psychology

Transmedia Literacy: Expanding the Media Literacy Frontier [Rutledge]

On 12/22/2014, in attention, digital storytelling, engagement / engaging students, innovation, new media literacies, participation, psychology, story, storytelling, transmedia, by Daniel Christian

Transmedia Literacy: Expanding the Media Literacy Frontier — from div46amplifier.com by Pamela Rutledge, PhD, MBA; Director, Media Psychology Research Center Adjunct Faculty, Fielding Graduate University

Excerpt:

Media literacy is an increasingly pressing issue for media psychologists and educators who strive to prepare people of all ages to function well in a media-rich, globally connected world. The ever-expanding integration of media technologies in our daily lives, from social media platforms to mobile apps, have challenged our understanding of just what it means to be literate in the 21^st century (Hobbs & Jensen, 2009). The emerging trend of transmedia storytelling will continue to push the envelope even farther. Transmedia storytelling goes beyond the need to segment such skills as search and collaboration. It demands the ability to recognize, understand, and interact with narrative threads across multiple modalities, not just within them.

Transmedia storytelling is the design and distribution of a story that is coordinated across multiple media channels. Each channel offers unique content, using the strengths of each medium to its best advantage to build a larger, richer story. Transmedia storytelling is intentionally designed for participation, drawing the audience in as co-creators to expand and develop the narratives.

Transmedia storytelling may not seem particularly different or profound until you consider that all information is translated into narrative in our meaning-making brains. We embody the stories we tell. Stories are how we assign causality, consciously process sensory input and imagery, and create associations so we can commit experience to memory. Stories are how we make sense of our selves, our lives, and our futures in the world around us (Polkinghorne, 1988).

Team-based content creation/delivery is pulling ahead of the pack!

On 11/04/2014, in A/V -- audio/visual, collaboration, communications, creativity, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital video, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, higher education, immersion, innovation, interactivity, learning ecosystem, love of learning, media/film, Michigan, multimedia, online learning, participation, play, psychology, real-world assignments, relationships, religion, social learning / networks, social media, society, sociology, story, storytelling, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, transmedia, universities, usability, user experience (UX), user interface design, using teams, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Last week I attended the 20th Annual Online Learning Consortium International Conference. While there, I was inspired by an excellent presentation entitled, “A Disruptive Innovation: MSU’s Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse – Are You Ready to Survive a New Way of Learning?“ The four team members from Michigan State University included:

Glenn R. Stutzky | Course Instructor
Keesa V. Muhammad | Instructional Designer
Christopher Irvin | Instructional Designer
Hailey Mooney | Course Librarian

Check out the intro clip on the website about the course:

From the description for the presentation:

This session highlights MSU’s award winning, groundbreaking online course that fuses social theory, filmmaking, social media, and viral marketing while students survive an apocalyptic event. http://zombie.msu.edu/

MSU created and used powerful digital storytelling and multimedia to overlay real, experiential, immersive learning. Important content was relayed, but in a way that drew upon your emotions, your ability to solve problems and navigate in a world where you didn’t have all of the information, your ability to work with others, and more.

“This innovative course integrates current research and science on catastrophes and human behavior together with the idea of a zombie apocalypse. In doing so, we actively engage with students as they think about the nature, scope, and impact of catastrophic events on individuals, families, societies, civilizations, and the Earth itself.”

“Our innovative approach to teaching and learning features: students as active participants, the instructor becomes the facilitator, storytelling replaces lectures, zombies become the catalyst of teaching, a “zombrarian” (librarian) drives research, and the students emerge as digital storytellers as a way of assessing their own learning.”

Others outside MUS have found out about the course and have requested access to it. As a result of this, they’ve opened it up to non-credit seeking participants and now various people from police forces, Centers for Disease Control, and others are able to take the course. To make this learning experience even more accessible, the cost has been greatly reduced: from $1600+ to just $500. (So this talented team is not only offering powerful pedagogies, but also significant monetary contributions to the university as well.)

For me, the key thing here is that this course represents what I believe is the direction that’s starting to really pull ahead of the pack and, if done well, will likely crush most of the other directions/approaches. And that is the use of teams to create, deliver, teach, and assess content – i.e., team-based learning approaches.

So many of the sessions involved professional development for professors and teachers – and much of this is appropriate. However, in the majority of cases, individual efforts aren’t enough anymore. Few people can bring to the table what a talented, experienced group of specialists are able to bring. Individual efforts aren’t able to compete with team-based content creation and delivery anymore — and this is especially true online, whereby multiple disciplines are immediately invoked once content hits the digital realm.

In this case, the team was composed of:

The professor
Two Instructional Designers
and a librarian

The team:

Developed websites
Designed their own logo
Marketed the course w/ a zombie walking around campus w/ brochures and a walking billboard
Used a Twitter stream
Used a tool called Pensu for their students’ individual journals
Made extensive use of YouTube and digital storytelling
Coined a new acronym called MOLIE – multimedia online learning immersive experience
Used game-like features, such as the development of a code that was found which revealed key information (which was optional, but was very helpful to those who figured it out). The team made it so that the course ended differently for each group, depending upon what the teams’ decisions were through the weeks
Used some 3D apps to make movies more realistic and to create new environments
Continually presented new clues for students to investigate. Each team had a Team Leader that posted their team’s decisions on YouTube.

They encouraged us to:
THINK BIG! Get as creative as you can, and only pull back if the “suits” make you! Step outside the box! Take risks! “If an idea has life, water it. Others will check it out and get involved.”

In their case, the idea originated with an innovative, risk-taking professor willing to experiment – and who started the presentation with the following soliloquy:

Syllabi are EVIL

Syllabi are EVIL and they must die!
Listen to me closely and I’ll tell you why.
Just want students to know what is known?
See what’s been seen?
Go – where we’ve been going?
Then the Syllabus is your friend,
cuz you know exactly where you’ll end.
But if you want to go somewhere new,
see colors beyond Red, Green, and Blue.
Then take out your Syllabus and tear-it-in-half,
now uncertainty has become your path.
Be not afraid because you’ll find,
the most amazing things from Creative Minds,
who have been set free to FLY,
once untethered from the Syllabi.

Glenn Stutzky
Premiered at the 2014
Online Learning Consortium International Conference
October 29, 2014

“The number of infected in Michigan has reached critical mass.” CSM Quintero #sw290 pic.twitter.com/F6m8ZaoRyG

— MSU Zombie (@MSUZombies) June 19, 2014

They started with something that wasn’t polished, but it’s been an iterative approach over the semesters…and they continue to build on it.

I congratulated the team there — and do so again here. Excellent, wonderful work!

By the way, what would a creative movie-like trailer look like for your course?

Teaching Metacognition: Insight Into How Your Students Think Is Key To High Achievement In All Domains [Briggs]

On 10/07/2014, in Australia, learning, learning ecosystem, learning theories, psychology, by Daniel Christian

Excerpt:

As it turns out, the difference between novices and experts in a wide variety of fields can be attributed to a single trait, the trait that prompts great writers to consider their readers: the ability to step outside of yourself.
…
Cognitive scientists called this new element of expert performance metacognition–the ability to think about thinking, to be consciously aware of oneself as a problem solver, and to monitor and control one’s mental processing.
…

Metacognitive practices help us become aware of their strengths and weaknesses as learners, writers, readers, test-takers, group members, etc. A key element is recognising the limit of one’s knowledge or ability and then figuring out how to expand that knowledge or extend the ability. Those who know their strengths and weaknesses in these areas will be more likely to “actively monitor their learning strategies and resources and assess their readiness for particular tasks and performances.”

Addendum on 10/15/14:

Thinking About Thinking: Reflection and Metacognition — from heutagogycop.wordpress.com by Stewart Hase

Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from Cognitive & Educational Psychology

On 08/15/2014, in learning, learning ecosystem, learning preferences, learning theories, psychology, student-related, by Daniel Christian

Excerpts:

In this monograph, we discuss 10 learning techniques in detail and offer recommendations about their relative utility. We selected techniques that were expected to be relatively easy to use and hence could be adopted by many students. Also, some techniques (e.g., highlighting and rereading) were selected because students report relying heavily on them, which makes it especially important to examine how well they work. The techniques include elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarization, highlighting (or underlining), the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, rereading, practice testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice.

To offer recommendations about the relative utility of these techniques, we evaluated whether their benefits generalize across four categories of variables: learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks. Learning conditions include aspects of the learning environment in which the technique is implemented, such as whether a student studies alone or with a group. Student characteristics include variables such as age, ability, and level of prior knowledge. Materials vary from simple concepts to mathematical problems to complicated science texts. Criterion tasks include different outcome measures that are relevant to student achievement, such as those tapping memory, problem solving, and comprehension.

…

Our hope is that this monograph will foster improvements in student learning, not only by showcasing which learning techniques are likely to have the most generalizable effects but also by encouraging researchers to continue investigating the most promising techniques. Accordingly, in our closing remarks, we discuss some issues for how these techniques could be implemented by teachers and students, and we highlight directions for future research.

Also see:

Sense-making Skills — from Harold Jarche <– with my thanks to Harold for posting this; this is where I got this item from
The lesson you never got taught in school: How to learn! — from bigthink.com by Neurobonkers

Does Studying Fine Art = Unemployment? Introducing LinkedIn’s Field of Study Explorer [Hwang]

On 08/14/2014, in art, Augmented Reality (AR), biology, business, career development, chemistry, computer science, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, design, drama/theater, engineering, entrepreneurship, geography / geology, higher education, history, instructional design, interaction design, interface design, K-12 related, leadership, liberal arts, library / librarians, marketing/social marketing, marketplaces, mathematics, MBA, media/film, music, new media literacies, organizational change, photography, political science, professional development, programming, psychology, publishing, reinvent, staying relevant, student-related, tools, user interface design, web design and production, workplace, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

Does Studying Fine Art = Unemployment? Introducing LinkedIn’s Field of Study Explorer — from LinkedIn.com by Kathy Hwang

Excerpt:

[On July 28, 2014], we are pleased to announce a new product – Field of Study Explorer – designed to help students like Candice explore the wide range of careers LinkedIn members have pursued based on what they studied in school.

So let’s explore the validity of this assumption: studying fine art = unemployment by looking at the careers of members who studied Fine & Studio Arts at Universities around the world. Are they all starving artists who live in their parents’ basements?

Also see:

The New Rankings? — from insidehighered.com by Charlie Tyson

Excerpt:

Who majored in Slovak language and literature? At least 14 IBM employees, according to LinkedIn.

Late last month LinkedIn unveiled a “field of study explorer.” Enter a field of study – even one as obscure in the U.S. as Slovak – and you’ll see which companies Slovak majors on LinkedIn work for, which fields they work in and where they went to college. You can also search by college, by industry and by location. You can winnow down, if you desire, to find the employee who majored in Slovak at the Open University and worked in Britain after graduation.

Self-directed learning for all? [modernlearners.com, Sylvia Martinez]

On 06/24/2014, in collaboration, heutagogy, K-12 related, pedagogy, psychology, relationships, teachers, teaching & learning, youth, by Daniel Christian

Self-Directed Learning for All? — from modernlearners.com
What do we mean by “self-directed learning,” and who gets to pursue it? All students? Or only some? Do we select certain students for these opportunities based on what counts as “good behavior,” for example?

How do we make sure that self-directed learning opportunities benefit all students? How do we balance students’ need for support with their need for freedom?

Author and speaker Sylvia Martinez writes in What a Girl Wants about the ways in which gender plays a role in education and explores how we can help support girls in self-directed learning opportunities.

An excerpt/quote from Sylvia’s article:

The teacher’s role is to help students move past what they know school usually asks of them and take a chance on something that they really want to do.

…

Some people assume that self-directed learning means solitary learning. This is far from the truth. Mardziah Hayati Abdullah of the US Department of Education writes that self-directed learning is both collaborative and social, where the learner collaborates with both teachers and peers. Students must learn how to navigate new ways of getting and sharing information with others, both in real life and online. Creating opportunities for self-directed learning means more collaboration and communication, not less, an area in which girls excel.

Also see:

Where the Internet of Things could take society by 2025 — from centerdigitaled.com by Tanya Roscorla

Excerpt:

The Pew Research Center Internet Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center released the report on Wednesday, May 14, as part of an ongoing future of the Internet series inspired by the Web’s 25th anniversary. Eighty-three percent of these experts, which included education leaders, agreed that the Internet of Things would have “widespread and beneficial effects on the everyday lives of the public by 2025.” The remaining 17 percent said it would not, and both camps elaborated on their answers in paragraph form.

Their explanations fall under six major points:

The Internet of Things and wearable computing will take major steps forward in the next 11 years.
Increased data from connected things will cause privacy concerns to come to the forefront and encourage the growth of profiling and targeting people, which will greatly inflame conflicts in various arenas.
Despite advancement in information interfaces, most people won’t be connecting their brains to the network.
Complicated, unintended consequences will arise.
A digital divide could deepen and disenfranchise people who don’t choose to connect to the network.
Relationships will change depending on people’s response to the Internet of Things.

From DSC:
As with most technologies, there will be positives and negatives about the Internet of Things. To me, the technologies are tools — neutral, not value-laden — and it’s how we use them that adds moral, political, legal, ethical, or social perspectives/elements to them. With that said, I’m quite sure that the IoT will have unintended consequences (#4 above). Also, item #5 — “A digital divide could deepen and disenfranchise people who don’t choose to connect to the network” — is especially troublesome to me, along with the topic of privacy concerns as mentioned in #2.

Will our children need to know how to interface with robots? — from quib.ly by Daniel Christian

Also see:

4 robots that teach children science and math in engaging ways– from scientificamerican.com by David Greer
Modular, programmable automatons make STEM learning fun

National All-Star [robot trading cards] Lineup for 2014 — from robotics.gatech.edu

CeBIT 2014: Three ways machine learning is changing the world — from businessinsider.com.au by Alex Heber

In defense of a liberal arts degree [Benett]

On 04/10/2014, in art, career development, corporate / business world, creativity, higher education, history, liberal arts, psychology, reinvent, staying relevant, STEAM-related, student-related, surviving, writing, by Daniel Christian

In defense of a liberal arts degree — from fastcompany.com by Andrew Benett
They might be getting overshadowed by STEM degrees in the news, but liberal arts degrees have a lot to offer their students.

Excerpt:

I know a lot of liberal arts graduates. I have hired a bunch of them. And I am one myself, having studied both psychology and art history. What I have found is that people with degrees in subjects such as history and literature–and, yes, even philosophy–tend to possess many of the qualities, skill sets, and aptitudes that are in highest demand in my own industry (marketing communications) and in others that rely on creative thinking and foresight.

In my experience, these are the areas in which liberal arts graduates really stand apart:

— Agility and adaptability
— Storytelling and persuasion
— Historical consciousness

Immigrants from the future [The Economist]

On 04/05/2014, in change, computer science, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, human-computer interaction (HCI), psychology, robotics, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Immigrants from the future — from The Economist
Robots offer a unique insight into what people want from technology. That makes their progress peculiarly fascinating, says Oliver Morton

The pieces in the Special Report include:

Research Application for the 21st Century: A Video for Every Scientific Article [JOVE.com]

On 02/05/2014, in biology, chemistry, online learning, physics, psychology, research, by Daniel Christian

Research Application for the 21st Century: A Video for Every Scientific Article — from jove.com on January 20, 2014

Excerpt:

Last week, JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, introduced a web application allowing scientists to view their text-based scientific articles in a 21^st century format.

Named the Ask JoVE button, this new web application, or bookmarklet, generates a collection of peer-reviewed videos demonstrating the techniques used in a given scientific paper. It offers researchers the opportunity to watch the crucial components of a procedure, thereby reducing experimental error and the time it takes to learn the experiment.

“We created this new feature because we want to visualize all the science literature in the world,” said JoVE’s CEO, Dr. Moshe Pritsker, “For every science article you read, click on the Ask JoVE button and immediately see videos of experiments related to this article, filmed at the best university labs.”

Balance, boundaries, & limits may be required; gaming brings its plusses & minuses

On 02/01/2014, in 21st century, attention, educational games / serious games, engagement / engaging students, interaction design, interactivity, K-12 related, love of learning, participation, psychology, the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

Some items/resources regarding gaming/video games as it pertains to education:

Bypassing the Textbook: Video Games Transform Social Studies Curriculcum

Teaching With Digital Games: a Video Case Study and Teacher Q&A with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Lisa Parisi

State Senate bill encourages learning via video games — from Murrow News Service by Matt Benoit

Higher Education Is a Massively Multiplayer Game — from educause

BETT 2014: Exploring the classroom of the future
From 3D gesture control to augmented reality textbooks, the classroom of the future will be more connected that ever before

Jane McGonigal.com

Learning Games Network

The 10 Biggest Trends in Ed Tech

.

Play to Learn: 100- Great sites on gamification — from top5onlinecolleges.org/gamification by Emily Newton

Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America — from joanganzcooneycenter.org by Victoria Rideout, January 24, 2014

Do Games Have a Future in Education?— from learndash.com by Justin Ferriman

Excerpt:

With the growing popularity in gamification and game-based learning, more and more conversations are being held about the viability of games in the educational sector (particularly K-12). Many are wondering to what extent should K-12 education use gamification in their learning.

The simple answer is that there really isn’t an exact answer. I think that using game theory in learning environments can prove useful (it’s been done in some capacity for years), but relying too much on it to drive home a lesson, or to teach the content, can be a mistake.

6 Lessons from the Trenches of Digital Learning Game Design at #ASTDTK14

However, excessive amounts of game playing can lead to addictions. This is a real concern. Consider the items below.

Video Game Addiction No Fun –– from WebMd.com
Compulsive video gaming is a modern-day psychological disorder that experts tell WebMD is becoming more and more popular.

How to stop video game addiction?

Video game addiction.org

End a Video Game Addiction

Avoid Video Game Addiction

Online gaming addiction in children and adolescents:
A review of empirical research
.

Online gaming addiction similar to alcoholism, gaming industry should pay for treatment, says new S Korea proposal

How to prevent and deal with video game addiction — from shelbycounselingassociates.org

Bottom line: Balance, boundaries, and limits will likely be needed here — at least in some/certain cases.

Addendum on 2/3/14:

Gamification in the Classroom — from seriousgames.msu.edu by Lissy Torres
Excerpt:
MSU’s meaningful play faculty and students came together on Wednesday to listen to Scott Nicholson, a game designer and board game enthusiast, give a talk on gamification. Nicholson currently teaches at Syracuse University, where he employs gamification in big ways through his undergraduate courses. But before we go into that, let’s have some more on the man himself.

Many of these presentations will be live streamed at:

Also see:

January 2014: Remote Webcast Locations

Proverbs 27:6

On 11/26/2013, in faith, hearts -- matters of the heart, psychology, relationships, by Daniel Christian

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” King James Version

or

“Wounds from a friend can be trusted…” New International Version

What if the hokey-cokey really is what it’s all about? Social networking & psychology of learning [Clark]

On 02/04/2013, in informal learning, instructional design, learning theories, memory, psychology, social learning / networks, UK, by Daniel Christian

What if the hokey-cokey really is what it’s all about? Social networking & psychology of learning — from Donald Clark

Excerpt:

Psychology of learning in 5 words
What makes good learning practice? Well, I always think the psychology of learning can be summed up in three words ‘less is more’. You could add another two ‘…and often’. There’s a number of established and well researched ways to improve memory and therefore learning:

Learning Ecosystems

Transmedia Literacy: Expanding the Media Literacy Frontier [Rutledge]

Teaching Metacognition: Insight Into How Your Students Think Is Key To High Achievement In All Domains [Briggs]

The Internet of Things will thrive by 2025 [Pew Research; Anderson & Rainie]

Immigrants from the future [The Economist]

Research Application for the 21st Century: A Video for Every Scientific Article [JOVE.com]

Calvin College’s January Series 2014: Some excellent presentations coming up!

Proverbs 27:6

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