Announcement: September ELI webinar: "Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture"

Over the summer, several faculty members attended group viewings of ELI webinars in June and July. NMU’s Course Technology Alliance will be hosting group viewings for ELI monthly webinars throughout the year as part of our Course Technology Innovation Project (CTIP).

We hope to see many of you for September’s webinar, which will be held at 1:00 pm on Monday, September 14 in LRC 235B. The topic is “Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture.” If you are interested in joining us, please go to the CITE event registration page, "View" the course, and "Enroll."

Prior to connecting to the webinar, I will give a brief overview presentation of ELI and how it may benefit us here at NMU. That presentation will begin at 12:30 pm in the same room. The webinar itself is one hour in duration. We have the room reserved for an additional half hour in case some attendees would like to stay to continue the local discussion after the webinar concludes. If you are interested in the webinar but unable to join us in LRC 235B, you may also register to watch it on your own laptop at no charge through the ELI web site. Recordings of ELI webinars are typically made available within a week of session dates.

Announcement: ELI Online Focus Session on Collaborative Learning Environments

As part of our Course Technology Innovation Project, the Course Technology Alliance is happy to bring the ELI Online Fall Focus Session to campus on September 23rd and 24th. ELI Focus Sessions are essentially online conferences, with various sessions related to a central theme. This Fall’s theme is “Flattening the Classroom: Building Collaborative Learning Environments.” Sessions will take place on Wednesday the 23rd between 12:00pm and 5:30pm and on Thursday the 24th from 12:00pm to 5:00pm. (View the full conference program).

We will be hosting group viewings of the sessions on both days. On Wednesday we will be in LRC 235B. On Thursday we will be in LRC 109. To help us anticipate how many people will be participating, we are asking attendees to register for each day when they plan to attend at least one session. Feel free to come and go as your interests and schedules dictate during the day. If you are interested in joining us, please go to the CITE events registration page, "View" the course (Day 1 or Day 2), and "Enroll."

How influential is MERLOT becoming?

Is this really a wine or what? No, there is no alcholic content here. There are 70,000 members in MERLOT today. There are multiple disciplines of which Health Care Services were just added. There are 743 Peer Reviewers and the MERLOT website has logged 1.7 Million visits per year on average. Go to www.merlot.org for more information. You can join for free. NMU is a Partner Institution and all faculty are encouraged to use MERLOT to find learning objects you might consider using for "free" in your courses.

Lecture Tools from University of Michigan's Perry Samson

Dr. Perry Samson is renown as the "guy on the Weather Channel!" He and some of his students created, refined and now have presented for data collection a fabulous integrated lecture arsenal called: Lecture Tools. Mind you, this is not intended for nor can it serve as a Course Management System as does Web CT or Blackboard. The Lecture Tools program was simply a solution to a long-lived problem -- how do I do all this "technological stuff" in my classes with limited funds. The answer -- Lecture Tools. To be coy: 1) Power Points with animations - free but boring and not comprehensive; 2) Video and Clicker Systems in class -- innovative but rather expensive 3) LECTURE TOOLS - Priceless -- literally IT IS A FREE system at the present time to any and all faculty. What can Lecture Tools do for you? Well, you know how you struggle every semester with should I let the students bring their laptops to class or not? Lecture Tools might be the interactive attention keeper you've been longing for. It is a program designed by students from their perspective of how they learn and want to be taught. It features capabilities all-in-one that include: power point slides .jpeg versions; animation viewing; an advanced clicker system with polling and multiple choice options; the ability to upload podcasts; both student and faculty may draw on slides in Lecture Tools; and finally a really cool aspect of being able to monitor students' comprehension of lecture real-time by use of an anonymous polling and dynamic bar graph output. The tool is designed for in class or asynchronous learning but is not a course management system and does not have grading capability. You can learn more by contacting Dr. Perry Samson who is looking for faculty participants by emailing him: Samson@umich.edu

Creative Commons? What is that you say?

The keynote speaker was probably the most articulate and informed one I've ever attended throughout my career: Mr. John Wilbank is the co-founder of a company called "Creative Commons (cc)." John's presentation was lively and information-packed as well as quite provocative. Creative commons? Of course your head is trying to wrap around the concept and I'm sure you may have a number of potential operational definitions. This concept is one that is quite foreign to academe - the sharing of materials and intellectual property without a copyright -- all rights reserved. John noted that: "...copyright law wasn't written for a paperless interconnected world." Believe it or not, MIT has creative commons licenses and they haven't lost any ground in terms of scholarly reputation or productivity. How many times have you seen students you may have thought to be plaigiarizing on-line yet readily accessible materials and found it a "grey" area yourself? Now, don't get too rattled quite yet. Actually, John and his colleagues as well as MERLOT have collaborated on this and it is an ingenious method of providing attribution while sharing learning objects to better educational standards world-wide. Under creative commons licensure, one could actually say "some rights reserved." Wouldn't it be great if you could use materials being taught with at say Harvard, Purdue, University of Michigan or California State? Of course it would. How might I access these materials and include them in an on-line or in my real-time lecture? Well with the advent and wider acceptance of a "Creative Commons" we all can and will be able to freely share our intellectual property while retaining ownership and authorship rights. John presented a variety of sharing options that still maintained the integrity of the material owneship/authorship. These methods of creative commons are actually bonafide licenses for use and have all the legal mumbo jumbo necessary to be highly accepted and totally binding and lawful: Attribution: free to share, copy and distribute or remix as long as one clearly indicates who the author is. You're not giving up your copyright -- you're simply enabled to legally refine it. Please enjoy these couple of sites and watch the video I've embedded here. It really is the wave of the future and it is likely time we start to ride it. Look to www.creativecommons.org for more information. YOU TUBE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DKm96Ftfko

Save from San Jose

My Chicago connection was cancelled and thus forced to stay at another night at the Hilton in San Jose. But I am back home now. Too bad faculty and others are not taking advantage of this terrific offer. For me, Merlot wants to help out with the Ojibwe language initiative. We will be talking soon. Had a great lunch with them all. Again, thanks to Matt.

Beds

Gang; I am requesting sleep and bed space on sept 20 for the UP INdian Education Conference. No of participants may be up to 20 individuals. On a separate and related note the Michigan Ojibwe Language Instructors are meeting here at Ramada on Sat., Sept 18, from 9-3. Some of them have asked for some floor space. For this event they would arrive Friday. And some of them would go on to participate in the UP Indian Ed conference. So waht say you all? Miigwech, Kenn

At the MIC, Outside of the Sessions

Most of our postings about the MERLOT International Conference have been about sessions that we attended. I think it is also worth mentioning the value of time spent outside of the formal sessions. During breaks we had a chance to discuss the sessions we'd attended and other various things with colleagues from other universities, which is always one of the nice things about conferences. Because the MIC is a cross-displinary conference, I suspect that some more diverse connections were made than can be at many events.

It was nice having a large group of NMU colleagues at the conference. We were able to cover multiple sessions during each time slot, to share notes afterwards, and to discuss how things might be applied at our institution. Friday and Saturday evenings, and Sunday afternoon, we got a chance to get out to see a few sites and enjoy some local food. Dinner conversation wasn't strictly limited to the conference (I discovered that not everyone in the group agrees with my choice of favorite NFL team), but often veered back to it. I appreciate the enthusiasm that my colleagues had for the event and am looking forward to continuing to work with them as CTIP proceeds throughout the year.

Top row: Lisa (left) and Julie (right) chat with a fellow conference attendee after the Sunday keynote; Matt (left), Kenn (center), and Jim at San Jose's Alum Rock Park.
Middle row: Team photo in the hotel lobby--from left to right Jim, Diane, Julie, Lisa, Deb, Matt, Kenn
Bottom row: Jim and a colleague enjoy continental breakfast; Saturday dinner at Original Joe's in downtown San Jose.
More photos

Games and Simulations

The last session I went to on Saturday was about running a simulation within a course management system. With the advent of Second Life, we tend to think of simulations as taking place in fancy 3-D environments or employing pre-programmed branching scenarios. Dorothy Fuller of Black Hills State University takes a different approach that mixes more traditional case-based learning with a course management system. I think it is a great idea.

For an online graduate class in education administration, the semester-long assignment was for groups of students to evaluate interactive whiteboard products and recommend one for purchase to the "superintendent." The client superintendent (played by a friend of Fuller's) was introduced via a video clip to the groups. Within the course management system, Fuller set up discussion rooms, e-mail, and a synchronous meeting area for the groups. Communication with the superintendent was handled via e-mail. A group writing tool, similar to Google Docs, was also used. A progress report was due at mid-term, with the final recommendation report due at the end of the semester. Fuller told us that at first students treated it like a class exercise, but by the end of the course were referring to the superindentent as if she were a real client.

A lot of planning goes into an exercise like this, but setting it up would be relatively simple and wouldn't require special programming.

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The last session I attended on Sunday, by Jeff Borden, was on "Serious Games for Education." This one is a bit hard to describe. Basically, what he does is create a mystery, with clues across various Internet sites. The only thing I had heard of similar prior to the session was the guerilla marketing mystery for the TV show Lost. He went so far as to set up real Facebook profiles for some of his characters. Clues are embedded in video interview of characters, on blogs, etc . . . a lot of planning and work would go into something like this, and it definitely isn't for everyone. But it was an entertaining session and a high-energy session that kept participants engaged despite having overloaded brains by that point!

Other Miscellanous Saturday MIC Tidbits

Saturday was a busy day at the MIC. Some highlights from sessions I attended:

• "Promoting MERLOT in Faculty Development Initiatives" -- despite some technical issues with the remote presenters, I got some ideas (and some contacts) that I hope to take advantage of as we roll out MERLOT to NMU faculty this year.
• "Let them Bring Their Laptops" -- Professor Perry Samson of the University of Michigan co-founded the wunderground.com site, is a tornado chaser, and in his spare time writes software, including the Lecture Tools suite that he demonstrated Saturday. It is a nice set of tools that includes a web-based response feature, and is "currently" free for faculty to use.
• "The Role of Social Networking in Education" -- The speaker, Steve Hargadon, wants to re-brand social networking as "Educational Networking" when it is used in education because he thinks focusing on the social aspects sells it short. He opened with a nice short summary of Web 2.0 tools, talked about some strengths and weaknesses of particular tools, and predicted that the next step is "the confluence of social networking and live collaboration."

Zeigler Becomes Impromptu Presenter

Our NMU group is new to MERLOT and none of us were scheduled to present. However, Jim Zeigler unexpectedly became a de facto co-presenter and helped save a session on Second Life that was, frankly, tanking. (Side note: maybe the name of the room had something to do with the problems. Seriously, who would name a conference room "Donner Pass").

In defense of the on-site presenter, she was supposed to have a co-presenter "in world" who would give us a tour of his space for science in Second Life. That person (or his avatar) never showed up. The presentation shifted from a demonstration to more of an informal discussion about health sites in SL. Jim sent the presenter the location of his, intending her to have it for future reference, and she decided to go to it right then. Next thing we knew, Jim was directing her through a demo of the 3-D larynx that he has in SL. The attendees--and the presenter--loved it. Jim didn't get an official presenter ribbon, but maybe he should have. I can almost guarantee that he would be selected to present if he submitted a proposal for the next conference.

Lunch with the MERLOT Team

On Saturday all 7 of our NMU attendees at the MIC had lunch with three members of the MERLOT team: Gerry Hanley (Executive Director), Phil Moss, (Director of Educational Partnerships and Planning), and Cathy Swift, (Director - Academic Partner Services). There was no formal agenda for the lunch meeting, it was just a chance to talk a little about MERLOT, NMU, and how we can utilize MERLOT services and contribute to the community. The MERLOT folks were interested in hearing about our team's CTIP projects and other academic interests.

Wade Ellis on Promoting Understanding & Retention of Concepts

Saturday's featured presentation was by Wade Ellis, a Mathematics Instructor from West Valley College. Ellis is very passionate about the need to have sound instructional design in college courses. He thinks the instructional design around technology is largely missing, stating that “The learning object is not the learning activity.”

He touched on various research that he believes instructors should take into account when planning course objectives and class activities, including Bloom's Taxonomy, reflective learning, and Malcom Knowles' assumptions about the design of learning for adult learners.

Ellis noted that many people will find a learning object in a repository and say “we’ll show it the next day” without giving enough thought into how to use it to further student learning. (I would add that in some cases even an object's creator might do the same thing).

He then set up an example from math that illustrated several of his points. According to the Action/Consequence/Reflection Principle (Tom Dick and Gail Burrill), students act on mathematical objects, transparently observe the consequences of their actions, and then reflect on the mathematical meaning of those consequences.

He showed us an interactive tool the illustrates the slope of a line. An instructor could should show that to a class and explain how changing coordinates affects the slope. Instead, he said, it would be much better to develop inquiry questions and have students experiment with it.

There was really not a lot of new information in his presentation. Bloom's taxonomy, for example, has been around since the late 1950s. However, I agree with him that instructional design is often overlooked, and evolving technology adds challenges. As an instructional designer myself, I enjoyed listening to a professor with such a passion for ID!

MIC: Revisiting Friday's Sessions

I didn't get many blog postings written while we were out at "The MIC" (as those in-the-know refer to the MERLOT International Conference). Now that I'm back home and not sprinting from session to session I will share some of what I saw and learned.

Friday kicked off with a great keynote presentation by John Wilbanks of Creative Commons. Jim Zeigler is going to write up a summary of that, so I won't go into detail here, but I will recommend that though Creative Commons may not sound like an exciting topic, if you get a chance to hear John Wilbanks speak, you should take it.

After the keynote I headed off to "How a Virtual Learning Environment Can (and should) Help Learners." The speaker stressed how teaching should be multi-modal (multiple ways) and multi-nodal (impacts various points in the brain). He was a dynamic, engaging speaker, who spoke quite quickly in order to cram all he wanted to cover into his 30 minute time period. The information he presented was largely not new to me, but he did share a nice resource list that he has compiled. It is on a password protected site, so I'm sure he wouldn't want to to post it here. However, NMU faculty who are interested can contact me for information on accessing it.

Also Monday I attended sessions on "Digital Identities in the Online Classroom," the Creative Commons license process, ePortfolios, and the ELIXR case stories (which Lisa blogged about earlier). I found the keynote and the ELIXR sessions the most interesting to me personally, and also picked up some other new ideas and information from the others.

More on the 3rd day at MERLOT

More on the 3rd day
This morning I also attended sessions on creating rubrics and developing open educational resources (OER’s) related to cultural diversity. I will definitely review some of the on-line tools and resources shared by the presenters for possible use in my courses.