Session 2: The Digital Age: The Impact and Future Possibilities Offered by Data and Technology
Thank you for registering to participate in the second Reimagining Minnesota State forum. The Forums have been designed to spark not only individual reflection but what we hope can serve as catalysts for discussions in a variety of venues. The Forum will be recorded and available for viewing on the Reimagining website.
Below are the directions whether you are attending in person or by live stream.
Catherine Haslag: Is there any research to show students retention in an online class vs a face-to-face course?
the challenge is not collecting, but integrating, using data.
silos = cylinder of excellence.
technology innovation around advising. iPASS resources.
adaptive learning systems – how students advance through the learning process.
games and simulations Bryan Mark Gill. voice recognition,
next 3 to 5 years AR. by 2023 40% with AR and VR
AI around the controversial. Chatbot and Voice assistants.
Unizin: 13 founding members to develop platform, Canvas, instructional services, data for predictive analytic, consistent data standard among institutions,
University innovation Alliance. Analytics as the linchpin for students’ success. graduation rates increase. racial gap graduation. Georgia State.
digital ethics. Mark Gill and Susana Nuccetelli. digital ethics: Susana Nuccetelli brought her students from the Philosophy Dept to Mark Gill’s SCSu Vizlab so we can discuss ethics and AI, last semester. jobrien@educause.edu
assistant vice president for student success and prevention Morgan State U
the importance of training in technology adoption
Dr. Peter Smith, Orkand Endowed Chair and Professor of Innovative Practices in Higher Education at University of Maryland University College
social disruption, national security issue,
Allan Taft Candadian researcher, 700 hours / year learning something. 14 h/w.
learners deserve recognition
free range learning.
how do we get a value on people from a different background? knowledge discrimination. we value it on where they learned it. then how you learned it and what you can do with it. talent and capacity not recognized.
we, the campus, don’t control the forces for a very first time. MIT undergrad curricula is free, what will happen. dynamics at work here. declining student numbers, legislation unhappy. technology had made college more expensive, not less. doing the right thing, leads to more disruption. local will be better, if done well. workplace can become a place for learning.
learning is a social activity. distance learning: being on the farthest raw of 300 Princeton lecture. there is a tool and there is people; has to have people at the heart.
what will work not only for MN, but for each of the campuses, the personalization.
staying still is death.
Panel discussion
what is the role of faculty in the vendor and discussions about technology. a heat map shows that IT people were testing the vendor web site most, faculty and student much less.
At the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC) this week, the UAE’s minister of state for Artificial Intelligence, Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, went so far as to declare that “Data is the new oil.”
according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author, economic historian and one of the world’s leading experts on the oil & gas sector; Daniel Yergin, there is now a “symbiosis” between energy producers and the new knowledge economy. The production of oil & gas and the generation of data are now, Yergin argues, “wholly inter-dependent”.
What does Oil & Gas 4.0 look like in practice?
the greater use of automation and collection of data has allowed an upsurge in the “de-manning” of oil & gas facilities
Thanks to a significant increase in the number of sensors being deployed across operations, companies can monitor what is happening in real time, which markedly improves safety levels.
in the competitive environment of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, no business can afford to be left behind by not investing in new technologies – so strategic discussions are important.
At WMU, the Libraries is partnering with our central OIT to host a VR lab in the main library. My partnering co-director, Kevin, is really the subject matter expert but I’m managing a lot of the day-to-day operations. Kevin is programming and experimenting with all kinds of hardware but we decided to use Oculus Rifts in our lab primarily because of the greater durability of the hand controllers (compared especially to the Vive). We’re getting all of our games through the Oculus store and have plans to expand into Steam or another provider but haven’t done so yet. We currently have 40+ titles available for gaming and educational purposes. We also teach content creation using Unity, Maya, Blender, and a handful of other tools.
Parallel running of two social media from different countries: WeChat and blog for international students
Our work with Chinese students from the Confucius Institute (CI) at St. Cloud State University (SCSU) shed light on an interesting development: in the last several years, the popular Chinese social media platform WeChat dominates the social life of Chinese people, Chinese students in particular.
Based on the WeChat affinity of the Chinese students at the SCSU CI program, the program organizers faced difficulty applying other social media platforms, as part of the curricula of the host country. Namely, blog, as one of the widely used SM platform for creative writing (citation comes here), was contemplated as a SM platform for the Chinese students to journal their experience at the SCSU CI program. Since WeChat behaves rather like Facebook and Snapchat, the lack of opportunity to utilize widely available platform for rather lengthy narration (versus SMS/texting abilitis of Twitter and WeChat) convince the SCSU CI program organizers to seek the buy in by Chinese students into the blog initiative.
Pang (2018) builds a theory based on Ellison (2007) theory of “maintained social capital,” namely the ability of individuals to maintain values of social ties when geographically disconnected. Ping (2018) further narrows her research on Chinese students in Germany using Li and Chen (2014) findings about Ellison’s theory on students in a foreign environment and the necessity for these students to build a new circle of friends in the host country. According to Basilisco an Cha (2015), such environment was provided for Filipino students by using Facebook and Twitter.
Agur, C., Belair-Gagnon, V., & Frish, N. (2018). Mobile sourcing: A case study of journalistic norms and usage of chat apps. Mobile Meida and Communication, 6(1), 53–70. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1177/2050157917725549
Borgerson, J. L. (2016). Scalable Sociality and 'How the World Changed Social Media': conversation with Daniel Miller. Consumption, Markets & Culture. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2015.1120980
Chen, Y. (2017). WeChat use among Chinese college students: Exploring gratifications and political engagement in China. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 10(1), 25–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2016.1235222
Pang, H. (2016). Understanding key factors affecting young people’s WeChat usage: an empirical study from uses and gratifications perspective. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 12(3), 262. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJWBC.2016.077757
Pang, H. (2018). Understanding the effects of WeChat on perceived social capital and psychological well-being among Chinese international college students in Germany. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 70(3), 288–304. https://doi.org/DOI 10.1108/AJIM-01-2018-0003
Run Zhi Zhu, X. L. X. (2015). The Influence of Social Media on Sleep Quality: A Study of Undergraduate Students in Chongqing, China. Journal of Nursing & Care, 04(03). https://doi.org/10.4172/2167-1168.1000253
Wang, Y., Fang, W.-C., Han, J., & Chen, N.-S. (2016). Exploring the affordances of WeChat for facilitating teaching, social and cognitive presence in semi-synchronous language exchange. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.2640
Wei, H., & Ke, L. (2014). “New Weapons” of Ideological and Political Education in Universities—WeChat. SHS Web of Conferences, 6, 04001. https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20140604001
We needed to create more study, learning, and research space in the library. Put simply, our library space was cramped. It was a nice-looking building but not terribly “user-friendly.”
Additionally, the building itself was one of the oldest on campus…
Finally, we wanted to create a more visionary learning space. We wanted to define what impactful spaces for our students would be, and examine how the academic library can support both emerging academic trends and social formation on campus.
We’ve created “living rooms” in the library: spaces with couches, softer seating, fireplaces—where students can go and plop down. That “plopping down” is important. The library has become a place where students go with some intentionality to rest, to check their phone, to read.
We’ve tried to create interesting “spots.” We have nicely appointed, contemporary-in-feel study spaces, with glass whiteboards and glassed walls. People can see in, people can see out; today’s students like to be seen, and they like to see in. This was very important in our focus groups. Also, on a practical level, students like to be able to see into study spaces to see if they’re occupied.
Special Collections used to be intimidating for a first or second-year student. We wanted an experience in which from the moment the student arrives, there are no barriers to exploration. We wanted to send the message that this is a place for inquiry and discovery, a place to learn more. There are no doors—just an open entrance to the wing.
the key with the Great Books Room is that it is glassed. Students can look in and see others deliberating about great books around an oval table, or participating in mentor-led discussions. And they see that this is a part of the experience they can have at college.
While it may take time to do this reflection, it can have many important benefits: 1) research shows that reflecting on experiences creates an environment in which insights and creativity can flourish; 2) taking a moment to consider the positive experiences (and to learn from the challenging ones) generates positive emotions which can benefit everyone during highly stressful moments in the semester; and 3) your experiences in narrative form provide insights to the committee beyond what is possible through surveys. This helps us to tailor the program in the future.
Here are a few questions/topics you should consider in your reflection:
How well is the program working for you so far?
I was not able to collaborate last year, but this year it has been perfect match with my ID2ID buddy Aura Lippincott. It is just marvelous to work with same-minded and driven person
What have you accomplished so far?
We are well underway with one of our two projects – the VRrelax one the project each of us is teaming up with faculty and staff from our universities. We plan to roll out the test at the end of this month (October), do the research in November and compare notes and results in December. The project aims to establish if VR delivered by Oculus Go may have positive impact on stress reduction for students.
Our second project, the Open Learning one is also gathering speed; we intend to have a research topic determined by the end of the month, while we are gathering resources at the time being.
What else do you need to do? Describe the progress you have made toward meeting your program goals.
What obstacles have you faced that you did not anticipate?
I have difficulty to pinpoint obstacles, because with a determined ID2ID partner and team members, all obstacles start to seem minuscules. We had discussions about the video content of the VR session, or the frequency of the testing and some of these issues is impossible to reconcile for two teams on different campuses, but again, they do not seem crucial when the team is driven by conviction to finish the research
What are your plans for working through them? What are your plans for the rest of the program? Many of you may have chosen to focus on one or more of the ELI Key Issues. If so, briefly summarize and reflect upon your discussions of these key issues.
I see our work falling neatly under: digital and information literacy. The work through ID2ID seems as a intake of fresh air, since digital and information literacy is not considered in the stagnant 90-ish interpretation, as myopically imposed in the library where i work. Our project aims to assert digital literacy as understood by Educause.
To some degree, our work also falls under the ELI issue of “learning space design.” While we advocate for virtual learning spaces, as well as under the ELI issue “academic transformation and faculty development.” Both XR and open learning are ambitious trends, which inadvertently can meet resistance with their novelty and lack of track in former traditional methods of teaching and learning.
Teaching news literacy is more necessary and challenging than ever in a world where news is delivered at a constant pace from a broad range of sources. Since social media and filter bubbles can make it challenging to access unbiased, factual information, we must equip students to be critical as they access news sources for a variety of purposes. This live, interactive edWebinar will give an overview of the phenomenon of fake news going viral and tools educators can use to help students develop news literacy skills.
Tiffany Whitehead, School Librarian at Episcopal School of Baton Rouge in Louisiana, will share:
A strategy to develop fun, original lessons about media literacy
Fresh approaches that move students towards better news smarts
Three CCSS-aligned sample lesson plans for middle and high school classrooms
Teacher and librarian collaboration opportunities that support powerful student outcomes
Elementary through higher education level teachers, librarians, and school and district leaders will benefit from attending this session. There will be time to get your questions answered after Tiffany’s presentation.
About the Presenter
Tiffany Whitehead, aka the Mighty Little Librarian, is an obsessive reader, social media user, and technology geek. She is the director of library at Episcopal School of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Tiffany earned her undergraduate degree in elementary education and School Library Certification from Southeastern Louisiana University, and her graduate degree in educational technology leadership from Northwestern State University. She has served as the president for ISTE’s Librarians Network and was recognized as one of ISTE’s 2014 Emerging Leaders. Tiffany is National Board Certified in Library Media and was named one of the 2014 Library Journal Movers & Shakers. She was the 2016 recipient of the Louisiana Library Media Specialist Award. She frequently speaks at local, state, and national conferences, sharing her passion for libraries and educational technology.
Looking for a beginner’s crash course in game making software and process? Games can be an excellent teaching resource, and game development is easier than ever. Whether you’re looking to develop your own teaching resources or run a game-making program for users, this course will give you the information you need to choose the most appropriate software development tool, structure your project, and accomplish your goals. Plain language, appropriate for absolute beginners, and practical illustrative examples will be used. Participants will receive practical basic exercises they can complete in open source software, as well as guides to advanced educational resources and available tutorials.
This is a blended format web course:
The course will be delivered as 4 separate live webinar lectures, one per week on Wednesday November 21 and then repeating Wednesdays, November 28, December 5 and December 12 at Noon Central time. You do not have to attend the live lectures in order to participate. The webinars will be recorded and distributed through the web course platform for asynchronous participation. The web course space will also contain the exercises and discussions for the course.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will be able to name five different software tools available to assist them or their users in creating games and interactive web content, as well as identify the required knowledge and skills to effectively use each program.
Participants will be able to effectively structure the development process of a game from brainstorming to launch.
Participants will be able to identify and articulate areas in which games can increase educational effectiveness and provide practical, desirable skills.
Who Should Attend
Library staff looking to develop educational games or run game making programs for users (including tween or teen users).
Instructors
Ruby Warren
Ruby Warren believes in the power of play, and that learning is a lot more effective when it’s interactive. She is the User Experience Librarian at the University of Manitoba Libraries, where she recently completed a research leave focused on educational game prototype development, and has been playing games from around the time she developed object permanence.
<Cost
LITA Member: $135
ALA Member: $195
Non-member: $260
Moodle and Webinar login info will be sent to registrants the week prior to the start date.
My note: Email is for old people (https://www.chronicle.com/article/E-Mail-is-for-Old-People/4169) compare with Trello + Slack
“The idea behind us using Slack [last fall] was to kill internal email,” says Green. That’s a common refrain in pro-Slack headlines, with good reason. Users can drop links and files into any Slack conversation.
documented here how educators use Trello to manage project-based learning activities that involve group work and peer review.
Slack has been described as “ a private Twitter on steroids.” At first glance, the tool looks like a chat room—but it’s got more going on inside.
Like Twitter, Slack features hashtags that denote specific “channels” dedicated to topics, but each channel operates like its own chat room. Users can send messages to a channel or directly to one another (one-to-one), and also create private groups for focused discussions (one-to-few).
connected Trello to Slack so that he receives a notification whenever his students make edits on a Trello card. He turns to Slack to communicate directly with students and groups, often leaving feedback on assignments. “It hasn’t been effective as a way to broadcast information to the entire class,” Green admits. “But it’s become a very important tool for us to share resources for kids, and have 1-on-1 conversations with students.”
Other educators are exploring how to use Slack as a professional learning network.
About the Presenter