Searching for "interactivity"

interactivity for the library

In 2015, former library dean purchased two large touch-screen monitors (I believe paid $3000 each). Shortly before that, I had offered to the campus fitting applications for touch screens (being that large screens or mobiles):

Both applications fit perfect the idea of interactivity in teaching (and learning) – https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=interactivity

With the large touch screens, I proposed to have one of the large screens, positioned outside in the Miller Center lobby and used as a dummy terminal (50” + screens run around $700) to mount educational material (e.g. Guenter Grass’s celebration of his work: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/04/15/gunter-grass-1927-2015/ ) and have students explore by actively engaging, rather than just passively absorbing information. The bus-awaiting students are excellent potential users and they visibly are NOT engaged by by the currently broadcasted information on these screens, but can be potentially engaged if such information is restructured in interactive content.

The initial library administration approval was stalled by a concern with students “opening porno sites” while the library is closed which, indeed, would have been a problem.

My 2015 inquiry with the IT technicians about freezing a browser and a specific tab, which could prevent such issues, but it did not go far (pls see solution below). Failing to secure relatively frigid environment on the touch screen, the project was quietly left to rot.

I am renewing my proposal to consider the rather expensive touch screen monitors, which have been not utilized to their potential, and test my idea to engage students in a meaningful knowledge-building by using these applications to either create content or engage with content created by others.

Further, I am proposing that I investigate with campus faculty the possibility to bring the endeavor a step further by having a regularly-meeting group to develop engaging content using these and similar apps; for their own classes or any other [campus-related] activities. The incentive can be some reward, after users and creators “vote” the best (semester? Academic year?) project. The less conspicuous benefit will be the exposure of faculty to modern technology; some of the faculty are still abiding by lecturing style, other faculty, who seek interactivity are engulfed in the “smart board” fiction. Engaging the faculty in the touch screen creation of teaching materials will allow them to expand the practice to their and their students’ mobile devices. The benefit for the library will be the “hub” of activities, where faculty can learn from each other experience[s] in the library, rather than in their own departments/school only. The reward will be an incentive from the upper administration (document to attach in PDR?). I will need both your involvement/support. Tom Hergert by helping me rally faculty interest and the administrators incentivizing faculty to participate in the initial project, until it gains momentum and recognition.

In the same fashion, as part of the aforementioned group or separate, I would like to host a regularly-meeting group of students, who besides play and entertainment, aim the same process of creating interactive learning materials for their classes/projects. Same “best voted” process by peers. My preferable reward: upper administration is leaving recommendation in the students’ Linkedin account for future employers. I will need both your involvement/support. The student union can be decisive in bringing students to this endeavor.  Both of you have more cloud with the student union then only a regular faculty such as me.

In regard to the security (porn alert, see above) I have the agreement of Dr. Tirthankar Ghos with the IS Department. Dr. Ghosh will be most pleased to announce as a class project the provision of a secure environment for the touch screen monitor to be left after the group meetings for “use” by students in the library. Dr. Ghosh is, however, concerned/uncertain with the level of cooperation from IT, considering that for his students to enable such environment, they have to have the “right” access; namely behind firewalls, administrative privileges etc. Each of you will definitely be more persuasive with Phil Thorson convincing him in the merit of having IS student work with SCSU IT technician, since it is a win-win situation: the IT technician does not have to “waste time” (as in 2015) and resolve an issue and the IS student will be having a project-based, real-life learning experience by enabling the project under the supervision of the IT technician. Besides: a. student-centered, project-based learning; b. IT technician time saved, we also aim c. no silos / collaborative SCSU working environment, as promised by the reorganization process.

Gamification to Teach Information Literacy Skills

Laubersheimer, J., Ryan, D., & Champaign, J. (2016). InfoSkills2Go: Using Badges and Gamification to Teach Information Literacy Skills and Concepts to College-Bound High School Students. Journal of Library Administration, 56(8), 924.

https://www.academia.edu/21782837/InfoSkills2Go_Using_Badges_and_Gamification_to_Teach_Information_Literacy_Skills_and_Concepts_to_College_Bound_High_School_Students?email_work_card=title

From online trivia and virtual board games to complex first-person perspective video games and in-person scavenger hunts, libraries are creating games for a variety of purposes, including orientations and instruction (Broussard,2012; Mallon, 2013; Smith & Baker, 2011).

Although the line between gaming and gamification can be blurry, most scholars recognize differences. Games are interactive, involvechallenge, risk, and reward, and have rules and a goal (Pivec, Dziabenko, &Schinnerl, 2003; Becker, 2013). Gamification, on the other hand, utilizes spe-cific gaming elements, often interactivity and rewards, to make an ordinary task more engaging (Prince, 2013). The gamification layer is not the focus of an endeavor, but rather can add enjoyment and a sense of competition toa task. 

Battista (2014) argues that well-executed badges could represent an authentic assessment tool, because they often require the student to tangibly demonstrate a skill, competency, or learning outcome.

Use of the badges helped the team organize the Web site and provided a hierarchy to follow once the steps for earning each badge were created.Each badge consists of three to six tasks. A task can be a tutorial, a video, a game, or a short reading assignment on a given topic. An assessment is given for each task

The fourth and final platform the group considered was BadgeOS fromLearningTimes. BadgeOS requires a WordPress installation BadgeOS was designed to work with Credly (https://credly.com/) and Mozilla Open Badges (http://openbadges.org/) as standard features. 
LearnDash was the most useful plugin for the project beyond BadgeOS. Available for a reasonable fee, LearnDash adds tools and features that give WordPress the ability to be used as a complete learning management system(LMS). 
Available for free under the GNU Public License, BuddyPress(https://buddypress.org/) is another plugin that was capable of integrating with BadgeOS as an extension. The advantage of BuddyPress for the project group was the addition of social media components and functionality to the project Web site.
Go-daddy.com offered comprehensive technical support, easy application instal-lation, and competitively priced hosting packages. A 3-year hosting agree-ment was purchased that included domain registration, unlimited storageand unlimited bandwidth.

compare to

practical application of D2L Brightspace badges for a chemistry course at SCSU
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/11/06/mastery-of-library-instruction-badge/

Library Instruction Chem 151

IM 690 VR and AR lab part 2

IM 690 Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. short link: http://bit.ly/IM690lab

IM 690 lab plan for March 3, MC 205:  Oculus Go and Quest

Readings:

  1. TAM:Technology Acceptances Model
    Read Venkatesh, and Davis and sum up the importance of their model for instructional designers working with VR technologies and creating materials for users of VR technologies.
  2. UTAUT: using the theory to learn well with VR and to design good acceptance model for endusers: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2020/02/20/utaut/
    Watch both parts of Victoria Bolotina presentation at the Global VR conference. How is she applying UTAUT for her research?
    Read Bracq et al (2019); how do they apply UTAUT for their VR nursing training?

Lab work (continue):

revision from last week:
How to shoot and edit 360 videos: Ben Claremont
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAjSHLRJcDfhDSu7WRpOu-w
and
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUFJyy31hGam1uPZMqcjL_A

  1. Oculus Quest as VR advanced level
    1. Using the controllers
    2. Confirm Guardian
    3. Using the menu

Oculus Quest main

    1. Watching 360 video in YouTube
      1. Switch between 2D and 360 VR
        1. Play a game

Climbing


Racketball

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Beat Saber (@beatsaber)

Practice interactivity (space station)

    1. Broadcast your experience (Facebook Live)
  1. Additional (advanced) features of Oculus Quest
    1. https://engagevr.io/
    2. https://sidequestvr.com/#/setup-howto

Interactivity: communication and working collaboratively with Altspace VR

https://account.altvr.com/

setting up your avatar

joining a space and collaborating and communicating with other users

  1. Assignment: Group work
    1. Find one F2F and one online peer to form a group.
      Based on the questions/directions before you started watching the videos:
      – Does this particular technology fit in the instructional design (ID) frames and theories covered
      – how does this particular technology fit in the instructional design (ID) frames and theories covered so far?
      – what models and ideas from the videos you will see seem possible to be replicated by you?
      exchange thoughts with your peers and make a plan to create similar educational product
    2. Post your writing in the following D2L Discussions thread
  2. Augmented Reality with Hololens Watch videos at computer station)
    1. Start and turn off; go through menu

      https://youtu.be/VX3O650comM
    2. Learn gestures, voice commands,
  1. Augmented Reality with Merge Cube
    1. 3D apps and software packages and their compatibility with AR
  2. Augmented Reality with telephone
  3. Samsung Gear 360 video camera
    1. If all other goggles and devices are busy, please feel welcome to use the camera to practice and/or work toward your final project
    2. CIM card and data transfer – does your phone have a CIM card compatible with the camera?
    3. Upload 360 images and videos on your YouTube and FB accounts
  4. Issues with XR
    1. Ethics
      1. empathy
        Peter Rubin “Future Presence”
        https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/03/25/peter-rubin-future-presence/

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Enhance your XR instructional Design with other tools: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2020/02/07/crs-loop/

https://aframe.io/

https://framevr.io/

https://learn.framevr.io/ (free learning of frame)

https://hubs.mozilla.com/#/

https://sketchfab.com/ WebxR technology

https://mixedreality.mozilla.org/hello-webxr/

https://studio.gometa.io/landing

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Plamen Miltenoff, Ph.D., MLIS
Professor
320-308-3072
pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu
http://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/faculty/
schedule a meeting: https://doodle.com/digitalliteracy
find my office: https://youtu.be/QAng6b_FJqs

GBL XR DS for IM 554

Course title: IM 554 Developing Skills for Online Teaching and Learning

Topic for this week: Game-based learning, Virtual Reliability, and Augmented Reality
Audience: IM Graduate students working for K12 schools or in business

March 28, Adobe Connect. http://scsuconnect.stcloudstate.edu/im554_park/

Events worth mentioning (pls share if you would like to discuss details):

1. Where are we now compared to:

2018: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/03/27/im-554-discussion-on-gbl-2018/

2017: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2017/02/22/im554-discussion-gbl/

2. How did GBL change in the past year? Who is the leader in this research (country)? Is K12 the “playground” for GBL and DGBL?

China: Liao, C., Chen, C., & Shih, S. (2019). The interactivity of video and collaboration for learning achievement, intrinsic motivation, cognitive load, and behavior patterns in a digital game-based learning environment. Computers & Education133, 43–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.01.013

Finalnd: Brezovszky, B., Mcmullen, J., Veermans, K., Hannula-Sormunen, M., Rodríguez-Aflecht, G., Pongsakdi, N., … Lehtinen, E. (2019). Effects of a mathematics game-based learning environment on primary school students’ adaptive number knowledge. Computers & Education128, 63–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.09.011

Tunesia: Denden, M., Tlili, A., Essalmi, F., & Jemni, M. (2018). Implicit modeling of learners’ personalities in a game-based learning environment using their gaming behaviors. Smart Learning Environments5(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-018-0078-6

Pitarch, R. (2018). An Approach to Digital Game-based Learning: Video-games Principles and Applications in Foreign Language Learning. Journal of Language Teaching and Research9(6), 1147–1159. https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0906.04

3. DGBL vs Serous Games vs Gamification

4. BYOx. Still timely?

5. XR and its relation to ID (instructional design) and the gamification of education:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/10/16/eli-2018-key-issues-teaching-learning/

#7 is ID, #13 is emerging technologies.

What is VR, AR, MR. Immersive learning?
examples from SCSU:
https://web.stcloudstate.edu/pmiltenoff/bi/

Examples from other universities as presented at Nercomp 2019 workshop:

https://zoom.us/recording/share/YtDl7AA3Te_whtCnZZdv93EiNZbljU7yyzl7ibOEam-wIumekTziMw?startTime=1552927676000

min 29 from start: University of Connecticut (chapter 1)
min 58 from start: Dan Getz with Penn State (chapter 2)
hour 27 min from start: Randy Rode, Yale (chapter 3)

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last year plan for IM 554 https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/03/27/im-554-discussion-on-gbl-2018/

Mapping 1968

Mapping 1968, Conflict and Change

An Opportunity for Interdisciplinary Research 

When:  Friday, September 28, 8:30am-3:00pm
Where: Wilson Research Collaboration Studio, Wilson Library
Cost: Free; advanced registration is required

1968 was one of the most turbulent years of the 20th century.  2018 marks the 50th anniversary of that year’s landmark political, social and cultural events–events that continue to influence our world today.

Focusing on the importance of this 50 year anniversary we are calling out to all faculty, staff, students, and community partners to participate the workshop ‘Mapping 1968, Conflict and Change’. This all-day event is designed to bring people together into working groups based on common themes.  Bring your talent and curiosity to apply an interdisciplinary approach to further explore the spatial context of these historic and/or current events. Learn new skills on mapping techniques that can be applied to any time in history. To compliment the expertise that you bring to the workshop, working groups will also have the support of library, mapping, and data science experts to help gather, create, and organize the spatial components of a given topic.

To learn more and to register for the workshop, go here

Workshop sponsors: Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS), U-Spatial, Liberal Arts Technologies & Innovation Services (LATIS), Digital Arts, Science & Humanities (DASH), and UMN Libraries.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5114403-early-thematic-mapping-in-the-history-of-cartography – symbolization methods, cartographers and statisticians.

Kevin Ehrman-Solberg ehrma046@umn.edu PPT on Mapping Prejudice. https://www.mappingprejudice.org/

Henneping County scanned the deeds, OCR, Python script to search. Data in an open source. covenant data. Local historian found microfishes, the language from the initial data. e.g. eugenics flavor: arian, truncate.

covenance: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/convenance

Dan Milz. Public Affairs. geo-referencing, teaching a class environmental planning, spatial analysis, dmilz@umn.edu @dcmlz

Chris ancient historian. The Tale of Mediterranean, City: Mapping the history of Premodern Carthage and Tunis.
College of Liberal Arts

from archives to special resources. archaeological data into GIS layers. ESRI https://www.esri.com/en-us/home how interactive is ESRI.

mapping for 6 months. finding the maps in the archeological and history reports was time consuming. once that data was sorted out, exciting.

Kate Carlson, U-Spatial Story Maps, An Intro

patters, we wouldn’t see if we did not bring it up spatially. interactivity and data visualization, digital humanities

making an argument, asking questions, crowdsourcing, archival and resources accessibility, civitates orbis terrarum http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/mapmakers/braun_hogenberg.html

storymaps.arcgis.com/en/gallery https://storymaps.arcgis.com/en/gallery/#s=0  cloud-based mapping software. ArcGIS Online. organizational account for the U, 600 users. over 700 storymaps creates within the U, some of them are not active, share all kind of data: archive data on spreadsheet, but also a whole set of data within the software; so add the data or use the ArcGIS data and use templates. web maps into the storymap app, Living Atlas: curated set of data: hunderd sets of data, from sat images, to different contents. 846 layers of data, imagery, besides org account, one can create maps within the free account with limited access. data browser to use my own data – Data Enrichment to characterized my data. census data from 2018 and before,
make plan, create a storyboard, writing for the web, short and precise (not as writing for a journal), cartographic style, copyright, citing the materials, choosing the right map scale for each page. online learning materials, some only thru org account ESRI academy has course catalogue. Mapping 101, Dekstop GIS 101, Collector 101, Imagery 101, SQL 101, Story Maps 101,

Awards for UMN undergrad and grad students, $1000

history, anthropology, political science,

Melinda, Kernik, Spatial Data Curator kerni016@umn.edu Jenny McBurney jmcburney@umn.edu

z.umn.edu/1968resources https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QpdYKA1Rgzd_Nsd4Rr8ed1cJDAX1zeG7J3exRO6BHV0/edit#slide=id.g436145dc5b_0_23

data2.nhgis.org/main

University Digital COnservancy

civil rights information from the U (migrants blog)

DASH Digital Arts, Sciences and Humanities. text mining data visualization,

data repository for the U (DRUM)

DASH director, https://dash.umn.edu/. Ben Wiggins 

Jennifer Gunn
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The “Mapping 1968, Conflict and Change” planning committee is very pleased with the amount of interest and the wonderful attendance at Friday’s gathering. Thank you for attending and actively participating in this interdisciplinary workshop!
To re-cap and learn more on your thoughts and expectations of the workshop we would be grateful if you can take a few moments to complete the workshop evaluation.   Please complete the evaluation even if you were unable to attend last Friday, there are questions regarding continued communication and the possibility for future events of this kind.
 
Below is a list of presented workshop resources:
Best Regards-
Kate

U-Spatial | Spatial Technology Consultant
Research Computing, Office of the Vice President for Research
University of Minnesota
Office Address
Blegen Hall 420
Mailing Address
Geography
Room 414 SocSci
7163A

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

data storytelling

3 Reasons Why Data Storytelling Will Be A Top Marketing Trend of 2018

https://martechseries.com/mts-insights/guest-authors/3-reasons-data-storytelling-will-top-marketing-trend-2018/
A study that looked at reader engagement across articles that contained charts and infographics vs. articles that were text-only found that those with graphical storytelling, or what I like to call data storytelling, had up to 34 percent more comments and shares and a 300 percent improvement on the depth of scroll down the page.
Using storytelling techniques to present data not only makes it more visually appealing but also enables easy spotting of key trends, seamless results-tracking, and quick goal-monitoring.

Here are things that can help you build a bridge from your current methods to effective data storytelling–

  • Choose a topic by identifying your target audience, the goal of your visual, what you would like to achieve.
  • Organize your data by thinking about what you want to convey and then get rid of anything that doesn’t help you tell that story.
  • Spend time making your visualization look sharp by keeping it simple, using color and interactivity.

A few bonus tips to make your data visualizations really pop–

  • Don’t use more than two graphs at a time so as not to confuse participants.
  • Stick with one color per graph; making things multicolored will cause data to look jumbled.
  • Give context to your concept. Introduce your idea slowly and tell the story of what you want your data to reveal instead of assuming everyone in the room is on the same page.
  • Try using interactive data storytelling techniques to support your data.
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more on digital storytelling in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=digital+storytelling

social media elearning

Mnkandla, Ernest, and Ansie Minnaar. 2017. “The Use of Social Media in E-Learning: A Metasynthesis.” The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 18 (5). http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3014.
This research represents a conceptual framework designed to explain the adoption of social media into e-learning by using online collaborative learning (OCL) in higher education. Social media in e-learning signals the end of distance education in higher education.
The proposed framework could be useful to instructional designers and academics who are interested in using modern learning theories and want to adopt social media in e-learning in higher education as a deep learning strategy.
The major paradigms underlying the theoretical frameworks that were investigated were included in social learning theory, social interactivity theory, constructionism and social constructivism, and online collaborative learning theory (Harasim, 2012). Collaboration and social constructivism were the main theoretical frameworks guiding the use of social media in e-learning in higher education that point towards a more integrative (collaborative) and co-constructivism peer supportive approach to learning in the digital age.
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more on social media in IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media+education

Large-scale visualization

The future of collaboration: Large-scale visualization

 http://usblogs.pwc.com/emerging-technology/the-future-of-collaboration-large-scale-visualization/

More data doesn’t automatically lead to better decisions. A shortage of skilled data scientists has hindered progress towards translation of information into actionable business insights. In addition, traditionally dense spreadsheets and linear slideshows are ineffective to present discoveries when dealing with Big Data’s dynamic nature. We need to evolve how we capture, analyze and communicate data.

Large-scale visualization platforms have several advantages over traditional presentation methods. They blur the line between the presenter and audience to increase the level of interactivity and collaboration. They also offer simultaneous views of both macro and micro perspectives, multi-user collaboration and real-time data interaction, and a limitless number of visualization possibilities – critical capabilities for rapidly understanding today’s large data sets.

Visualization walls enable presenters to target people’s preferred learning methods, thus creating a more effective communication tool. The human brain has an amazing ability to quickly glean insights from patterns – and great visualizations make for more efficient storytellers.

Grant: Visualizing Digital Scholarship in Libraries and Learning Spaces
Award amount: $40,000
Funder: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Lead institution: North Carolina State University Libraries
Due date: 13 August 2017
Notification date: 15 September 2017
Website: https://immersivescholar.org
Contact: immersivescholar@ncsu.edu

Project Description

NC State University, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, invites proposals from institutions interested in participating in a new project for Visualizing Digital Scholarship in Libraries and Learning Spaces. The grant aims to 1) build a community of practice of scholars and librarians who work in large-scale multimedia to help visually immersive scholarly work enter the research lifecycle; and 2) overcome technical and resource barriers that limit the number of scholars and libraries who may produce digital scholarship for visualization environments and the impact of generated knowledge. Libraries and museums have made significant strides in pioneering the use of large-scale visualization technologies for research and learning. However, the utilization, scale, and impact of visualization environments and the scholarship created within them have not reached their fullest potential. A logical next step in the provision of technology-rich, visual academic spaces is to develop best practices and collaborative frameworks that can benefit individual institutions by building economies of scale among collaborators.

The project contains four major elements:

  1. An initial meeting and priority setting workshop that brings together librarians, scholars, and technologists working in large-scale, library and museum-based visualization environments.
  2. Scholars-in-residence at NC State over a multi-year period who pursue open source creative projects, working in collaboration with our librarians and faculty, with the potential to address the articulated limitations.
  3. Funding for modest, competitive block grants to other institutions working on similar challenges for creating, disseminating, validating, and preserving digital scholarship created in and for large-scale visual environments.
  4. A culminating symposium that brings together representatives from the scholars-in-residence and block grant recipient institutions to share and assess results, organize ways of preserving and disseminating digital products produced, and build on the methods, templates, and tools developed for future projects.

Work Summary
This call solicits proposals for block grants from library or museum systems that have visualization installations. Block grant recipients can utilize funds for ideas ranging from creating open source scholarly content for visualization environments to developing tools and templates to enhance sharing of visualization work. An advisory panel will select four institutions to receive awards of up to $40,000. Block grant recipients will also participate in the initial priority setting workshop and the culminating symposium. Participating in a block grant proposal does not disqualify an individual from later applying for one of the grant-supported scholar-in-residence appointments.
Applicants will provide a statement of work that describes the contributions that their organization will make toward the goals of the grant. Applicants will also provide a budget and budget justification.
Activities that can be funded through block grants include, but are not limited to:

  • Commissioning work by a visualization expert
  • Hosting a visiting scholar, artist, or technologist residency
  • Software development or adaptation
  • Development of templates and methodologies for sharing and scaling content utilizing open source software
  • Student or staff labor for content or software development or adaptation
  • Curricula and reusable learning objects for digital scholarship and visualization courses
  • Travel (if necessary) to the initial project meeting and culminating workshop
  • User research on universal design for visualization spaces

Funding for operational expenditures, such as equipment, is not allowed for any grant participant.

Application
Send an application to immersivescholar@ncsu.edu by the end of the day on 13 August 2017 that includes the following:

  • Statement of work (no more than 1000 words) of the project idea your organization plans to develop, its relationship to the overall goals of the grant, and the challenges to be addressed.
  • List the names and contact information for each of the participants in the funded project, including a brief description of their current role, background, expertise, interests, and what they can contribute.
  • Project timeline.
  • Budget table with projected expenditures.
  • Budget narrative detailing the proposed expenditures

Selection and Notification Process
An advisory panel made up of scholars, librarians, and technologists with experience and expertise in large-scale visualization and/or visual scholarship will review and rank proposals. The project leaders are especially keen to receive proposals that develop best practices and collaborative frameworks that can benefit individual institutions by building a community of practice and economies of scale among collaborators.

Awardees will be selected based on:

  • the ability of their proposal to successfully address one or both of the identified problems;
  • the creativity of the proposed activities;
  • relevant demonstrated experience partnering with scholars or students on visualization projects;
  • whether the proposal is extensible;
  • feasibility of the work within the proposed time-frame and budget;
  • whether the project work improves or expands access to large-scale visual environments for users; and
  • the participant’s ability to expand content development and sharing among the network of institutions with large-scale visual environments.

Awardees will be required to send a representative to an initial meeting of the project cohort in Fall 2017.

Awardees will be notified by 15 September 2017.

If you have any questions, please contact immersivescholar@ncsu.edu.

–Mike Nutt Director of Visualization Services Digital Library Initiatives, NCSU Libraries
919.513.0651 http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/do/visualization

 

VR trends

6 VR Trends to Watch in Education

By Sri Ravipati  05/16/17

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/05/16/6-vr-trends-to-watch-in-education.aspx

VR devices are expected to increase 85 percent by 2020, with gaming and educational applications driving most of that growth.

Maya Georgieva, an ed tech strategist, author and speaker with more than 15 years of experience in higher education and global education. Georgieva is co-founder of Digital Bodies, a consulting group that provides news and analysis of VR, AR and wearables in education

Emory Craig,  currently the director of e-learning at the College of New Rochelle,

six areas with promising developments for educators.

1) More Affordable Headsets

the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, which I really like, you’re talking close to $2,000 per setup. the 2017 SXSWedu conference,

Microsoft has been collaborating with its partners, such as HP, Acer, Dell and Lenovo, to develop VR headsets that will work with lower-end desktops. Later this year, the companies will debut headsets for $299, “which is much more affordable compared to HoloLens

many Kickstarter crowdfunding efforts are bound to make high-end headsets more accessible for teaching.

the NOLO project. The NOLO system is meant for mobile VR headsets and gives users that “6 degrees of freedom” (or 6 DoF) motion tracking that is currently only found in high-end headsets.

2) Hand Controllers That Will Bring Increased Interactivity

Google Daydream  Samsung has also implemented its own hand controller for Gear VR

Microsoft  new motion controllers at Microsoft Build

zSpace, with their stylus and AR glasses, continue to develop their immersive applications

3) Easy-to-Use Content Creation Platforms

Game engines like Unity and Unreal are often a starting point for creating simulations.

Labster, which creates virtual chemistry labs — will become important in specialized subjects

ThingLink, for example, recently introduced a school-specific editor for creating 360-degree and VR content. Lifeliqe, Aurasma and Adobe are also working on more interactive tools.

5) 360-Degree Cameras

6) Social VR Spaces

AltspaceVR h uses avatars and supports multiplayer sessions that allow for socialization and user interaction.

Facebook has been continuing to develop its own VR platform, Facebook Spaces, which is in beta and will be out later this year. LectureVR is a similar platform on the horizon.

 

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

students evals online learning

The Online Discussion group for Blended and Online Learning leads an interesting discussion on course evaluations; here are the highlights:

Perceptions-of-Online-Learning–Analysis-of-Online-Course-Evaluations-tbz6om

When we first started in 1999, we included ~10 questions in addition to our standard  questions that were different for online courses.  This information was particularly useful as we grew our online offerings (i.e. Would you take another online course.  93-5% answered yes consistently. How would you rate the level of interactivity between you and the instructor?  Between you and the other students?)  These were administered via SurveyMonkey because there were no online evaluation services back then.

Now we have a single evaluation that is administered to all students regardless of the delivery format (online, hybrid, blended, F2F or intensive)  The questions were designed to be relevant regardless of the delivery format.  All of these evaluations are administered online…which has its downsides (e.g. response rate is less especially compared to what was captured in F2F classes in the past.)   We continue to explore ways to increase the response rate.

Reta Chaffee Director of Educational Technology-Academic Affairs Granite State College 25  Hall Street Concord, NH 03301 (603) 513-1350

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On Behalf Of Krajewski, Scott
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2017 1:00 PM
To: BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [BLEND-ONLINE] Course Evaluations

Hi Hala, We have a standard online evaluation form for all courses.  We do add 3 questions to the sports courses but otherwise we’re 100% standardized.  We have a ton of info at

http://inside.augsburg.edu/ctl/resources/augsburg-resources-and-support/course-evaluations/

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You might find this study (or the related literature) helpful — http://patricklowenthal.com/publications/Student-Perceptions-of-Online-Learning–Analysis-of-Online-Course-Evaluations.pdf

Patrick Patrick R. Lowenthal | Associate Professor Educational Technology, Boise State  University   http://www.patricklowenthal.com

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On Behalf Of Rob Gibson
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2017 8:39 AM
To: BLEND-ONLINE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [BLEND-ONLINE] Course Evaluations

 

We use the IDEA evaluation framework combined with CampusLabs as the delivery engine.

  • IDEA is a well-established evaluation process dating back to the 1970s.
  • The CampusLabs delivery process (new as of about 2 years ago) provides students with a single URL to complete their evaluations – on-campus or on-line. Mobile friendly.
  • It uses the same base evaluation criteria across the university. (That’s how IDEA is able to substantiate reliability and validity.) IDEA is matched against a national database using a CIP code. Hence, faculty can gather comparative data of their course against other similar courses in the university, or at the national level.
  • While each department uses the same basic framework, there are modification that can be made. For example, custom questions can be added to the eval (these fall outside the scope of the comparative data) and the learning objectives can be modified by course, department, school, college. We have one School that has custom learning objectives for each course in their program. Objectives are set using a 3 point Likert scale.

Very easy to set up a survey administration. Data is retrievable within 48 hours after close.
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more on online learning in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=online+education

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