Educause 2002 Summary: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

Key presentations: Wednesday: OpenCourseWare; Thursday: Pay the Piper, OKI
Key themes: OKI looks good, crusade of Kay Wijekumar continues, schools are tired of CMS rising costs
All materials

Wednesday, 10:30: Developing a Modular Approach to CMS Use

Educause research report published later this year. Study of faculty using U of W CMSes.

Goals:

• address service concerns, reliability
• avoid brand loyalty
• manage process of change between CMSes
• address problems of price fluctuations

Study:

• how faculty use CMS
• a triangulation to explore faculty CMS use
  • mix qualitative and quantitative methods
  • interviews with faculty
  • surveys of faculty
  • analyze logs of CMSes

Early Results:

• under usage of tools by faculty
• CMS as organization tool, not pedagogical tool
• fears of change

Wednesday, 11:40: An Open Source Model for Academic Content Dissemination and Pedagogical Collaboration: An Oxymoron or Just Impossible?

web.mit.edu/ocw

OpenCourseWare
is not:

• MIT education
• a replacement for classroom interaction
• distance ed

OpenCourseWare
is

• web-based publication of course content
• open sharing of knowledge
• available to the world
• permanent and sustainable

Benefits

• educators can use it for curriculum development
• learners can use it for self-study
• common repository to stimulate collaboration across disciplines

Wednesday, 2:15: Preparing Faculty and Students for Hybrid Courses

www.uwm.edu/Dept/LTC/hybrid.html

PPT has all the info, online soon?

Notes from talk:

faculty often fear losing a connection with students in hybrid courses, opposite is often true
new ways of assessing student learning are needed
6 month lead time for development of a hybrid course
rethink course, not just an add-on to existing course

Thursday, 8:10: Paying the Piper Now or Later: Improving the Effectiveness of Web-Based Learning

www.br.psu.edu/faculty/kxw190
www.br.psu.edu/faculty/kxw190/educause/index.htm

Excellent presenter from last year. Full presentation above.
Highlights:
learning management system - "no one is going to manage my learning but me"

Outcomes of current practice are superficial http://www.br.psu.edu/faculty/kxw190/educause/sld005.htm

Cognitive outcomes matrix http://www.br.psu.edu/faculty/kxw190/educause/sld008.htm

What we know:

• multimedia learning (Mayer 2001) - illustrated audio has been show to be more effective than text-annotated pictures
• hypertext navigation (Montgomery & Stevenson) - people get lost, "butterfly defect"
• learner control - students don't know how to use the tools
• collaborative learning (webb et al.) - by asking questions student hasn't learned material, but student who explains it knows it
• hypertext (Soloman & Almog) - shallow knowledge structures from too many sites to visit

Orienting Faculty

• rethink content
• problem-solving tools -- SPSS, online technical calculator
• rethink assessments objectives, ongoing and different, discourage multiple choice, use chat rooms as an assessment, for defense of a portfolio, upload agenda before chat (i.e. not having meeting agenda before a meeting)

Orienting Students

• technical orientation
• learning skills
• communication skills
  • how to formulate thoughts, not just how to click on stuff
• time management

Thursday, 11:45: Integrating Technology into Medical Education

1987-1998: used a problem based model parallel with traditional lecture curriculum
1995-1998: combined the strengths of both into a new curriculum
1998: integrated technology

Strategy

• create central academic computing office (1 director, 4 software developers, 3 techs, 2 sysadmins)
• thinkpad to each student (925 laptops)
• PDA in 3rd year (275 PDAs)
• all coursework web-based (20 servers)
• curriculum - MD, PA, Biomed graduate program

Software provided

• Stedman's Medical Dictionary
• Human & Micro Anatomy
• standard suite

Laptop is their gateway to everything (bad imho)
don't tell faculty must use computer but create an environment for success if they want to use it, students pressure faculty too

first 2 years clinical cases are much of the work

highly customized database system for student evaluations from field perceptors, standardized system for evaluation
computerized testing using PED system, web-based, 2 day exam window online

PDAs

• ePocrates (Pharmaceutical Reference)
• patient encounter tracking system developed in-house
  • faculty can check on students on their rotation
  • students build personal database of patient encounters for their entire program
  • program uses pull-down menus to minimize typing on PDA
• medical reference guide developed in-house

Software developers do a lot of the work of building materials, faculty just provide stuff to them

Thursday, 2:20: The Open Knowledge Initiative

web.mit.edu/oki/
web.mit.edu/oki/proj/edu2002/index.html
aboutcoursework.stanford.edu
stellar.mit.edu

a collaborative initiative to provide a service architecture for education
MIT, U Wisc, Stanford, Dartmouth, etc

Edu Applications

• identify 12 critical edu services
• extract them
• make apps smaller
• define interfaces to services (implementation-independent)
• can swap data at both app layer and infrastructure layer without trouble

CourseWork by Stanford

Goals:

• nurtured pedagogical innovation
• sustainability
• integration

Answer:

• modular layer of tools, user can turn on/off
• under is a standard layer of infrastructure

Features:

• e-reserves
• course materials (multiple criteria for file sorting)
• announcements
• syllabus, etc
• content based around faculty, not course
• switch to admin interface changes UI so they know something different is going on
• assessment engine - mult choice, mult choice w/ text rationale, can see trends in questions, histograms
• person roles - visitor, guests, TAs, students, etc
• API has XML feed from registrar that is two way

getting funding to develop a more robust assessment and assignment module

open source this academic year

Stellar 1.3 from MIT

started before OKI, 2.0 will have OKI features

content in 2 level hierarchy, each item has an "edit" link if it is editable
calendar
material (metadata tagged)
homework (metadata tagged)
e-reserves populated by library
distributed environment, roles such as guest, ta, instructor (5)
integrated search tool (PDF, HTML)
discussion tool (JIVE JAVA tool)
a navigation bar editor is under development

Filing API demo

one of the 12 services
abstraction of boundary between app and 1 or more file directories (cabinets)
a daemon is running that is doing the syncing
app and developer don't care where cabinets are
folder appears to be on hard drive, though it is not

Client UI

• same code for Mac, PC, UNIX
• rich user experience
• support disconnected use

Thursday, 3:45: The MIRA Psychiatric Nurse-Practitioner Program: Providing Rural Health Care Education

the problem

• develop a rural American education model
• readily accessible
• cost-effective
• self-sustaining
• lower Medicare reimbursement, aging facilities

developed IP video conferencing system
collected parallel systems that were existing, standardized on equipment, shared with other programs

Friday, 8:10: Online + Face-to-Face = ???

cid.byu.edu

has a large historic correspondence (distance) program along with tradition program
all courses are developed and faculty can't change them!?

using CMS with both programs
reducing face time in traditional program reaped benefits of less use of facilities

kinda lame overall

Friday, 9:30: Using Peer Assessment in the Design of Online Collaborative Learning Environments

niche online learning environment, firstclass?
learning is a social process best done in groups
need both individual and group accountability in completion of learning tasks
establish a positive interdependence of group members for success
from "learning about" to "learning to be"
construct norms from student voting but faculty can add any missing ones

Peer / Self Assessment

• learn about assessment
• read the case
• build assessment
• do a "how am I doing" exercise
• students anonymous evaluate each other
• team reflect
• 4-5 students on teams mixed by gender, location, cultural background