There’s something powerful that occurs when people shift from being content consumers to content creators in the public sphere. Suddenly you’re the creator of intellectual property, you’re a digital citizen, and you have a responsibility and an accountability.

I recently had a discussion with a classmate regarding the requirement to upload Creative Commons content to WikiMedia spaces. He expressed frustration over the perception that any media uploaded to the public space of the internet is in public domain and should be freely usable. I realized that this general misconception prevails when people are primarily content-consumers rather than content-producers; that is they don’t yet understand the issues and foibles of web-presence.

I pointed out that in order to be a digital citizen and professional, I’m required and expected to post representations of my work (particularly as a designer) online. I post them on my own website that I pay for and manage myself. Search engines index the contents of my website (automated without explicit knowledge or permission) and then ‘served up’ the material to the world. We have no control over this process (logically material can’t be seen if its not indexed) however, that doesn’t mean I’ve given anyone permission to use my work as their own, to modify it, or heavens forbid to make money off of it through add supported revenue (yes, I’ve been a victim of this, forced to submit DMCA take-down notices as my only recourse). I’ve also installed several scripts to ‘tell’ search engines not to index certain directories and file types (jpeg, png, gif) but not all search engines pay heed to this. What about people that aren’t aware of how to do this or who don’t know any better? I decided to turn the tables and brought up the idea that in future he would be required to post papers, images/presentations, graphics even perhaps photos taken online, and that once one is a content-creator, he/she may feel very differently when this material shows up in some other person’s portfolio, or for sale somewhere (this happens more often than one would think). While I freely contribute creative commons photography, line-art and other materials, my designs are mine (or my clients). The way the web is currently structured, it’s up to citizens not to infringe upon people’s work. I don’t think this is a lot to ask, and corporations sue over this very thing every day. It’s individuals and self-starters who are most at risk.

Having students participate in blogs and other public means of online communication is particularly useful to help them make this shift from being content-consumers to content-producers. It also brings with it a better understanding of the many issues that surround digital participation, literacy and citizenship.

I was fairly amazed at the mature types of responses given by students with regards to the usefulness of educational blogging:

Alternate URL link here

 

Considering Boris’ situation

Boris has been teaching Chemistry 11 at a regional high school in the Bulkley Valley of northern BC for over a decade. He uses his school district’s Moodle server to disseminate lecture notes, lab forms and to answer student questions outside of class time via a discussion forum.

Over the years he’s found a distinct gap between some students’ performance in laboratory exercises and their exams. In particular they seem to have difficulty transferring what they learn about the Periodic Table in their labs (and readings) to their exam work. Some students do well, but they are those who find it manageable to memorize the entire table: students who cannot, who comprise about half his students in any given year, are the ones who struggle.

There isn’t a single hour of extra time for Boris to spend on Periodic Table review in class.  He does have some extra handouts to give students who want more practice, but knows these only scratch the surface – substantive review would require a more detailed and systematic approach.

Boris is trying to find some way to create a stand-alone, self-directed review tool for students learning the Periodic Table. It should allow students to review material, then test their knowledge. In a perfect world it would give students instant feedback that not only tells them if they’re right or wrong: it would give them formative feedback that helps them move towards the right answers.

 

When I saw this post I didn’t think I’d have enough time to address it along with all of the other things I have due this week (balancing 3 MET courses and PT work). I did have a bit of time on the bus to review the RSS feeds to read others posts regarding what Boris can do. I stumbled upon Kate’s very well thought out response and I realized that perhaps I could add to it. She suggested a plethora of really great existing Periodic Table resources so that Boris doesn’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel’.

What if he used a Moodle page and quiz tools to embed and test with some of these already existing resources to support his weekly labs and readings for extra practice? Also, if his students are having trouble applying or transferring knowledge, then perhaps the labs themselves are not adequately helping students to apply this knowledge?

Quizes and other Moodle tools can certainly be used to give instant feedback, they can also provide hints, links, and other resources to help complete tasks in practical ways. He can use the instant, general or question specific feedback boxes to direct students to very specific resources that can be used to improve their understandings. If he provides a number of these resources every week, pretty soon he will have a systematic stand-alone review method in place to help support his students. I’d also suggest that he also have a forum where students can submit links that they find helpful in relation to each week’s resources, this way he can amass a library of potential review sources.

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PS. Random creative sidebar: I found a few interesting images in my periodic table search:

Periodic table of Froot Loops

And my personal favorite, Periodic table of Typefaces (this would relate to my design course lol):

Since my Moodle course is a geared towards post-secondary students of design and dynamic media, I decided to add an activity that would fit with the curriculum I’ve been roughing in. The class is structured as an online companion to a face-to-face design class, extending opportunities for learning outside of classroom hours. In terms of course weight, studio courses are critical at 6 credits. Students cannot proceed to the next year without having successfully completed the studio class because this class serves to focus the years other required courses, and course electives. Everything learned in these other classes is applied in this one concentrated studio. It is understood and required that students spend a large amount of their own time prepping for, and working together on the materials for this course.

At the beginning of any design studio project students must explore topics of interest and present interest areas for the development of design solutions. For some this is easy, for others it is hard. Typically students will begin the exploration alone then present their areas of interest to their peers and instructor in class (or outside of it). Due to time restraints this usually happens in groups and not all students have the benefit of this in-person research and questioning. An opportunity lost is also the “legacy” that is left by these explorations for ALL students to read, absorb, learn, and ideate from peer ideas and posts. It is also difficult for students to keep track of what their peers are working on, yet they will have to intelligently monitor and critique peer work several times during the semester. In this sense an asynchronous forum is extremely beneficial because it allows for constructive presentation and feedback between peers over the long term. Students may at any time browse, comment and continue to monitor the progression of peer work as well as their own.

For my activity I decided to rough in my Module 1 > Week 2 activity “Areas of Interest”

You can log in using the username: Visitor
password: Password123!

I created a discussion forum for students to post their interim areas of interest and I asked other students to comment on at least 5 of their peers posts.

Students that spend long hours in the studio have the benefit of this discussion through a shared studio space, but students that cannot spend a large amount of time on campus tend to miss out on these opportunities. The asynchronous forum will allow these students to still engage and contribute in this process. Synchronous feedback in a community of inquiry or practice is also key as students must actively question their decision making processes; this often occurs organically through the spontaneous presentation of peer thoughts and ideas. I decided to create a single instance of a live chat activity to allows for a degree of this to take place outside of the studio. I also turned on the ability for students to create/add their own chat rooms in case the main chat is already in use.

(I’m still playing with the logistics of how this might be restricted to a certain class in a certain week so as not to overload or bog down the server.)

My rationale for including both synchronous and asynchronous activities was based on the opposing benefits and drawbacks for each activity and Anderson’s mention that “it is possible to combine synchronous, asynchronous, and independent study activities in a single course” (2008). I think that where possible, students can have access to these “optional synchronous activities” (2008) to enhance their learning, thus I made the asynchronous activity mandatory, and the chat rooms an added optional activity. I’m hoping that this type of approach can constitute the ‘right mix’ when applied thoughtfully and effectively.

I injected these at the beginning because “knowing what you know and don’t know focuses learning” (Chickering & Gamson in Garison et al., 2000). This seeks to make early use of student-driven “appropriate feedback on performance [… and] help in assessing existing knowledge and competence” (2000). I thought this would be a key opportunity to combine aspects of prior assessment, knowledge building and synchronous and asynchronous communication. Establishing this practice early hopefully helps to reinforce the high expectations set in the intro module, and also hopefully guides students towards a model of sustained inquiry and use of the meta-cognitive strategies that they will need to succeed through the term (you can read my related intro module post here).

 

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References

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Chickering, A., & Gamson, Z., in Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

 

 

This week’s instructional design scenario kicked me into icon-ideation mode. In the spirit of nerdity I thought I’d share my approach:

This was a complex problem with multiple factors. I’ve been taught that whenever there’s a large or messy situation you can best look at the whole picture if you extract the different pieces, re-arrange and play with them (yep, I said play). In this mode you can often come up with an idea you wouldn’t have otherwise. In IxD/INDD this is typically done with paper cutouts, icons or sticky notes to represent aspects, stakeholders or factors. People generally think this process is odd or silly but it does have a really important gain:

When you’re done forming a new representation of your potential solution you can then try to visually see if there are any holes, critical pieces left over, or items not well addressed before you invest time in development. This can lead to several “aha” moments where you test the validity of multiple ideas very rapidly (rapid viz). I’ve been taught that this is best done as a group to gain differing perspectives. I realized this week, that this class is innovative for me because it allows this sort of a text-based ‘design charrette‘ to occur on the forums. In total I had about 8 different  ideas (icon formations) to suggest potential change, but my document was huge so I tapered it down. I represented the situation visually, then offered the community solution that was best supported by our readings. The neat part about this approach (and the approach we use on the forums) is it can actually reveal several valid strategies and I always look forward to reading those provided by my peers.

In terms of the problem scenario, volume of communications was one of the main issues communicated in this case; having 4 or more means of teacher-student communication amongst 150 students is not sustainable. I suggested that Trinh set down some firm rules regarding teacher-student communication and restrict email/personal communications to one main avenue, perhaps within/through Blackboard itself. I also made a few other suggestions with regards to the formation of a learning community:

Anderson states that “emerging best practices now recognize the flow of communication in online courses to be much less ‘teachercentric,’ […] teachers do not have to respond immediately to every student question and comment, and playing a less dominant role in class discourse can actually support the emergence of greater learner commitment and participation” (2008). Trinh can easily add an auto-responder to her own email instructing students to post questions in the forums, she can also add something to this effect on her blog and twitter. This means that she is freed up to perhaps employ a model of student-student help and interaction through the use of help forums and peer forums.

This supports the learner-centered model that Trinh is ‘committed’ to where “appropriate combinations of asynchronous and synchronous voice, text, and video” (2008), can support a learner-centered environment. Perhaps now is the time to develop on the asynchronous activities. She could use ‘technology as lever’ in this case to divide the large community of 150 students into smaller groups, employing a peer model of reciprocal co-teaching. Blackboard provides several tools to facilitate this.

 

For my oddball exploration I used quirktools.com>wires  😉

Since part of my flightpath deals with exploring, pushing and manipulating LMS frameworks to do things that aren’t necessarily a ‘typical’ use scenario, I spent a lot of time hijacking the normal course layout (after deciding on the aims, goals, needs and appropriate interactivities and materials that is).

Once I had thought about and composed the items listed above, I decided to create a sitemap to figure out what my layout would look like. I used a free service called Smaps for this.

In my graduating project at ECU I did a few general student surveys regarding students’ feelings towards using Moodle and their impressions of usability (part of the ethnographic research process). This was actually the reason that I took this approach.

 

One of problems frequently identified was the ‘endless scroll’ format and bread-crumb navigation. Many of the students expressed their wish that it behave more like a website or blog, so I wanted to play with this idea.

I used a short youtube video on making Moodle behave like a webpage to inform my approach and also brushed up on my inline CSS styling and HTML skills at Code Academy.

I realized that the top section or course “summary” always stays at the top of the page, so it’s a good place to put a static site banner and navigation images/button that display on all pages.

The other thing that I realized is that I can create and link my “pages” to these buttons, then force Moodle to display only one page at a time.

 

This essentially ‘hides’ the long list of pages, showing them only when they are clicked on in the navigation. (I had to work with them all showing first, then switch to this when I was done to make it behave this way). Overall I had a lot of fun. I’m glad I attended to the important stuff first, then dove into the design/HTML code last. I was able to make the layout look nice by using inline CSS styles, and by creating content columns using divs. This saved me a lot of time since I tend to dive into design first. The overall verdict is that Moodle isn’t half as bad as I thought, it does perhaps have some flexibility in terms of course design that other LMS’s might not offer. It does require a lot of work though :\

If you’re interested, you can read my reflection post and access my non-UBC Moodle site on this page: https://blogs.ubc.ca/bobbik565a/intro-module/

I’ve realized that I’m a visual representations kind of girl… more specifically I’m a big believer in visual organizers.

Why? We’ve been provided a number of key and important frameworks in this class that I want to be able to return to (on an ongoing basis) to inform my decision-making processes. I realized that while I might remember how one aspect of a key framework can benefit my thinking, I can’t possibly remember everything. It’s neither accessible nor efficient to have to continually re-scan texts in order to identify which aspects fit or don’t, or why one framework might be of more use than another. Basically I feel like these frameworks and their specifics get marooned in a text somewhere, so I’m trying a new approach this term. I started a Google spreadsheet with each framework in a tab/table and summarized the specifics beside it. This allows me to organize, to (hopefully) retain something in the process, and to create a quick reference that I can pick at and draw from. Each sheet/tab links to a copy of the full text so that I can re-read when I need to dive in deeper. This seems infinitely easier to keep myself organized and is working admirably for my ETEC 510 class. This week’s activity allowed me to test it, so my approach with it was a bit of a science experiment!
Here’s a peek at what I’ve got so far:

 

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I posted my (roughed) in flightpath today. I found it really hard to map because it is really an extension of my undergrad tradjectory. In IxD/ID we pursue and develop on the same project sometimes for a few weeks, a semester, or a year or more in our final year of study. My project has turned into a bit of a mission, extending into the MET. The process is not without fear and trepidation. In my undergrad I was allowed to stretch the limits, to play,  and to explore, and I think that I can do the same here but I feel as though my path will continue to change and evolve… so I’ve decided to continue to amend it as the course play out.

You can check it out here, all thoughts and suggestions are welcome!

https://blogs.ubc.ca/bobbik565a/flight-path/

Sometimes I feel a little bit like an oddball in the MET. I’m not really a teacher (yet) but an active investigator, a communicator, a re-mixer, a splicer, a co-creator and an experimenter. I am in love with learning and helping others to learn, particularly with regards to new technologies and new creative endeavors. I really do struggle with questions that relate to teaching practice because I’m still learning how to teach. I imagine you never stop learning new ways to teach if you are passionate about it.

My undergrad at ECU was a unique experience. We didn’t always take classes in rooms with desks but sometimes in hallways, outside, on benches, in galleries and in uniquely constructed studio spaces. Sometimes door handles had knitted cozies, walls were covered in sticky notes and studio spaces with blocks, carpets, cardboard models and plastic forms. The interactions in these spaces are strange, exciting and fruitful but our online materials boring and neglected. Laptops are mandatory and Moodle the dry morning chore. Can Moodle be exciting? Can it be visual and stimulating while catering to the needs of the caffeine-primed creative? I’d like to think so. I keep thinking back to the tools that I’ve seen students of design and dynamic media use the most online so I’m starting a list for inspiration.

Sitemaps, wireframes,

Visual maps – Mural.ly, Pinterest, GoVisually,

Images – CC Images Search

Critique/Collab – Marqueed, RedPen, Evernote, Bounce, Skype, Google Docs, Google Hangouts

 

Hello everyone, my name is Bobbi and I’m a ‘creative’ nerd. I recently finished my undergrad at Emily Carr University in Interaction (IxD) and Industrial Design (ID). My goal is to eventually help with the redesign of new LMS and CMS solutions and to be an instructional designer. I’m hoping to do this for creative institutions as I’m in love with the idea of facilitating design studio culture on the web.