promoting active learning

I've found a few resources that might be helpful as our faculty try to select the right tool and context for integrating technology into courses:

• Academic blog portal - a huge collection of links to academic blogs, organized by discipline
• U of Tennessee's guide to academic blogging
• writingwiki.org's guide for teachers new to wikis

A vision of students today

Please forgive me if you've seen this video before...



This video was made at Kansas State. Do you think some of the survey results reported in the video describe our students?

Blog experience

So far my experiment with a blog in my 21st C. Techniques class has not been super. I get the assigned person to write most of the time, but even after repeated requests, the rest of the class is not responding. I'm open to suggestions.

New Zealand police and Wikis

Has anybody heard (read) about the attempt by the New Zealand police to revise their laws and regulations through a Wiki?
I just read a piece in a Spanish newspaper and I was wondering if there is an English version to share with this group. If you are interested I can give you the Spanish-language reference.
What would happen if the faculty were to propose a revision to the administrative structure of the school using a Wiki? How about designing a protocol for the curriculum review through a Wiki?
Precisely.

first experience with wiki not so great

Curious to know how others have done with wikis (wikies?). I created one for my introductory American government class and asked the students to use it to write mock court rulings. The students had a little over a week to do the assignment. They formed 4 groups, each responsible for the equivalent of 2 pages of text.

Two significant problems:

1) About 6 of the 27 students in the class didn't participate.

2) The hoped-for collaborative strength didn't materialize. The writings were choppy, and in a couple of the cases no one took the time to stitch together the various pieces that group members created. Punch-line: the entries read like a bunch of disjointed notes, not like a final document.

You can see the results for yourself (as if you have nothing else to do w/ your time) at iwu-americangovernment.wikispaces.com

open to suggestions --

Greg

Blog vs. Wiki?

Anyone have any thoughts about which pedagogical purposes are best served by a blog and which are best served by a wiki?

Wes Chapman

News Items

From today's InsideHigherEd.com's newsletter:

• Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia, arranged to with Facebook to eliminate a group on the site devoted to opposing the university’s alleged use of animals in research, Canada.com reported. The group, called “Stop Dogs and Puppies From Being Murdered at Dalhousie University,” attracted thousands of members. University officials said that they did not have the site removed for being critical, but because it would not post responses from the university or correct inaccurate information. For instance, university officials said that the site featured pictures of dogs that appeared scared — as if they were part of university experiments when they were not.
• Many college students have been slow to embrace e-books, so Café Scribe, which offers online textbooks, commissioned a poll on what they most like about books in traditional form — and 43 percent cited issues related to smell (either liking “old book” smell or “new book” smell. So the publisher announced that it would send scratch-and-sniff stickers to those students who buy e-books.

Wiki instead of textbook?

Hi all,

I've been watching your posts here with great interest. Sounds like you all are planning some interesting projects for the upcoming semester.

Let me join in by pointing you to a Computerworld article about a professor at Boston College (my alma mater.) This fellow has been using a wiki as the "primary teaching tool" in his classroom since October.

Do you think abandoning a text book in favor of a wiki is too radical an approach, or perhaps worth a try?

(BTW - I found this article from the rss feed of the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus blog.)

Use of a blog

Here is my attempt at using some of the information presented at our workshop this spring. Students in the Twenty First Century Techniques for Music Education class this fall will be asked to participate in a class blog. I will assign one student each week to discuss the technology (Finale, Band-in-a-Box, Publisher, PowerPoint, creating web pages, etc) or the jazz pedagogy we are covering that particular week, and then request class members respond to that blog entry. The class will also be introduced to WIKI and RSS by Rick Lindquist from IT. This year we will not have specific assignments using these options, but will consider using them in future classes.

Request for Bloggers!

Hi everyone,

As the end of summer rapidly approaches, the Summer Reading Project is gearing up. The library has a webpage with a number of resources about Mountains Beyond Mountains - articles, sites, video/audio interviews with Kidder and Dr. Paul Farmer, etc..

If you're reading the book or if you've read the book, or if you have any knowledge/opinion of the book or of Dr. Farmer's work, I would love it if you'd post to the IWU Reads blog at http://iwureads.blogspot.com/. Right now, it's just me, so it would be great to get other faculty voices in the mix! Students know about the blog thanks to mailings and a link from the "Class of 2011" Facebook group, so hopefully some of them will also chime in.

Please email me so I can invite you to participate in the blog through Blogger!

Thanks in advance!
Stephanie

blogging vs writing?

Here is an article by author and blogger Sophie Cunningham called "Caught in the Blogjam". She talks about a lot of writers you might have heard of (Michael Chabon, William Gibson, Poppy Z Brite, Barbara Ehrenreich and on and on) who manage to teeter on the edge between blogging and writing. Does engaging in blogging help or hurt our main efforts?

http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/caught-in-the-blogjam/2007/07/19/1184559950812.html

I expect many of the arguments and commentary in the article apply much the same to Illinois Wesleyan faculty as they do to full time writers of fiction and non-fiction.

Good stuff

When I was at the University of Wisconsin - Baraboo, the dean always said "Good stuff" when he liked an idea. So I say, "Good stuff." I'm really looking forward to hearing about the results of each of your projects.

I've been working with Joel Haefner on a collaborative library - writing center project. We are experimenting with training a select few writing tutors to provide a combination of writing and research assistance to students in specific classes. Communication among all parties -- tutors, students, teacher, Joel, and me -- will be important, so I'm going to either set up a group in Luminus or create a blog for one of the fall semester classes that utilizes a designated writing tutor/research assistant. Details later...

Marcia

Economics Senior Seminar

The Economics Senior Seminar is the capstone course in economics and is taught every fall. Students are given various assignments throughout the semester (topic proposal, outline, annotated bibliography, presentations) as steps toward their final assignment, an original research paper.

As liaison to the Economics Department, I work closely with the class (taught by Mike Seeborg). At the beginning of the semester I meet with the class and talk about what resources they are likely to find the most helpful and some of the challenges and issues they may face in conducting their research. The final paper requires a significant literature search and the use of datasets, which can be difficult to locate, access, and download. I encourage students to meet with me individually to talk about their projects and I work with them to locate needed resources and to troubleshoot problems in locating and accessing data. Often there is overlap among different students regarding resources they might find useful and/or problems they encounter and ways to solve these problems (especially with accessing datasets).

This fall there are two sessions of the senior seminar class. I’ve decided that using a blog might prove helpful as a way to communicate resources and to share problem-solving strategies. My hope is that students will not only post questions and concerns, but also share what they learn – such as good search techniques, resources, or ways to solve the challenges inherent in finding usable and relevant datasets. Thus, they will learn from each other in addition to any insight I can provide. This blog will also serve as an archive and this information will be beneficial to have for other economics classes (such as econometrics) and for future senior seminars.

Digitizing Documents in Order to Facilitate Access

As a result of the June technology workshop, and after talking it over with my Department’s chair, I propose to: (a) create a searchable digital collection of all the research honors papers written by our majors and (b) conduct a web-based digital job search for two tenure-track positions.

(a) Senior Seminar

This course is taught every Fall. Early on in the semester students are asked to research the existing collection of Research Honors papers for potential topics and examples of empirical methodologies. Currently we use a folder listing the author, adviser and title of each of the 91 articles, spanning 27 years, comprising the collection. Creating a CARLI Digital Collection we will digitize the papers, and most importantly, tag the documents so that they can be searched for keywords. The pedagogical goal is to facilitate a more comprehensive and practical access to the collection, enriching new projects.

(b) Digital Job Search

During the 2007-2008 academic year the Economics Department will be conducting two simultaneous job searches. Past experience has showed us that requesting a cover letter, a writing sample, academic transcripts, letters of reference, teaching evaluations and so on, multiplied times a number of applicants well into triple digits, generates a massive volume of paper. This time around we expect to receive twice as much. Since only full applications are considered, yet only less than one hundred make the first cut, a vast amount of documentation is effectively discarded. By requesting job applicants to submit their materials on-line and by using the Luminis platform we will expedite the sorting-out of applications by our office manager, allow off-campus work by the search committee, and reduce the amount of paper involved in these searches.

Fall 2007 Gateway

It has taken me some time to post my ideas, since I've been considering all the options regarding technology and the delivery of the various courses I teach. For this fall, I've decided to focus on the use of a blog for my Gateway class, “London seen through the Eyes of the Other.” I will continue to use my Luminis course webpage to manage other aspects of course delivery, including files and links.

As I thought about my greatest challenges in offering Gateway, I recognize the tension I feel in adapting my course to both the “skills” (e.g., teaching writing) and the “content” (e.g., the theme of the course, as it relates to critical thinking, etc.). In class I often run out of time, due to the fact that I cannot devote enough class time to discussion of the different texts we deal with (three complex novels) while giving the students enough feedback and guidance in the remedial ways that are sometimes necessary in Gateway courses.

Since I do not like the idea of incorporating the use of technology simply for technology’s sake, I have decided to attempt to address this specific problem: How can the use of a blog help me to teach my Gateway? The answer seems simple (at least for now—ask me again in October): I will ask students to use blogs to discuss in preliminary ways the course readings. It’s an obvious way to verify that students have done the reading and have grasped the essential concepts, thereby saving class time for more in depth conversations and issues related to writing. I realize that this may seem simple to an experienced educator, but it will be a challenge for me, for two reasons: 1) I have never used a blog in my teaching before, and negotiating the productive use of a blog in class will mean planning; and 2) teaching Gateway is typically a stressful experience for me (as it is for others as well), and including a blog may add to that stress, at least initially.

I hope to find that the use of the blog will help eliminate the stress of covering what I aim to cover in class. I expect to experiment also with other uses for the blog, including asking students to pose their own discussion questions, having students post journal-type entries regarding their difficulties in writing and the writing process, and making essays for peer review (or even possibly the peer reviews themselves) available on the blog. These are all issues I need to sort out more before August. I’m hopeful, however, that a blog will allow me to teach better, and in turn create an environment that extends the walls of the classroom and allows students to engage more fully with the issues and material, as well as to collaborate more easily with peers—in short, to learn better, and to come away from the experience with a more positive impression.

American National Government, PS 101 – Greg Shaw

My introductory American government class has involved a series of small group projects presented by students in class. The oral presentations tend to prompt a good deal of conversation, but the presentations themselves often lack polish. I believe the presenters would take more care with their ideas and their words if their work were on public display. Such an on-line posting of the groups’ work would also allow the class to focus on its responses to the written work rather than using scarce class time to sit through sometimes inefficient presentations.

As an example, I ask students to consider a case that is headed for or was recently heard by a federal court. The assignment invites students to combine their readings with our class discussions of the issue and to bring to bear the analytic tools from both on the case in question. My idea is to ask the small groups – each consisting of perhaps 4-6 students – to develop a mock ruling based on the facts of the case, their own reasoning, and the relevant precedents embodied in related cases from the past. Students could collaborate face to face or electronically to create their group’s written opinion, and those opinions would be available on the course wiki for all to review before coming to class to discuss. Not only would the broad arguments be open to debate, but also their (hopefully) close reasoning. This approach could also work for our discussion of proposals for further campaign finance reform and our re-write of the US Constitution.

Barbara Ganley’s insight that when students’ work is open to the world, or at least to the class to review, students produce better quality work is certainly intriguing, though I guess I’ll fully believe it when I see it. However, taking this on faith, I hope that peer-to-peer and group-to-group comparisons online will lead students to raise the bar of expectations. Presuming that no group wants to be labeled the slacker group, good quality work should result.

I’ll give this idea a whirl in the fall and will post a follow-up about how it turned out. I’m certainly open to suggestions, so bring on the collective brain power. Thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have.

Greg

Advanced Social Psychology--Natalie Smoak

I teach advanced social psychology every fall. It is a discussion-based course where we cover one broad topic (e.g., prejudice, relationships, consumer behavior, etc.) during each third of the semester. Under the umbrella of each broad topic, we have time to discuss 4-5 more fine-grained topics, usually averaging about one per week. During class, students lead the discussion of the articles and topics based upon readings I assign. As an aid to the discussion leaders, I have students submit 2-3 discussion questions 24 hours in advance of the class discussion to the discussion leaders and me. The discussion leaders then organize and group the questions and guide the conversation the group has in class the next day. I also facilitate and make sure the discussion is on topic and relevant. I like the students to own the class this way, and I also enjoy musing over what they want to talk about, and not just what I think is interesting. Submitting the discussion questions each week is worth a nominal amount of points, but overall, they add up to a substantial portion of the grade.

The course averages 16-20 students per semester, and getting an email containing discussion questions from each of them at least once a week causes some problems at times. I try to capture these emails and put them into a class email folder, but then I always wonder, “Do I print them all out, assign points, and hand them back?” This seems like a waste of paper. Occasionally, an email doesn’t come through though the student sends it (and they don’t realize it, of course), or I don’t get an email into the proper folder and it seems “lost.” Argh. J

I thought it might be interesting to try creating a course wiki this fall, with a page for each weekly topic. I would like students to submit their discussion questions to the wiki, which is not particularly innovative. But, as the questions are submitted, I will encourage students to read others’ questions, provide links to material on the web that is relevant to someone else’s post as part of their participation credit (the questions lend themselves to this type of thing sometimes), and maybe even submit their question(s) as a follow up to someone else’s. The questions are often related or they (heretofore, unintentionally) take an “as a follow up to what he asked” approach, but with the current submission method, the students never see this and they aren't learning from each other as much as they could be. I will encourage the students to partially organize the discussion into themes for the discussion leader by where on the page they submit the questions. I will also encourage students to respond to discussion questions from other students (briefly, as we want to use class time for this) or point other students to places in the readings or to additional readings. Lastly, as the wiki serves as a record of what we are talking about in the class, we can link to the previous weeks’ discussions and see how our learning process is evolving. When we get into class, I will pull the wiki up on the screen so we can refer to it and edit it as our discussion progresses.

One thing I would like feedback on in particular, though I am open to all comments and suggestions, is whether you think students will edit one another’s discussion questions. I will obviously tell them not to, but do you think that will be a problem? I know I will be able to see who is editing and when, but I don't want to police this continually. Do I need to have the students still submit the questions via email?

Natalie Smoak

RSS feeds by any other name would be less confusing

I’ve added a page to our IWU Wiki entitled “Options for Collecting RSS Feeds” as a means of collecting methods of finding, subscribing and readers news articles and blogs. Please take a few minutes to peruse the site and feel free to add your favorites tools, tips, or recommendations.

Instructional strategies for blogging

I came across an article in the e-journal Campus Technology that I thought I'd share. Instructional Strategies for Blogging describes Ruth Reynard's approach to integrating blogging into a course. Of course, Barbara Ganley added some great resources about blogging to our IWU Technology Wiki, but Reynard's article describes a methodology that may be useful.

Wiki in Plain English

Here's a great little video I first saw at the ASCUE conference earlier this month.
It does a great job of explaining Wikis in plain english.



If you enjoy this video, go back and read Stephanie's comment to Rick's post and view the video she includes there.

Kira's Gateway

With so many ideas to consider, I am trying to be reasonable! Podcasting might have to wait. If I could just stumble upon those secret extra hours in the day….

In my Gateway course, students are required to keep journals. They are required to write entries at least after each video but are encouraged to journal about course readings, discussions and current/life events related to course material. Students are asked to share subjective reactions, feelings, questions or insights. The task is not to “prove” that they were paying attention to the film. Previously, journals were to be kept either within one Word document or a spiral notebook. In the coming semester, I will require them to create a blog to capture their thoughts and require that they use RSS feeds to keep up with the blogs of other class members. The blogs will be worth 100 points (out of 800). Students will be graded on whether they created a blog and post after each video (at least 7 posts). Extra posts and commenting on classmates’ blogs will enhance participation grades.

In addition to the blogs, I want to pilot using Facebook as a discussion tool for class. I’ve joined and become addicted and already have had students “befriend” me. With the amount of time students report spending on Facebook, I think it would be great to harness some of that energy for the course. I propose creating a group that will be by permission only and will be accessible only to students in the class as a place to chat about course topics. I will encourage students to write on the wall of the group rather than writing wall-to-wall. However, the group interactions will most likely foster camaraderie among the students- a welcome byproduct.

Those are my thoughts. I am open to suggestions!

Spanish Composition Class

Frank and everybody,

Thanks for sharing all your ideas and for making the workshop continue through this blog and our Wiki.

I will start using Wikis for one for my classes next semester, and I am planning on start using them little by little in the Basic Spanish classes. Next semester I will be teaching a Composition Class. For this class we use a book called “Composition Through Literature”. In this book we read short stories, we answer questions related to them, we study some vocabulary and then we study some grammar. For this specific class I am going to use a Wiki for the vocabulary of each chapter, and we are going to have another one to do some creative writing.

1. Vocabulary

Idea
I am going to type some of the most relevant words for each short story (I already have them) on a Wiki. Then students and I are going to be giving definitions and examples of those words in context and in the short story. I am also thinking that it would be a good idea to have my students create some activities at the end of the Wiki.
How it’s going to work
I must also add that we read eight short storied in the semester which means we are going to have eight Wikis for vocabulary. Each Wiki will be a responsibility for two of the students (they are responsible for the “final product”) but everybody in class must participate in the Wiki (including myself).
How it was before
In the previous semesters, students have to do (in paper) some exercises from the book related to the vocabulary of each chapter and when we came to class we review some of those exercises. A problem I had was that only some of the would participate in the discussion.

2. Choose your own adventure

Idea
I went to a conference and in one presentation they talked how in a French class they are using Wikis for creative writing. What they do it’s divide the class in groups and each group it’s responsible for parts of the story. So I think it would be a good idea to have one creative writing paper along with the other papers my students write for this class.
How it’s going to work
I usually have fifteen students in this class so I was thinking to have three different stories for the class. The topics for each one of them could be: horror, love, sci-fi, or anything the students select. It is very important they chose their own topic. Then each student would write his/her part of the story. I have not decided how long it’s going to be but I am working on that.
The grade will be based in the final product, the process and the participation of each student from the group.
One final thing it’s that I will have a part in each one of the stories.
How it was before
I didn’t do anything like this before…so we’ll see how it goes…

I would like to add that since part of the grade comes from the final product, students will be responsible to highlight (no to correct) each other’s mistakes. I am also going to have due dates for each of the parts of the project so students will not wait until the last minute to do their parts.

Please let me know if you have any questions or more ideas.

Thanks,

Jaime.

Frank, it has been exciting to me to learn something new and different. Educating myself about the features of Luminis have been difficult enough for me. I am not a technology savey person and using Luminis was a stretch for me. However, now that I have my own Blog I feel the need to use it. I am going to include this blog on my Luminis course page and ask my students to refer to it before each class period. I may post pictures of anatomy or injuries, I may pose questions of interest, I may provide an assignment, or I may simply use it as a way to commuicate. Thank you for creating an atmosphere of learning that I could learn something new without hesitation or fear of failure. I hope my blog (Kauths Korner) will do the same. In the future I plan to put my picture and those of my students on the blog. We will see in the weeks ahead what it turns out to be.

Bill Kauth

IWU in Barbara Ganley's blog

Barbara has a great picture of the head above the McPherson Theatre entrance, plus she's posted her slides from her presentation in this post on her blog.

my other blog is a Porsche

It turns out that blogging, for the purpose of teaching or otherwise, is really a habit that has to be learned. The prolific characters of the "blogosphere" (don't get me started on the terminology thing!) are not the norm - most people don't take the time to publish their lengthy perspectives on the Universe multiple times a day. Most people have to think a bit rather than simply streaming their consciousness all over the 'Net.

I run or contribute to three or four blogs pretty regularly and I have to make a concerted effort to keep up that pace. In certain cases the habit can become something more, a regular idle-time activity. In others it can become therapeutic or even addictive. In still others the content is dry enough to make it clearly a task for work hours only. I just hope that a few teachers at Illinois Wesleyan give it that first bit of effort - set up feeds to consume the content (I'll help with that), then make it a habit to write a bit. Let's communicate!

Getting Started

All,

One final thanks to everyone for your participation in last week's workshop. Our ad hoc planning group from the Mellon Center, Ames, and IT have already met once to discuss how we can continue the conversation. We've got a plan for the summer, anyway.

In the short term, we plan to maintain the wiki as a repository of resources on instructional technology and pedagogy, including links to tools or articles that might be of interest. For those who need cyber-directions back to the wiki, here is the url:

http://iwu.wikispaces.com/

We have also created this blogspace as a venue to be used for comment and discussion. The IWU Teaching Blog will also be the place to post your plans for any new pedagogy or assignment that are incorporated in a course as a result of the workshop. You might remember that the Mellon Center will offer an additional $100 stipend for submitting a brief description of your curricular innovation. The blog posting need only be 250 words long.

To emphasize a conclusion we reached on the last day of the workshop, by "innovation" we mean one aspect of one course. For example, a single assignment or a structured component of the course's participation grade will be sufficient. Large-scale curricular revisions are great, to be sure, but certainly not expected or required for the nominal stipend.

One way to ensure that you get any new information from the workshop would be to subscribe to an RSS feed from our blog. You might remember that the RSS feeds can be delivered directly to your email client or web browser. If you have problems or questions on how to subscribe or on the options for subscription, please let us know.

Finally, some logistical details. The $250 stipend for participation in the workshop will appear in your July paycheck. Later in the summer, we will post an additional $100 for your blog posting that includes a description of your new pedagogical approach or assignment.

More later,
Frank