Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Minnesota

Quality Matters at the University of Minnesota - Update for Fall 2012

2012-10-24T16:09:45Z

Last spring, three University faculty faculty completed training to be certified facilitators of the introductory Quality Matters course, Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR). For the first time, the University of Minnesota sponsored QM trainings that were facilitated by U of M faculty and participants were all from U of M campuses.

A cohort approach
University-facilitated training allowed cohorts of U of M faculty and staff to participate in trainings as a group, building a collegial and shared experience with Quality Matters. Participants have met colleagues from other areas of the University who are working on similar projects; as they move forward in their own course design or redesign, they can reach out to others that they met during the QM training.

A cohort model also helps establish the use of Quality Matters and instructional design best practices within departments and colleges. If one faculty member from a college participates in Quality Matters, it may be difficult to expand the use of QM beyond the courses directly influenced by the one faculty member. If, however, several faculty members participate, their collective efforts can establish a culture or practice of quality design and assurance.

Feedback from Participants

I was very impressed with my course facilitator, the organization of the materials, and the course design. As the design of distance delivery environments evolve, access to this wonderful resource is invaluable. The research embedded in the rubrics helps to facilitate a cycle of continuous improvement in our courses. - Staff Participant

Although, I have taught online for well over a decade, I have never really taken an online course. So, it did help me view a course from a student's perspective and it was clear to me that I need to be more explicit about the instructions in my online courses. It also showed me the importance of instructor feedback and that student's do value and anticipate timely feedback from faculty. It also drilled home the necessity of alignment in online courses. - Faculty Participant

Participate!

Learn more about QM@UM and sign up to participate in an upcoming Quality Matters training.

Quality Criteria for Online Modules

2012-10-17T20:38:00Z

A fantastic resource for faculty and staff who are creating online modules came across my radar recently, Defining quality criteria for online continuing medical education modules using modified nominal group technique. Medical educators worked together to identify the most important criteria for an online module to be high quality. The resulting list can be used to guide module development or to assess the quality of modules already created, especially for accreditation.

What I like most about this list is that it identifies important practices for excellent online learning that can easily be forgotten when we create online modules. For instance, the first criteria for identifying high-quality online modules is "Allows user to learn at own pace, within reasonable completion timelines, and to review previously completed material as needed." It may seem obvious, but learners get very frustrated when this basic functionality is not included.

The other sixteen criteria are less obvious, such as "Cites the best available evidence, such as clinical practice guidelines, and provides links to these sources where possible" and "Cites the best available evidence, such as clinical practice guidelines, and provides links to these sources where possible".

The article is available through U of M Libraries and Academic Search Premier.

Full citation: Shortt S, Guillemette J, Duncan A, Kirby F. Defining quality criteria for online continuing medical education modules using modified nominal group technique. Journal Of Continuing Education In The Health Professions [serial online]. Fall2010 2010;30(4):246-250.

Resource - Writing Learning Objectives

2012-09-12T20:34:16Z

Identifying unit learning objectives that are clear and measurable is often a difficult task for faculty and instructors. At the same time, scholarship and research show the importance of measurable learning objectives. Many best practices in teaching and learning, especially in online teaching and learning, state the importance of clear, measurable learning objectives.

The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State has a great collection of resources to help faculty develop learning objectives. The Synthesis Worksheet is especially useful to guide mapping unit outcomes, the cognitive task (based on Bloom's taxonomy), how the unit will be taught, and how student learning will be assessed.

What other resources have you found helpful in writing learning objectives?

What's new with Quality Matters

2012-07-26T16:35:57Z

Quality Matters at the University of Minnesota continues to grow. Last year nearly 100 faculty and staff participated in Quality Matters-related training. Faculty and instructional designers find Quality Matters a useful tool in reviewing online courses and in creating new online courses. The rubric serves as a helpful guide in taking a step back from your course and looking at it from a student's perspective.

To learn more about Quality Matters, visit the QM@UM site. From there, you can request training and learn more about available trainings.

Engaging a 2,670-student-class by utilizing technologies

2012-05-04T05:22:25Z

Have you ever taught a large class with 200 or 300 students? If so, you should know how difficult it is to teach a large class.

What about, then, teaching more than 2,000 students in a classroom? How can you handle that?

One recent article in the Chronicle in Higher Education really inspired me to rethink about teaching a large class.

John Boyer, who teaches "World Regions" course at Virginia Tech explores how technology can help engage students from 600 to nearly 3,000 students in a big classroom. And it was shown that students do learn from the class while some people doubt the effectiveness of the class in terms of student learning.

To me, the most interesting thing he does is the 'virtual' office hours.

Before starting the office hours, his assistant sends out alerts through Facebook and twitter. Then, students including his former students attend the office hours either off-line (i.e., come in person and sit in his office couch) or on-line.

Then, he takes questions through instant messages and 'broadcasts' his answers via 'Ustream', a free Web platform that lets anyone broadcast a video feed through a Webcam.

Isn't that cool?

Another way of utilizing technology is to let student tweets tagged with the class hashtag. ,

Also, he often invites students to text their responses to a poll to choose a topic for the day (FYI, 'Chime In' is a similar system developed by the U of M CLA IT group that lets students respond to a poll via internet or text messages).

Oh, and I should tell you one more thing he does. He has been inviting famous people (e.g., Aung San Suu Kyi, a Myanmar's pro-democracy leader) to do a Skype interview in his class. To make that possible, he recorded videos showing the large crowd of students blowing noisemakers and chanting their names and posted them on Youtube.

What a bold and great idea!

I believe it was not only the technologies but also his knowledge in interactive teaching methods that helped engage a large crowd of students into learning.

I think these techniques, especially virtual office hours using Ustream, can be useful in all types of classes (off line, online, or hybrid).

If you have time, I do recommend to read through the original Chronicles of Higher Education article.

Presenting slides in Google hangout - A tool for live online discussing

2012-04-23T18:52:51Z

Some of you might already have been using Google hangout, the online face-to-face chatting tool.

I think Google hangout can be used as a live online teaching/learning tool because you can present learning content to others while discussing online.

Note that you can chat with up to 9 people in Google hangout, though. So Google hangout may be better for small group discussions than whole class lecturing.

There are two ways in which you can present your content (for example, ppt slides) in Google hangout. You can share your screen itself or share slides using SlideShare app.

First, sharing screen is simple. When you start Google hangout, you can see 'Chat', 'Invite', 'App' and 'Screenshare' in the menu bar.

By clicking 'Screenshare', you can choose and share your computer screen with the people you invite. Whatever you have in your computer screen including power point slides and Youtube video will be on your friends or students' screens, too.

Below is the screenshot image of sharing a computer screen in the Google hangout. You can see a Youtube video is being played in the screen.

And if you want to use SlideShare app, you need to first upload your slides into SlideShare. Then after starting google hangout, click 'App' menu then choose 'SlideShare' app. And you need to search and select the presentation slides you uploaded to share with others.

Below is a screenshot image of using SlideShare app in Google hangout.

Visit here for more information for using SlideShare in Google hangout.

iPads in K12 classrooms - empowering students but furthering the learning gap

2012-04-02T22:18:29Z

One U of M graduate student recently conducted a study in a secondary school examining the potential of using iPads in classrooms and found a few interesting findings. She visited a secondary school, which had purchased 300 iPads and allowed students to use them in classrooms for learning.

Empowered (but sometimes Distracted) Students
First, the student researcher found that by using iPads, students were empowered to learn on their own. Students could shift their role from passive receivers of knowledge to producers of knowledge. For example, students was encouraged to do a lot of independent inquiry and research using the iPad's web browser or applications. And by doing group project work and presentations, they could inform other classmates and teachers (i.e., project-based and cooperative learning). So the Information seemed to be regarded as permeable and not owned by the teacher. From teachers' perspective, it was necessary to employ both traditional (e.g., lecturing) and non-traditional (e.g., encouraging exploration by students) teaching methods.

While students were empowered, however, it was found that students were also easily distracted when searching through internet and using applications. Teachers should carefully design a way to prevent students from being distracted.

Barriers against effective use of technologies
It was not always easy to utilize the new technology in classrooms. Interestingly, the barriers against effective use of iPads in classrooms were not teachers but school policies and procedures. In a class project that involved designing the distribution and use of iPads in their own school, students could not access the iTunes store to view information, ratings, and pricing, which they needed to complete their project, due to the school policy. And this problem was solved by teachers' downloading the AppHits application for the students. Installing the application onto the classroom's cart of iPads took a few days but worked out great.

Furthering learning gap
A couple of unexpected findings emerged. First, one group of students explained how they had access to iPads at home so they could continue to study or explore information. But one student said that her family is too poor and she wished she had one at home. The school's iPad project does not address the issue. But the researcher hopes to get more insight to this issue from teachers during follow up interviews.

Second unexpected finding was that iPads could "further the achievement gap." The school Principal in the initial interview stated his belief that iPads are furthering the gap. In observing class discussions one teacher noted the increased learning gap between high performing students and low performing students and asked students what they thought about distributing the iPads to the lowest 75 students in each grade to help bridge the gap. Students did not like the idea. One student even said, "they'll just break them"

In sum, according to the ethnographic study, utilizing iPads can bring both benefits and pitfalls to classrooms. Since using iPads in classrooms is just at the beginning stage in schools, we should carefully observe and keep our eyes on those projects.

The result of U of M iPad Project

2012-03-22T18:12:06Z

College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at U of M initiated an iPad pilot project in 2010 fall, providing iPad for the entire freshman class (about 450 undergraduate students) in the college. (If you want to know more about the project, read this previous blog posting)

Now the college published a Year One report explaining what they learned from the project.

In the report, they explain what they learned from using iPad in classrooms in six broad categories:

1. Reducing the digital divide: Instructors expressed optimism that the iPad could reduce the digital divide in the classroom. They emphasized finding apps that are free or very inexpensive for students.

2. Increased Media Production: Instructors frequently asked students to create media using their iPad, including development of individual photo journals, e-documents, speeches with image projections, short movies on a course theme, photomontages of images, and pictures or videos for class presentation.

3. Increased Personal Productivity: Instructors were positive about the convenience
and ease of accessing email and calendars on the iPad, and many used the iPad to schedule appointments or send email to students "on-the-spot" during class.

4. Increased information Literacy: Instructors and students agree that information access and consumption is one of the primary strengths of the iPad. And students used iPad to do many kinds of class preparation and research activities resulting in increased information literacy of students.

5. Sustainable classroom: To reduce the use and related cost of traditional course materials and to take advantage of the features of the iPad, some faculty, for example, used an e-version of required texts, encouraged students to access and annotate course readings via a reader app, and checked and sent assignments using their iPads.

6. Learning Beyond the classroom: Several faculty members developed curriculum that used the iPad to change the learning context. For example, in an introduction to psychology course students used the portability of the iPad and the college's online survey tool to collect data in the community related to their research questions.

For more information, read the executive summary of the report or the full report.

Video Ant: A video annotation tools

2012-03-08T18:41:47Z

According to a recent article in the Chronicle of the Higher Education, it is found in a new study that many online instructors aren't taking advantage of interactive instructional tools like online video. Instead, the professors are relying on static (i.e., text based) course materials and assignments. These text-based course materials aren't likely to motivate students very much.

For instructors who are using or planning to use video in their courses, I would like to introduce the 'Video Ant (http://ant.umn.edu)', an easy video annotation tools created by U of M.

Using video ant, students can critique and annotate their idea about a video on Youtube or Media Mill.

You can find more information and video tutorials of Video Ant in Video Ant Blog.

As an example of utilizing the Video Ant, Tani Bialek, an instructor in OLPD let her online course students find a video on Youtube related to the course topic. And then, students are required to discuss, critique, and annotate it. The annotated videos are then posted on the Moodle site for all students in the course to view.

Read more about Bialek's story in another TEL blog entry.

Engagement and Wonder

2012-02-15T19:21:47Z

The Chronicle interviewed Michael Wesch of Kansas State University, the famous (at least in my world) and inventive professor who creates engaging, learner-oriented lessons with YouTube, Twitter, Google Docs, and many other types of technology. (See his World Simulation project for just one example.)

The key theme of the article is that it is not technology that makes these lessons amazing; it is the fact that the technology helps create an environment of wonder, exploration, and connectedness. We know this already, from the literature and best practices - students who are engaged with other students and their professor are more likely to be successful (see Quality Matters among many others), students learn better when they can scaffold (Bloom's taxonomy, e.g.) and apply what they learned previously to new situations, etc. But it is an easy point to lose track of in the exciting world of tablets, simulations, and mobile learning.

Good teaching is good teaching. Technology can facilitate good teaching. Technology for technology's sake is not useful and can distract from learning.

Finally, follow Michael Wesch for inspiring uses of technology to create engaged learners.

2012 Horizon Report

2012-02-03T16:39:07Z

The New Media Consortium's Horizon Report was released today. The Horizon Report is published every year and attempts to identify emerging technologies that will have an impact in teaching and learning. The report lists technologies in three time-to-adoption time frames.

For 2012, the Horizon Reports lists Mobile Apps and Tablet Computing as 1 year or less. Game-based Learning and Learning Analytics are 1 to 3 years out, and Gesture-Based Computing and the Internet of Things being 4 to 5 years out.

The "internet of things" concept stems from the work of Vint Cerf. He describes the "internet of things" as

"The Internet of things is on its way. The clear evidence of that, of course, is mobile to begin with, appliances that are now Internet-enabled, picture frames, refrigerators and things like that, office appliances, appliances at home. The smart grid is going to accelerate that process because more and more appliances will be part of the smart grid and its ensemble. They will be reporting their use. They will be accepting control saying, "Hey, don't run the air conditioner for the next 15 minutes, I'm in the middle of a peak load." We'll see many, many more devices on the Net than there are people [and] more sensor networks on the system, as well".

When I first heard of the Internet of Things, I thought of home appliances and consumer goods. The Horizon Report connects the concept with learning, and is well worth the read.

Beyond labs and museums, where do you see the Internet of Things impacting higher education?

Open education and credentials

2012-01-16T17:30:34Z

MIT announced it will offer certificates to students who take their online courses but are not enrolled or admitted to MIT. The credential will be from MITx, not MIT, and it looks like students will pay to receive the credential.

Higher education is an ecosystem of educational content, interaction with instructors/experts, interactions with students, credentials, and accreditation (and likely more that I am not thinking of at the moment). Until all of those aspects are addressed, open education will not overtake traditional higher education (both online and on-campus). With this move, MIT is addressing credentials. In a few years, I would not surprised to see other institutions accept MITx credentials as for-credit courses. Which would bring some form of accreditation, albeit secondarily.

Fascinating.

Questions and Prompts to Facilitate Online Discussions

2012-01-10T17:27:49Z

Online discussions can be difficult to facilitate, especially high-quality, engaging online discussions. Too often, students post the minimum required posts, not engaging with their peers in thoughtful discussion.

The resource, Questions and Prompts to Facilitate Online Discussions, may be a useful tool for instructors in search of discussion prompts that can help lead to deeper discussions.

This resource aims to assist instructors in fostering student engagement in online discussions, one of the elements of the Quality Matters rubric.

How to share your content with public

2011-12-22T22:42:12Z

Do you have good content you want to share with public? Or do you want to create a podcast?

University of Minnesota provides members of the University a good podcasting tool with which they can share their content with public. That is University of Minnesota Public iTunes U.

If you are interested, please download and read a manual explaining the required process.

If you have any question on the process, please fill out the technical support request form.

Measuring the quality of learning: Use output rather than input

2011-12-21T23:33:27Z

How should we measure the quality of online learning?

When talking about the quality of online learning, many people try to compare it to the quality of classroom learning. And the result of comparison has been repeatedly reported that the quality of online learning is similar to (or even slightly better than) that of classroom learning is similar. A 2010 report published by the U.S. Department of Education is one example of those reports.

In fact, how we deliver may not matter. Most of online learning have similar ways of delivering content (lectures, reading material, assignments, class discussions and so on). So it may not be so surprising to see the quality of online learning is similar to that of offline learning.

How, then, do we measure the quality of online learning? In terms of what?

A president of a nonprofit, online university raised good questions and provided some good examples regarding measuring quality of learning issue in a recent special report published by Chronicles of Higher Education.

In the article, he said that many accrediting organizations or ranking systems such as the U.S. News & World Report rankings are doing wrong things by looking at inputs-the degrees held by faculty members, faculty-student ratios, library resources, expenditures per student and so on.

Of course, many research universities are measured by the quality of their research. But most other colleges including online universities are not focusing on research. According to the president, those universities who has focus on teaching and learning should be measured by outputs rather than inputs.

Outputs can include the popular measures such as the dropout rates or graduation rates. But, output should be related to what students know and what they are able to do. That is why the president's university, Western Governors University tries to measure students' learning outcomes-they call it as 'competencies'. Again it is what students should know and be able to do.

In the university, in order to graduate, students must demonstrate they have mastered all competencies through many assessment tools (tests, performance tasks, projects, papers, etc.). Where possible, they utilize third-party assessments such as licensure exams for teachers and nurses, IT certification exams for IT students, the Society for Human Resource Management exam for HR students, and so on.

And in addition, they ask graduates and their employers whether their graduates have competencies required for their jobs, and how employers are satisfied with their graduates and so on as another way of evaluating their quality of teaching and learning.

After reading this article, I got to agree with this author. The quality of learning should be measured in terms of output rather than input. And the output should include what students know and be able to do after their classes, not just how high the graduation rate or the dropout rate would be.

I think academic administrators should carefully consider developing assessment tools and systems like Western Governors University, not just leaving the important tasks in the hands of instructors.