How much is too much?

Tim sent me this following email:

Hey, Christi,

As  I go through my mental notes on this semester, I am struck by the fact that while knowledge of how to accomplish the various innovations I am putting into my courses is rewarding and gratifying, TIME seems to be the precious variable.  Knowledge leads me to innovate more, which requires more knowledge, which takes more time.   What is the point of diminishing returns?  I don't know, but I wonder if it will ever be possible to run a really good electronic course without heavy technical support like that you and your crew provide.  Should a professor be expected to have both the content and the technical know-how to "to it all?"

Hmm.  Back to my lecture recording and posting.

Tim

My response:

I love this train of thought! I have these myself sometimes. 

I like to use the phrase, "Just because you have the power doesn't mean you should use it!" 

I try to decide how much something will add to student understanding and/or feeling of connection and satisfaction. If I'm just doing it because I can but I can't see any real benefit to the student I don't do it. If I can see some benefit to the student I will weigh the work output with the benefit and if it's something that is amazingly wonderful for the student I will go way overboard. It's all a judgement call on your part!

As for the technical support, that's what we're here for AND as you have been going along you have required less and less support. That is the goal, to help you become proficient so when you want to add something on Saturday night you don't need to have someone online walking you through it. I think of these tools as something that a professor shouldn't have to find and learn on his/her own but something that it is possible to learn enough so they can be used effectively, kinda like an elmo or smart board.

My thoughts!

Christi

Technology "Office Hours"

While meeting with Tim yesterday and thinking about the huge amount of technology we are going to require of his students, I came up with an idea that I think is truly a good one.

Technology Office Hours

The idea is that one of the Instructional Designers or ITES will choose a time during the week where they will be available via Elluminate to answer any tech questions students might have. So students who are assigned to create a Powerpoint presentation but don't know how to use Powerpoint would come and get a lesson. Or if a student doesn't know how to download a podcast she/he could come and get a lesson.

We could also record each individual piece of a session based on topic so they could be archived for students who don't want to or can't attend a live session. If it started getting unmanageable with numbers we could also have themed times, where we focus on a specific topic.

I think I will start this with the Tim's class and my own this fall and see how it works.

I would hope that many students wouldn't need the help but I know there are a few that could really use it AND it would also help the faculty since they would not feel that they have to answer tech questions.

I believe it to be a win-win for everyone and, hopefully, not a massive addition to the ID's. If it works out we could even put it into the catalog! Maybe...

I look forward to getting the ball rolling.

Now we just need a snappy name....

Jeff Borden is the man!

We have been able to secure Jeff Borden as our Plenary speaker and we will have him do an additional classroom session. He's a wonderful presenter and teacher and I really look forward to having him here.

The website and graphics have been updated and we just agreed on a postcard. We'll be sending them to the faculty AND we'll put them in the packets for all incoming GA's and Faculty.

We have a date, rooms, speaker and we are rapidly moving forward.

http://www.uwyo.edu/techforum

Tim will be amazing!

We met to create a plan of attack for Tim and his iPod Touch project. We spent 2 hours over the lunch break to work out some ideas and address some problems.

Here are some of the notes from the meeting:

• Tim is teaching Literacy Methods online for the first time in the fall. He has some grave concerns. Hopefully we can help with ideas and technology
• His biggest concern/problem is the typical faculty one of time, or lack thereof. He'd rather have time than the development money. I told him we would provide either some money for a GA or a GA ourselves (in the form of Athena). This is the exact reason we chose to allow faculty to use TIE grant money for whatever they choose, they could hire a TA!
• We need to order him a Flip Video camera for Vodcasts on the fly
• He may want to do screen-capture so we'll need to either order Snapz or teach him to use Jing
• He will pod/vodcast short lectures every week which students can download to their ipods
• He will have 3 iPod assisted assignments: The "Running Record", students will record an "Running Record" using their microphone; a "teaching practicum" in which students will record themselves teaching a lesson and the Final Assignment, which is a mock interview, they'll discuss the components via the discussion threads and then record their responses to the interview questions.
• To support the students in the iPod portions, as well as some of the other technology ideas, we will provide "Tech Help Office Hours" where Cody and I will be available via Elluminate to assist students learn the technology necessary to be successful in the class. I think this is a brilliant idea and will write another blog post about the potential.
• We will look at sending out the iPods ASAP, once enrollments settle a little. It's a cohort group so it seems that attrition shouldn't be too bad.
• Additional apps that might be of value are Dictionary.com and Flashcards.

I know there will be many technical issues but I'm hoping that the flawless workings of Apple will help to cushion the blow a bit!

On the whole it was an amazing meeting and is one of the reasons I love my job. I LOVE working with faculty to try to better reach students.

TIE Grants

I finally spent some time writing a draft for the TIE Distance Education Grants. I've been putting this off but finally just sat down and did it and it wasn't too bad at all. 

I want to thank April for some great examples for me to draw upon. I was also able to use a great deal of the language and text from various documents.

I think it is a good start. It has now gone to the Mates and Cody for editorial review and then I'll send it on to April to preview for potential problems.

I will create an online form in Google Docs and then embed it into the TIE webpage once the time is right. I didn't create it yet because I don't want to have to edit it substantially so I'm waiting for revisions.

Once it is done we'll send it out to the OCP faculty and organize a committee to review and choose the recipients. I hope we get a lot of interest! I'll post the link to the Grant App once I get it finalized.

More droid vs. Apple

I've spent some time this morning playing with my iPad and while I love so much about it I'm still frustrated by many things. I think that I would have liked it better had I not gotten a droid first, then I wouldn't have know better!

I'm still highly frustrated by the lack of java and flash support. I thought it would be amazing to use iPad with Elluminate. Being able to draw on the whiteboard with my finger instead of the mouse would be truly amazing. However it is a java download and it won't work. Of course maybe that doesn't matter now because Blackboard has bought Elluminate and that may cause a change of webconferencing anyway. The other thing is that despite Apple's claim that Flash is problematic at this point it is truly one of the few video formats that always works with online classes. Losing the ability to view so much of existing content is problematic in the extreme!

Another issue I have is the multitasking. What a pain! I know this is being changed in the new OS but seriously...

Finally, i don't like the lack of a "mouse". What I mean is even just arrow keys to move around in text with. While the pressing your finger until the little zoom box is sexy it is not near as functional as actually having arrow keys to move around. Very timeconsuming and more difficult.

On the plus side, the keyboard on the ipad is actually really great. I can type reslly quite quickly and easily with few problems. Much faster than the keyboard on the droid. It is much smaller though and I don't like the iPod keyboard.

Generally I also like the autocorrect on the iPad but it seems to be fairly random. Sometimes it capitalizes my "I" and sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it add apostrophes and sometimes it doesn't. I can't quite figure it out!

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple products and I really love my iPad, I guess I'm just extremely impressed with the Android software, it's amazingly great!

Writing!

This morning I put on my calendar 2 hours for research and writing. I did this because I can't seem to make time in my life to actually sit down and write up my projects.

It started slowly, I couldn't remember the name of the program I used to keep track of my sources and take notes, I couldn't find the articles on virtual labs, I couldn't find my dissertation... Eventually I managed to get going.

It turns out I like to do research and write! I forgot in my running towards new projects but it's actually quite fun!

I read through several articles, took numerous notes and started paring down my dissertation. Great fun!

I now need to check the submission guidelines for ASM-CUE, integrate the new sources I've found, majorly shorten the introduction/lit review and combine everyone else's parts into a rough draft that we can work from.

It actually sounds like fun!

Internship anyone?

I just finished meeting with Kent, department head for Professional Studies, and he's all behind the idea of an internship for ITEC students.

We have 3 areas identified for sure: Research, teaching and instructional Design.

I now just need to contact Doris, John, Craig and Steve and see if anyone will take the lead on their end.

This may slow the process down a bit since I know for a fact that at least 3 of the four are not here this summer. I'll probably have to shoot for an internship for spring 2011, the timing just won't work out this summer.

More Grant Program Notes

After a quick meeting with April I have a few more thoughts:

1. Personally approach people who would be good for the project
2. Be sure to tell them about their responsibilities up front - meetings and presenting
3. Set time-frame - beginning and end dates
4. Require mentorship of next group? probably just encourage them to continue coming to meetings
5. Outside evaluator? Necessary?

That's all for now, I'll keep updating this as we go!

Plenary Speaker...

So we really wanted to get Mimi Ito to speak for our e-volution forum but she is out of our price range, we're a small group and simply don't have the money.

We talked about some other options and it looks like we'll ask Jeff Borden to come. I've seen him present several times and he really is fantastic! I don't believe we could do better and his cost is extremely reasonable.

I have emailed Jeff and hope to hear back soon. I would love to get him up here!

Virtual Orientation

In March I was named to the Virtual Orientation Task Force and we've been meeting 1/week for about a month. It's an interesting group from all across campus as well as in OCP and UW/CC I never knew how much went into orientation on the campus!

Much of the discussion does not seem overly useful to distance, non-traditional students but it never hurts to listen and examine your own practices.

I believe that much of the material we need already exists online but how to better package it and whether to make it mandatory are two of the questions with which we are struggling.

We have now broken into several sub-groups, three of which I volunteered to join: Transfer - OCP, Transfer - UW and Transfer - UW/CC. Yes, I need to learn to keep my mouth shut...

Anyway, it should continue to be an interesting process.

YouTube.edu

Many faculty, as well as the rest of the world, have been using Youtube for a variety of purposes, including even a few instructional! One of the major advantages of Youtube is it's ease of use and the ability to embed videos in other webpages or, in the case of distance education, course shells. The process of uploading and embedding a video is so easy that it is extremely popular with instructors who are using existing content or creating short video content. The only problem with regular Youtube accounts is that videos are limited to 10 minutes.  For some instructional uses 10 minutes is a sufficient amount of time but for some faculty members it is not enough to accomplish her/his instructional goal. Some would argue, my among them, that most content should be less than 10 minutes but I have also seem some amazingly innovative video that is over that length and truly great!

Youtube has a .edu section of it's service which is devoted to educational resources. A University applies for a .edu account and this brings two big advantages: videos are not limited to 10 minutes and the University has an entire 'site' that can be used to organize the content.

Many Universities that currently have a Youtube.edu account have separate accounts for different entities on campus, with distance education and extension as options. Harvard has a University site as well as 3 other sites, including the 'Harvard Extension School'. UW already has one .edu setup but we hope to be able to add Outreach as well. We are the distance "delivery van" and as such we have unique needs.

I'm planning to apply for an UW Outreach Youtube.edu account. The main purpose of this would be for instructional purposes but once it is up we may find other great possibilities. If we named it Outreach instead of OCP then it could also be used by the other units of the Outreach school and UW/CC, OCP, Marketing, and OTS could all have a channel within the overall Outreach site.

We've got buy in and we're ready to apply and see what happens.

Love working with Faculty!

Met with Diane today and talked to her about how she can use Google Docs in her classroom. Diane has spent a great deal of time this summer trying new stuff. She's made a cool interview podcast already this summer and now she wants to take on Google Docs.

She has a great project and lots of ideas so I'm looking forward to working with her and hearing how it all goes.

Working with Faculty is definitely one of the things I love best about this job!

eTutoring!

It looks like the eTutoring Consortium is up and running. We are getting signatures from the appropriate people and we have the Writing Center on board.

It's looking great! It will be extremely exciting to offer this service to our distance students. Hopefully we have the problem of having way to many users and we will need to add tutors! Finger Crossed!

Hiccup!

Small Hiccup with the Plenary speaker for e-volution. Mimi is too expensive for our modest group. Serious bummer but we'll find someone great before this is over.

We're no moving on to other options. We'll see how it goes.

Internships Revived?

After more than a year I am putting the ALT Internship idea back on the burner. With the reorganization of ALT into the new Professional Studies Department I'm hoping I can get something moving. I think that John and I were just too focused on other activities and couldn't get it actually done. I blame both of us but now is the time to try it again!

I've scheduled a meeting with Kent next week with the hope to get some movement, I'm guessing for Spring. We need that time to get the kinks worked out and to get it into the schedule.

We are looking at 3 types: teaching, instructional design and research. We had administrative and student services on the list but I don't know how to do the administrative and Nicky doesn't want a student services intern. I might revive the student services intern with the idea of helping me with SI and eTutoring but I think we'll start where we are with the 3 more basic ones.

We have descriptions of all three and we will need to complete a learning contract. I'd also like to be the instructor if at all possible. Maybe become adjunct in Prof Studies.

I truly hope this will work out because it will be beneficial for everyone, us AND the students.

Distance Learning Guild

The TIE project participants have now spun into a new group that I have named the Distance Learning Guild. I chose this name because of it's Distance Learning nature and the associations that Guild has both historically AND in virtual worlds and gaming. It seemed appropriate.

I have set the meetings for the last Thursday in every month. So far we've had 2 official meetings that weren't associated with TIE. The first we had Rachel talk about Second Life and the possibilities for teaching and the one last week we talked about iPads, iPod Touches. We didn't have a huge turn-out but we had some people and for the middle of the summer it was great.

I didn't plan much but we just went around and discussed how we each used them for various things. It was informative and instructive and I think everyone enjoyed it.

I'm not sure what to do for next meeting but I'm sure something will come to mind!

TIE, a grant program?

Last week I came up with the idea of making TIE into a grant program. There are several reasons for this:

1. It will, hopefully, help up identify distance faculty that are interested and/or are doing something innovative but have managed to avoid detection by the ID's
2. It will have a more direct impact on their tenure and promotion since it will show up in their packets as a grant.
3. I am always impressed with the creativity and imagination of faculty and this would allow them to propose their own project, some of which I'm sure will be something none of us have imagined.
4. It will give clear requirements of program reports etc.

I'm sure there are others but these are all that come to mind at the moment.

I talked to Jane, who has done TONS of these small grants, and got a lot of great ideas and some questions we need to consider. Here is a list in no particular order:

1. Are past TIE participants eligible for the new grants? Maybe we should require presentation or publication from returning faculty?
2. We need a solid beginning and ending date.
3. State how faculty can spend the money
4. Ask faculty to propose how they want to spend the money
5. Have a review panel that includes OCP as well as a couple of faculty members
6. Should we encourage collaboration between faculty and/or disciplines?
7. Require and  end of the project report
8. Create a reviewer rubric for choosing the projects
9. Have a session at e-volution that will help them craft a possible grant proposal
10. Plan to go for maybe 3 years as is and then re-evaluate the effectiveness and whether things need to be changed.
11. Require participation in the Fall 2011 e-volution

We are thinking of sending out the call for proposals the second week of classes, advertising it and having a session at e-volution and then have the due date about 1 week later. We would do several meetings in the fall semester to get faculty oriented and then faculty would be required to teach and complete their project in either Spring, Summer or Fall of 2011.

I'm excited about this idea and I think it will help to turn TIE into standard operating procedure. It will also give some structure to it and to me!

e-volution Update

I think we've finally settled on asking a speaker for the e-volution. We don't know if she'll do it, how much she'll cost and whether it will generally work out but her name is Mimi Ito,
http://www.itofisher.com/mito/ . Several people have seen her talk and we've seen a video and she looks great. 


I'm really hoping we'll be able to work it out with her.


We're tentatively looking at the Thursday or Friday the last of September or first of October but much will depend upon Mimi and being able to schedule rooms.


We now have a working group of Jane, Cathy, Stan, Jeff and Cheryl. I should probably schedule a meeting as soon as we have a possible speaker.

iPod Touch - Everybody wants one!

We ordered 76 iPod Touches. Here is the list of people who either have one in hand or will by tomorrow afternoon:
Christi
Larry
Jeff
Cody
Reed
Brent
Renee

Leaving 69 for the students.

Thoughts so far...

The iPod Touch is a fantastic piece of equipment. It is simple and elegant with more apps than I can imagine and a fairly straight-forward interface.

I also have a Motorola Droid  and a comparison might be useful.

Likes - Touch only:

• integrates with Audible.com
• integrates with iTunes so I can get my purchased songs onto it
• tons of apps
• zoom feature
• nicer graphics
• Kindle reading app

Likes - Droid only:

• multitasking
• slide-out keyboard
• no restrictions on apps
• plays flash
• ability to move cursor with "mouse"
• can download free apps without authenticating

That's it for now, I'm sure there will be more as I go.

We have faculty!

Tim joined us right away and we asked Brent to take care of getting a UW/CC faculty member to do the in-class experimentation. We now have Rod on board and he seems pretty excited about the project!

I'll be headed up to Casper tomorrow with an iPod Touch. I hope to meet with him and get him started on thinking about how the Touch might be used.

Once I meet with Rod we will really be rolling and I'll need to start thinking about an assessment strategy.

Jim is in!

Jim has agreed to help with the tech support for the iPod experimentation. Woo Hoo!

Now I just need to find an iPad to reward him...

iPod Touch Experimental beginnings

I have started the iPod Touch Experimentation, it should be interesting.

I have successfully recruited Tim for the online faculty and I've contacted Rod for the UW/CC faculty member.

Tim has his iPod and has already started playing with it, he is a great choice, although I now see that I have two men. Oh well, you can't get rid of good people just because they had the unfortunate luck to be born priviledged...

I have also given iPods to Cody, Jeff, Reed and myself. I want to keep track of numbers.

Cody has created several YouTube videos of examples of educational uses (http://www.youtube.com/uwocp) and has started a Google Doc with a list of blogs or sites that list educational uses of iPods.

I just now need to meet with Rod and get him completely on board and see if I can entice Jim to help with tech support in Casper.

We're off!

Today it begins...

I've been threatening to start a blog for awhile and finally decided to do it. I hope to be able to update is on a fairly regular basis. The idea is to document my journey's through my special projects so I have some record and may be able to resist making mistakes. It's probably a hopeless thought but I'm going with it.

I'm going to tag each post with the project so they are easy to find later.

I don't really care if anyone follows this blog, I just want to keep a personal record of my projects.