One of the first reviews of OER efficacy tests included 16 studies (Hilton, 2016). The abstract stated that “ … students generally achieve the same learning outcomes when OER are utilized.”
All nine studies had major confounds such as method of instruction (e.g., comparing OER sections that were taught online or blended versus traditional texts used in a face-to-face class). Some studies switched exams between comparisons and some changed course design (e.g., went to a flipped model). Most study authors acknowledged that the type of textbook was not the only factor that changed.
There is promise in the use of OERs. Beyond the “as good as” findings, some studies suggest they could be beneficial. Jhangiani, Dastur, LeGrand and Penner (2018) found students using print OERs (versus digital) did better on one of three exams tested (no differences on the other two, still good news). Is the promise of OER fulfilled? There is not enough to know yet. We have to be tighter in how we assess the efficacy of such materials in particular and higher education innovation in general.
Methodological challenges abound in classroom research on teaching, as learning is complex. Many challenges can be overcome with strong research design. There are benchmarks for conducting research on teaching and learning (Felton, 2013; Wilson-Doenges and Gurung, 2013), and it would be prudent for more educational researchers to use them.
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.
This class will start with simple ways librarians may embed their skills remotely starting with the LMS especially through the use of portal tabs, blocks, eReserves, knowledge bases, and student/faculty orientations. We’ll then move on to discussing how to bring the traditional face-to-face BI session (which librarians know so well) into the online class through the use of team teaching, guest lecturing, and conducting synchronous workshops. We’ll explore in the 3rd week how the librarian can become more influential in online course design and development. The session concludes with an examination of the ways librarians can evaluate whether or not their virtual efforts are impacting student access to library resources as well as possible learning outcomes.
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more on embedded librarianship in this iMS blog
Course Design addresses elements of instructional design. For the purpose of this rubric, course design includes such elements as structure of the course, learning objectives, organization of content, and instructional strategies.
Interaction and Collaboration
Interaction denotes communication between and among learners and instructors, synchronously or asynchronously. Collaboration is a subset of interaction and refers specifically to those activities in which groups are working interdependently toward a shared result. This differs from group activities that can be completed by students working independently of one another and then combining the results, much as one would when assembling a jigsaw puzzle with parts of the puzzle worked out separately then assembled together. A learning community is defined here as the sense of belonging to a group, rather than each student perceiving himself/herself studying independently.
Assessment
Assessment focuses on instructional activities designed to measure progress toward learning outcomes, provide feedback to students and instructors, and/or enable grading or evaluation. This section addresses the quality and type of student assessments within the course.
Learner Support
Learner Support addresses the support resources made available to students taking the course. Such resources may be accessible within or external to the course environment. Learner support resources address a variety of student services.
A virtual reality headset can take students on an immersive journey to another world. But no matter how cool it is, if that $3,000 piece of equipment enters a classroom and doesn’t provide any real instructional value, it can quickly become a very expensive paperweight.
Most schools don’t do edtech procurement really well yet. Sometimes we buy products that end up in closets because they don’t fit the instructional needs of students, and we end up not being good stewards of taxpayer dollars.
Located in the district’s central office, where hundreds of teachers and staff members stop by each week for professional development, the playground offers a creative space that encourages teachers to explore new tools that have been vetted and approved by the district’s tech department.
In the United States, K-12 schools spend more than $13 billion a year on edtech — often without any idea whether it will make a difference in learning outcomes.
Outline:
The Gamification of the educations process is not a new concept. The advent of educational technologies, however, makes the idea timely and pertinent. In short 60 min, we will introduce the concept of gamification of the educational process and discuss real-live examples.
Learning Outcomes:
at the end of the session, participants will have an idea about gaming and gamification in education and will be able to discriminate between those two powerful concepts in education
at the end of this session, participants will be able search and select VIdeo 360 movies for their class lessons
at the end of the session, participants will be able to understand the difference between VR, AR and MR.
if you are interested in setting up a makerspace and/or similar gaming space at your school, please contact me after this workshop for more information.
How would you define gamification of the educational process?
Gaming and Gamification in academic and library settings (paper) Short URL: http://scsu.mn/1F008Re
Gamification takes game elements (such as points, badges, leaderboards, competition, achievements) and applies them to a non-game setting. It has the potential to turn routine, mundane tasks into refreshing, motivating experiences (What is GBL (Game-Based Learning)?, n.d.).
Gamification is defined as the process of applying game mechanics and game thinking to the real world to solve problems and engage users (Phetteplace & Felker, 2014, p. 19; Becker, 2013, p. 199; Kapp, 2012). Gamification requires three sets of principles: 1. Empowered Learners, 2. Problem Solving, 3. Understanding (Gee, 2005).
Apply gamification tactics to existing learning task
split in groups and develop a plan to gamify existing learning task
from the web page above, choose a movie or click on this link: https://youtu.be/nOHM8gnin8Y (to watch a black hole in video 360) Open the link on your phone and insert the phone in Google Cardboard. Watch the video using Google Cardboard.
ECAR collaborated with 157 institutions to collect responses from 13,451 faculty respondents across 7 countries about their technology experiences. ECAR also collaborated with 124 institutions to collect responses from 43,559 undergraduate students across 10 countries about their technology experiences. Please see the 2017 student and faculty studies hub for more about this year’s research.
When it comes to meeting technological support needs, students’ default modality is DIY. Students are more than twice as likely to figure out solutions to technology problems on their own, to search online sources, or to ask a friend than they are to use their campus help desk. Contacting the vendor or company to fix a technology problem is the last resort.
Laptops are king, smartphones are queen, and tablets are on the way out.
Students’ experiences with their instructors’ use of and approach to technology in the classroom are a mixed bag. A majority of students said most of their instructors have adequate technology skills, use technology to enhance learning, and encourage the use of collaborative technology tools. However, students said fewer faculty use technology for sophisticated learning tasks (e.g., engagement, creative and critical thinking), and relatively few faculty ask students to use their own devices for in-class work.
Students are choosing sides in the online versus face-to-face debate. For the fourth year in a row, the number of students preferring a blended learning environment that includes some to mostly online components has increased. The number of students preferring completely face-to-face or completely online courses continues to dwindle. The number of students expressing no preference has been cut by more than half since 2014.
Students are satisfied with features of their LMS…except when they aren’t.Students have favorable opinions about the basic features and functionalities of their LMS. But, the more sophisticated the task and the more engagement required of students, the less happy they tend to be. This may be a function of the tools, the instructors who use them, or both.
Students would like their instructors to use more technology in their classes.Technologies that provide students with something (e.g., lecture capture, early-alert systems, LMS, search tools) are more desired than those that require students to give something (e.g., social media, use of their own devices, in-class polling tools). We speculate that sound pedagogy and technology use tied to specific learning outcomes and goals may improve the desirability of the latter.
Students reported that faculty are banning or discouraging the use of laptops, tablets, and (especially) smartphones more often than in previous years. Some students reported using their devices (especially their smartphones) for nonclass activities, which might explain the instructor policies they are experiencing. However, they also reported using their devices for productive classroom activities (e.g., taking notes, researching additional sources of information, and instructor-directed activities).
Web search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo are integral to making information more discoverable on the open web. How can you expose data about your organization, its services, people, collections, and other information in a way that is meaningful to these search engines?
In this 90 minute session, learn how to leverage Schema.org and semantic markup to achieve enhanced discovery of information on the open web. The session will provide an introduction to both Schema.org and the JSON-LD data format. Topics include an in-depth look at the Schema.org vocabulary, a brief overview of semantic markup with a focus on JSON-LD, and use-cases of these technologies. By the end of the session, you will have an opportunity to apply these technologies through a structured exercise. The session will conclude with resources and guidance for next steps.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will leave this webinar with tools for increasing the discoverability of information on the open web.
This program will include presentation slides, bibliographic references to resources referenced to in the slides, and hands-on exercise material. The exercise material will include instructions, template records for attendees to practice applying Schema.org and JSON-LD, and example records as reference material.
Who Should Attend
Librarians and other professionals interested in increasing discovery of their organization’s information and collections on the open web. General knowledge of metadata concepts and standards is encouraged. Familiarity with the concept of data formats (XML, JSON, MARC, etc.) would be helpful.
Jacob Shelby is the Metadata Technologies Librarian at North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries, where he performs metadata activities that support library information services and collections. He has collaborated on endeavors to enhance the discovery of library services and collections on the open web, including exposing NCSU Libraries digital special collections data as Schema.org data. In addition to these endeavors, Jacob has taught workshops at NCSU Libraries on Schema.org and semantic markup.
Discuss ways to incorporate library services through the learning management system level.
Examine bibliographic instruction in the virtual classroom through team teaching, guest lecturing.
Identify librarian roles during the design and development of online courses.
Assessing embedded librarianship efforts.
Mimi O’Malley is the learning technology translation strategist at Spalding University. She helps faculty prepare course content for hybrid and fully online courses in addition to incorporating open education resources into courses. She previously wrote and facilitated professional development courses and workshops at the Learning House, Inc. Mimi has presented workshops on online learning topics including assessment, plagiarism, copyright, and curriculum trends at the Learning House, Inc. CONNECT Users Conference, SLOAN-C ALN, Pencils and Pixels and New Horizons Teaching & Learning Conference. Interview with Mimi O’Malley
Code4Lib 2018 is a loosely-structured conference that provides people working at the intersection of libraries/archives/museums/cultural heritage and technology with a chance to share ideas, be inspired, and forge collaborations. For more information about the Code4Lib community, please visit http://code4lib.org/about/.
The conference will be held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, from February 13, 2018 – February 16, 2018. More information about Code4lib 2018 is available on this year’s conference website http://2018.code4lib.org.
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Mark Gill and Plamen Miltenoff proposal:
Gamification of Library Orientation and Instruction
Abstract
The rapid advent in the technologies of augmented and virtual reality (VR) in the last several years and the surge down in price creates possibilities for its increasing and ubiquitous application in education. A collaboration by a librarian and VR specialist led to testing opportunities to apply 360 video in academic library orientation. The team seeks to bank on the inherited interest of Millennials toward these technologies and their inextricable part of a growing gaming environment in education. A virtual introduction via 360 video aims to familiarize patrons with the library and its services: http://bit.ly/VRlib. I short Surveymonkey survey following the virtual introduction assesses learning outcomes and allows further instruction when necessary. Patrons can use any electronic devices from desktop to any size mobile devices. Patrons can also watch in panorama mode, and are provided with goggles if they would like to experience the VR mode.
The next step is an introduction to basic bibliographic instruction, followed by a gamified “scavenger hunt”-kind of exercise, which aims to gamify students’ ability to perform basic research: http://bit.ly/learnlib. The game is web-based and it can be played on any electronic devices from desktops to mobile devices. The game is followed by a short Google Form survey, which assesses learning outcomes and allows further work shall any knowledge gaps occur.
The team relies on the constructivist theory of assisting patrons in building their knowledge in their own pace and on their own terms, rather than being lectured and guided by a librarian only.
This proposal envisions half a day activities for participants to study the opportunities presented by 360 video camera and acquire the necessary skills to collect quickly useful footage and process it for the library needs. The second half of the day is allocated for learning Adobe Dreamweaver to manipulate the preexisting “templates” (HTML and jQuery code) for the game and adapt the content and the format to the needs of the participants’ libraries.
Mr. Gill is a Visualization Engineer for the College of Science and Engineering and runs the Visualization Laboratory. He has worked for several major universities as well as Stennis Space Center and Mechdyne, Inc. He holds a Masters of Science in Software Engineering.
Dr. Miltenoff is part of a workgroup within the academic library, which works with faculty, students and staff on the application of new technologies in education. Dr. Miltenoff’s most recent research with Mark Gill is on the impact of Video 360 on students during library orientation:http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/bi/