The brain is actually three brains: the ancient reptilian brain, the limbic brain, and the cortical brain. This article will focus on the limbic brain, because it may be most important to successfully using interactive video or web-based video. The limbic brain monitors the external world and the internal body, taking in information through the senses as well as body temperature and blood pressure, among others. It is the limbic brain that generates and interprets facial expressions and handles emotions, while the cortical brain handles symbolic activities such as language as well as action and strategizing. The two interact when an emotion is sent from the limbic to the cortical brain and generates a conscious thought; in response to a feeling of fear (limbic), you ask, “what should I do?” (cortical).
The importance of direct eye contact and deciphering body language is also important for sending and picking up clues about social context.
The loss of social cues is important because it may affect the quality of the content of the presentation (by not allowing timely feedback or questions) but also because students may feel less engaged and become frustrated with the interaction, and subsequently lower their assessment of the class and the instructor (Reeves & Nass, 1996). Fortunately, faculty can provide such social cues verbally, once they are aware of the importance of helping students use these new media.
Attachment theory also supports the importance of physical and emotional connections.
As many a struggling teacher knows, students are often impervious to learning new concepts. They may replay the new information for a test, but after time passes, they revert to the earlier (and likely wrong) information. This is referred to as the “power of mental models.” As explained in Marchese (2000), when we view a tree, it is not as if we see the tree in our head, as in photography.
The coping strategies of the two hemispheres are fundamentally different. The left hemisphere’s job is to create a belief system or model and to fold new experiences into that belief system. If confronted with some new information that doesn’t fit the model, it relies on Freudian defense mechanisms to deny, repress or confabulate – anything to preserve the status quo. The right hemisphere’s strategy is to play “Devil’s Advocate,” to question the status quo and look for global inconsistencies. When the anomalous information reaches a certain threshold, the right hemisphere decides that it is time to force a complete revision of the entire model and start from scratch (Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998, p. 136).
While much hemispheric-based research has been repudiated as an oversimplification (Gackenbach, 1999), the above description of how new information eventually overwhelms an old world view may be the result of multiple brain functions – some of which work to preserve our models and others to alter – that help us both maintain and change as needed.
Self-talk is the “the root of empathy, understanding, cooperation, and rules that allow us to be successful social beings. Any sense of moral behavior requires thought before action” (Ratey, 2001, p. 255).
Healy (1999) argues that based on what we know about brain development in children, new computer media may be responsible for developing brains that are largely different from the brains of adults. This is because “many brain connections have become specialized for . . . media” (p. 133); in this view, a brain formed by language and reading is different from a brain formed by hypermedia. Different media lead to different synaptic connections being laid down and reinforced, creating different brains in youngsters raised on fast-paced, visually-stimulating computer applications and video games. “Newer technologies emphasize rapid processing of visual symbols . . . and deemphasize traditional verbal learning . . . and the linear, analytic thought process . . . [making it] more difficult to deal with abstract verbal reasoning” (Healy, 1999, p. 142).
“When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my revolver.”
Kultur, he explains (along with Bildung, or education), denoted in pre-unification Germany those qualities that the intellectuals and professionals of the small, isolated German middle class claimed for themselves in response to the disdain of the minor German nobles who employed them: intellectual achievement, of course, but also simple virtues like authenticity, honesty, and sincerity.
German courtiers, by contrast, according to the possessors of Kultur, had acquired “civilization” from their French tutors: manners, social polish, the cultivation of appearances. As the German middle class asserted itself in the nineteenth century, the particular virtues of Kultur became an important ingredient in national self-definition. The inferior values of “civilization” were no longer attributed to an erstwhile French-educated German nobility, but to the French themselves and to the West in general.
By 1914, the contrast between Kultur and Zivilisation had taken on a more aggressively nationalist tone. During World War I German patriotic propaganda vaunted the superiority of Germany’s supposedly rooted, organic, spiritual Kultur over the allegedly effete, shallow, cosmopolitan, materialist, Jewish-influenced “civilization” of Western Europe. Martin’s book shows how vigorously the Nazis applied this traditional construct.
Goebbels and Hitler were as obsessed with movies as American adolescents are today with social media.
Music was a realm that Germans felt particularly qualified to dominate. But first the German national musical scene had to be properly organized. In November 1933 Goebbels offered Richard Strauss the leadership of a Reich Music Chamber.
Goebbels organized in Düsseldorf in 1938 a presentation of “degenerate music” following the better-known 1937 exhibition of “degenerate art.”
As with music, the Nazis were able to attract writers outside the immediate orbit of the Nazi and Fascist parties by endorsing conservative literary styles against modernism, by mitigating copyright and royalty problems, and by offering sybaritic visits to Germany and public attention.
Painting and sculpture, curiously, do not figure in this account of the cultural fields that the Nazis and Fascists tried to reorganize “inter-nationally,” perhaps because they had not previously been organized on liberal democratic lines. Picasso and Kandinsky painted quietly in private and Jean Bazaine organized an exhibition with fellow modernists in 1941. Nazi cultural officials thought “degenerate” art appropriate for France.
Science would have made an interesting case study, a contrary one. Germany dominated the world of science before 1933. Germans won fifteen Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine between 1918 and 1933, more than any other nation. Far from capitalizing on this major soft power asset, Hitler destroyed it by imposing ideological conformity and expelling Jewish scientists such as the talented nuclear physicist Lise Meitner. The soft power of science is fragile, as Americans may yet find out.
American soft power thrived mostly through the profit motive and by offering popular entertainment to the young.
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The Original Axis of Evil
THE ANATOMY OF FASCISM By Robert O. Paxton. 321 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $26.
fascism — unlike Communism, socialism, capitalism or conservatism — is a smear word more often used to brand one’s foes than it is a descriptor used to shed light on them.
World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 contributed mightily to the advent of fascism. The war generated acute economic malaise, national humiliation and legions of restive veterans and unemployed youths who could be harnessed politically. The Bolshevik Revolution, but one symptom of the frustration with the old order, made conservative elites in Italy and Germany so fearful of Communism that anything — even fascism — came to seem preferable to a Marxist overthrow.
Paxton debunks the consoling fiction that Mussolini and Hitler seized power. Rather, conservative elites desperate to subdue leftist populist movements ”normalized” the fascists by inviting them to share power. It was the mob that flocked to fascism, but the elites who elevated it.
Fascist movements and regimes are different from military dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. They seek not to exclude, but rather to enlist, the masses. They often collapse the distinction between the public and private sphere (eliminating the latter). In the words of Robert Ley, the head of the Nazi Labor Office, the only private individual who existed in Nazi Germany was someone asleep.
t was this need to keep citizens intoxicated by fascism’s dynamism that made Mussolini and Hitler see war as both desirable and necessary. ”War is to men,” Mussolini insisted, ”as maternity is to women.”
For every official American attempt to link Islamic terrorism to fascism, there is an anti-Bush protest that applies the fascist label to Washington’s nationalist rhetoric, assault on civil liberties and warmaking.
Southeast Regional Conference November 6-7, 2017 University of Virginia
Conference Description and CFP The Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL) and the University of Virginia (UVa) are pleased to host the 2017 Southeast Regional AAEEBL Conference. AAEEBL is an international professional association dedicated to supporting educational leaders committed to education transformation relevant to 21st century learnings and best known for promotion of ePortfolios as a high impact practice in higher education.
Theme: Meaning-Making with Eportfolios ePortfolios provide an authentic context for learning and assessment as well as fertile ground for the exploration of the learning process itself. In this conference, we propose to explore the role of “meaning making” in the various facets of the ePortfolio building process and the way it informs the experiences of our students and our understanding of learning.
AECT-OTP Webinar: Digital Badges and Micro-Credentials for the Workplace
Time: Mar 27, 2017 1:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Learn how to implement digital badges in learning environments. Digital badges and micro-credentials offer an entirely new way of recognizing achievements, knowledge, skills, experiences, and competencies that can be earned in formal and informal learning environments. They are an opportunity to recognize such achievements through credible organizations that can be integrated in traditional educational programs but can also represent experience in informal contexts or community engagement. Three guiding questions will be discussed in this webinar: (1) digital badges’ impact on learning and assessment, (2) digital badges within instructional design and technological frameworks, and (3) the importance of stakeholders for the implementation of digital badges.
Dirk Ifenthaler is Professor and Chair of Learning, Design and Technology at University of Mannheim, Germany and Adjunct Professor at Curtin University, Australia. His previous roles include Professor and Director, Centre for Research in Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia, Manager of Applied Research and Learning Analytics at Open Universities, Australia, and Professor for Applied Teaching and Learning Research at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He was a 2012 Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, at the University of Oklahoma, USA
Directions to connect via Zoom Meeting:
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/8128701328
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Dial: +1 408 638 0968 (US Toll) or +1 646 558 8656 (US Toll)
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Each student learns differently and assessment is not linear. Learning for different students can be a longer or shorter path.
representation graph:
assessment comes before badges
what are credentials:
how well i can show my credentials: can i find it, can i translate it, issuer, earner, achievement description, date issued.
the potential to become an alternative credentialing system to link directly via metadata to validating evidence of educational achievements.
DB is not an assessment, it is the ability to demonstrate the assessment.
They are a motivational mechanism, supporting alternative forms of assessment, a way to credentialize learning, charting learning pathways, support self-reflection and planning
1. They have self- awareness. Emotionally intelligent leaders understand their own emotions and know how to manage them. They don’t speak out of frustration or anger; they control their emotions and wait to speak up until their feelings have settled and they have processed their thoughts. They don’t react in the heat of the moment but wait to respond.
2. They respond to criticism and feedback. Every leader faces feedback, some of it negative. Emotionally intelligent leaders don’t become defensive or take it personally. They listen, process, and genuinely consider other points of view, and because they’re always looking to improve, they know how to accept sincere critiques.
3. They know how to generate self-confidence. Emotionally intelligent leaders share a healthy dose of confidence but never cross the line into arrogance. When they don’t understand something, they ask open-ended questions that aim to gather information, not challenge or argue. They know how to give and take in a way that generates confidence.
4. They know the importance of checking their ego.Leaders who have to demonstrate their own importance or value are not yet connected to true leadership or emotional intelligence. Those who are know how to speak and act out of concern of others. They don’t always have to be the center of attention, and they would never take credit for the work of others. Secure in their own abilities, they’re generous and gracious to others.
5. They know how to embody empathy. Leaders with emotional intelligence can put themselves in others’ shoes. They listen with genuine interest and attention and make it a point to understand, then give back in a way that benefits themselves and others. They know how to create win-win situations.
6. They know how to engage with empowerment. The best leaders–the ones with the highest EQs–make it their mission to believe in others and empower them to believe in themselves. Instead of focusing on themselves they know it’s the power of the people that makes leadership successful, so that’s where they focus their efforts.
The content itself isn’t VR, just the digital venue.
Along with these three apps, Google has also brought NextVR to Daydream, which is the only app of the bunch that actually offers 360-degree, 3D video. With Netflix VR, HBO VR, NextVR, Hulu VR and Google Play Movies & TV, Daydream has suddenly become the undisputed leader of VR video.
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More on on VR in this IMS blog https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=vr
I absolutely echo Kimber’s notion that a team approach to course development can actually take longer, even when one of the team members is an instructional designer. Perhaps because faculty members are used to controlling all aspects of their course development and delivery, the division of labor concept may feel too foreign to them. An issue that is similar in nature and referred to as ‘unbundling the faculty role’ is discussed at length in the development of competency-based education (CBE) courses and it is not typically a concept that faculty embrace.
Robin
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I will also confirm that the team approach to course development can take longer. Indeed it does in my experience. It requires much more “back and forth”, negotiating of who is doing what, ensuring that the overall approach is congruent, etc. That’s not to say that it’s not a worthwhile endeavor in some cases where it makes pedagogical sense (in our case we are designing courses for 18-22 year-old campus-based learners and 22+ year-old fully online learners at the same time), but if time/cost savings is the goal, you will be sorely disappointed, in my experience. The “divide and conquer” approach requires a LOT of coordination and oversight. Without that you will likely have a cobbled together, hodgepodge of a course that doesn’t meet expectations.
Best, Carine Director, Office of Instructional Design & Academic Technology Ottawa University 1001 S. Cedar St. * Ottawa, KS 66067 carine.ullom@ottawa.edu * 785-248-2510
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Breaking up a course and coming up with a cohesive design and approach, could make the design process longer. At SSC, we generally work with our faculty over the course of a semester for each course. When we’ve worked with teams, we have not seen a shortened timeline.
The length of time it takes to develop a course depends on the content. Are there videos? If so, they have to be created, which is time-consuming, plus they either need to have a transcript created or they need subtitles. Both of those can be time-consuming. PowerPoint slides take time, plus, they need more content to make them relevant. We are working with our faculty to use the Universal Design for Learning model, which means we’re challenging them to create the content to benefit the most learners
I have a very small team whose sole focus is course design and it takes us 3-4 weeks to design a course and it’s our full-time job!
Linda
Linda C. Morosko, MA Director, eStarkState Division of Student Success 330-494-6170 ext. 4973 lmorosko@starkstate.edu
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Kelvin, we also use the 8-week development cycle, but do occasionally have to lengthen that cycle for particularly complex courses or in rare cases when the SME has had medical emergencies or other major life disruptions. I would be surprised if multiple faculty working on a course could develop it any more quickly than a single faculty member, though, because of the additional time required for them to agree and the dispersed sense of responsibility. Interesting idea.
-Kimber
Dr. Kimberly D. Barnett Gibson, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Online Learning Our Lady of the Lake University 411 SW 24th Street San Antonio, TX 78207 Kgibson@ollusa.edu210.431.5574 BlackBoard IM kimberly.gibson https://www.pinterest.com/drkdbgavpol/ @drkimberTweets
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Hello everyone. As a follow-up to the current thread, how long do you typically give hey course developer to develop a master course for your institution? We currently use an eight week model but some faculty have indicated that that is not enough time for them although we have teams of 2 to 4 faculty developing such content. Our current assumption is that with teams, there can be divisions of labor that can reduce the total amount time needed during the course development process.
Kelvin Bentley, PhD Vice President of Academic Affairs, TCC Connect Campus Tarrant County College District
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At Berkeley College, full-time faculty may develop online courses in conjunction with an instructional designer. The course is used as a master template for other sections to be assigned from. Once the course has been scheduled and taught, the faculty member receives a stipend. The faculty member would receive their normal pay to teach the developed course as part of their semester course load, with no additional royalties assigned for it or any additional sections that may be provided to students.
Regards, Gina Gina Okun Assistant Dean, Online Berkeley College 64 East Midland Avenue, Suite 2, Paramus, NJ 07652 (973)405-2111 x6309 gina-okun@berkeleycollege.edu
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We operate with nearly all adjunct faculty where >70% of enrollment credits are onlinez
With one exception that I can recall, the development contract includes the college’s outright ownership, with no royalty rights. One of the issues with a royalty based arrangement would be what to do when the course is revised (which happens nearly every term, to one degree or another). At what point does the course begin to take on the character of another person’s input?
What do you do if the course is adapted for a shorter summer term, or a between-term intensive? What if new media tools or a different LMS are used? Is the royalty arrangement based on the syllabus or the course content itself? What happens if the textbook goes out of print, or an Open resource becomes available? What happens if students evaluate the course poorly?
I’m not in position to set this policy — I’m only reporting it. I like the idea of a royalty arrangement but it seems like it could get pretty messy. It isn’t as if you are licensing a song or an image where the original product doesn’t change. Courses, the modes of delivery, and the means of communication change all the time. Seems like it would be hard to define what constitutes “the course” after a certain amount of time.
Steve Covello Rich Media Specialist/Instructional Designer/Online Instructor Chalk & Wire e-Portfolio Administrator Granite State College 603-513-1346 Video chat: https://appear.in/id.team Scheduling: http://meetme.so/stevecovello
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I’ve worked with many institutions that have used Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to develop or provide the online course content. Most often, the institutions also provide a resource in the form of an Instructional Designer (ID) to take the content and create the actual course environment.
The SME is paid on a contract basis for provision of the content. This is a one-time payment, and the institution then owns the course content (other than integrated published materials such as text books, licensed online lab products, etc.). The SME may be an existing faculty member at the institution or not, or the SME may go on to teach the course at the institution. In any event, whoever teaches the course would be paid the standard faculty rate for the course. If the course requires revisions to the extent that a person will need to be engaged for content updates, then that can be a negotiated contract. Typically it is some fraction of the original development cost. No royalties are involved.
Within SUNY, there is some variance regarding whether a stipend is paid for development or not. In either case, since we are unionized there is policy regarding IP. IP resides with the faculty developer unless both parties agree in writing in the form of a contract to assign or share rights.
Thank you for your feedback on this issue. Our institution does does not provide a royalty as we consider course development as a fee-for-service arrangement. We pay teams of 2-4 faculty $1000 each to develop master course shells for our high-enrollment courses. Instead of a royalty fee, I think an institution can simply provide course developers the perk of first right of refusal to teach the course when it offered as well as providing course developers with the first option to make revisions to the course shell over time.
Kelvin
Kelvin Bentley, Ph.D. Vice President of Academic Affairs, TCC Connect Campus Tarrant County College District
Once upon a time, and several positions ago, we set up a google doc for capturing all kinds of data points across institutions, like this. I’m sure it’s far out of date, but may still have some ideas or info in there – and could possibly be dusted off and oiled up for re-use… I present the Blend-Online Data Collector. This tab is for course development payment.
Kind regards,
Clark
Clark Shah-Nelson
Assistant Dean, Instructional Design and Technology
University of Maryland School of Social Work—Twitter … LinkedIn —voice/SMS: (646) 535-7272fax: 270.514.0112
Hi Jenn,
Just want to clarify…you say faculty “sign over all intellectual property rights of the course to the college.” but later in the email say “Faculty own all intellectual property and can take it with them to teach at another institution”, so is your policy changing to the former? Or, is it the later and that is what you are asking about?
I’ll send details on our policy directly to your email account.
I am tasked with finding out what the going rate is for the following model:
We pay an adjunct faculty member (“teaching faculty”) a set amount in order to develop an online course and sign over all intellectual property rights of the course to the college.
Is anyone doing this? I’ve heard of models that include royalties, but I personally don’t know of any that offer straight payment for IP. I know this can be a touchy subject, so feel free to respond directly to me and I will return and post a range of payment rates with no other identifying data.
For some comparison, we are currently paying full time faculty a $5000 stipend to spend a semester developing their very first online class, and then they get paid to teach the class. Subsequent online class developments are unpaid. Emerson owns the course description and course shell and is allowed to show the course to future faculty who will teach the online course. Faculty own all intellectual property and can take it with them to teach at another institution. More info: http://www.emerson.edu/itg/online-emerson/frequently-asked-questions
I asked this on another list, but wanted to get Blend_Online’s opinion as well. Thanks for any pointers!
Jenn Stevens
Director | Instructional Technology Group | 403A Walker Building | Emerson College | 120 Boylston St | Boston MA 02116 | (617) 824-3093
Ellen M. Murphy
Director of Program Development
Graduate Professional Studies
