough to turn users off. Why is this message so hard to convey?

What I think may be going on is that faculty who are new to teaching online are now being asked to become visually astute for the first time. This is a talent that can be learned, at least to a degree. Not everyone is born knowing how to present well in a face-to-face class, and the same thing is true online. Not everyone has a tasteful sense of color (to my dismay), and not everyone understands that pixelated, distorted, and unmatched icons jumbled together on a web site make for a confusing, disjointed appearance. Finally, not every instructor understands that a course web site needs to “flow”. That is, a course web site needs to work well not only on the first day of class, but each subsequent visit by a student. That “welcome” message at the top of your screen starts to look mighty stale by visit number umpteen. There needs to be a sort of visual rythm that makes sense to the student, and it needs to be calm and and clear.

The need for an attractive look isn’t just about function; it affects my attitude about the entire course. As a person who is highly visual, if I am required to log in and interact with a site that offends my senses, I will have not only an unpleasant reaction each time I log in, but I’ll be thinking to myself that either the instructor doesn’t have skills that are up to par or that they don’t value the online experience enough to bother.

It’s easy enough to remedy. Ask your more artistically inclined friends for their opinions - ask several of them, in fact. If in doubt, use the default color scheme and icons. Odds are very good these will be more attractive than your amateur attempts. And finally, do some scouting. Ask your students if they know of any sites that they find appealing, and check the sites out. You could even try taking an online course yourself.

Back when I was a college student (a span that lasted roughly 30 years), I used to cope with boredom in classes by doodling, sketching, writing letters, and even writing papers for other class assignments. Usually, I did these activities during long lectures, but I also zoned out during endless, poorly executed presentations by my class peers. As technologies advanced, I began using my PDA, smart phone, and laptop to perform the same unprofitable boredom avoidance tactics.

Instructors were never that threatened by daydreamers and doodlers up until these new technologies came on the scene, for some reason. So, the good folks at companies such as SMART Technologies invented products like Synchroneyes, which is supposed to help give instructors control over potentially distracting computer screens. I tried this tool in one of the graduated educational technology courses I taught in a computer classroom, and found it to be clunky, slow, and a distraction. Worse yet, while I was busy doing Synchroneyes activities, the students were bored and a little insulted. I found that whatever I gained in control over the less-motivated students, I lost in interest and engagement from my more-motivated students.

I am an instructional designer, so I am biased toward keeping my courses dynamic and engaging rather than by trying to control all distractions. My courses move along fairly fast-paced, and I try to design them so that I’m not talking more than a 10-15 minutes without engaging the students in some kind of activity, even if it’s only to stop for a mini discussion of the topic. I may repeat these 10-15 minute chunks in a variety of learning style modes, but I keep them all short. Whenever possible, I keep the lecture down to a few minutes of instruction and then let the students do whatever possible on their own. Nothing beats doing a task oneself for learning. Also, I build in time for working with others in groups once they’ve had a chance to work alone, which gives them all the benefits of social connectedness. If time is pressing, I can off-load the social connectedness tasks to 2.0 applications outside of class tiem. This provides me with a hugely effective formative assessment tool, since I can check to see how patterns of understanding are emerging from all this activity.

Bottom line: Students will find a way to occupy their minds of I don’t keep them occupied in class. Better to make a more dynamic class than to try and control all potential distractions.

I had a small amount set aside in my budget for a white board, something I sorely needed in my Faculty Development Lab. But I waited until the end of the budget year to purchase one, and boy did that procrastination pay off! Smart Technologies dropped the price on their mid-size 660 board, and projector prices have been dropping steadily as well. So, for the price of a white board, I could now afford to buy a smart board and projector. Wahoo! Yesterday we set it up and it looks amazingly crisp and clear. I can’t wait to hold workshops in the FDL in fall - I’m pretty much done for the year as we are nearing finals.

Facebook is becoming an important tool in institutes of higher learning. It isn’t particularly enriching or enlightening - but it does that social networking thing really well. Once you have “friended” some other people you can see their interests and activities. You can join groups, play quizzes, list your favorite things, document your travels, and announce events, among other things. If you are a student trying to suss out the culture of your college, including the mysterious world of faculty and staff personal interests, Facebook can help you feel at home surprisingly quickly. Still, I wish the interface was more appealing and that the widgets weren’t seemingly all geared to high schoolers. Or, maybe I’m just too old? Eh.