Conference Calls Don't Have to Hurt!

For some people, attending a conference call is about as pleasant an appointment as having a root canal. We've all had bad experiences with conference calls - noise from barking dogs or crying babies, interruptions from late arrivers, painful and awkward silences, several people speaking at once, and so on - but many of us have discovered that conference calls are great for collaborating and provide a cost-effective and efficient way to bring groups together from any distance. They're easy to set up and can be very productive, provided you take some prudent precautions.

I'm sure you'll find this Tripp and Tyler video amusingly familiar (albeit exaggerated).


What can you do to make sure your conference call doesn't go as disastrously as this IRL (In Real Life) conference went?

Take Charge and Be On Time. Someone has to direct a conference call, just as with any meeting. It doesn't have to be the boss, but everyone needs someone who will decide who has the floor, whose turn it is to talk, and what the subject is. This person should also be first on the call, so that joiners are greeted, the clock (see below) can be started, etc. If the meeting moderator does not arrive on time, everyone else is stuck with music until (s)he shows up.  It might also be good for the group if the greeter role changes hands as each new person comes onto the call. Make sure everyone agrees on the length of the meeting, and adjust the time or agenda if someone has to leave early. Here's a humorous take on what happens when someone joins a conference call after the meeting has been going for a while.



Who Are You? When you speak, identify yourself. This looks silly in real life, but - especially when conference calls are starting out - it's important to know who's doing the talking when you can't see them. And if you haven't spoken for a while, listeners may find it difficult to recognize you.

Noise. Close your door. Put your rustling papers out of reach. Don't move the phone, and put your pen down if you're a pen-tapper. Make sure your keyboard is quiet (if you insist on typing while Conferring). Take a cough drop if you're prone to hacking. That takes care of you, but how do you control those noisy participants calling in from airports, cars, or nursery rooms? The same way: insist that they either mute themselves or move to a quieter environment. In some cases, it's best to ask the caller to hang up and try again from a quieter phone. To avoid unnecessary embarrassment, ask callers to avoid cell phones and cheap speakerphones: they "buzz" or produce static that annoys everyone else, and their signals are prone to dropping. Also, make sure everyone knows NOT to put their phones on hold: doing so may result in unwanted music that will tempt everyone to regret that dental appointment they could have been attending.

Don't Interrupt. It's rude, for one thing. For another, it's very hard on call participants to understand what's going on when several people are speaking at once.

Call on People. Instead of asking if anyone has an opinion - which will lead to several people speaking at once - call on each person individually. You can do this with a single sentence: "I'd like to hear from Phill, then Michelle and then Chris." Also, don't let any one person speak longer than 10 minutes. Attentiveness and listening become compromised when the same voice dominates, and your group members will begin to multi-task (read e-mails, respond to IMs, make grocery lists) as you let this continue. Some moderators use the "Clock" method for directing discussions: the first person is one o'clock, second is two o'clock, etc.

Stay on Track. As with any meeting, a conference call needs an agenda and the call will be successful only if you stick to it. If all participants have a copy of the agenda prior to its start, you'll find it easier to bring them back to it when they begin to stray (and it will skirt the problem of people trying to listen and read at the same time). It's a good idea to prime the conversation by letting participants know in advance what question(s) you hope to have answered when you meet. Another helpful accessory - if you have time to prepare it and send it to participants - is a brief bio of each participant, so that everyone will know something about the person who's talking. If there are any pre-conference call tasks you need them to do or materials you want them to have for the call, make that clear in your invitation (boldface, ALL CAPS, etc.).

Grin and Bear It. Smile. No matter what. You sound better when you're smiling, and everyone will feel better because your voice comes across as friendly and happy.

The Web Conferencing Skill Set

"Ah, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door these new skills can open, even as another door is closing." - Gail Sheehy

We've spent a lot of time in this blog discussing the tools of Web conferencing and some of the practices which have proved most effective in using those tools. As with any tool set, the level of skills in the use of these tools is a significant variable in their successful implementation. Instructors and students come to the virtual classroom with different skill levels, personalities, and experiences, all of which play a role in determining the learning climate.

Valaitas et. al. studied instructors who used Web conferencing to teach health sciences. By identifying personality types in their instructor sample - "Pragmatists, Positive Communicators, and Shy Enthusiasts" - they were able to differentiate approaches to the use of and acquisition of skills in the tools of Web conferencing. The "positive communicators" in this group "strongly disagreed" with the statement "The application sharing tool is a bit confusing for participants and presenters" and "were not challenged by the application-sharing feature." By contrast, the "shy enthusiasts" preferred the "ability to interact online by responding to multiple-choice or open-ended questions." The "pragmatists" in this sample did not show a particular proclivity to any particular tool, although all three groups were generally positive about the technology. This suggests that skills and personality may be inter-related in this arena.

The "digital natives" in modern classrooms may not be quite so "native" in the Web conferencing environment. Kennedy et. al. report that only a third of students surveyed had used a Web conferencing tool; two-thirds had not. It's clearly not safe to assume that your students know this software and will be able to help you find your way around.

Matt Bower points out the need for and variability of skills in this environment in his three-semester study of Web conferencing used for instruction. He observed "four levels of online collaborative competencies... operational, interactional, managerial, and design." He also notes that "the relative importance of students and teachers possessing the different levels of competencies depended on the degree of interactivity in the learning processes." The instructors who designed into their lesson plans greater interactivity increased the potential for misuse of the tools and the need for competencies to manage the interaction, operate the tools, and interact successfully. "Firstly, there are several tools to master; secondly, different tools need to be selected depending on communication requirements; thirdly, the affordances of tools in combination requires consideration; and fourthly, decisions about how to use tools often need to be made in real time. Failure to understand one subtle feature of a tool or its use can have a crippling impact on the learning episode, amplifying the importance that users have developed technical and collaborative competencies...."

What DOESN'T Work in the Virtual Classroom?

I've written a lot about the benefits of the virtual classroom and included many examples of what works well in this environment. In the 10+ years of CCC Confer, we've seen exponential growth in popularity among faculty and students, and we've watched Web conferencing technology become more and more reliable and stable for our thousands of users.

But it wouldn't be accurate or fair to pretend that Web conferencing is always  the best option or that it is always the best way to reach students and deliver online instruction. In fact, there's evidence to suggest that Web conferencing provides some barriers for students and instructors, which must be recognized and overcome for a successful experience and for effective instruction to take place. For example, I just previewed an article in the June 2013 Journal of Computing Sciences in College entitled, "Under What Conditions Does Web Conferencing Inhibit Learning in a Computer Science Classroom?" The authors - Jami Cotler of Siena College and Dima Kassab and Xiaojun Yuan of SUNY-Albany - drew conclusions from two lectures (one delivered face-to-face and one delivered online via Web conferencing) and students' reactions to the experience of these lectures. I'll reserve comment on the methodology or validity of this study, but I'm interested in the students' perceptions.

Distractions. In the Cotler study, 31% of the students reported problems with distractions during the virtual lecture. The nature of these distractions were not disclosed, but we can guess that they may have involved the typical distractions online students encounter: e-mail messages, tweets, Facebook posts, instant messages, and other Web excursions. It may also be that these students found the Web conferencing interface itself distracting, with its chat window, video, whiteboard, etc. The face-to-face classroom also has distractions, of course, but eye contact with the instructor is often inhibition enough for students to block them off and pay attention to the lecturer.

To help students overcome these distractions, the experienced Confer instructor gives guidelines to students before their first online class session and even at the beginning of the session. Disable notifications from your online applications (noises, signals, pop-ups): they will interfere with your concentration. Some instructors even provide specific instructions for turning off, say, Facebook notifications. And, while the class is meeting online, it's good practice to keep the students alert by mixing up the delivery.

Engagement. Cotler's students reported that they were 38% less engaged in the virtual classroom than in the face-to-face environment. Oddly, though, 88% "felt they were able to participate during the [Web conferencing] lecture" and 56% "felt highly engaged in the course materials and the course activities" in the online classroom. So the perception of less engagement may have been related to distractions or some other subjective factor. Many (69%) of the students reported "less connection to the instructor" when using the virtual classroom. However, they reported using the whiteboard and chat features, and most of the students claimed to have reached out to either another student or the instructor during the online session.

We know from long experience that keeping students engaged in the virtual classroom is more challenging than in the traditional environment. You can't see all of your students, and you're not going to be able to validate all of their behavior all of the time. Your sense of control online is compromised because of the distance between you and the "desks" in front of you. But you can keep students engaged by doing some extra work: preparing breaks in which students provide examples, express opinions, or vote on issues. Work in assessments or chat activities, and use breakout rooms to divide a large class into manageable small groups where it's harder for students to hide or let others do all the work. Several of my blog posts provide examples of these strategies.

Unfamiliarity with Technology. I was surprised to read in Cotler's study that unfamiliarity with technology accounted for only 13% of the reported problems with the virtual classroom. Half of all the students "stated that it was convenient and that they like that they could remain in the comfort of their home," and an amazing 81% reported "feeling less stressed about tasks accomplished during the [Web conferencing] session in comparison to the face-to-face session." So technophobia (or at least fear of synchronous online interaction), while not dead, is on the wane with today's students.

It's a good idea to orient students to the virtual classroom before you make them do something in it. This can happen during a "practice" session, in a "sandbox" (we offer several on the CCC Confer Web site), or via training materials (videos, slides, documents) you provide for them. Given these results and the increasing popularity of synchronous online rooms (Skype, Google Hangouts, etc.), it may be just as important that you orient yourself to the virtual classroom and feel comfortable showing its features to your students.

What doesn't work in the virtual classroom? Mainly, not having a plan to use it!

Live Online Events: Keys to Successful Management

It sounds easy: let's all get together at noon and have a presentation from one of our speakers. We'll look at a few slides, maybe watch a video, take questions, and discuss the whole thing together. Maybe we can even poll the members to see what they think about the key issues. Let's plan to be through in an hour, but I'd like some way to record the proceedings so anyone who can't make it can review later. I'd like you to facilitate, okay?

Oh, did I mention we'd be online?

Sooner or later, if it hasn't happened yet, you'll be asked to do something like this. Live online is a fact of modern collaboration, and it's a great maximizer of time and resources, especially when managed properly. My advice to get the maximum return for these events is to invest in preparation time so that everything goes as you'd like it to go.

Protocols. If you plan to archive (record) the event, it's standard practice to inform live participants of the fact. You can do this verbally or you can prepare a slide in advance that "warns" them that the event is being recorded. This gives them the opportunity to participate accordingly. Similarly, if the event is being captioned, it's a good idea to show participants how to open and close the captioning window, along with some instructions about how to make adjustments to font, size, etc. Letting participants know how and when - or if - their questions can be asked is also important. These standard protocols are generally called "housecleaning" tasks and should occur prior to the presentation and before the "record" button is pressed.

Publicity. At CCC Confer, we send e-mails to constituents announcing Webinars well in advance. We also use our Facebook page, the TechEdge newsletter, and listservs to publicize these events. (An example of an e-mail Webinar announcement is included.) If it's possible to include a calendar link that will automatically populate an online (e.g. Outlook) calendar and include the sign-in details, you'll be better assured that your audience will remember to attend and know how to log in when they need to.

Prompts. I've noticed that the best facilitators always seem to ask the right questions of our Webinar presenters and are able to solicit audience participation precisely when it's appropriate. After discussing their techniques with them, I learned that their "spontaneity" is planned: they spend time before the event thinking up the questions they will ask and planning how to stimulate audience participation. They keep a text document handy with chat "prompts" which they copy and paste into the dialogue at appropriate times so that there is always something to interest the online participants. They call this "seeding the chat box."

Pre-Loads. If the presenter wants to show a video, the file has to be pre-loaded into the multimedia library to avoid delays during the online presentation. Similarly, large files, if they are to be shared with the audience, should be pre-loaded so that no time is lost waiting for them to be delivered. In the synchronous online environment, even the slightest delay - a few seconds - can seem to last much longer.

Practice Run. Although it's not always possible to get a guest speaker to practice with you before an event, it's very helpful. Even if they can't make it, though, you'll benefit from pre-loading and testing the software, slides, content, and timing. This allows you and/or the presenter to make adjustments beforehand and to anticipate audience reactions to the screens as they appear.

Every event has a beginning and an end, and generally there are other sequential points in the event where you want things to happen. You won't be able to determine these accurately if you can't tell when the slides will be finished, how long the video will last, or how fast (or slow) the presenter will be talking. Practicing with him or her makes it possible for you to plan the question-answer period properly and determine when breaks or interludes can be inserted. It avoids the irritating sense that you've had to speed up the presentation or cut off feedback because of the clock.

How to Flip Your Classroom

Image from Edudemic

Hack Education lists "The Flipped Classroom" as one of the "Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012", noting that "the practice became incredibly popular this year." In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dan Berrett says the Flipped Classroom "describes the inversion of expectations in the traditional college lecture. It takes many forms, including interactive engagement, just-in-time teaching (in which students respond to Web-based questions before class, and the professor uses this feedback to inform his or her teaching), and peer instruction." Generally, though, the model is that of taking the lecture out of the classroom and putting it online so that class (face-to-face) time is spent working with students on mastery. Here's one of the many available images that illustrate the "flip" -

 

From Deseret News

- and (if you're collecting them), here's an infographic from Edudemic that provides more details:

There are several ways you can flip your classroom. You can use a lecture capture utility. You can try Google Hangouts. One writer lists these tools as options: YouTube, Facebook, TED Ed, Khan Academy, Screencast-o-matic, Edmodo, Schoology, Spreaker, Podomatic, Audacity, Podbean, ShowMe, ScreenChomp, Explain Everything, Educreations, and ScreenCast Video Recorder.

Here at the California Community Colleges, we have our own classroom flipper: CCC Confer. With Confer, you can record your lectures anytime, from anywhere, and deliver them to live online students, face-to-face students, both at the same time, or to students who will view them at an unspecified time and date of your choosing. The archives can be accessed from anywhere at any time, and they can be made portable (i.e., as MP4s or uploaded to YouTube) if you choose.

Here's how easy it is:




You can discover more about how instructors like you are flipping with Confer archives here. By recording lectures, they're extending class time, providing options for students who miss class, providing for searchable content, accommodating diverse learning styles and abilities, and making it easier for students to apply themselves to learning and mastery, rather than to taking notes and interpreting.

Interested in more information about the flipped classroom? Try this link, which will take you to my curated articles on the subject.

CCC Confer: Where Do I Start?

Another semester and you're still not ready for online real-time interaction with your students? It's not that hard! You can do it! Let's get you started with some simple suggestions.

1. Try It Out! You don't have to start blind with your students or anyone else. There's a simple way to get your feet (or at least your toes) wet without having to feel embarrassed or under pressure. Try our practice rooms for free. You can sign into the rooms any time, from anywhere, and see how this thing works. Try the whiteboard, upload a PowerPoint or some image files, share your desktop applications, go on a Web tour. No one will see you making mistakes, and you'll soon discover exactly which tools make you comfortable and which you might want to practice with more before using them with students.

2. Get Some Training. You can get live online training from our expert (and oh-so-understanding and patient) Client Services team, or you can choose recorded training or self-paced instruction. It's a painless way to pick up the tips and techniques that will make it possible for you to be successful online with your students.

3. Sign up for an Account. If you're an instructor in the California Community Colleges (any of them), you're eligible for a free account. Follow this link to register for a MyConfer account, which will make it possible for you to schedule classes, office hours, conferences, etc. whenever you like. With this account, all of your meetings and archives will be available to you when you login.

4. Review our Videos. The "Two Minutes to Better Confer Meetings" series provides quick reminders and tips for the most common Confer uses: application sharing, file sharing, polls, privacy settings, recurring meetings, the timer, uploading PowerPoint and image files, Voice Over IP, Web cameras, Web tour, and the whiteboard. And our Confer channel features real instructors (like you) demonstrating and explaining how and why they use CCC Confer in their online classrooms.

5. Record a Trial Session. Before you schedule a live session with your students, schedule a session without an audience. Get everything ready in advance (PowerPoints, activities, polls, Web sites, and so on), login to your session, and press the "Record" button. Deliver your lecture or presentation as if you were doing it with a live audience, pacing yourself and pausing in appropriate spots for student feedback, and stop the recording when you're through. When the archive becomes available (generally in a few hours), look at it critically for mistakes or things you'll want to change the next time. This is an excellent way to improve your online teaching skills: see yourself as your students will. You may want to repeat this step a few times, and even to allow students or colleagues to view the archive and give you constructive criticism or feedback.

6. You're Ready: Schedule Your Class. If you've taken these five steps, you're ready to "go live" online with your students. Does that mean your first class will go smoothly, without a hitch? Maybe and maybe not. I belive, however the first class goes, that it guarantees you'll know what to do when the unexpected happens, and that you're likely to keep going despite minor setbacks.

Be sure to let us know how things go!

Two Minutes to Better Confer Sessions

The hard-working Client Services team at Confer have produced some very useful - and conveniently short - videos to help you succeed online in your Confer sessions. They all use the new sleek interface and are designed to show you quickly and clearly what you need to know to use the tool you want to use. Enjoy!

























Dandies, eh? Let us know what else you'd like to see a short video tutorial about!

Ten Reasons to Attend the Online Teaching Conference in 2012

San Jose, home of the silicon-based integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and the microcomputer, and the home of electronic innovation for over four decades. In 1909, Charles Herrold started the first radio station with regularly scheduled programming here.Today, there are more than 6,600 technology companies employing more than 254,000 people in San Jose. The Milken Institute continues to rank the San Jose metropolitan statistical area as the #1 high-tech area in North America.High-tech companies make up nearly 12% of private-sector businesses in San Jose, the greatest concentration in the U.S. and almost three times the national average. San Jose has 182.5 high-tech jobs for every 1,000 private-sector jobs: 47% higher than any other market.

OTC's portal keeps all attendees and presenters in touch with one another by means of discussions, captured sessions, presentation materials, and a vibrant social network. The conference continues even after the last booth has been disassembled and the planes have taken off.

Change is rapid and constant in the online education world, and you -as a professional - need to keep up with the changes. At OTC, you'll get a chance to hear from practitioners and insiders what's happening, what's new to the industry, and what's ahead in online teaching.

There are many faces of online learning, and here's a chance to see them together and up close. Your heros and mine come to this conference, and they're here to meet and get to know you.

Hands-on experiences with new tools, new applications, and the technology you're interested in using make this conference invaluable to educators.

There's a track and presentation for everyone, from the novice to the seasoned pro. If you want to know more about educational policies and best practices, we've got that. Want to hear about course design and accessibility? Yep, it's here. How about real-life disaster-preparedness and best practices from online educators who know from real experience? No problem.

OTC doesn't just skim the surface: it covers topics in depth. Although the novice can find plenty of information that's understandable and digestible, the educator who wants to know more will find enough to satisfy in the in-depth panel discussions and higher-level presentations.

OTC doesn't present one-sided or uni-dimensional pictures of online teaching choices or issues. We're vendor-neutral, solution-agnostic as a conference, so you'll be able to hear what works from many different angles. As much as we love our sponsors, we won't let them squeeze you into a single world-view.

All this for a mere $125 (early bird)? You'd pay twice that for half the content at most technology conferences!

We designed the Online Teaching Conference with you, the online teacher, in mind. Online teachers do most of the talking, teaching, and work at this conference, and they have the biggest say in how the conference will be structured and delivered. This is YOUR conference; thanks for making it work!



Improvise or Stick to the Script? How to Plan Your Online Interactions

"Creative teaching is improvisational, and participatory classroom discussions gain their effectiveness from their improvisational, collaborative nature... Once we recognize that creative teaching is improvisational, it opens up a new range of opportunities for training teachers, because teacher-training programs can take advantage of the training that aspiring improvisational actors receive. Aspiring improv actors begin by taking improvisational acting classes, and these classes teach a set of basic principles that encourage collaborative and emergent performances." - R. Keith Sawyer, "Creative Teaching: Collaborative Discussion as Disciplined Improvisation."

The Confer classroom provides ample opportunities for communication and interaction, including audio conversation, shared content, text chat, and polling. Many researchers - Wang and Hsu, Saw et. al. Ciekanski and Chanier, and Hampel to name a few - have demonstrated that students appreciate and value these features. The instructor in this environment can lecture, answer questions, lead a brainstorming session, organize group activities, role-play, conduct debates, and critique student work - and this doesn't come close to the possible options available.

For some instructors - especially those new to synchronous online instruction - all these options - with the attendant tools needed to facilitate them - can be daunting. To effectively switch from lecturing on whiteboard material to chatting with students, you have to pay attention to the whole screen. To set up an impromptu poll and share the results with the class, you have to be comfortable with the polling tool. Switching between breakout rooms requires some dexterity, as does effective desktop sharing. This "split attention" can overload the teacher, and it can also be hard on students, who may become confused by the mix of media. Many Confer instructors find a "comfort zone" that involves the use of one or two tools only, and they stay in that zone for all of their classes.

A new study by Karen Kear and her colleagues at The Open University suggests that careful planning and design are helpful for successful synchronous online instruction, but that "the real-time aspect means that learning and teaching in these environments is never predictable." Instead, say Kear et. al., "effective teaching in web conferencing environments ... requires a skilled balance of planning and moment-by-moment adaptation." R. Keith Sawyer calls this "disciplined improvisation." The Open University researchers were interested in how experienced tutors would adapt to tutoring in the online environment and how they learned to improvise in a disciplined manner.

One thing these tutors discovered is that improvisation requires "a repertoire of things to choose from." Because slides have to be pre-loaded, it's necessary to have these ready to go in case you need them. They also placed great value on preparing students to use the various Web conferencing tools so that they were comfortable in the online classroom (although the students overwhelmingly reported that they enjoyed the environment). Practice, practical training, and prepared materials for use in the virtual classroom were viewed by the OU tutors as most necessary for success. Here are some of the most revelatory comments:

• "The thing that really impressed me is how enthusiastic my students were to be able to hear each other, and how much more personal Elluminate felt to them than the forum."
• "For me one of the real benefits of Elluminate is that the preparation time is completely focused on the topics for the tutorial rather than logistics of how to get there etc."
• Of course by writing on the board they got my attention more easily, but it also became a bit more collaborative – typically one student would start an equation, the next would finish it and a third would add the units. Then I would suggest another way of solving the problem or someone would ask a question ..."
 

I haven't thought of myself as an improv actor, but the shoe fits. I've definitely become a better Confer user by interacting with other Confer users, improvising as the situation and audience demands. I've used scripts with some online lectures, but I'm able to leave them when there's a reason to interact. The key is to feel planned, to be ready for interruptions, but to allow the moment to be something that's never been before.

2011 Year in Review

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain

"Another fresh new year is here/ Another year to live!/To banish worry, doubt, and fear,/ To love and laugh and give!" - William Arthur Ward

2011, we barely knew you. You brought earthquakes and tsunamis, unemployment, an Arab Spring, and an Occupy movement. There were blizzards when you first arrived, drought and wildfires as you took your first steps, tornadoes, floods and stifling heat waves as you reached midlife, and strange storms in your latter days. You saw the end of the Space Shuttle program, Oprah's 25-year reign over daytime television, Borders bookstores, and American troops in Iraq. You take with you Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Taylor, Joe Frazier, Amy Winehouse, and many more we will miss. From my desk at CCC, here are four things I'll remember you for:

1. TTIP Consolidates. We learned in early spring that TTIP (Telecommunications and Technology Infrastructure Program, which funds CCC Confer and several other statewide projects) was going to experience budget cuts. To cope with reduced funds, a plan was developed to consolidate TTIP projects into two centers. Tim Calhoon, Director of the California Community Colleges Technology Center, will be directing the California Virtual Campus (CVC) along with CCCApply and CCCTran. My end of the deal will include CCC Confer, 3C Media Solutions / Edustream, and the @ONE project. My sincere thanks to Bill Doherty, who will be retiring at the end of next month, and Lenora Pinkston (who will remain at Evergreen Valley College) for their help in the transition and planning for this consolidation, and to all of the staff from these projects who have collaborated to ensure an effective alliance of minds and efforts. We're a terrific team and I'm fortunate to be part of it.

2. Mobile Learning. In January, I was part of the Mid-Pacific Information and Communication Technology (MPICT) Winter ICT Educator Conference in San Francisco. One of the tracks that fascinated me and all of the attendees had to do with educational mobile apps: there are thousands of them, and they're multiplying! The Horizon Report predicted that this would be the year for adoption of mobile learning, and it certainly seems to have been a banner year for iPhones, iPads, eReaders, Androids, and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).  Irvine Valley College hosted a symposium entitled "Mobility Matters" in March, where I joined Craig DeVoe, Jim Gaston, Bob Bramucci, and several others to discuss mobile computing and the impact of mobility on learning and higher education. (Incidentally, I'm going back to MPICT next month for the 2012 iteration; hope to see you there!)

3. Open Learning Heroes. The 2011 Online Teaching Conference at Orange Coast College used the theme "Be an Open Learning Hero" for good reason. Open educational resources are a growing part of the landscape. Early in 2011, the U.S. Department of Labor introduced the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program, a $2 billion effort that mandates the use of openly licensed materials. Open Educational Resource University (OERu) began to take shape this year, along with the Open Course Library. And State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg proposed a bill that will allocate $25 million to create free online college text books and establish the California Digital Open Source Library. View Jane Park's presentation, "Opening the Door to Sharing Content in Education," by clicking here. Eric Frank's talk - "Free the Text! How Open Texts are Disrupting Publishing and Improving Outcomes" - can be viewed here. And Steve Hargadon's keynote, "Open Learning: The Future of Education" is available here.


4. Learning is Social. Facebook now has 800 million users, more than half of whom are daily users. Over 900 million objects (pages, groups, events) are shared every day on the site, with 250 million new photos uploaded daily. 350 million of Facebook's active users connect from mobile devices. It took three years, two months, and a day from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet on Twitter. Currently, it takes a week to send a billion Tweets.  Twitter now adds an average of 460,000 new accounts per day, and saw a 182% increase in mobile users in 2011. Google+ was introduced this year and is nearing 100 million users (all adult). Michelle Pacansky-Brock calls this "The Era of Participation" and we're all (willing or not) participants.

Bring 'Em On Board: How to Get Your Colleagues to Confer

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." - Alan Watts

"I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it." - Groucho Marx

Julian Prior and Marie Salter at the University of Bath recently reported on their pilot of Web conferencing software at their university. With funding from HE STEM grants, and a need to connect teams in partner colleges and organizations, they decided to test the Web conferencing waters. Here's how they got their colleagues to wet their feet:

• Interviews. Almost by accident (literally!), they discovered that candidates can be interviewed without the expense and bother of having to bring them to campus, order a room, and fill it with committee members. A candidate at Bath was hospitalized and could not attend her interview, but with this technology "she was able to respond to questions, complete the interview task planned, and demonstrate skills - just as she would have been able to do in a face-to-face situation."
• Regional Conferences. They tested this with a group of lecturers and technologists who wanted to discuss lecture capture as a strategy. What better way to demonstrate than with a remote technology that allows for capturing and reviewing the proceedings?
• Virtual Open Day. The Clinical Psychology department held a program that was so popular that there was insufficient space and resources for the students who wanted to attend. The solution: take the program online and allow everyone to participate.
• Regional Meetings. Naturally, the far-flung HE-STEM network was quick to discover the ease and convenience of meeting online rather than traveling to meetings.
• Case Study Presentations. The Chemistry department used the technology to present case studies.
• Project Proposals. The Health Department - no stranger to distance education - used the technology to allow students in distant countries to present project proposals to on-campus mentors.
• Postgraduate seminars.  A series of seminars was delivered to Masters students in Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Palestine, Syria, and the UK by means of Web conferencing.
• Professional Development. The Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology made use of the virtual learning environment to deliver continuing professional development training.

The reactions of the Bath experimenters were positive and enthusiastic. They tried several technologies and shared their findings with each other and the larger professional community. Prior and Salter conclude that "we are in the enviable position of reporting overwhelmingly positive feedback from participants who have been involved in a number of different usage scenarios."

If you're feeling lonely on your campus because you haven't found other instructors or practitioners who've taken the leap of faith required to become a virtual instructor, consider trying some of these scenarios with your colleagues. Many of our most ardent supporters and users were first introduced to CCC Confer by means of an invitation to an online event like one of these. They became curious, and later found out for themselves that Web conferencing provides a solution to challenges in their own circumstances. Share it with someone you know. 

Are You a Visitor, or Do You Live Here?

"I come from the Batman era, adding items to my utility belt while students today are the Borg from Star Trek, assimilating technology into their lives." - David Tuss


"They are used to the immediacy of hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets – which are on 24/7; a library on their laptops/computers, and connectivity anytime, anywhere. They’ve been networked most or all of their lives. Being always connected is something natural to them, and they have conversations constantly going with their social networks via text messaging and instant messaging." - Eva Windisch and Niclas Medman


I've just read the "Visitors and Residents" paper by David S. White and Alison Le Cornu. They're proposing an alternative to Prensky's Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. One reason this may be necessary - aside from the fact that Prensky's model has been under fire lately - is because the native-immigrant model pre-dated social media. Prensky's "natives" lived in the digital information world, whereas today's "residents" live in a digital world that combines infinite information with relationships, social and political networks, and new approaches to teaching and learning. Visitors "understand the Web as akin to an untidy garden shed" where they find tools, do a job, and return the tool once the job is over. Residents "see the Web as a place ... in which there are clusters of friends and colleagues whom they can approach and with whom they can share information about their life and work."





This video gives a good summary of the visitors/residents idea, and you can access  (and use) the Prezi presentation here. Though I'm not sure the name change is necessary, the new definitions and typology appeal to me. Our students tend to fall into "use it to do this" vs. "Welcome to my world" categories.

Katie Piatt has collected some data to support the visitor/resident dichotomy, using a questionnaire with her students that asks these questions:

1. Do you have any online friends that you have never met face to face?
2. How often do you update your Facebook status or post on Twitter each day?
3. Do you ever feel like you are missing out because you've been offline for a long time?
4. Have you ever Googled yourself?

The first question is aimed at discovering online relationships. The second is a measure of desire to leave records of one's persona online. The third question distinguishes between the "native" and the "resident" by pointing at the value of conversations and relationships - as opposed to mere information - online. The last question tries to indicate one's attachment to a digital identity.

The distinction might help explain students' approaches to your virtual classroom, and even your own approach. Do you miss online time with your students, chatting, sharing, laughing, networking? Are you inclined to force students to report what they're doing every day? Is the Web your home, or do you just come here to teach?

Connecting with Students: It's a Whole New World

"If I had asked our students, faculty, and staff before all of this if they thought social media was a huge part of their lives and work, the answer would have been no. But now, many are seeing that it is a really big part of how we behave and what we do." (Eric Darr, Provost at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology)

Last week, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology imposed a ban on social media sites: students' access to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and AOL Instant Messenger. The idea, according to Eric Darr (quoted above), was that " the set of technology we call “social media” has a big impact on the way students, faculty, and staff here at the university live their lives and do their work. It’s not just a peripheral time-waster. But posing this to students in an academic setting didn’t seem to quite get to it; habits are very hard to talk about and articulate because we’re not aware that we’re doing them. Imagine a world without social media! " Darr claims that several students reported less stress, better concentration, and improved sleep once the ban was enacted. He also acknowledges that the ban didn't really work:  the proportion of students who actually went "cold turkey" was probably around 10% or 15%.

Also last week, the second Education Nation summit was held at Rockefeller Center in New York City. This summit brought together some of the nation's most prominent education reformers, policymakers, and funders to discuss important and emerging educational trends and policies. Ann Curry of NBC also convened a very important panel of - students (!!!) to provide insights and suggestions about what's important to them about education. They suggested 20 things, but I'll highlight a few that stand in sharp contrast to the Harrisburg experiment:

•  I can't learn from you if you are not willing to connect with me.
• Us youth love all the new technologies that come out. When you acknowledge this and use technology in your teaching it makes learning much more interesting.
• We appreciate when you connect with us in our worlds such as the teacher who provided us with extra help using Xbox and Skype.
• You need to use tools in the classroom that we use in the real world like Facebook, email, and other tools we use to connect and communicate.

Finally, I've included in this entry a snapshot of a Facebook conversation I had this week with a young woman from India (I've intentionally protected her privacy by smearing her name and profile picture) who posted on CCC Confer's Facebook page. At first I thought she was asking for training materials related to using the technology, which would have been fine and even a bit flattering. But it became clear in the conversation that she had an interest in the archived lectures of a particular instructor at a particular college in California who teaches high-tech computer classes. Here's an illustration of how dramatically the technologies of lecture capture, synchronous online education, and social networking combined to make international connections and learning possible. (I checked yesterday: the instructor and the student are now Facebook friends.)

Ironically, this week was Banned Books week: libraries around the country held programs and readings to discuss the evils of censorship and content restrictions. Ban (Face)book? Not in my world!