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.
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.
A Professional Development Opportunity for All Faculty and Staff
What: Statewide opportunity to read, discuss, interact, share and learn with a book on a topic of interest and relevance for our work. This year the topic is improving communication with students and enhancing their sense of belonging. Created by: Rebecca March and Cheryl Neudauer, Minneapolis College
The book is The College Fear Factor: How Students and Professors Misunderstand Each Other. Rebecca Cox “spent five years talking to, and watching, community college students. She noted carefully the many ways they failed their classes. She listened closely to their reasons why.”– Jay Mathews, Washington Post blog
Three 90-minute virtual Adobe Connect meetings to discuss how the experiences and perspectives in this book relate to our students and communities. Virtual meetings are scheduled for:
Thursday, February 21 – 12:00-1:30 pm
Thursday, March 28 – 12:00-1:30 pm
Thursday, April 18 – 12:00-1:30 pm
D2L Brightspace course to explore issues related to communicating with our students both outside of and within the classroom, orally and through our documents, policies, and electronic communications and how these impact their sense of belonging. The “course” will use short, asynchronous, interactive activities to help us explore how we can better serve our students, connect across the system, and share resources.
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2nd meeting, March 28, 2019.
CHAPTER 2 THE STUDENT FEAR FACTOR (pp. 20-41)
Engaging the Online Learner Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction:
why instructional design doesn’t typically work with students, or anyone’s learning for that matter, when you teach with PowerPoint—as well as how you can avoid it. It all begins with a little concept called “cognitive load.”
Cognitive load describes the capacity of our brain’s working memory (or WM) to hold and process new pieces of information. We’ve all got a limited amount of working memory, so when we have to handle information in more than one way, our load gets heavier, and progressively more challenging to manage.
In a classroom, a student’s cognitive load is greatly affected by the “extraneous” nature of information—in other words, the manner by which information is presented to them (Sweller, 2010). Every teacher instinctively knows there are better—and worse—ways to present information.
A study in Australia in the late 1990s (the 1999 Kalyuga study) compared the learning achievement of a group of college students who watched an educator’s presentation involving a visual text element and an audio text element (meaning there were words on a screen while the teacher also talked) with those who only listened to a lecture, minus the pesky PowerPoint slides.
Researchers including John Sweller and Kimberly Leslie contend that it would be easier for students to learn the differences between herbivores and carnivores by closing their eyes and only listening to the teacher. But students who close their eyes during a lecture are likely to to called out for “failing to paying attention.”
Richard Mayer, a brain scientist at UC Santa Barbara and author of the book Multimedia Learning, offers the following prescription: Eliminate textual elements from presentations and instead talk through points, sharing images or graphs with students
a separate Australian investigation by Leslie et al. (2012), suggest that mixing visual cues with auditory explanations (in math and science classrooms, in particular) are essential and effective. In the Leslie study, a group of 4th grade students who knew nothing about magnetism and light learned significantly more when presented with both images and a teacher’s explanation than a separate group which received only auditory explanation.
hints:
Limit yourself to one word per slide. If you’re defining words, try putting up the vocabulary word and an associated set of images—then challenge students to deduce the definition.
Honor the “personalization principle,” which essentially says that engaging learners by delivering content in a conversational tone will increase learning. For example, Richard Mayer suggests using lots of “I’s” and “you’s” in your text, as students typically relate better to more informal language.
Jumping onboard to a new industry trend with insufficient planning can result in your initiative failing to achieve its objective and, in the worst case, even hinder the learning process. So which hot topics should you treat with care?
1. Virtual Reality, or VR
Ultimately, the key question to consider when adopting anything new is whether it will help you achieve the desired outcome. VR shouldn’t be incorporated into learning just because it’s a common buzzword. Before you decide to give it a go, consider how it’s going to help your learner, and whether it’s truly the most effective or efficient way to meet the learning goal.
2. Gamification
considering introducing an interactive element to your learning, don’t let this deter you—just ensure that it’s relevant to the content and will aid the learning process.
3. Artificial Intelligence, or AI
If you are confident that a trend is going to yield better results for your learners, the ROI you see may well justify the upfront resources it requires.
Again, it all comes down to whether a trend is going to deliver in terms of achieving an objective.
4. Microlearning
The theory behind microlearning makes a lot of sense: organizing content into sections so that learning can fit easily with modern day attention spans and learners’ busy lifestyles is not a bad thing. The worry is that the buzzword, ‘microlearning’, has grown legs of its own, meaning the industry is losing sight of its’ founding principles.
p. 5 a LibGuide was created that provided a better description of the available software for both the Microsoft Hololens and the HTC Vive and also discussed potential applications for the technology.
Both the HTC Vive and the Hololens were made bookable through the library’s LibCalendar booking system, streamlining the booking process and creating a better user experience.
When the decision was made to bring virtual and augmented reality into the McGill University Library, an important aspect of this project was to develop a collection of related software to be used alongside the technology. In building this software collection a priority was placed on acquiring software that could be demonstrated as having educational value, or that could potentially be used in relation to, or in support of, university courses.
For the Microsoft Hololens, all software was acquired through Microsoft’s Online Store. The store has a number of educationally relevant HoloLens apps available for purchase. The app ARchitect, for example, gives a basic sense of how augmented reality could be used for viewing new building designs. The app Robotics BIW allows user to simulate robotic functions. A select number of apps, such as Land of the Dinosaurs and Boulevard, provide applications for natural history and art. There were a select number of apps related to science, mathematics and medicine, and others with artistic applications. All of the HoloLens applications were free but, compared to what is available for virtual reality, the experiences were much smaller in size and scope.
For the HoloLens, a generic user account was created and shared with person who booked the HoloLens at the time of their booking. After logging into this account – which could sometimes prove to be a challenge because typing is done using the headset’s gesture controls – the user could select a floating tile which would reveal a list of available software. An unresolved problem was that users would then need to refer to the HoloLens LibGuide for a detailed description of the software, or else choose software based on name alone, and the names were not always helpful.
For the Microsoft HoloLens, the three most popular software programs were Land of the Dinosaurs, Palmyra and Insight Heart. Insight Heart allow users to view and manipulate a 3D rendering of a high-resolution human heart, Land of the Dinosaurs provided an augment reality experience featuring 3D renderings of dinosaurs, and Palmyra gave an augmented reality tour of the ancient city of Palmyra.
p. 7 Though many students had ideas for research projects that could make use of the technology, there was no available software that would have allowed them to use augmented reality in the way they wanted. There were no students interested in developing their own software to be used with the technology either.
p. 8 we found that the Microsoft HoloLens received significant use from our patrons, we would recommend the purchase of one only for libraries serving researchers and developers.
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Getting Real in the Library: A Case Study at the University of Florida
As an alternative, Microsoft offers a Hololens with enterprise options geared toward multiple users for $5000.
The transition from mobile app development to VR/AR technology also reflected the increased investment in VR/AR by some of the largest technology companies in the world. In the past four years, Facebook purchased the virtual reality company Oculus, Apple released the ARKit for developing augmented reality applications on iOS devices, Google developed Google Cardboard as an affordable VR option, and Sony released Playstation VR to accompany their gaming platform, just to name a few notable examples. This increase of VR/AR development was mirrored by a rise in student interest and faculty research in using and creating new VR/AR content at UF.
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Arnhem, J.-P. van, Elliott, C., & Rose, M. (2018). Augmented and Virtual Reality in Libraries. Rowman & Littlefield.
Hammady, R., & Ma, M. (2018). Designing Spatial UI as a Solution of the Narrow FOV of Microsoft HoloLens: Prototype of Virtual Museum Guide. In Proceedings of the 4th International AR & VR Conference 2018. Springer. Retrieved from https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/4799/
‘HoloMuse’ that engage users with archaeological artefacts through gesture-based interactions (Pollalis, Fahnbulleh, Tynes, & Shaer, 2017). Another research utilised HoloLens to provide in-situ assistant for users (Blattgerste, Strenge, Renner, Pfeiffer, & Essig, 2017). HoloLens also used to provide magnification for low vision users by complementary finger-worn camera alongside with the HMD (Stearns, DeSouza, Yin, Findlater, & Froehlich, 2017). Even in the medical applications, HoloLens contributed in 3D visualisation purposes using AR techniques (Syed, Zakaria, & Lozanoff, 2017) and provide optimised measurements in medical surgeries(Pratt et al., 2018) (Adabi et al., 2017). Application of HoloLens extended to visualise prototype designs (DeLaOsa, 2017) and showed its potential in gaming industry (Volpe, 2015) (Alvarez, 2015) and engaging cultural visitors with gaming activities (Raptis, Fidas, & Avouris, 2017).
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van Arnhem, J.-P., & Spiller, J. M. (2014). Augmented Reality for Discovery and Instruction. Journal of Web Librarianship, 8(2), 214–230. https://doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2014.904208
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Evaluating the Microsoft HoloLens through an augmented reality assembly application
To assess the HoloLens’ potential for delivering AR assembly instructions, the cross-platform Unity 3D game engine was used to build a proof of concept application. Features focused upon when building the prototype were: user interfaces, dynamic 3D assembly instructions, and spatially registered content placement. The research showed that while the HoloLens is a promising system, there are still areas that require improvement, such as tracking accuracy, before the device is ready for deployment in a factory assembly setting.
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Pollalis, C., Fahnbulleh, W., Tynes, J., & Shaer, O. (2017). HoloMuse: Enhancing Engagement with Archaeological Artifacts Through Gesture-Based Interaction with Holograms. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 565–570). New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3024969.3025094
Gračanin, D., Ciambrone, A., Tasooji, R., & Handosa, M. (2017). Mixed Library — Bridging Real and Virtual Libraries. In S. Lackey & J. Chen (Eds.), Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality (pp. 227–238). Springer International Publishing.
We use Microsoft HoloLens device to augment the user’s experience in the real library and to provide a rich set of affordances for embodied and social interactions.We describe a mixed reality based system, a prototype mixed library, that provides a variety of affordances to support embodied interactions and improve the user experience.
Computer science as an engineering discipline has been spectacularly successful. Yet it is also a philosophical enterprise in the way it represents the world and creates and manipulates models of reality, people, and action. In this book, Paul Dourish addresses the philosophical bases of human-computer interaction. He looks at how what he calls “embodied interaction”—an approach to interacting with software systems that emphasizes skilled, engaged practice rather than disembodied rationality—reflects the phenomenological approaches of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other twentieth-century philosophers. The phenomenological tradition emphasizes the primacy of natural practice over abstract cognition in everyday activity. Dourish shows how this perspective can shed light on the foundational underpinnings of current research on embodied interaction. He looks in particular at how tangible and social approaches to interaction are related, how they can be used to analyze and understand embodied interaction, and how they could affect the design of future interactive systems.
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Pollalis, C., Fahnbulleh, W., Tynes, J., & Shaer, O. (2017). HoloMuse: Enhancing Engagement with Archaeological Artifacts Through Gesture-Based Interaction with Holograms. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 565–570). New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3024969.3025094
HoloMuse, an AR application for the HoloLens wearable device, which allows users to actively engage with archaeological artifacts from a museum collection
pick up, rotate, scale, and alter a hologram of an original archeological artifact using in-air gestures. Users can also curate their own exhibit or customize an existing one by selecting artifacts from a virtual gallery and placing them within the physical world so that they are viewable only using the device. We intend to study the impact of HoloMuse on learning and engagement with college-level art history and archeology students.
Many U.S. states are similar in population size and demographics to Finland, and education is largely run at the state level. In the economically depressed forest region of North Karelia — on the Russian border — where we spent much of our time, the unemployment rate is nearly 15 percent, compared with under 5 percent in America and our home state of New York. However, the U.S. child poverty rate is four times higher than Finland’s.
Delegations and universities from China and around the developing world are visiting Finland to learn how to improve their own school systems.Singapore has launched a series of Finnish-style school reforms.
n Finland, we heard none of the clichés common in U.S. education reform circles, like “rigor,” “standards-based accountability,” “data-driven instruction,” “teacher evaluation through value-added measurement” or getting children “college- and career-ready” starting in kindergarten.
Instead, Finnish educators and officials constantly stressed to us their missions of helping every child reach his or her full potential and supporting all children’s well-being. “School should be a child’s favorite place,” said Heikki Happonen, an education professor at the University of Eastern Finland and an authority on creating warm, child-centered learning environments.
How can the United States improve its schools? We can start by piloting and implementing these 12 global education best practices, many of which are working extremely well for Finland:
1) Emphasize well-being.
2) Upgrade testing and other assessments.
3) Invest resources fairly.
4) Boost learning through physical activity.
5) Change the focus. Create an emotional atmosphere and physical environment of warmth, comfort and safety so that children are happy and eager to come to school. Teach not just basic skills, but also arts, crafts, music, civics, ethics, home economics and life skills.
6) Make homework efficient. Reduce the homework load in elementary and middle schools to no more than 30 minutes per night, and make it responsibility-based rather than stress-based.
7) Trust educators and children. Give them professional respect, creative freedom and autonomy, including the ability to experiment, take manageable risks and fail in the pursuit of success.
8) Shorten the school day. Deliver lessons through more efficient teaching and scheduling, as Finland does. Simplify curriculum standards to a framework that can fit into a single book, and leave detailed implementation to local districts.
9) Institute universal after-school programs.
10) Improve, expand and destigmatize vocational and technical education. Encourage more students to attend schools in which they can acquire valuable career/trade skills.
11) Launch preventive special-education interventions early and aggressively.
12) Revamp teacher training toward a medical and military model. Shift to treating the teaching profession as a critical national security function requiring government-funded, graduate-level training in research and collaborative clinical practice, as Finland does.
Tuesday, October 30 from 9:00am-3:00pm at the System Office, Wells Fargo Place (Saint Paul, MN).
Team 3 is charged with developing a process for prioritizing and selecting collaborative curriculum development and course offering projects that require the use of enterprise instructional design and technology services.
Have expertise in online education that you are willing to share?
The Online Strategy Workgroup needs subject matter experts to participate on one of the three teams below.
Team 1 (Access) – Team 1 is charged with reviewing the existing services provided by the Minnesota State Info Hub and aligning the services they provide with the needs outlined in the corresponding action steps of the Online Strategy report. This team will utilize the existing levels of funding allocated to the Minnesota State Info Hub without seeking additional financial compensation from campuses. See what subject matter experts are needed for this team.
Team 2 (Quality) – Team 2 is charged with reviewing the existing services provided by the Minnesota Online Quality Initiative (MOQI) and aligning these services with the needs outlined in the corresponding action steps of this report. In addition to evaluating faculty development programming options available through MOQI, this team will be responsibility for developing the tools intended to support the quality improvement processes used by campuses. See what subject matter experts are needed for this team.
Team 3 (Collaboration) -Team 3 is charged with developing a process for prioritizing and selecting online collaborative curriculum development and online course offering projects that require the use of enterprise instructional design and technology services. See what subject matter experts are needed for this team.
program level course mapping.
course level modules and learning objectives.
RCE reasonable credit equivalency
IAA inter-agency agreement
RFP request for proposal
Collaborate on Curriculum and Course Offerings (Action A)
Adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) (Action A)
Revenue Sharing Model (Action D) Instructional Design and Technology Services (Action C)