Category: open Page 13 of 21

The road to SXSWedu 2014

On October 17, 2013

In emerging technologies, my research, open, scholarship, sharing

In mid-August,, I posted a note asking for your vote on a panel I proposed for SXSWedu consisting of Tanya Joosten, Amy Collier, Audrey Watters, and myself. The topic was: Startups Should Talk with Researchers and Educators,

I’m uber excited to report that our proposal has been accepted. We will be headed to Austin in March to discuss how researchers and educators can contribute to the design, development, refinement, and ultimately effectiveness of learning technologies and educational technology.

Tanya described why she is interested in this topic on her blog. I thought I would do the same, especially as Tanya, Amy, and I were at Educause this week discussing issues that educational institutions need to consider when piloting for technology/innovations.

A lot of you may not know this, but I have a degree in computer science, and way back when, in my undergraduate thesis I developed software enabling real-time interactions between students and instructor that emulated classroom processes by allowing students to “raise their hand” to ask questions, make comments, etc. This was nothing spectacular, unique, or groundbreaking. Yet, it was my first attempt at developing educational technology to solve a (perceived) problem. Since then, I have concurrently done design/development work and research, and I see myself as a researcher and a designer. Some of the projects I have worked on are AvenueASL (a language learning and e-assessment platform), Project Engage (a dual credit course and online learning environment introducing students to the Big Ideas relating to Computer Science), Geothentic (an online environment immersing students in Geography through situated, real-world problem-solving), and AL through Water and MOSS (an online learning environment supporting science learning via outdoor exploration). I don’t only write about learning technologies. I also build them.

How does one reconcile D&D work and research? My perspective is that it’s not enough to study what happens with educational technology. Studying, analyzing, critiquing, and questioning educational technology is very important. It’s imperative. But, we need to take the additional step to use the research to (a) design and develop educational applications, and (b) inform others on what the research says so that they can develop effective technology-based solutions based on what we know about teaching and learning. Hence the need for this panel.

I was also motivated to put together this panel after participating in SXSWedu 2013. One of the sessions I attended last year focused on business models for educational technology. One of the panelists noted that their commitment to their investors is profit, not learning outcomes. I’m not naive. Entrepreneurship is important and we should support and reward it in various ways. However, putting profits before learning outcomes is corrosive and dangerous. The biggest losers in such a setup will be learners, the idea of the university, and the idea of education. Our panel at SXSWedu is an attempt to add some sense to the conversation, to ‘add the “edu” to “sxsxedu” ‘ (I think that’s a Laura Pasquini quote, but i might be mistaken). It is also an attempt to explain to startups and vendors how they can have their cake and eat it too, how they can make meaningful, and much needed, change in education without necessarily sacrificing other goals that they have.

Whether you are an educator, a startup company, a researcher, a reporter, or an administrator, please join us – we’d love to have you!

For your information, here is our panel’s description: Education is facing numerous challenges. Educational technology startups promise solutions. However, entrepreneurs seem to disregard the knowledge that educators and researchers have amassed that can help startups address these challenges, or, at least, help them avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. At the same time, we were astounded by the lack of educators and researchers that were sharing their knowledge at last year’s SXSWedu conference. The event felt more like a vendor gathering than what the SXSWedu website describes as “meaningful conversation and collaboration around promising practices and tools for improved learning.” If we want meaningful and transformational change in how we do education, it is imperative for entrepreneurs and educators/researchers to converse. In this interactive panel, we will discuss how educators/researchers can help startups improve their products and answer questions pertaining to education research, how people learn, and classroom practice.

Learner experiences with open online learning and MOOCs e-book

By George Veletsianos

On September 24, 2013

In emerging technologies, online learning, open, scholarship, sharing

I’m excited to announce the publication of an open access e-book on learners’ experiences with open learning and MOOCs. The book consists of ten chapters by student authors and one introductory chapter by me. Part pedagogical experiment, part an exploratory investigation into learners’ experiences with emerging forms of learning, the aim of the book is to capture and share student stories of open online learning.

This publication is necessary for a number of reasons.

First, from a pedagogical perspective, whenever possible, we should be asking students to do a discipline, not just read about it. In this occasion, students were asked to do open online learning and reflect/write about their experience, instead of just reading about the field and the experience of others.

Second, in the frenzy surrounding the rise of “edtech” and MOOCs, it seems that student voices and experiences are rarely considered. This e-book is an attempt to remind designers and developers that the learning experience should be a central tenet of attempts to reform education. Let’s all remind ourselves that what we should be designing is learning experiences – not products for efficient consumption.

Third, the examination of learning experiences with open learning and MOOCs in the literature is scant. Further, recent literature tends to gravitate towards big data and analytics, and while those research endeavors are worthwhile, they tend to generate abstract descriptions of learner behaviors. A holistic understanding of learner experiences should include both investigations of patterns of how learners behave as well as in-depth qualitative descriptions of what learning in open environments is like. To illustrate, learning analytics research suggests that there are a number of ways learners typically engage with a course (e.g., completing, auditing, disengaging, sampling). Complementary to this, our book generates nuanced descriptions of some of these categories. For example, even though one of the authors would be considered as completing a MOOC he “was left with a partial sense of accomplishment and feelings of hollowness and incompleteness.”

The scholarly contributions from this book are two. They can be summarized as follows, but for in-depth descriptions, please read my full chapter, which is simultaneously published on Hybrid Pedagogy:

The realities of open online learning are different from the hopes of open online learning.
We only have small pieces of an incomplete mosaic of students’ learning experiences with open online learning.

As with the emerging technologies in distance education book that I edited in 2010 (also available as open access), please don’t hesitate to send me an email to let me know what you think about this book. I’d love your thoughts! If you are teaching a class on emerging learning environments, open education, online learning, and other related topics, and you find this book helpful as reading material, I’d love to hear about how you are using it!

P.S The book is published on Github, which means that you can effortlessly improve and expand on this work. If you want to learn more about this, Kris Shaffer, who was instrumental in making our github project happen, wrote an excellent article on Github and publishing.

Interested in a post-doc studying emerging forms of online participation?

By George Veletsianos

On September 12, 2013

In emerging technologies, my research, NPS, online learning, open, work

Are you interested in a post-doctoral fellowship in any of the following topics?

open online learning
emerging forms of online participation
digital and open scholarship
online social networks
learner, instructor, and scholar experiences in any of the above

If so, I would love to see an application from you to our call for Banting post-doctoral fellows! The call is open to Canadians and non-Canadians alike.

On the call listed above, you will see that we are seeking applicants for multiple positions. The section relevant to my interests is the following:

Working with Dr. George Veletsianos, Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Innovative Learning and Technology, the post-doc will focus on emerging technologies and innovations in online education, and in particular open education, open/digital scholarship, and social media/networks. The experiences and practices of learners, instructors, and scholars with emerging forms of online participation (e.g., MOOCs, social media) are ill-understood and ill-researched. The objective of a Banting post-doc within this research program will be to make sense of participants’ experiences and practices with open online education and social media/networks in higher education and to understand why individuals use these emerging innovations in the ways that they do. Research questions may include, but are not limited to: What is the nature of open online learning, teaching, and participation? What does the experience of open online learning/teaching and/or social network learning consist of? What is the lived experience of open scholars? How is technology changing scholarship? How do scholars perceive and construct their identity using social media/networks? How do individuals use social media/networks to cope with the expectations of their academic roles (e.g., being a doctoral student, being a newly-hired faculty member, etc)?

Take a look at the call, explore my research on these topics, and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me. Applications are due by September 27, 2013.

Forthcoming ebook and twitter chat on MOOC and open learning experiences

By George Veletsianos

On September 4, 2013

In emerging technologies, online learning, open, scholarship

I’m very excited to share the news that Hybrid Pedagogy will be publishing an open access e-book that I edited on learner experiences with Open Online Learning and MOOCs.

The e-book, entitled Learner Experiences with MOOCs and Open Online Learning, is a project in which student authors describe and reflect upon their open online learning experiences. While this book aims at improving our understanding of student experiences with open online learning, it is also an attempt to give voice to learners, as current conversations around educational innovations in general, and MOOCs in particular, lack student voices.

In setting the stage for the book, Hybrid pedagogy is holding a a Twitter discussion under the hashtag #digped on Friday, September 6 from 1:00 – 2:00pm Eastern (10:00 – 11:00am Pacific). We’d love for you to join us! You can read more details about the discussion here!

Sample Preliminary Written Exam Questions

By George Veletsianos

On July 29, 2013

In courses, open

Doctoral students are often asked to take a preliminary written exam as part of their degree, and they are often unclear of what those questions look like. They visit with their adviser, ask friends, and ask past students to get an idea of what those pesky preliminary exam questions may be. I like to give examples to my students of the type of questions that I like to ask, and I thought that others might find these useful, so I am posting a few below.

Writing, 22 November 2008 (photo by ed_needs_a_bicycle)

The questions:

1. Summarize two major debates in the field, and clearly articulate your own position on each debate. Cite relevant research to support your stance.

2. Moos and Honkomp (2011), in their paper entitled Adventure Learning: Motivating Students in a Minnesota Middle school, state: “Though adventure learning offers exciting possibilities to engage students and facilitate deep, meaningful learning, it is not without substantial challenges and issues to consider.” What kinds of instructional, learning, and organizational challenges do you think adventure learning poses?

3. “Technology integration” is a persistent theme in the educational technology literature. Recently, scholars have sought to refine the notion of “technology integration” and have discussed transformative uses of technology. What is transformative education and transformative technology integration? What does culturally- and contextually-relevant technology integration look like?

4. In a survey of 459 university students and 159 university faculty members, Malesky and Peters (in press) found that “over one-third of the students and a quarter of the faculty participants reported that it is inappropriate for faculty members to have accounts on [Social Networking Sites].” Why might students consider faculty members’ use of social networking sites inappropriate? Use both empirical and theoretical literature to support your arguments.

5. Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) argue that for novice learners minimally guided instruction (i.e. a situation in which learners discover or construct essential information for themselves) is inefficient and ineffective. These authors argue that direct instruction (i.e. “providing information that fully explains the concepts and procedures that students are required to learn”) is the
most effective and efficient approach to learning. How would Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark respond to the idea of “tinkering?” What position would you take in this debate in your dissertation? In your answer, make sure to cite related research to support your arguments.

Something to note prior to using these as a study guide though: Preliminary written exams differ from university to university. When I took mine at the University of Minnesota, if I recall well, I had eight hours to respond in detail to two questions. There was a take-home portion to that exam as well. At the Learning Technologies program at UT-Austin, we give students four hours to answer four out of the five questions we provide. At both instances access to resources (e.g., the Internet) is limited*.

* We can debate the authenticity and relevancy of limiting access to resources, but that may be an issue better suited for a different post. On the one hand, these individuals will have access to resources when they are doing their work in the future, so why limit them? On the other hand, they will encounter situations in which they have to respond without consulting an outside resource – e.g., during a job talk.

University of New Hampshire keynote talk

By George Veletsianos

On June 13, 2013

In emerging technologies, online learning, open, scholarship

I have just returned from the University of New Hampshire where I gave a keynote talk at the 12th annual Faculty Instructional Technology Summer Institute. My hosts (Terri, Stephanie, Marshall, Dan, Ken, Shane) organized an excellent event and were so welcoming and gracious that it was difficult to leave!

Photo courtesy of UNH Information Technology

This year’s faculty member participants represented departments that have launched or were exploring the launch of an online program. Professional development events like this one have a number of goals including helping participants understand online education, gain technological and pedagogical skills, alleviate anxiety, share, foster community, and create a sense of shared purpose.

My talk focused on exploring the opportunities, challenges, truths, myths, and realities of online education. I argued that our goal as educators and designers is to create and foster learning experiences and opportunities that are effective, fulfilling, inspiring, meaningful, caring, empowering, and democratic. Using this goal as the starting point, my fellow faculty members and I explored the online learning landscape and discussed a variety of topics that included the “no significant difference phenomenon” as it pertains to online vs. face-to-face education, competency-based models, disaggregation and unbundling, online program management services, the role of the faculty member, the quest for efficiency and automation, and openness.

I am including my presentation below. This is the first talk in which I included practical advice and simple strategies that a faculty member new to online learning may find helpful in their teaching. If you are interested in that aspect of online education make sure to explore the last few slides of my talk.

Online Learning Myths & Truths from George Veletsianos

Thank you for supporting our work!

By George Veletsianos

On May 23, 2013

In courses, open

A few weeks ago, Audrey and I submitted an application for a MOOC fellowship. Here’s Audrey’s announcement. Here’s my announcement. The voting phase of the competition has closed, and the next step is for the team of jurors to make funding decisions.

Regardless of the outcome, I wanted to thank each and everyone who voted for our proposal and shared our work with others. Seeing images like the one below over the past couple of weeks is both humbling and motivating. Thank you!

Screen shot 2013-05-23 at 2.45.01 PM