04/13/21

Final Project: Performance Grades in Higher Education

For this final task, I decided to research performance grades. This topic is meaningful to me personally as someone who’s always worried too much about grades. Inspired by the course readings, I decided to use this opportunity to research grades as technology – What information do they really carry about a student? Who needs this information? Are grades even good for students? How about teachers? Are there alternative options?

In terms of the form or representation, I chose to create a video to move away from the more habitual written form, and leverage the affordances of a documentary to showcase some of the concept maps and charts I created while doing the research.

Did you grow up in a family where you were praised for bringing As or maybe a numeric equivalent grade? Did you and your family members get stressed and upset if you got a C or a D? I know I did. In fact, I finished school with honours without really learning much. One thing I did learn really well though was how to get a good grade. Am I completely over that addiction to grades now, 20 years later? Unfortunately no. This documentary is my personal attempt to get a bigger picture and get myself out of this grade addiction.

04/4/21

Linking Assignment – Lori Jonesy

Click on the image below to access Lori’s blog.

Authoring Tool

Lori is using UBC Blogs as an authoring tool. Her webspace is full of subtle design decisions that express her personality and unique approach to the learning process.

Starting with the cover image and the quote she selected to repsent her mission, the logo that she designed, and the About page with a video introduction – all of these elements convey Lori’s work ethics, her energy, and commitment to excellence in everything she does.

Literacies

Lori’s understanding of UDL (CAST, 2018) and multimodalities (New London Group, 1996) comes through in the way she developed her About page. Her introduction is represented in a variety of forms – video, textual, and audio.

In fact, throughout the website, Lori consistently leverages the affordances of hypertext to add multiple of pathways for her readers to explore (Bolter, 2001). Her writing is thorough and scholarly, yet engaging and fun. Almost all of her posts are supplemented with youtube videos on related topics. I am not sure if she has seen some of these clips before or if she takes extra time to research and find just the right pieces for each of her posts, but I really admire this added depth and a variery of topics that I, as her reader, can move on to. I also feel inspired to embed more videos to my blogs now. Lori’s students are lucky to have such a committed and fun teacher!

Mode-Bending Assignment

It is not surprising then that Lori chose to make a video as a means of her re-imaged What’s In Your Bag assignment. A variety of video-making and editing skills come though in the film. Her skillfully-written script and and the artfulness and liveliness of the presentation reveal the many layers of Lori’s personality.

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York, NY: Routledge.

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org

The New London Group. (1996). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–93. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u

04/4/21

Linking Assignment – Dierdge Dagar

Click on the image below to access Dierdre’s blog.

Authoring Tool

Borth Dierdge and I chose to use UBC Blog as our webspace. Dierdre keeps her webspace design minimalist and free of excessive use of images or colors. Even the hyperlinks are subtle and do not interfere with the continuity of her narrative (Bolter, 2001). This design choice makes exploring her blog really easy on the eyes which I can appreciate given the amount of data we deal with daily.

Something that made it a bit hard for me to explore Dierdre’s posts was the absence of the menu. To help with navigation, Dierdre’s older posts are grouped in monthly archives, and there is also a possibility of scrolling down through her older posts.

Finally, I can’t help but notice that Dierdre’s posts are relatively long and very beautifully composed. This, to me, coupled with the above-mentioned design choices, represents Dierdre’s love for writing and text, as well as her literacy in using the written word to communicate ideas.

Network Assignment

I related to Dierdge’s interpretation of the Palladio networks in a number of ways. Both of us were puzzled by the way the Palladio algorithm divided us into subgroups and spent some time studying the connections in different groups and searching for answers. In her exploration of the connections between the participants, Dierdre went even farther as she also created some forced connections between the group members:

In her analysis of the WHYs behind the song choices in her subgroup, Dierdre found several connections, such as all of the group members being high school teachers and having similar song elimination criteria. This goes in contrast with my group, where the four members seem to have been grouped based on the differences, not similarities.

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York, NY: Routledge.

04/4/21

Linking Assignment – Meipsy Shackleford

I’ll be honest, for my last Linking Assignment post, I was set to look for a coursemate in either of the course streams who selected the same or similar song criteria for Task 8 – Golden Record Curation. Having spent quite a bit of time on that task in week 8, I became somewhat biased to the criteria that I had selected, and I felt quite surprised to learn that the people in my subgroup did not follow the same or similar criteria (not even close!). So I started searching for a ‘soulmate’ by looking at the blogs, one by one, with not much luck. That is until I saw the magnificent cover image on Meipsy’s blog! The deep green of the trees, the wind in the hair of Meipsy and her children up on the mountain slope – all told me I did not have to search any longer! As we’ve learned in the course, images are also technologies of meaning, able to create immediacy between the author and the reader (Bolter, 2001), and I think Meipsy uses the pictures on the Home and About pages very effectively to tell a story about the person behind the blog.

Click on the image below to access Meipsy’s blog.

Golden Record Curation

When reading Meipsy’s Task 8 post, she also found curating the list of 10 songs to be challenging. While my approach was to save the music of underrepresented cultures, Meipsy prioritized making a “good first impression of Earth”. Meipsy also listened to the podcast about the process of selection of the original Goldern Record songs and came to the conclusion that while the process of the debate was probably intense and lively, the resulting list is still biased to western songs. Further, something that we both have in common is that we were touched by the speech of Dr. Rumsey and her question ‘What can we afford to lose?’. Influenced by the music, the course readings, and Dr. Rumsey’s talk, Meipsy decided to choose the 10 songs to represent “a global diversity of music from around the world while also trying to show the various temporal diversities of sound of voice and types of instrumentation.” In contrast, I focused my selection on the songs of the Global South while also keeping in mind the distribution of the songs on the map.

To sum up, both of us seemed to have enjoyed the task and the process of searching for optimal and not-too-biased selection criteria, resulting in 5 songs in common – maybe not the most impressive quantitative closeness, but well-supported with the thoughtful approach to WHY.

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). The Breakout of the Visual. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110

04/4/21

Task 12 – Speculative Futures

I enjoy quality science fiction, but I am by no means a writer, so this task was quite a challenge for me. In my search for ideas, Dunne & Raby’s (2013) framework proved to be a helpful guide. Following the authors’ recommendations, I tried to make my narratives simplified and open to interpretation. One of my narratives was also inspired by the HyperHuman design (Core77 Design Awards 2019, n.d.), as it shows how AI could help us, humans, see through our biases and preconceptions and amplify our strength and potential.

My two speculative narratives are about the future of teaching and learning. In one, AI does all the marking for teachers, freeing their time for more important and creative work. In the other one, it assists students who study online and suffer from imposter syndrome. In a way, both of the futures are preferable (Dunne & Raby, 2013), but “for whom, and who decides?” (p. 4). Listen and decide for yourself…

Scenario 1: Feedback Wizard

Scenario 2: Marker Wizard

References:

Chapman, A. (2017). Using the assessment process to overcome Imposter Syndrome in mature students. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 41(2), 112-119.

Core77 Design Awards 2019. (n.d.). HyperHuman. https://designawards.core77.com/speculative-design/86821/HyperHuman

Dunne, A. & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Retrieved August 30, 2019, from Project MUSE database.

Parkman, A. (2016). The imposter phenomenon in higher education: Incidence and impact. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 16(1), 51.

03/12/21

Task 9 – Network Assignment

Intrigued by the task, I initially spent quite a bit of time playing around with the Palladium graph, studying the groupings, reconfiguring the networks, checking and unchecking different boxes in the menu, and creating countless screenshots, like this group screenshot below.

Once I felt I was starting to have more questions than answers, I turned to the reading materials on p. 9.1 seeking information to help me frame the answers. The videos on Networking Theory were helpful in providing some background knowledge and some key vocabulary on network theory. The readings were good for helping me see the bigger picture behind the task.

The 65B Network

Our network consisting of 18 students (nodes) was connected based on the song choices we made last week in the Golden Record Curation Assignment.

In our larger group, track #3 had the highest degree of connectivity (Systems Innovation, 2015), with 14 selections. On the other hand, Track 27 was only chosen once by Peter Jordan. When I turned to Peter’s blog to read why he chose this song, I learned he randomly selected his whole list. Due to his random choice strategy, he also did not choose the most popular track #3.

Based on criteria that I was not able to identify (hoping to find the answer in someone else’s post!), we were further divided into groups for easier processing.

Group 1 was quite unique since it showed a network formed between the two coursemates – Jennifer and Jasmine, who had only three tracks in common. There was nothing special or unique about these three tracks – all of them had the weight of 5 to 7. When I compared my song choices with Jennifer, I found out we were connected by four songs, which was not represented in the groups. So until I find a better answer, I will be considering the groupings to be accidental.

Group 5:

In my group, I was connected with three other students. By moving the edges around, I was able to get a better understanding of our connections. There were two tracks that all of us shared – track 4 (weight of 5) and track 12 (weight of 9). Additionally, I was connected by two songs with Judy and Megan, and one with Peter and Megan. Each of us had 2-3 selections that we did not share with anyone in our group.

Data interpretation

One obvious interpretation that one could make by looking at the graph is that the four of us either have the same taste in music or that we selected songs based on similar criteria. Luckily, we had access to each other’s blog to reveal the selection criteria.

To be honest, I was quite shocked after reading how each of my groupmates selected the songs (I am still gasping and shaking my head in disbelief as I’m typing these words!). I had expected to find at least some of the same criteria, but I found none (Was that the rationale for forming the group, Ernesto?).

Peter left it all to chance, justifying his strategy by bots making choices for us anyways. Interestingly, he was able to build quite a vibrant network of connections with his curated list.

Megan decided to experiment with selecting the list based solely on her personal music taste. She does not specify in her blog which songs she excluded and why.

Judy’s main selection criterion was a variety of musical instruments in the songs. Interestingly, her list contained only 8 songs instead of 10, and she also included the verbal greetings from a different part of the Golden Record. In contrast with my choices, Judy did not take into account the song distribution around the globe – 2 of her tracks are from Peru, 2 are from the US, and 3 are from Europe.

Reflection

I was expecting to find some commonalities among our choices, but what I found was more profound – we were grouped by the diversity of ideas and approaches. If we were to send our mini-collection into space accompanied by the chart above, aliens or the people of the future would learn that humans are very diverse, and approach the same task in a variety of ways.

What does it all mean and why does it matter?

The data visualization tool helps us understand how information is organized on the internet. In the overwhelming amount of data available online, search engines use AI algorithms to predict our needs and to provide information from sources with the highest degree of connectivity (code.org, 2017). While the search engines bias us into selecting the most weighed pages, I wonder if that is what we need. After all, cultures develop and evolve through differences, not sameness.

References:

Code.org. (2017, June 13). The Internet: How Search Works. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/LVV_93mBfSU

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 19). Network Connections. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/2iViaEAytxw

03/2/21

Task 8 – Golden Record Curation

This task was both fun and challenging. I enjoyed listening to a variety of musical pieces, although I kept wondering what criteria were guiding the people who selected those tracks. Inspired by Dr. Rumsey’s (1999) questions ‘What can we afford to lose?’ and “What would the people of the future want to know about us?’, my curated collection is an attempt to tell a story of diverse voices and rich multicultural past, to enlighten people of the future and help them build a better future.

When shortlisting the songs, I imagined the Golden Record traveling in time, not in space, so I focused my attention on the underrepresented cultures of the Global South (Whose Knowledge?, 2018). In a world where only 7% of the languages are represented online (Trancozo Treviño, 2020), digitizing media is a question of those cultures remaining in history. With our attention focusing more and more online, only the cultures with some digital representation can stay visible and make their voices heard (Smith, 1999).

After highlighting all of the songs from the Global South, I made further choices by selecting songs “scattered among many locations” (Smith, 1999). It was important to me to include songs with human voices and languages in them, due to their capacity to add depth to the local context and tell a more complete story about the cultures. When two songs were from the same region, such as the two tracks from Peru, I eliminated the one with male voices in it, since male songs overpopulated the record anyways, and I wouldn’t want the people in the future to get an erroneous idea of our world lacking female representation.

Of course, the resulting collection of 10 songs is by no means comprehensive, but it provides a variety of unique and multilingual songs that create a larger context in an attempt to decolonize the internet (Whose Knowledge?, 2018).

References:

Brown University. (2017). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose?”

Smith Rumsey, A. (1999, February). Why Digitize? Retrieved June 15, 2019, from Council on Library and Information Resources website: https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub80-smith/pub80-2/

Trancozo Treviño, M. (2020, April 14). The many languages missing from the internet. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200414-the-many-lanuages-still-missing-from-the-internet

Whose Knowledge? (2018). Decolonizing the Internet. (Summary report). https://whoseknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DTI-2018-Summary-Report.pdf

02/27/21

Linking Assignment – Erin Marranca

Click on the image below to access Erin’s blog.

While being very serious about my studies, I also really appreciate the coursemates (and instructors) who are not afraid to share their human side online. Such seemingly small actions as sharing a smile or a positive comment, turning on the camera, posting a picture of oneself on the blog – can reduce the transactional distance and increase the feeling of immediacy and belonging.

Erin was one of such positive people during the evening video meetings, which immediately drew me to her blog. Of course, the picture was there, accompanied by a warm informal greeting.

Authoring Tool

Like me, Erin chose to host her work on UBC Blogs. Some of Erin’s literacies that stand out are:

Logo design, Website design, Remixing

Some implicit skills that her webspace conveys are:

Attention to detail, Creativity, Imagination

Erin’s textual architecture deserves a special mention. Erin is very advanced at using hypertext – all of her posts are multilinear and interactive, giving the reader the freedom to explore a variety of pathways (Bolter, 2001). She really owns the course materials, interlinking the new information with her rich intellectual word.

Twine Task

Erin’s Twine game is a virtual gallery, which is not surprising, taking into account her background in print and book media, as we learn in her Task 4 post. Unlike my Twine, which is a story with a few possible scenarios, Erin is inviting her visitor to a virtual exhibition, which feels very spatial, due to her narrative style, the skillful use of hyperlinks, and the accompanying visuals created by Erin. I personally went back and explored each of the places in her imaginary world and only wished there were more places to go to.

It’s at times like this that I feel sad that we study online, without a chance to see one another in person, chat together over a cup of coffee, and get a closer look at each other’s story.

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Hypertext and the Remediation of Print. In Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Routledge.

02/27/21

Linking Assignment – Marwa K

Click on the image below to access Marwa’s blog.

I’ve known Marwa since winter 2020 when we studied in ETEC 524 together. Later, in the fall of 2020, we collaborated on the final project in another course. Being one of a small number of ESL learners in the program, I can relate to Marwa’s journey as a student at many levels. One obvious connection is that we are both immigrant women, bringing linguistic and cultural diversity to our learning community. On the other hand, precisely due to these differences, we at times might feel marginalized.

Authoring Tool

Marwa and I are both using UBC Blogs to host our content.

The first thing that I noticed about Marwa’s webspace is that she designed her own logo, which speaks to her literacy as a coder/web designer, and also the willingness to take time to make things look polished and put together.

Next, she creates an organized, well-designed space for her reader by using different design elements, such as text boxes and icons. She also added the ‘About’ page to introduce her reader to the blog and herself, the author – something I haven’t included in my blog due to time constraints.

Taking into consideration the course limitations, such as the inability to talk with the classmates, or the lack of weekly forums (so grateful for that!), Marwa communicates with others by leaving comments on their blogs. She also takes time to revisit the blogs and add to the discussions started in the comment boxes – something that is hard to keep track of, in my opinion, but Marwa is doing it masterfully.

To sum up, I feel grateful and honored to be studying alongside Marwa. Her commitment to lifelong learning is contagious, and I have learned a lot from her.

References:

Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., Kalantzis, M., Kress, G., Luke, A., Luke, C., Michaels, S. and Nakata, M. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard educational review, 66(1), pp.60-92.

02/27/21

Task 7: Mode-bending

While reading the New London Groups’ article (Cazden et al., 1996) I paused many times to think about my ESL students and how a lot of learning materials they encounter, including digital ones, are predominantly text-based. My students are adult newcomers to Canada, and as their teacher, I have a bit of influence on how they perceive the culture and values of the new society, as well as their role in it. With the technologies of meaning rapidly changing, teaching “mere literacy” is no longer enough. It is my responsibility as a teacher to help my learners embrace their “multiliteracies”.

I was also thinking about my little daughter and the multiliteracies she is going to have in her lifetime, some of which probably do not even exist yet. As her parent, my role will be to support her learning so that she becomes an effective citizen and an active designer of her social future.

With that in mind, I tried to create my presentation to account for the “increasing multiplicity and integration of significant modes of meaning-making, where the textual is also related to the visual, the audio, the spatial, the behavioral” (Cazden et al., 1996, p. 64). Inspired by the New London Group’s discussion of the power of diversity and the importance of maintaining own voice in the increasingly globalized world, I overcame the initial desire to record a voiceless interactive video. Instead, I decided to narrate the video and let my accent be heard, first, because it is a part of who I am, and second, because it adds to the diversity of our learning community.

Creating the multimode presentation proved to be a challenging task. Just finding the way to position my camera to capture only the table and my arms took quite a bit of effort. Next, I added the intro and outro images and traditions, downloaded and cropped a free soundtrack, and applied noise reduction to my audio file – none of which I had done before. All of that was done to accommodate viewers with diverse needs and preferences, by including the video, audio, and textual (open captions) forms of representation. This was also a personal attempt to increase my own digital literacy and become “well-versed in different semiotic modes, visual, textual, and verbal” (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009, p. 298).

References:

Dobson, T., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital Literacy. In D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 286-312). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.