Michael Bugeja’s opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Reduce the Technology, Rescue Your Job,” struck a nerve today.  He started by noting that for “most of this decade, professors embraced the pedagogy of engagement, wooing students via technology and ignoring the costs because traditional methods, from textbooks to lectures, purportedly bored students who multitasked in the wireless classroom.”  He then noted the massive cuts occurring across higher education, and suggested that these “facts alone merit an immediate technological and curricular assessment, or else hundreds more professors and staff members could lose their jobs in the coming weeks and months. You may lose your job.”

Bugeja raised the valid point that too often technology decisions are made without factoring in true costs, but he then suggests that teaching centers (like the one at which I work) are part of the problem for pushing the use of technology for teaching and learning.  His final paragraph reads:

• “I challenge anyone objecting to these arguments to look in the eye of secretaries, janitors, adjuncts, advisers, and professors of eliminated programs and say that avatars, clickers, social networks, and tweets—and the pedagogies, IT expenses, and teaching centers supporting them—are more important than feeding their families. To believe we can afford both indicates how incapable many of us are of making the difficult choices that the times require.”

It would be easy to dismiss this article if I did not think that his way of thinking was not reflective of many in mainstream faculty.  I have seen a number of faculty in higher education, as well as teachers in K-12, who see technology as an evil.  In many ways, they want to wall off their classes from the outside world.

That image of a wall is particularly relevant today, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  President Reagan has always been one of my favorites, and one cannot think of him without hearing his exhortation:

“Mr. Gorbachev…tear down this wall!”

That is the line most remember, but I like his comments later in the same speech, in which he stated “this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”

Bugeja’s comments to reduce technology in order to save jobs ignores the realities of a changing world…much as the Berlin Wall did.  Technology in and of itself is not evil, and technology integrated into education is opening minds, not closing them.  The participatory web and open access to information has created freedoms that never existed in the past.  Those freedoms directly and positively impact learning.  As Derek Bruff noted in a comment to Bugeja’s piece:

“…point out that Bugeja has focused here on the cost of instructional technology, but not on the benefits to student learning. There’s plenty of research that shows that student learning is positively affected by instructional methods that involve more active student engagement before, during, and after class. Technologies that support or facilitate such instructional methods are certainly worth exploring, if our goal is student learning. When conducting a cost-benefit analysis, it’s only appropriate to spend as much time thinking through the benefits as it is thinking through the costs.”

“…if our goal is student learning…”  Well said, Derek!  If one shifts the microscope from technology to student learning, one might find many traditional classrooms in trouble!  President Reagan made his speech in 1987, and during that same period, Chickering and Gamson developed a seminal work on teaching and learning, their Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Instruction.  They synthesized fifty years of research on teaching to develop these principles:

Good practice in undergraduate education:
1. Encourages contact between students and faculty
2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.
3. Encourages active learning.
4. Gives prompt feedback.
5. Emphasizes time on task.
6. Communicates high expectations.
7. Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

Rather than cast technology as an evil, I would suggest that technology is a powerful tool that encourages contact between students and faculty, provides avenues for reciprocity and cooperation among students, creates new venues for active learning, enables more timely and prompt feedback, and gives new opportunities to keep students on task.  High expectations can now be communicated in multiple ways across social media that students are using, and these diverse and multiple paths respect the talents and new ways our students are learning.

We certainly need to be fiscally prudent with taxpayer and tuition-funded monies, but now is not the time to build walls and isolate our students from a 24/7 wired world.  Instead, we need to actively help our students create the learning networks that they will need to thrive in the 21st Century.

So to Mr. Bugeja and others who agree with him, I say “Tear down this wall!”

I just finished reading Curtis J. Bonk’s new book, The World is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will tell you that Wiley, the publisher, emailed me after I reviewed Dan Willingham’s book in a previous post and asked if they could send me Bonk’s book for possible review (with no strings attached).

I said yes and the next week received a copy of this book at no charge.

With that said, this book has resonated with me and I found Bonk’s approach interesting.

In many ways, Bonk is as much a fan boy of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat as I am.  Just as Friedman had ten flatterners, Bonk has ten openers:

Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN)

1. Web Searching in the World of e-Books
2. E-Learning and Blended Learning
3. Availability of Open Source and Free Software
4. Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare
5. Learning Object Repositories and Portals
6. Learner Participation in Open Information Communities
7. Electronic Collaboration
8. Alternate Reality Learning
9. Real-Time Mobility and Portability
10. Networks of Personalized Learning

WE-ALL-LEARN provides a framework for his book and the premise that anyone can now learn anything from anyone at anytime.  Bonk  spun out chapters on each opener, illustrating each concept with stories, a bit of research and statistics, and implications for education in the future.  Working in the field, I recognized some of the people he named, but I also learned new pioneers.  Bonk continually reinforces that these openers ought to be changing education as we know it, as our world is quite different from our parent’s world.

In Bonk’s view, these openers need to viewed through three overarching trends.  First, the pipes are getting bigger allowing access to tools and infrastructure.  Second, more and more pages of content is becoming available as free and open content. Third, a participatory learning culture is evolving around social media.

One of the things I found fascinating was my own reaction to the book.  I buy the basic theme that openness ultimately improves education, and I consider myself someone who is part of a participatory learning culture.  I was pleased that Bonk provided a companion website with hyperlinked references and other resources.  But my first inclination was to begin following Curt Bonk’s Twitter account…and I could not find one for him!  Other than his blog, I did not see Bonk participating to the same degree that he discusses in his book.  I have never met him and may be way off target, but I was somewhat surprised that I could not immediately connect with him the way I did with some of the people he mentioned in his book like Stephen Downes, Vicki Davis, Clay Shirky or Dave Weinberger.

So I was thrilled with the content and miffed a bit by the author!  Weird reaction!

I also found that increasingly with books like this one, I read it with a laptop nearby, so that I can quickly go look at something new and immediately start the learning process for myself.  I had never seen Dancing Matt before, so really enjoyed viewing his Youtube video while reading that section of the book.  This bouncing between the web and the written word is a new but interesting process…and it suggests that in many ways, this should have been an e-book as opposed to a print book.

His final opener has to do with personalized learning…something we reflect on often in faculty development.  Bonk stated that we should be striving to move from where we see personalized learning as the ideal to a culture where personalized learning is the accepted norm.  With the pipes, pages, and participatory culture, anyone can establish their own learning path on any topic, whether it be improved teaching, learning a new language, or finally programming the VCR (…just kidding).  The implications for faculty development are huge!

Bonk has fifteen predictions at the end.  I will leave it to you to check them out, but I liked that he is questioning the status quo.  With the availability of all the world’s knowledge in our pockets/cellphones, the typical four-year college process no longer makes sense to Bonk.  He suggests that formalized education will expand rather than contract.  But informal learning with global partners will play an equal role to the formalized higher education model.  Learning will be authentic from passionate teachers…but those “teachers” may no longer be credentialed.  Bonk also served up a dozen issues that will have to be solved for openness to succeed.

I work with faculty daily on best ways to incorporate the internet into their teaching practices.  In the past three years since I came to VCU, the access to learning on the web has exploded.  Bonk’s book is pushing me to reconceptualize how I should facilitate faculty development in an open world.  I recommend the book to you and would be interesting in your thoughts on the evolution/revolution of faculty development in these exciting times!

The delivery of courses online is nearly as old as the web itself, but as with any innovation, some faculty members have been early adopters while others have watched the development with both interest and skepticism. As publishing and managing content on the web has become easier, and as the delivery of online courses has become increasingly more popular, more faculty members have begun exploring ways to offer their courses online.

There is a common perspective that moving a course online is primarily about designing and sequencing course content. While content is important, we also believe that recent changes on the web – toward a more social and interconnected space – have necessitated the rethinking of what it means to make the transition to online teaching and learning. The unprecedented access to information coupled with the ability by anyone to publish online are disrupting how one teaches and learns, raising questions in the minds of faculty as to whether their own practices should change.

Jeff Nugent, Bud Deihl, and I at the Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Teaching Excellence where I work have authored a white paper, Building from Content to Community: [Re]Thinking the Transition to Online Teaching and Learning, that is intended to serve as a resource for faculty who are teaching online or are considering making a transition. We hope this paper serves as the starting point for conversation, and invite you to share your ideas by leaving a comment at our CTE blog or here.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Forty years ago when I was a plebe at the U. S. Naval Academy, I learned quickly that naval officers never said “I don’t know.”  The correct response if you did not know the answer was “I’ll Find Out, Sir!”  And then you had better find out!  It is a little thing, and yet, from an attitude perspective, huge.  “I don’t know” is a passive response requiring no action.  “I’ll find out” is a proactive response requiring action.

As I said goodnight to Michele, I was reflecting on her comment about my not saying “I don’t know.”  That is a personal attitude, but could it not also be transferred to our students? After all, it is simply an expectation that students will take responsibility for their own learning.

We have been debating the efficacy of allowing laptops in classrooms here on campus.  At the risk of calling them old-schoolers, there is a segment here that flatly bans the use of laptops or mobile devices in their classes.  To me, that is inviting a passive student to your class.  Luckily there are faculty here who feel the opposite.

The alternative as these other faculty have found is to tap in to the natural curiosity of students and set the expectation of “I’ll Find Out!”  At a brown bag lunch last week, one faculty talked about the excitement of having students in his History class fact-check him during lectures and pull their impromptu research into the class discussion.  I totally agree, and I think the attitude applies whether you are talking face-to-face or online classes.

In my online classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level, I have tried to set the expectation of student-generated content to add to the learning process.  My current class is a good example.  I have enjoyed co-teaching Educational Technology and School Leadership this semester with Jon Becker.  Over the past twelve weeks, we and our students have collaboratively explored the integration of Web 2.0 in K-12 programs.  At the start of class, we had a group of self-described technophobes who were very worried about taking an online class.  Through the use of active learning and collaboration in a wiki, they have grown comfortable working and sharing online.  Now, they wonder why their colleagues are not doing the same.  During the past week, the online discussion was rich with commentary about the professional development of K-12 teachers.  It was interesting to see my students moving from a former expectation that it was the administrator’s job to provide professional development to one that espoused personal learning in a networked world as the key to professional development.

“I’ll Find Out!” may be the heart and soul of learning-centered teaching, but I am coming to the realization that it also is the heart and soul of faculty development as well.  Of course, it requires action on the part of each individual.  A personal learning environment or network does not materialize overnight.  It requires time and conscious thought to develop a learning network that works for you.

Trying to figure out how to facilitate that process will tug at me for the next few weeks.  In June, Jeff Nugent, Bud Deihl and I will be guiding our annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Institute.  Our theme this year is Teaching and Learning in a Networked World.  Our challenge will be to introduce faculty to the power of networked learning and to assist them in developing their own networks.  I have had the luxury of a full semester with my class, so this is a tall task to attempt in one week.  It will be interesting to see how we do.  Will we succeed?

I’ll find out.

{Photo Credit: Ezalis, Chrisfreeland2002}

After two 3+ hour flights and one flight delay, I have crossed the country to attend Innovations 2009 in Reno NV.  Innovations is an annual conference of the League for Innovation in Community Colleges, and this is my fifth or sixth.  While I am no longer associated with two-year colleges, I still stay in touch through both the League and the Chair Academy.

About two months ago, Barry Dahl asked if I could step in and take over a pre-conference workshop called “Engaging Students with Free Web Tools” that he had originally submitted.  It seemed the missus had obtained some surprise cruise ship tickets without checking dates with her husband.  I was only too glad to do so, and have enjoyed putting together the workshop with my own spin on it.

Barry had previously done a similar workshop and used his blog to post his resources.  I liked the idea, but I wanted to model the practice of open collaboration.  So I went with a Wet Paint wiki for my resources.  I am opening it up to anyone to join and improve.

I will be spending three hours with this group…and on the off-chance that the hotel internet is snarky, I created a lot of powerpoint slides to back up my presentation.  I am posting parts one and two below.  I am trying to be true to Presentation Zen…but I have a long way to go!

Looking forward to tomorrow and the conference!  If the wiki is useful to you and your personal learning network, feel free to use it or share it.  It is under Creative Commons Sharealike licensing.

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Research one of the Top 100 Tools from Jane Hart’s list and present your findings in a short multimedia tutorial presentation to the rest of your classmates.

26 students – 26 tools

In two weeks.

With no further guidance.

Two weeks ago, you might as well said:  Take this goat and cross this rickety bridge.  (Love this image!)

As one might imagine, during the past two weeks, these students stressed out over just how to do their projects.  One noted that she was ready to toss her computer through her window!  I suspect that several of them would have preferred carrying a goat over doing a web presentation!  At the start of the journey, very few of these students had any experience in web applications.

This weekend, 26 presentations had been uploaded into our class wiki.

Our students reviewed each others presentations and commented in our class discussion forums about what they learned themselves and what they learned from each other.  Many of the comments discussed their stresses in trying to figure out how to present online and how amazed they were that they overcame them and completed their projects on time.

My team mate Jeff Nugent passed me a relevant article this past weekend from Barbara McCombs and Donna Vakili, entitled “A Learning-Centered Framework for E-Learning.”  It noted that content has become so abundant as to make it a poor foundation on which to base an education system.  Rather, context and meaning are the important commodities today.  My students may have started their journey assuming that the tool they were studying was the critical element, but they ended realizing that it was the journey that was important.  One student noted:

“After reading these posts, it seems that we all agreed that using our tool was not the hard part of this assignment.  Perhaps Britt and John knew that when making this assignment…”

I collected their reflections and dumped them into Wordle to see what emerged:

A few things jumped out at me.

USE – Most felt that they would use these tools (and several presented by their classmates) in their teaching.

JING – Jing became the default method for presenting their respective tools to each other.  It was not the only method, however.  We also had some Camtasia screencasts, some YouTube videos, an iMovie clip, and one engaging seaturtle with Blabberize.

STUDENTS and LEARNING – while each of these graduate students approached their specific tool in unique ways, they all focused in on the educational implications of web applications.  Many stated this was eye-opening for them.

And finally, TIME – they recognized the time investments one must make to gain proficiency with these tools.

I found one student’s comment particularly revealing:

“I had been dreading the actual tutorial because the technology scared me to death!  Once I played around with Jing, and saw how easy it was, it wasn’t so bad after all.  I learned that I definitely have some fears when it comes to technology!  It made me wonder why I have them.  My students definitely don’t.  My 11 year old doesn’t.  They just dive in and play with it until they know it.  I wondered when I lost that in myself…”

Another lesson that several reflected on was how this project reflected the social nature of web learning. In keeping with the theme from this year’s EduCon, Jon and I had reinforced  the notion that all learning can and should be networked learning, and that they should therefore support one another as they developed their presentations.  They found this support one of the most valuable aspects of the project.

The McCombs/Vakili article noted that research “underlying the learner-centered principles confirms that learning is nonlinear, recursive, continuous, complex, relational, and natural in humans” (p. 1586).  The lessons learned by these students backs this up – messy at the time but rewarding when accomplished.

Four weeks ago, I told these students that they would freak out doing their projects, but that they would persevere and all complete their projects…and be amazed and proud of themselves.  This weekend, they saw that I was right.

26 different destinations, but one journey – and it was fun to go along for the ride!

{Photo Credit: Jungle Boy}

The participatory web has allowed groups with common interests to organize and collaborate in ways that were not possible just five years ago.

Yesterday, Dr. Jonathon Becker, professor of Educational Leadership in the VCU School of Education, joined Jeff Nugent, Bud Deihl and myself of the VCU Center for Teaching Excellence to record a podcast on professional development in a networked world.  Jon and I co-teach our Education Technology and School Leadership online course, and I always enjoy listening to his perspectives on teaching, learning, and networked life.

Jon and Jeff shared their perspectives surrounding their attendance at EduCon 2.1, a “conference” organized and run by teachers and students without a supporting national professional organization.   Jon attended physically and presented, while Jeff attended from his home on a weekend via streaming video and social media.   It provided a rich example of networked learning and formed the basis for subsequent discussion into the changing nature of professional development…and learning.

Show Notes
Links mentioned during the podcast:

EduCon 2.1 – Conference wiki

K12Online Conference – Conference website and links to presentations

Shirky, Clay (2008) – Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Malcolm Gladwell’s TED Talk – What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

Download file

{Photo Credit: William “Bud” Deihl}

I had the good fortune last Tuesday to participate in a podcast with Kathyrn Murphy-Judy, professor of French in the School of World Studies here at VCU.  Facilitated by Jeff Nugent and joined by Bud Deihl, we spent nearly an hour discussing the uses of social media in our classes.  As Jeff set the stage, he noted that as faculty continue to explore ways to take advantage of the learning opportunities afforded by the participatory web, they face new challenges about how to assess student learning in a context that values collaboration and shared knowledge building.  After all, we want students to collaborate and build knowledge together, but at the end of the day or course, each student must be assigned a grade.

As always, I learned a lot listening to Kathyrn and bouncing ideas off my two colleagues here in the Center for Teaching Excellence.  Have a listen – I would be interested in your thoughts and feedback!

{Photo Credit: JustABigGeek}

I was looking over the session schedule for the SLOAN-C Conference on Online Learning and was a bit disappointed in what I saw.  Here, as in elsewhere throughout the blogosphere and more importantly the mainstream education journals, one sees the term “online learning” continually bantered around.  Yet, it is a term with fuzzy edges – a term that continues to evolve.  While I am sure many very good presentations will occur at the SLOAN-C Conference, it appears that many will involve someone with a deck of powerpoint slides lecturing to a “class” on approaches to online learning.  How ironic is THAT?!?  Some appear to be taking the square peg of online learning and trying to jam it into their existing classroom structure with which they are comfortable.   I must admit that the K12Online Conference was much more cutting edge than anything showing up in SLOAN-C’s conference, for the very reason that K12Online is adopting and modeling the practices being discussed.

We are at an interesting juxtaposition in the evolution of online learning.  After a century of little real change in classroom teaching (college lecture halls of 2008 look little different from college lecture halls of 1908), we now have tools and capabilities to actually teach and learn in new ways.  Economic, administrative and social pressures are pushing faculty to consider transitioning some or all of their courses online.  Students are looking for the 24/7 access to learning that they experience in their social lives.  The early adopters have already made the transition, but the majority of faculty are hesitant.  Some maintain that online learning is inferior to their established classroom approach.  Yet, as Douglas Johnson noted in “Towards a Philosophy of Online Education” in David Brown’s (2003) Developing Faculty to Use Technology:

“Critics are already lamenting what is lost, particularly from interpersonal relations in the classroom, but the real test of online education will be what on balance is gained.”

To better understand what could be gained, one has to first define online learning.

Google defines it as follows:

Definitions of online learning on the Web:

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If you check “online learning” in Wikipedia, it redirects you to “Electronic Learning.”  But it seems to me that this is too limiting, as are the ones above.  My colleagues have heard me on a variety of occasions say it’s all fracking online when hit with these limitations.  It is limiting to me to simply equate online learning with distance education or worse, with electronic correspondence courses.  Online learning is more than just one’s PLE/PLN.  We seem to be fighting whether to equate it to a formal class taught via the internet or to serendipitous learning while surfing the web.  To me, online learning is an interactive medium that applies equally to totally online courses and totally on campus courses.  Just as students need oxygen and food to grow and nourish, so too do they now need the internet – as do their faculty.

My job title is “Online Learning Specialist” so I certainly have biases.  I have taught online for a dozen years, and so see this topic through my own filters.  I would hope that by stating my biases, we can start a conversation with others.  I am interested in where you think I am on target and where I need better focus.

• I believe that online learning involves the use of the internet to promote interactive learning experiences for both students and faculty, independent of distance, time and place.
• I believe that online learning is not about the technology, it is about how the technology is leveraged to facilitate the learning.  (Thanks to Bud Deihl for helping shape this one)
• I believe that online learning uses all of the seven principles of good practice first espoused by Chickering and Gamson in 1987.
• I believe that online learning is active, learning-centered, and associated with the higher order thinking skills of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
• I believe that online learning expands the walls of the classroom to incorporate global resources available anytime and anyplace.
• I believe that online learning is not individualistic, it is the result of participation in a community of learners.
• I believe that online learning is metacognitive and reflective in nature.
• I believe that online learning involves mutliple senses and learning styles.
• I believe that online learning shatters the concept of seat time and is focused on learning outcomes.
• I believe that online learning does not just happen.  It is the result of hard work and good teaching.

Our students increasingly turn to the internet for answers to their questions as they arise.  They are buying mobile cellular technology that increasingly provides capabilities and capacity to integrate the web into their daily lives…and into their learning if we also adopt these processes.  It is time for our classes to reflect this changing world, and that suggests new ways of teaching.  Putting our powerpoints up in a learning management system is not online learning.  I would like to refine the discussion about what is….and how it should shape our teaching.

Be interested in your thoughts.

{Photo Credit : Dave Trapp, McGeorge Photolibrary,  nswlearnscope}

A quick disclaimer, I may have took notice because I was one of 192 professionals that submitted our top ten tools to Jane, who compiled them into her Top 100 Tools for Learning. Given the number of submissions and the depth of expertise of the submitters, this list strikes me as pretty balanced and interesting.  But I may be biased.

However, in reading Stephen’s post, I was struck by a feeling that I have not had since my Pentagon days – one of “NIH” – or “not invented here.”  NIH was a condition that sometimes struck officers of one branch of the military if an officer from another branch suggested a solution.  Stephen seemed to be unimpressed with many of the tools because he had already written a script or code that did similar functions and saw little utility in the tools listed.  He basically downplayed or outright stated that he had no use for 15 of the 25 tools.

I would suggest a different take.  Most faculty (and I include myself) are not as inherently gifted at coding or programming as Stephen is, and instead are simply looking for tools that solve problems in their very real world.  Many of the tools in Jane’s list meet these needs.  They have for me.

What I find interesting in Jane’s list are the possibilities it has suggested.  Rather than saying “I do not use this tool”, I looked at the list for suggestions on tools I might use to solve problems I have with my online teaching (and my students’ online learning).  I now routinely use 21 of the top 25 tools (though that was not true two years ago).  The four tools that make up my PLE (delicious, Google Reader, blogging with WordPress, and Twitter) are all in the top fifteen.  I am using Camtasia and Wikispaces in my online Blackboard class.  Firefox is my default browser.  Pictures in my blog come from Flickr or SnagIt, and I routinely network with others through Ning and Slideshare.  In fact, I continue to be blown away by the fact that one of my powerpoints I uploaded on a whim to SlideShare, Teaching In A Flat World, now has over 7,000 views in just the last 5 months – not to mention nearly 600 downloads and 16 embeds in others’ websites.  Long winded way of saying that I find tremedous value in these tools.

What is your take?  Do you find Jane’s list unhelpful (does it not fit your world)…or is it helpful – does it open up new possibilities for teaching and learning?  Be interested in your thoughts!

{Photo Credit: LexnGer}