Notes on Penn State Learning Design Podcast #4: Throw out the LMS?

Posted on March 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

They title it “Baby and the Bathwater,” Jeff Swain and Brian Young.

baby-with-bathwater-mid-size

Full podcast available from ITunes :EdTech episode #4_ Baby & the bath water

These snippets of their conversation stuck out to me.

“If we implement it as we did in the past, if we support it as we did in the past, we will end up with what we had in the past.”  (Brian’s voice I think)

baby_in_bath_listening

The LMS’s of today pretty much all have the same functionality. In what way are they flawed? What is it about an LMS as a tool that still needs to change… is it

- the workflow required of an Instructor to accomplish a pedagogical goal?

- the fact that it’s a closed system which doesn’t allow for students to interact with other students studying the same same?

- flexibility to make some parts open and others closed to the students taking it that term (in that particular section, or all sections taught by same Instructor? Or all sections across several Instructors?)

They love blogs (sounds like for teaching, research, and reflection method).

How does an LMS related to the ground swell of Program Assessment? LMS repositories aren’t built for providing artifacts and data for assessing the program… But why not?

What about from the student point of view? Why don’t we map out their entire program so that over time they can see how each course supports the program’s goals, how far they’ve come? How far yet to go?

baby_bathtub

“100% of the issues with any of the LMSs are due to lack of planning on the Instructor’s part.” (around 26 minutes) – Brian Young

babies_water 4

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Posted in Academic IT, Course Management, Faculty Resourcing, Teaching and Learning

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No Wonder Video is Not For the Faint of Heart!

Posted on March 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

(…Or maybe just not for users who are PC-based, as I’m sure some of my readers would point out to me).

This story starts out with an online course I’m taking in Advanced Technologies for Distance Education (this course description page is due for revision so it may not be up when you click on it). My assignment this week was to explore video for teaching – read about it, find some I like and why, and make some. As someone firmly planted in-between supporting the backend of an LMS and supporting the faculty who use it, this is excellent professional development for me and a good assignment.

I also happen to be an assistant coach for a First Lego League Robotics team (which is an excellent program supporting STEM curriculum in the middle schools, despite the fact that it’s also fun). So I decided to kill two birds with one stone by doing a promo video for this season’s team as my video project for class.

So, again I deviated a little bit from the requirements of the assignment, but I did so to make the assignment work for my real life.

First, I used devices I currently own (and I’m the only one in America without a dedicated camcorder).

  1. PC running Windows 7
  2. HTC Evo (8+ megapixels and HD  resolution, 1280×720 pixels.

Secondly, I chose a project I needed to do anyway, and that was a video interview with a 5th grader. The phone camcorder was appealing to me in this setting for another reason as well- I figured all kids these days would have had a mobile phone pointed at them and had their picture taken; my interviewee would thus be just as comfortable with it as Mom or Dad pointing their phone at them and saying “Wow, Honey, that’s Great!”

The recording session went well, took virtually no time at all for a nice piece of 1:30 second video. My subject even knew where to look! The hardest part was finding a background on the bright sunny day. Indoors and my subject had green hued skin, outdoors and she faded into the shadow… until I found the glass door. Excellent.

FLL_Robotics_Club_Endorsement_2011

Then began the process of setting up my computer to edit the film, add some intro music and a title. For our class we were to use Windows Movie Maker 2. But on that page you’ll see that users of Windows 7 are encouraged to click another link and download and install Windows LIVE Movie Maker instead. Since I use Windows Live Writer for blogging anyway, I figured this was a good thing…

Turns out Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 doesn’t like the mobile format, .3gpp . But even before that I had to wrestle my PC’s internal speakers to forget about the USB headset/mic I usually have plugged in. Live Movie Maker wanted to route sound through the headset’s MICROPHONE!

Then I realized I had codec problems when the intro music I appended played but the original audio didn’t. I do NOT know this stuff. I mean saying “codec problems” may sound techie and all that, but what I know about what a codec is and why we need them and how they are used is… well, here’s all I know:

A codec is a set of algorothms used by a computer program to translate one video or audio format to another so that the resultant file can be viewed, heard, edited and saved for use with some other program or device.

That’s it. That’s all I know. Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 and Windows Media Player 12 both were displaying my video but not playing the audio.

But because my operating system is Windows 7 and my Media Player 12 and Live Movie Maker 2011 were fresh downloads (untried really) , and they are both Microsoft, I made the assumption that if I fixed the problem in Media Player, they would share the codecs needed to make the translation from the mobile .3gpp to whatever they like.

Wrong.

In the process I discovered (after downloading and finding it didn’t work) that the Windows Media Player add-on called “Media Codec pack” has been superceded by the new Expression Encoder 4 , and that DID solve my problem of hearing .3gpp files – BUT ONLY while viewing them in Windows Media Player, NOT in using Live Movie Maker to edit the file. Oh, and Expression Encoder 4 has a prerequisite I also had to download, the newer Microsoft .NET framework 4.

So, where was I? Ah… the light was beginning to dawn. I needed to get a program expressly to convert the .3gpp mobile phone codec (format) to something else before Live Movie Maker 2011 could work with it at all.

This is when I turned to a freebie I had used several years ago on another PC, probably the last time I dabbled in video, which is distributed by DVDVideoSoft.

So now to the usefulness (or not) of video

That is the question, isn’t it? Is this stuff good? Is it needful? Does it aid memory? Stimulate learning? Engage folk? When to use it? I’ll hit these topics in my next posting.

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Posted in Academic IT, Teaching and Learning, Web/Tech

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I get by with a little help from my friends

Posted on March 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

 

I’ve now been in the learning management space for 12 years. I still love it. And I love that the professional networks I began back then, over time, and any number of conferences, become people I value as friends. I know which ones I can trust and which ones spout baloney after a couple of beers. Bob Boufford, I can trust. Couldn’t believe where he is today and how timely that is for some of my current questions about importing BbVista quizzes to Sakai!

BobBoufford_withRespondusNow (click on image)

Make new friends and keep the old, they say. My recent queries out to the universe through Twitter have emphasized just that. I met new friends from the University of Florida at Notre Dame’s Learning Technology Consortium confab and someone I’ve never met but whom I’m guessing is related to those folks, answered.

SakaiCAS_WebDAV_answer(click on image)

I asked whether anyone knew how to configure Sakai with CAS such that a desktop client like WebDAV could authenticate too. Old friends surprised me as well. Check out what THEY’RE doing:

KronerOnCAS_Blackboard(click on image)

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Posted in Academic IT, Course Management, Sakai, Web/Tech

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Emails to Faculty: Are they read?

Posted on March 18, 2011 | 2 Comments

Here’s an example of an email I sent last week:

From: Laura Gekeler
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 12:51 PM
To: ‘concourse@listserv.nd.edu’
Subject: Service maintenance on Concourse

Good Afternoon All,

I wouldn’t expect this information to be of great importance to many of you, nor to your students -given that it’s the Sunday before spring break, but it’s my duty to tell you. So I will. ;-)

This Sunday, March 13th, from 5am to 11am,  yours truly will be awake, alert and patching the Concourse application. Those of you wishing to rise early, forego family, spiritual or meditative activities, and login to Concourse will have to find other occupation as it will be unavailable during that time. Enjoy your Sunday morning and check back after 11am.

Take care and have a good spring break!

Laura

Many Instructors tell me they read my emails because they like my writing style or my sense of humor. After the email above I even got an invitation to face time at lunch with an Instructor. It was terrific. (And she bought!).

I know, I know, the opening sentence is counter-intuitive… the practice should NOT be to begin with an apology or disclaimer, and I don’t begin that way as a matter of course. (But it was the weekend before spring break – a great time to patch the application!).

How many emails does a college instructor get in a day? What is their relative importance?

We in central IT or Academic IT centers tend to think our emails are of maximum importance because faculty are using our services and we want them to know that we’re offering workshops, we have new online tutorials, there will be a service outage, a software defect has been identified for which we have a workaround (or we don’t have a workaround and want to say: “Don’t Press that button!”), ETC. In other words, reading our emails are supposed to reduce pain.

So what have we tried? (All things I agree we want to do)

  • Limiting distribution lists to those whom we can specifically identify as users of the service in question
  • Using fancy HTML to make our messages pretty
  • Keeping the messaging short and to the point, with a link to further information (the scheduled outage page, for instance)
  • Using descriptive subjects that notify those who may scan email without opening
  • Sending the email at the right time for faculty

What else could be done? Here are my suggestions…

  • See your readers face to face when writing
  • Be friendly (if you’re a service organization, you want everything you do and say to make yourselves approachable to your customers)
  • Use humor appropriately
  • Make it fun

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Posted in Academic IT, Support

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Thought Leadership on Academic Projects

Posted on March 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

IT projects for the Academy ARE different.

Here’s how:

  • “The Academy” is not a unified entity but contains constituent groups (Arts & Letters, Sciences, Engineering, Architecture, Business, Law, Libraries, Languages) which are more disparate than “The Administration” (HR, Finance, Admissions, Registrar, Controller’s Office, Facilities, Housing, Development).
  • The Academy aggregates around learning practices, which, when effective, require variation according to the needs of the student and the body of knowledge to be captured as one’s own.
  • The Administration aggregates around business practices, which, when effective, require similarity as governed by universal business practice.

Since the Academy aggregates around learning, and learning itself is an iterative activity, when the Academy sets out to collect project requirements it’s a given what they are attempting to do (the scope) will be iterative.

A centralized IT service provider will do well to design independent processes in support of the Academy and the Administration. At some level a centralized IT service provider may need specifically trained people who understand the nuances of these two major bodies of constituents in order to effectively provide the best services for both.

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Posted in Academic IT, Teaching and Learning, Web/Tech

Is it a project or a relationship or a language?

Posted on March 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

My ‘seat’ at the table of higher ed is smack dab in the middle of the IT service organization. We build stuff and keep the lights on, and oh, also support the Academy.

Every month we start new projects. Every month we end projects. Most of our thought is project-based. On the walls around here are posters of our most recent project process revision, representing how to do projects better than the way we did them before. Although it’s great to have more definition of what it takes to get a new project out the door, I don’t like the chart so much. There are 6 steps with the last one being “Operationalize” with the comment that this is supposed to mean “Thoughtful transition to support.” To understand the chart requires you to enter our world of IT.

Despite the location of my seat at the table, or maybe because of it, I am passionate about strengthening my relationship with faculty impacted by ever-transitioning technology. That’s why I’d like a project process encapsulated in my faculty colleagues’ language.

That’s because if I’m going to serve them better, I invite them to sit at the table with me to help me understand and prioritize their needs. And I don’t want to dictate who they have to become or what language they have to speak to sit here.

I want to understand from their point of view the  technologies they are required to use  (ie final grade submission, email, course instructor feedback, calendaring), as well as technologies we make available for them to choose to use- technologies which could make their teaching management easier (ie online gradebooks, online quiz question banks, online syllabus distribution, online office hours); technologies which, meshed with their teaching styles, could engage students in learning to a greater degree (ie discussion boards; RSS feeds; podcasts; polling software; classroom back channels) .

WARNING: THIS IS WHERE IT GETS STICKY.

To understand the Academy, which we know is not a unified entity, but which is made up of Engineering, Arts & Letters, Architecture, the Sciences, and others – all constantly transforming according to perceptions of strategic need, I do not need them to sit at my table.

I need to sit at each of their tables.

One of the outcomes of their talks about operational needs and strategic directions will be projects to build the tools that they want.

I will do the translation of their language into my language.

That’s a good first step. Now how do they get aggregated and prioritized by a single institutional service provider, assuming that what each of them decide is good for their College, school or department may not be good for the institution as a whole? If there were such a table where all of them could sit, listen to each other, and together prioritize their separate goals for the good of the institution, whose table would that be?

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Posted in Faculty Resourcing, Support, Web/Tech

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A Day in the Life …

Posted on February 17, 2011 | 2 Comments

As the LMS replacement project moves forward, I was asked to validate what the heck I do all day… Back in November when I calculated support activities weekly for our current LMS, I only accounted for half my time. What do I do the rest of the time?

So, today I wrote notes. This is what happened today. No wonder I can’t find buckets or categories to put this stuff in!

6:00am The alarm clock rings.
7:30am On the way out the door to work discovered one of my sons had left his homework binder. 40 minutes round trip to drop it off for him puts me at work 30 minutes later than planned.
8:30am Fill out timesheets from past two weeks. Miss general Enterprise Systems weekly mtg to do so.
9:00am Respond to email from instructor of special use coursesite asking how he adds member. Send link to instructions. Add person acct for him. (Note to self: Log support ticket).
9:30am Login to Test, discover my sudo scripts broken. Email sys admin that application user account does not have sudo in test and I can’t restart the app after patching yesterday.
9:30am Take phone call from project member researching TCO for the LMS replacement project
9:30am Take phone call from Instructor wanting to know what RLB adoption is so that psych department can recoup their cost in licensing it for this year.I understood Psych department to be taking the lead on promotion.
9:30am Return call from A&L IT Director about support for RLB.
9:30am Alter bash_profile of application user account on test servers to reflect new weblogic path. Email sys admin that app user has lost its sudo privileges somehow (from physical to vm no doubt).
10:00am Start searching my harddrive for information on TCO from last project to forward to project member calculating it this time.
10:00am Emailed sys admin backup (regular SA out on medical leave turns out) for cms servers that I no longer seem to have sudo privileges to start vista in test environment.
10:30am Reviewed several versions of excel spreadsheets and passed on the one I think most helpful.
10:30am Received an out of the blue offer from new faculty in Graphic and Interaction Design to assist with LMS evaluation.Loved it! Forwarded it to committee.
10:30am Opened LMS touchpoint spreadsheet.
11:00am Found the BackupAndRetention policy as it was communicated to campus March 31, 2009 by Gordon Wishon and posted it out to the CMS Subcommittee as was discussed at one of our meetings no one seemed to recollect our commitment to migrate 2 years of courses forward.
11:00am Went online to my Advanced Technologies for Distance Education and made a couple of posts concerning whether there is an educational use for Twitter or blogging.Found out what this week’s assignments are.
Noon    Got Lunch. Back at my desk eating. Writing more posts for my class. Researching the dawn of RSS. Suggesting improvements to the course.
1:00pm Enough professional development already! Where is the email from the sys admin backup that I have sudo back? Take a walk up to her office…
1:00pm Logging into Wimba Admin dashboard to attempt to collect Stats I promised to project member along with TCO this morning.
1:00pm Setting out of office and voice mail message for Friday and Monday. (yee-ha!)
1:30pm Sending results to Project member.
1:30pm Answering email responses to the BackupAndRetentionPolicy discussion. (Why did we commit to migrating student data! to new system!!!).
1:30pm Missed call agian form A&L IT Director re: support for RLB.
1:30pm Found out System Admin backup is out sick but responded this morning from home, yet isn’t going to be able to help with sudo.
2:00pm Continuing work on spreadsheet of all touchpoints to current LMS which need to be considered when moving to our new system.
2:00pm Going to get coffee.Continuing work on spreadsheet.
2:00pm Phone call with A&L IT Director finally. We scheme about how to assist with the promotion of RLB by the psych depart. Dave taking it up.
2:30pm Continuing work on spreadsheet of touchpoints.
2:30pm Email request from Chris Clark to unenroll the Kaneb “learning” account rom the FA10 course sections they assisted with.10 of them and any others he didn’t list.
3:30pm Email from A&L IT Director that RLB contract expires 7…2011 and who paid and that he will follow-up.
3:00pm Remembered I hadn’t heard back about a reservation request for U of Fl guests before the Learning Technology Consortium meetings. Resent the email to the admins in charge.
3:00pm Thought to ask about Jira’s production status because these spreadsheet rows really go in Jira for tracking. Sigh. Double-entry for me.
3:00pm Real sys admin out for medical reasons today emails me that the app user’s sudo privileges on my test system have been restored. Reboot to get back on VPN and test…
3:00pm Fiddled with Grooveshark and speakers to drown out a personal conversation a few cubes away
3:30pm Logged in and starting up my patched Bb Vista 8.04 test app. I have sudo again.
4:00pm Moved files from the old domain directory per standard patching, Chat and log4j.properties
4:00pm Took phone call from admin asst who has been working on my room reservation for the U of Florida folks. She’d been out sick.
4:00pm Emailing sys admin that sudo looks good.
4:00pm Another email about Student Data Retention…Answered what skill set we need to retain just the gradebooks. A programmer. Webservices. Java. Or student employees to dip into each section and download the gradebook as .csv (FERPA???)
4:15pm Commencing end of day rituals to leave at 4:30pm

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Posted in lms evaluation, Off Topic