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App Gap

Higher Ed Needs to Bridge the ‘App Gap’ to Reach Students

By Gordon Freedman     Nov 29, 2018

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-11-29-higher-ed-needs-to-bridge-the-app-gap-to-reach-students

Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) or Gen Z (born after 1996)

Today’s youth culture lives in apps—not for the sake of the technology itself, but for the rich social, psychological identity-driven mash-up that define a person, group, interactions and opinions.

When a Millennial or Gen Z-er accesses a new consumer app, it is as simple as opening the morning newspaper is for their parents or grandparents. However, when the same people look at a college schedule, fill out paperwork or an online form, access or save records that they may need later, and, eventually, try to conjure it all at the end of this process, they are stopped in their tracks.

Building a Brand, User Testing Apps, Social Media Marketing

By contrast, when brands and memes compete on social media, young people pay attention.

Without those social signals as well as continual feedback from their friends and influencers— what the younger generations rely on for context—they are likely on very different wavelengths from the colleges who want them to attend and stay, training and outreach opportunities vying for their attention, and employers who need reliable entry hires.

Each generational shift suffers a cultural communication schism, noticeable at home and in school, that in the past was navigable by the time young people focused on college or career training, or entered the workforce. Today, this is not happening.

The gap between the traditional practices and the social and consumer app world is serious. Simply creating app-like technology to mimic older processes is not the answer.

Equity is more than creating more organizational programs or developing more ineffective websites without adequate measures for engaging and empowering young people who need support.

Data driven design

Valuing data over design instinct puts metrics over users

Benek Lisefski August 13, 2019

https://modus.medium.com/data-driven-design-is-killing-our-instincts-d448d141653d

Overreliance on data to drive design decisions can be just as harmful as ignoring it. Data only tells one kind of story. But your project goals are often more complex than that. Goals can’t always be objectively measured.

Data-driven design is about using information gleaned from both quantitative and qualitative sources to inform how you make decisions for a set of users. Some common tools used to collect data include user surveys, A/B testing, site usage and analytics, consumer research, support logs, and discovery calls. 

Designers justified their value through their innate talent for creative ideas and artistic execution. Those whose instincts reliably produced success became rock stars.

In today’s data-driven world, that instinct is less necessary and holds less power. But make no mistake, there’s still a place for it.

Data is good at measuring things that are easy to measure. Some goals are less tangible, but that doesn’t make them less important.

Data has become an authoritarian who has fired the other advisors who may have tempered his ill will. A designer’s instinct would ask, “Do people actually enjoy using this?” or “How do these tactics reflect on our reputation and brand?”

Digital interface design is going through a bland period of sameness.

Data is only as good as the questions you ask

When to use data vs. when to use instinct

Deciding between two or three options? This is where data shines. Nothing is more decisive than an A/B test to compare potential solutions and see which one actually performs better. Make sure you’re measuring long-term value metrics and not just views and clicks.

Sweating product quality and aesthetics? Turn to your instinct. The overall feeling of quality is a collection of hundreds of micro-decisions, maintained consistency, and execution with accuracy. Each one of those decisions isn’t worth validating on its own. Your users aren’t design experts, so their feedback will be too subjective and variable. Trust your design senses when finessing the details.

Unsure about user behavior? Use data rather than asking for opinions. When asked what they’ll do, customers will do what they think you want them to. Instead, trust what they actually do when they think nobody’s looking.

Building brand and reputation? Data can’t easily measure this. But we all know trustworthiness is as important as clicks (and sometimes they’re opposing goals). When building long-term reputation, trust your instinct to guide you to what’s appealing, even if it sometimes contradicts short-term data trends. You have to play the long game here.

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more on big data in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=big+data

rethinking gamification

Ruffino, P., & Fizek, S. (n.d.). Rethinking Gamification. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/7544496/Rethinking_Gamification

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more on gamification in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=gamification

Gamification can be approached in at least two ways. First, as a general process in which games and playful experiences are understood as essential components of society and culture.

Sebastian Deterding, Rilla
Khaled, Lennart Nacke and Dan Dixon have proposed a tentative history of
the term: “ ‘gamification’ as a term originated in the digital media industry.
The first documented use dates back to 2008, but gamification only entered
widespread adoption in the second half of 2010”

Jane McGonigal’s work, expounded in her contribution at the TED
Talk series in 2010, is also concerned with “selling” gamification to corporations.
In her book Reality is Broken. p.9  In her understanding, gamification is a concept that describes a new age where gamers can collectively use their problem-solving skills not only
to solve puzzles within a digital game but also to approach social and political
issues in the real world. Gaming, according to McGonigal’s vision,
could and should play a redeeming role. Game designers could become the
new social entrepreneurs, and citizens become gamers. From this perspective,
gamification thus becomes a technique for enabling greatly ambitious
change.

p. 10 Consumer loyalty, issues related to finance and governance, workers’ productivity, training and development – these are only some of the areas that are allegedly being positively revolu tionised by the emergence of gamification

As outlined by Ian Bogost in several contexts (2011a, 2011b), gamificatio has little to do with the design of games (or an allegedly salvific process), and much more with the exploitation of consumers. It frustrates the practice of game design and reduces playing to a stimulus-response experience

p. 11 Niklas Schrape proposes looking, through Foucault, at how gamification might work as a method to regulate individuals and their social lives. It also works as a pleasant regulator of behaviour because it offers positive feedback (rewards, leaderboards, etc.) rather than
negative penalties (fines, prison, etc.).

Ruffino looks at the work of Tim Ingold and his reading of Bergson and Heidegger and argues that participation, dwelling and co-existence could be seen as alternative ways of thinking about engagement: less as a transitive process that goes from games to their players and more as an in transitive status that needs to be narrated in order to be of any value

Foursquare alters the experience of moving about on the streets of a city and establishes a form of communication based on bodily proximity

p. 12 Joost Raessens examines how gamification could be seen in the context of a more general “ludic turn”, which affects society and culture at many different levels. This century, Raessens notes, has seen several different kinds of “turns”: We have seen the linguistic turn, the digital, followed by the material one and many others. To what extent could we say that we are now experiencing a playful turnp.

p. 14 the definition of gamification as the use of game elements in a non-game context.
Philippette suggests the very idea that games that can influencethe non-game context could be re-interpreted following Henriot’s theories on play (https://www.academia.edu/16293099/Gamification_Rethinking_playing_the_game_with_Jacques_Henriot

Counter-gamification is not a precise practice; it is not defined in guidebooks, workshops, or tutorials. It is instead a form of appropriation of playful elements by artists in order to promote radical and oppositional values.

p. 15 Fizek’s proposal is to expand the concept of play and fun and to introduce new forms of engagement in the practice of gamification

If the endgame approach were applied to gamification, Nicholson argues, we could see very different ways of designing and playing. The author explores these alternative modes of gamifying things through a text that offers both a theoretical understanding of gamification and exceptionally useful suggestions for designers.

p. 16 an eudaimonic view of gamification could bring a “good” way of living and
playing, one where joy and satisfaction are at the centre of a responsible practice. Gamification, according to Deterding, could become the name of a play practice that truly helps human beings in fulfilling their own lives and those of others

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More on Bogost in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=bogost

Bug-in-Ear Coaching

With Bug-in-Ear Coaching, Teachers Get Feedback on the Fly

By February 26, 2019

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/02/27/with-bug-in-ear-coaching-teachers-get-feedback-on.html/

The practice is called bug-in-ear coaching, and it has been around for decades in different sectors in some capacity. But in recent years, more and more educators are beginning to try it out.

And a growing body of research shows it works. When educators are coached with this technology, they use evidence-based practices in their instruction more frequently. Research also shows that most teachers tend to keep up the improvements in their teaching behavior after the bug-in-ear coaching sessions have ended.

Yet experts say there’s skepticism from some in the education community, who worry that real-time feedback while teachers are delivering instruction will be overwhelming.

Virtual teacher-coaching services have become more popular in recent years—teachers record their lessons, and remote coaches review the videos and offer feedback. This approach has been especially popular in rural schools, or in districts that can’t afford to staff their own coaches.

As educators see the benefits of the coaching method, experts predict that it will continue to spread. That has been the case at the University of Washington’s college of education, where researchers have done a series of studies with bug-in-ear coaching.

 

Peter Rubin Future Presence

P 4. But all that “disruption,” as people love to collect, is over looking the thing that’s the most disruptive of them all call on the way we relate to each other will never be the same. That’s because of something called presence.
Presence is the absolute foundation of virtual reality, and in VR, it’s the absolute foundation of connection-connection with yourself, with an idea, with another human, even connection with artificial intelligence.
p. 28 VR definition
Virtual reality is an 1. artificial environment that’s 2. immersive enough to convince you that you are 3. actually inside it.
1. ” artificial environment ” could mean just about anything. The photograph is an artificial environment of video game is an artificial environment a Pixar movie is an artificial environment the only thing that matters is that it’s not where are you physically are
p. 44 VR: putting the “it” in “meditation”
my note: it seems Rubin sees the 21st century VR as the equivalent of the drug experimentation in the 1960s US: p. 46 “VR is potentially going to become a direct interface to the subconscious”

p. 74 serious games, Carrie Heeter. p. 49

The default network in the brain in today’s society is the wandering mind. We are ruminating about the past, and we are worrying about the future, or maybe even planning for the future; there is some productive thinking. But in general, a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. And that is where we spent all of our week in time: not being aware of everything that we are experiencing in the moment.
Hester’s Open meditation had already let her to design apps and studies that investigated mediate meditations ability to calm that wandering mind
p. 51 Something called interoception. It is a term that is gaining ground in psychologist circles in recent years and basically means awareness of battle associations-like my noticing the fact that I was sitting awkwardly or that keeping my elbows on the cheers armrests was making my shoulders hunched slightly. Not surprisingly, mindfulness meditation seems to heighten interoception. And that is exactly how Heeter and Allbritton Strep throat the meditation I am doing on Costa Del sole. First, I connect with the environment; then with my body; Dan I combined the two. The combination of the VR and interception leads to what she describes as “embodied presence”: not only do you feel like you are in the VR environment, but because you have consciously work to integrate your bodily Sensations into VR, it is a fuller, more vivid version of presents.

p. 52 guided meditation VR GMVR

p. 56 VVVR visual voice virtual reality

p. 57

Just as the ill-fated google glass immediately stigmatized all its wearers as “glassholes”- a.k.a. “techier-than-thou douche bags who dropped $1500 to see an email notification appear in front of their face”-so to do some VR headset still look like face TVs for another it’s

p. 61 Hedgehog Love
engineering feelings with social presence. p.64 remember presents? This is the beginning of social presence. Mindfulness is cool, but making eye contact with Henry is the first step into the future.

p.65 back in 1992, our friend Carrie heeter posited that presence-the sensation did you are really there in VR-head treat day mentions. There was personal presents, environmental presents, and social presents, which she basically defined is being around other people who register your existence.
p. 66 the idea that emotion can be not a cause, as sweet so often assumed, but a result of it of behavior
p. 72 in chapter 1, we explain the difference between Mobile VR and PC driven PR.  The former is cheaper and easier; all you do is drop your smart phone into a headset, and it provides just about everything can eat. Dedicated VR headsets rely on the stronger processors of desktop PCs and game consoles,So they can provide a more robust sense of presence-usually at the cost of being hit Earth to your computer with cables. (it’s the cost of actual money: dedicated headset systems from hundreds of dollars, while mobile headsets like Samsung’s deer VR or Google’s DayDream View can be had for mere tens of dollars.) There is one other fundamental distinction between mobile VR and high-end VR, though, and that is what you do with your hands-how you input your desires. When VR reemerged in the early 2010s, however, the question of input was open to debate. Actually, more than one debate. p. 73 video game controllers are basically metaphors. Some, like steering wheels or pilot flight sticks, might look like that think they’re supposed to be, but  at their essence they are all just collections of buttons. p. 77 HTC sales small wearable truckers that you can affix to any object, or anybody part, to break it into the Vive’s VR.
p. 78 wait a second – you were talking about storytelling.
p. 79 Every Hollywood studio you can imagine-21st Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bross.-Has already invested in virtual reality. They have made VR experiences based on their own movies, like interstellar or ghost in the Shell, and they have invested in other VR companies. Hollywood directors like Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) and Robert Stromberg (Maleficent) have taken VR project. And the progress is exhilarating. Alejandro GOnzalez Inarritu, a 4-Time Oscar winner for best director 2014 movie Birdman, won best picture, received this special achievement Academy award in 2017 for a VR Schwartz he made. Yet Carne Y Arena, which puts viewers insight a harrowing journey from Mexico to the United States, is nothing like a movie, or even a video game.

When you premiered at the Cannes film Festival in early 2017, it was housed in an airplane hangar; viewers were a shirt, barefoot, into a room with a sand-covert floor, where they could watch and interact with other people trying to make it over the border. Arrests, detention centers, dehydration-the extremity of the human condition happening all around you. India announcement, the Academy of motion picture arts and sciences called the peas “deeply emotional and physically immersive”

p. 83 empathy versus intimacy. Why good stories need someone else

p. 84 Chris Milk

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

p. 85 empathy vs intimacy: appreciation vs emotion

Both of these words are fuzzy, to say the least. Both have decades of study behind him, but both have also appeared and more magazine covers in just about any words, other than possibly “abs”

Empathy: dear Do it to do identify with and understand dollars, particularly on an emotional level. It involves imagining yourself in the place of another and, therefore, appreciating how do you feel.

Intimacy: a complex sphere of ‘inmost’ relationships with self and others that are not usually minor or incidental (though they may be a transitory) and which usually touch the personal world very deeply. They are our closest relationships with friends, family, children, lovers, but they are also the deep into important experiences we have with self

Empathy necessarily needs to involve other people; intimacy doesn’t. Empathy involves emotional understanding; intimacy involves emotion itself. Empathy, at its base, isn’t act of getting outside yourself: you’re protecting yourself into someone’s else experience, which means that in some ways you are leaving your own experience behind, other than as a reference point. Intimacy, on the other hand, is at its base act of feeling: you might be connecting quit someone or something Else, but you are doing so on the basis of the emotions you feel. p 86. Any type of VR experience perfectly illustrates the surprising gap between empathy and intimacy: life action VR. p. 87 unlike CGI-based storytelling, which full somewhere in between game in movie, live action VR feels much more like the conventional video forms that we are used to from television and movies. Like those media, people have been using VR to shoot everything from narrative fiction to documentary the sports.

Nonny de la Peña Hunger in Los Angeles at Sundance

p. 89 Clouds over Sidra Chris Milk

p. 90 SXSW south by southwest Austin Texas

p. 92 every single story has only one goal at its base: to make you care. This holds true whether it is a tale told around a campfire at night, one related to a sequence of panels in the comic book, or dialogue-heavy narrative of a television show. The story might be trying to make you laugh, or just scare you, or to make you feel sad or happy on behalf of one of the characters, but those are all just forms of caring, right? Your emotional investment-the fact that what kept us in this tale matters to you-is the fundamental aim of the storyteller.

Storytelling, than, has evolved to find ways to draw you out of yourself, to make you forget that what you are hearing or seeing or reading isn’t real. It’s only at that point, after all, that our natural capacity for empathy can kick in. p. 93 meanwhile, technology continues to evolve to detaches from those stories. For one, the frame itself continues to get smaller. Strangers still, this distraction has happened well stories continue to become more and more complex. Narratively, at least, stories are more intricate then the have ever been. p. 94. Now, with VR storytelling, the distracting power of multiple screens his met it’s match.

p. 101 experiencing our lives- together

What videos two cannot do, though, he’s bringing people together insights VR, the way re-McClure’s sinking-multicoloredat-blogs-at-each-other tag-team project is VVVR does. That’s why even V are filmmaking powerhouses like Within ( https://www.with.in/get-the-app) are moving beyond mere documentary and narrative and trying to turn storytelling into a shared experience.

Make no mistake: storytelling has always been a shirt experience. Being conscripted into the story, or even being the story.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-engel-96421010/

https://medium.com/@Within/welcome-jess-aea620df0ca9

p. 103 like so many VR experiences, life of us defies many of the ways we describe a story to each other. For one, it feels at fonts shorter and longer than its actual seven-minutes runtime; although it’s seems to be over in a flash, flash contains so many details that in retrospect it is as full and vivid is a two-our movie.

There is another think, though, that sets life of us apart from so many other stories-it is the fact that not only was I in the story, but someone else was in there with me. In that someone wasn’t a field character talking to a camera that they some calling about it, or a video game creature that was programmed to look in ‘my’ direction, but a real person-a person who saw what I saw, a person who was present for each of those moments and who know is inextricably part of my old, shard-Like memory of them.

p. 107 what to do and what to do it with . How social VR is reinventing everything from game night to online harassment.

Facebook Hires Altspace CEO Eric Romo

p. 110 VR isn’t given Romo’s first bet on the future. When he was finishing up his masters degree in mechanical engineering, a professor emailed him on behalf of two men who were recruiting for a rocket company there were starting. One of those man was a Elon musk, which is how Romo became the 13th employee at space X. Eventually, she started the company focusing go solar energy, but when the bottom fell out of the industry, she shut down the company and looked for his next opportunity. Romo spent the next year and a half researching the technology and thinking about what kind of company might make sense in the new VR enabled world. He had read Snow crash, but he oh soon you get our hopes for DVR future could very well end up like gay themed flying car: defined-and limited-bite an expectation that might not match perfectly which what we actually want.

https://www.amazon.com/Snow-Crash-Neal-Stephenson/dp/1491515058

p. 116 back in the day, trolling just trim forward to pursuing a provocative argument for kicks. Today, the word used to describe the actions of anonymous mobs like the one that, for instance, Rolf actor Leslie Jones off Twitter with an onslaught of racist and sexist abuse. Harassment has become one of the defining characteristics of the Internet is for use it today. But with the emergernce of VR, our social networks have become, quite literally, embodied.

p. 116 https://medium.com/athena-talks/my-first-virtual-reality-sexual-assault-2330410b62ee 

p. 142 increasing memory function by moving from being a voyeur to physically participating in the virtual activity. embodied presence – bringing not just your head into your hands, but your body into VR-strengthens memories in the number of ways.

p. 143 at the beginning of 2017, Facebook fit published some of its. New Ron’s in internal research about the potential of social VR. Neurons INc. The agency measured eye movements, Brain activity, and pools of volunteers who were watching streaming video on smart phones and ultimately discovered that buffering and lag were significantly more stressful than waiting can line it a store, and even slightly more stressful than watching a horror movie.

p. 145 after the VR experience, more than 80% of introverts — is identified by a short survey participants took before hand-wanted to become friends with the person they had chatted with, as opposed to less than 60% of extroverts

p. 149 Rec Room Confidential: the anatomy in evolution of VR friendships

p. 165 reach out and touch someone; haptics, tactile presence and making VR physical.

https://www.digicert.com/ 

VOID: Vision of Infinite Dimensions p. 167

p. 169 the 4-D-effects: steam, cool air, moisture,

p. 170 Copresence

About

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shanyang_Zhao

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2532682_Toward_A_Taxonomy_of_Copresence

https://astro.temple.edu/~bzhao001/Taxonomy_Copresence.pdf

p. 171 Zhao laid out two different criteria. The first was whether or not to people are actually in the same place-basically, are they or their stand-ins physically close enough to be able to communicate without any other tools? To people, she wrote, can either have “physical proximity” or “electronic proximity” the latter being some sort of networked connection. The second criterion was whether each person is corporeally there; in other words, is it their actual flesh-and-blood body? The second condition can have three outcomes: both people can be there corporeally; neither can be there corporeally , instead using some sort of stand in like an avatar or a robot; or just one of them can be there corporeally, with the other using case stent in

“virtual copresence” is when a flesh and blood person interacts physically with a representative of a human; if that sounds confusing, 80 good example is using an ATM call mom where are the ATM is a stent in for a bank teller

p. 172 “hypervirtual copresence,” which involves nonhuman devices that are interacting in the same physical space in a humanlike fashion. social VR does not quite fit into any of this category. Zhao refers to this sort of hybrid as a “synthetic environment” and claims that it is a combination of corporeal https://www.waze.com/telecopresence (like Skyping) and virtual telecopresence(like Waze directions )

p. 172 haptic tactics for tactile aptness

Of the five human senses,  a VR headset ca currently stimulates only to: vision and hearing. That leaves treat others-and while smell and taste me come some day.
P. 174; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley Brave New World. tactile “feelies”

p. 175 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Michael_Noll, 1971

p. 177 https://www.pcmag.com/review/349966/oculus-touch

p. 178 haptic feedback accessories, gloves. full body suites, p. 179 ultrasonics, low-frequency sound waves.

p. 186 the dating game: how touch changes intimacy.

p. 187 MIT Presence https://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/pres

p. 186-190 questionnaire for the VRrelax project

p. 195 XXX-chnage program: turning porn back into people

p. 221 where we are going, we don’t need headsets. lets get speculative

p. 225 Magic Leap. p. 227 Magic Leap calls its technology “mixed reality,” claiming that the three dimensional virtual objects it brings into your world are far more advanced than the flat, static overlays of augmented reality. In reality, there is no longer any distinction between the two; in fact, the air are by now so many terms being accused in various ways by various companies that it’s probably worth a quick clarification.

definitions

Virtual reality: the illusion of an all-enveloping artificial world, created by wearing an opaque display in front of your eyes.

augmented reality: Bringing artificial objects into the real world-these can be as simple as a ” heads-up display,” like a speedometer project it onto your car’s windshield, or as complex as seen to be virtual creature woke across your real world leaving room, casting a realistic shadow on the floor

mixed reality: generally speaking, this is synonymous with AR, or eight at least with the part of AR that brings virtual objects into the real world. However, some people prefer “mixed” because they think “augmented” implies that reality isn’t enough.

extended or synthetic reality (XR or SR): all of the above! this are bought catch old terms that encompass the full spectrum of virtual elements individual settings.

p. 228 https://avegant.com/.

Edward Tang:

p. 231 in ten years, we won’t even have smartphone anymore.

p. 229 Eve VR is these come blink toddler, though, AR/MR is a third-trimester fetus: eat may be fully formed book eat is not quite ready to be out in the world yet. The headsets or large, the equipment is far more expensive than VR Anthony in many cases we don’t even know what a consumer product looks like.

p. 235 when 2020 is hindsight: what life in 2028 might actually look like.

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Belamire, J. (2016, October 20). My First Virtual Reality Groping. Athena Talks. https://medium.com/athena-talks/my-first-virtual-reality-sexual-assault-2330410b62ee

Online course, storytelling, data

Online Course | A Thousand Words and a Picture: Storytelling with Data

https://events.educause.edu/courses/2019/a-thousand-words-and-a-picture-storytelling-with-data

Part 1: March 13, 2019 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Part 2: March 20, 2019 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Part 3: March 27, 2019 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET

Overview

A picture is worth a thousand words, but developing a data picture worth a thousand words involves careful thought and planning. IT leaders are often in need of sharing their story and vision for the future with campus partners and campus leadership. Delivering this message in a compelling way takes a significant amount of thought and planning. This session will take participants through the process of constructing their story, how to (and how not to) incorporate data and anecdotes effectively, how to design clear data visualizations, and how to present their story with confidence.

Learning Objectives

During this course, participants will:

  • Develop a story that elicits a specific outcome
  • Identify and effectively use data elements to support a compelling story
  • Learn how to tell your story in a clear and effective way

NOTE: Participants will be asked to complete assignments in between the course segments that support the learning objectives stated below and will receive feedback and constructive critique from course facilitators on how to improve and shape their work.

Facilitator

Leah LangLeah Lang, Director of Analytics Services, EDUCAUSE

Leah Lang leads EDUCAUSE Analytics Services, a suite of data services, products, and tools that can be used to inform decision-making about IT in higher education. The foundational service in this suite is the EDUCAUSE Core Data Services (CDS), higher education’s comprehensive IT benchmarking data service.

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more Educause webinars in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=educause+webinar

Selecting Tech Solutions for Your Classroom

Selecting the Right Tech Solutions for Your Classroom

https://www.iste.org/learn/iste-u/technology-selection

Course Description:

Integrating technology into your teaching practice can be intimidating. Where do you start? What tools do you choose? What are the questions you need to ask?

In Selecting the Right Tech Solutions for Your Classroom, you’ll get the guidance you need to thrive with edtech, whether you’re just dipping your toe in or rethinking a districtwide approach. Throughout the course, you’ll engage in online content, develop materials specific to your context and receive feedback from experts. The course culminates with a capstone project that can be used to communicate with stakeholders about your selected technology, your rationale for choosing it and how you’ll implement it.

This is a 15-hour, instructor-led course.

Winter session: February 5 – March 29, 2019

Complexity A Leader’s Framework

Complexity: A Leader’s Framework for Understanding and Managing Change in Higher Education

George Siemens, Shane Dawson and Kristen Eshleman
Monday, October 29, 2018

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/10/complexity-a-leaders-framework-for-understanding-and-managing-change-in-higher-education

The relationships between jobs, locality, families, housing, work and government policy, tax processes, crime, psychology, environment, access to education, and urban planning interact and converge in what is known as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS).

definition: Complexity can be understood as a theory of change and adaptation that details how change occurs within systems as well as the principles and mindsets needed to flourish in turbulent environments

he complexification of higher education is an intentional goal of engaging with complexity rather than attempting to reduce it to its constituent parts. Effective vision generation, planning, and goal achievement in the modern uncertain economic-social-technical environment benefits from embracing complexity and the utilization of strategies and actions that reflect a CAS.

ive principles of complexity science are of particular relevance to the higher education system. These attributes—networks, emergence, self-organization and social coordination, feedback sensitivity, and agility—are sufficient to provide higher education leaders with an entry into complexity science as a means of observing, understanding, and interacting with change.

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more on leadership in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=ed+leadership

LinkedIn and Snapchat stories

LinkedIn launches its own Snapchat Stories. Here’s why it shouldn’t have

No app is safe from the Stories plague

 LinkedIn confirms to TechCrunch that it plans to build Stories for more sets of users, but first it’s launching “Student Voices” just for university students in the U.S. The feature appears atop the LinkedIn home screen and lets students post short videos to their Campus Playlist.

My note: Since 2012, I unsuccessfully tried to convince two library directors to approve similar video “channel” on the SCSU library web page with students’ testimonies and ability for students to comment / provide feedback regarding the issues raised in the videos. Can you guess the outcome of such proposal?
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/11/03/video-skills-digital-literacy/

A LinkedIn spokesperson tells us the motive behind the feature is to get students sharing their academic experiences like internships, career fairs and class projects that they’d want to show off to recruiters as part of their personal brand.

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more on LinkedIn in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=linkedin

hi ed leader team

5 SECRETS TO DEVELOPING A HIGH-PERFORMING TEAM IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Patrick Sanaghan & Jillian Lohndorf

https://www.academia.edu/8335887/Ways_to_Improve_Teams_in_Higher_Education

6 POTENTIALLY DESTRUCTIVE MYTHS
#1: THE MYTH ABOUT TALENT
A variety of skills, experiences,and perspectives are necessary,along with high levels of trust, open communication, emotional support, and mutual accountability—all of which arevery hard to establish and maintain. One differentiator of an exceptional team is a high level of curiosity where questions(not hidden criticisms) are prized.

#2: THE MYTH ABOUT FOCUS

stellar teams allocate their time in an unexpected way. They spend two-thirds of their time on thetask at hand (gettin’ ‘er done) and a full one-third on the “process” or relational aspect of the team’s functioning

#3: THE MYTH ABOUT CONFLICT

Exceptional teams see conflict as a resource, not something to be avoided.

Leaders need both the skill and the courage to deal with conflict on their team, as well as the understanding that everyone on the team needs to be involved in its resolution. 

#4: THE MYTH ABOUT OPENNESS

  • the “ seduction of the leader ” syndrome frequently seen in higher education.  Due to the “collegial” and polite nature of most campuses, people simply don’t feel comfortable providing honest feedback,especially if it is negative or critical. 
  • Many people are reluctant to be honest, because it might hurt someone’s feelings. 
  • People don’t want to “lose their seat at the table” and fear that they risk doing so if they are truly honest.
  • People realize that the leader really isn’t open to honest feedback, even as the leader professes to want it

#5: THE MYTH ABOUT SAMENESS

One of the pervasive team dynamics that every team leader needs to be aware of is
“comfortable cloning.”
 This happens when we select people to be on our teams who have similar backgrounds to ours.

#6: THE MYTH ABOUT MOTIVATIONAL METAPHORS

One of the best ways to build a realteam is to have each team membershare their own metaphor for how theywould like the team to operate.

5 STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING A STELLAR TEAM

1. Make your team a learning team, by creating an internal article or book club.

2. Define the rules for decision making.

3. Create working agreements or“ground rules” for the functioning and support of the team.

4. Establish a mechanism for regular, anonymous evaluation of team meetings.

5. Conduct a leadership “audit.”

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more on leadership in higher ed in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=ed+leader

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