When I was pondering the names of “Educational Technology” degrees last year, we were in the midst of examining the identity of the field. Now, I am happy to announce, that our program at the University of Texas at Austin has a new name: Learning Technologies. Though a name doesn’t mean that we will change the work we do, it does capture the field and essence of our work in a better way. We are definitely not the first to go through this change. Purdue, Georgia, Penn State, Georgia State, Michigan State, and the University of Minnesota have all moved towards this direction.

2nd CALL for PAPERS

62nd Annual conference of the International Council for Educational Media 2012

In conjunction with the 5th Innovative Learning Environments 2012

http://icem2012.cardet.org

Download the Call for Papers

CONFERENCE THEME: Design Thinking in Education, Media, and Society

DATE AND LOCATION: 26-29, September 2012, Nicosia, Cyprus

ORGANIZERS: CARDET, ICEM, UNIC

Extended Deadline for Abstracts: March 12, 2012

The theme of the conference is “Design thinking”. All humans have an inherent ability to design. When planning a dinner, a trip, a building, a learning activity, a new product, we engage in design. Everything that we have around us (with the exception of the untouched nature) has been designed. However, the process of design was poorly understood for a long time. Design thinking is an interdisciplinary framework that draws from the fields of cognition, creativity, engineering, arts, and the social sciences. Design thinking uses the sensibilities of a designer to develop human-centered innovative solutions to problems. During the ICEM2012 conference we will explore the various applications of design thinking and discuss challenges and opportunities that might arise when applying such a framework to solve problems faced in education, media and society.

Topics of interest to this international event include, but are not limited to the following:
- Design thinking and its application across contexts
- Arts-based approaches to education, design and problem solving
- E-learning theory, design, and practice
- Learning design (theory and practice)
- Games in education and training
- Mobile learning applications
- Visual and media literacy
- Design research across disciplines
- Accessibility and assistive technologies
- Technology and social justice
- Distance education and online environments
- Educational media production and distribution
- Research and evaluation methods in educational technology
- Teacher education and lifelong learning
- Applications of technology in business, government, and medicine
We encourage the submission of a variety of papers and work including but not limited to empirical research, case studies, classroom implementations, case studies with applications of technology, theoretical discussions, and critical reviews of literature.

Part of my research demands that I develop technology-enhanced interventions in order to study them. I enjoy this part of my work partly because I get to create solutions to tackle education problems and partly because it has allowed me to explore technology-enhanced learning across different disciplines (e.g. I was involved with developing online learning environments for American Sign Language, environmental stewardship, and sociological concepts).

Now comes another excitement and challenge: Last August, Dr. Calvin Lin and I were awarded a National Science Foundation grant (award #1138506) to develop a hybrid “Introduction to Computer Science” course to be taught at Texas high schools and institutions of higher education. The project is a collaboration between the department of Computer Science (Dr. Lin) and Curriculum and Instruction – Instructional Technology (me). I’ll be posting more about the project (probably on a different blog), but the overarching goal here is to enhance how CS is taught using emerging technologies and pedagogies (mostly PBL) while valuing local contexts and practices. Mark Guzdial, in a recent paper, notes that “We need more education research that is informed by understanding CS—how it’s taught, what the current practices are, and what’s important to keep as we change practice. We need more computing education researchers to help meet the workforce needs in our technology-based society.”

I look forward to sharing more about this project with everyone soon!

May it be healthy, peaceful, and full of joy to you and yours!

I have memories of white holidays from my years in Minnesota, mild winters from growing up in Cyprus, and cold winters from my time in Manchester… but winters of 25 degrees Celsius (75 F) are new to me. I suppose that’s an appropriate way for Austin to welcome the new year!

Congratulations are in order for two students enrolled in our Instructional Technology program who recently published their work in peer-reviewed journals:

Royce Kimmons has published his paper, Understanding Collaboration in Wikipedia, in First Monday.

Michael Anderson has published his paper, Crowdsourcing Higher Education: A Design Proposal for Distributed Learning, in the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching.

Keep up the good work Royce and Michael!

While writing a paper, I used IOGraph to visualize my mouse movements.  The darker circles represent areas where my mouse was resting and the lines represent mouse movements from point A to point B. During this session, I was mostly writing, and my mouse was stationary. I wonder what educational uses such a visualization has. For example, I use Scrivener as my writing platform because it minimizes distractions and allows me to focus on writing (rather than editing). If I were to use a tool that wasn’t distraction-free (e.g., MS Word), I imagine I would be seeing a lot more activity around the editing toolbars. Thus, using the visualization as a way to reflect on the writing process might be an interesting exercise.

In my blog post explaining scholars’ participation and practices on Twitter, I alluded to Networked Participatory Scholarship (yet another acronym!). I have mentioned this on and off over the last year and a half, but I am now happy to announce that Royce Kimmons (who recently became a doctoral candidate – woot!) and I published a paper explaining pressures that exist for educators’ and researchers’ to participate in digital scholarship and online social networks. Our work complements recent research in the field by suggesting that the rise of digital scholarship is not simply due to technological advances. Digital scholarship also relates to social and cultural pressures (e.g., scholars’ questioning scholarly artifacts, such as peer-review, and experimenting with new forms of teaching, such as open courses and MOOCs). For this reason, we prefer to think about digital scholarship in terms of practices, as “scholars’ participation in online social networks to share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and otherwise develop their scholarship.”

Here’s the abstract:

We examine the relationship between scholarly practice and participatory technologies and explore how such technologies invite and reflect the emergence of a new form of scholarship that we call Networked Participatory Scholarship: scholars’ participation in online social networks to share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and otherwise develop their scholarship. We discuss emergent techno-cultural pressures that may influence higher education scholars to reconsider some of the foundational principles upon which scholarship has been established due to the limitations of a pre-digital world, and delineate how scholarship itself is changing with the emergence of certain tools, social behaviors, and cultural expectations associated with participatory technologies.

We conclude by noting that, “Whether they recognize it or not, scholars are part of a complex techno-cultural system that is ever changing in response to both internal and external stimuli, including technological innovations and dominant cultural values. Though such an understanding may lead to a certain level of trepidation regarding the shape of scholarship’s uncertain future, we should take an active role in influencing the future of scholarship and establishing ourselves as productive participants in an increasingly networked and participatory world.”

A copy of the paper is also available:
Veletsianos, G. & Kimmons, R. (2012). Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent Techno-Cultural Pressures Toward Open and Digital Scholarship in Online Networks. Computers & Education, 58(2), 766-774.: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.10.001

Image courtesy of: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/onecm/5862945226/. Licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

In July of 2010, I published Emerging Technologies in Distance Education with Athabasca University Press. The book was published in print and e-book format. In the spirit of openness I am sharing the book’s download statistics, as culled from the AU Press site below. If you can’t see the spreadsheet below, you can access it here.

A number of chapters have been included in course syllabi which helped increase their readership. Last time I checked, the book or chapters of it had been used in the following courses:

• EDTECH 597: Social Network Learning from Boise State University (Fall, 2010)
• EDU 7271: Information and Communication: Social and Conventional Networks from Northeastern University (Spring 2011)
• EDU 6407: Essentials of Multimedia for Distance Learning from Northeastern University (Spring 2011)
• PLENK 2010: Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge. A collaborative Open Course offered from Athabasca University and the University of Prince Edward Island (Fall, 2010)
• OLIT 538: E-learning Course Design from the University of New Mexico (Fall, 2010)
• EDUC60602: Teaching and Learning with Emerging Technologies from the University of Manchester, UK (Spring 2011)

[Side note: If you are using the book or chapters of it in courses that are not listed above, I'd love to hear about it!]

Chapter 6 (pdf) by Alec Couros was included in the PLENK 2010: Personal Learning Environments Networks, and with the large number of participants has shot to the number 1 most-read chapter in the book. Congrats, Alec!

Chapter 1 was the chapter that I wrote, and sought to define emerging technologies and pedagogies (pdf). This was the second most downloaded chapter in the book.

Thank you for downloading the book (or parts of it) and I hope it has helped you in your educational endeavors!

The CIAE-SIG (Computer and Internet Applications in Education Special Interest Group) is seeking nominations for three executive committee positions for 2012: Chair, Program Chair, and Treasurer-Secretary. Please consider nominating individuals for these positions or volunteering yourself!

The Chair of the SIG plans and runs the business meeting, as well as attends to the other paperwork required by AERA (a few forms a year).

The Program Chair manages the submissions and reviewers in AERA’s online system, and follows AERA’s procedure for putting together a program of sessions for the annual meeting. Typically the SIG is allocated space on the annual meeting program for 1 business meeting session and 4 paper/symposium sessions, plus roundtables and posters.

The Treasurer-Secretary is responsible for monitoring and controlling the SIG’s financial account and coordinating this fiscal activity with AERA headquarters.

The new officers start immediately following the 2012 annual meeting. The term of positions are for one year at a time, and no person may serve in any office for more than two consecutive terms. Each year AERA has several leadership seminar sessions at the annual meeting to aid new officers in understanding important topics ranging from Annual Meeting planning, financial management, governance, operations, and web-based tools.

Being a SIG officer is great for your CV and can allow you to take a leadership position in enhancing the types of sessions offered by the SIG.

For all nominations, please submit the following to Dr. George Veletsianos (veletsianos|at|gmail.com) for inclusion in the AERA ballot:

• The full name of the candidate;
• The institutional affiliation of the candidate;
• A biographical statement for the candidate, which can be up to 250 words.

Thank you!
George Veletsianos
Charles Miller
Cassie Scharber

I just came across Nancy White’s discussion of her contribution to the 2011-2012 Change MOOC organized by George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dave Cormier (through Stephen’s announcement). Draft schedule here. I thought that Nancy’s description of her session sounded wonderful – so wonderful actually, that I wish that we had all shared our session descriptions with each other prior to designing them so as to create more synergies between the weekly sessions. There’s always room for re-design however, and I’m sure the #change11 organizers wouldn’t mind (smile)!

I am sharing my session description below, and even though I have tried to draw links to other sessions, you will see that task #2 is asking participants to make connections to other parts of the course in a very specific and personal way.

I would love to hear any input that you may have about this!

Scholars’ online participation and practices (April 30-May 6, 2012)

George Veletsianos, Instructional Technology – University of Texas at Austin

1. Overview

Within the openness movement, we have seen increasing calls for scholars and educators to employ open digital practices. For instance, enthusiasts argue that networked technologies such as blogs, social networking sites, microblogging fora, and other emerging social media can help democratize knowledge production and dissemination. During this week, we will explore how academics co-opt and appropriate technology in their day-to-day professional lives, with specific emphasis on social networking technologies. We will discuss faculty members’ experiences and practices when they adopt online social networks (e.g., Twitter) and online scholarly networks (e.g., Academia.edu) for professional purposes, and investigate whether their online participation is (re)defining academic work (i.e. teaching and research).

My work in this domain has started with a desire to understand faculty member’s digital practices. Professor Weller’s research (2011), which was also presented in this MOOC, has set the foundations for this investigation. Thus, the digital scholarship movement influences and informs my work. In this context, I have studied the relationship between scholarly practice and participatory technologies, and sought to understand (a) what faculty members’ do in online social networks, (b) what their experiences in these networks are like, and (c) what issues and pitfalls we might face when suggesting the use of social media for faculty members’ professional practice. This is an important topic of study because (a) digital scholarship is gaining increasing interest, and (b) a large percentage of higher education faculty have adopted, are considering the use of), or have rejected social networking technologies for professional practice, Importantly, the field is in dire need of empirical data to be in a position to critically evaluate claims with regards to the benefits that social technologies might afford academic practice (i.e. teaching and research).

During this particular week, we will consider whether the rise of online social networking within academic circles is a result of technological or cultural shifts, and investigate the purposes, goals, and pitfalls of networked participation. For instance, we will ask: What are academics doing in online public spaces? What are their intentions and what are their fears? Are faculty members’ altruistically sharing information on social media for the benefit of the community in which they belong? Or, is information-sharing a self-serving activity? Are academics sharing information in order to assist the profession grow intellectually, or are they attempting to develop a “brand” around themselves? Are we seeing the rise of the “public scholar” or the rise of the “celebrity scholar?” A critical evaluation of academics’ participation in digital spaces matters because an understanding of these reasons will allow us to gain a better sense of how and why online social networks are used in the ways that they are. Whether we recognize it or not, we are part of a complex techno-cultural system that is ever changing in response to both internal and external stimuli, including technological innovations and dominant cultural values. An understanding of the cotemporary forces that shape academic work is necessary for enhancing education and scholarship.

2. List of Readings

Hall, R. (2010). Open Education: The need for critique. Blog entry retrieved on August 12, 2011 from http://www.learnex.dmu.ac.uk/2010/07/27/open-education-the-need-for-critique/

Selwyn, N. (2010). Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of educational technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1), 65-73.

Veletsianos, G. (in press). Higher Education Scholars’ Participation and Practices on Twitter. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.

Weller, M. (in press). The digital scholar: How technology is changing academic practice. Bloomsbury Academic.

Plus two other papers that I am not yet able to share publicly, but will be available by the time this session arrives.

3. Suggested Activities

Task 1: What do academics do on _________________ ?

The intention of this task is to describe academics’ participation on a number of social technologies (e.g., Twitter, Quora, Google +, Linkedin, Blogs, etc).  The goal is to evaluate participation and understand (a) how technology and its affordances influence participation, and (b) professional roles influence participation and use of technology. This is essentially a mini research task.

Your “description” can be done individually or collaboratively. It can also take any form that you are comfortable with. For instance, it can be an essay posted as a blog entry, a video narrative, a digital story, or a concept map. You should include support for any claims that you make. For instance, you can use empirical data or references to the literature (or other writing) to support your claims.

Task 2: Create a concept map that explains how the topic studied this week relates to and/or contributes to further understanding the topics studied in preceding weeks.