Interactive app brings 4th-century thinker to life— from campustechnology.com by Toni Fuhrman At Villanova University, a student-developed app version of Augustine’s Confessions brings contemporary vitality and relevance to a classic 4th-century work.
Excerpt:
Augustine of Hippo, who lived from A.D. 354 to 430, might be surprised to find his Confessions in circulation today, including a number of e-book versions. Still widely read, popular in great books programs and studied in university classes, The Confessions of St. Augustine is autobiography and confession, spiritual quest and emotional journey.
One of the most recent electronic versions of the Confessions is an interactive app developed at Villanova University (PA), the nation’s only Augustinian Catholic University. Released three months ago on Augustine’s birthday (Nov. 13), the Confessions app is required for all freshmen as part of a “foundation” course. Available for both Apple and Android devices, the app includes the 13 books of the Confessions, authoritative commentaries, photo gallery, timeline, map and text-highlighted audio, as well as search, note-taking, annotation and bookmark options.
“What better way to reflect on and update this struggle than for today’s students to use technology to bring the text to life through visual, audio and analytical components?”
From DSC: Love the idea. Love the use of teams — including students — to produce this app!
Completely realistic holograms, that will be generated when you pass a sensor, are coming to the high street.
Some will be used to advertise, others will have the ability to interact with you, and show you information. In shops, when you find a shirt you like, the technology is now here to bring up a virtual clothes rail showing you that same shirt in a variety of colours, and even tell you which ones are in stock, all using the same jaw-dropping imaging we have previously only experienced wearing 3D glasses at the cinema.
Holograms, augmented reality – which superimposes technology over the real world – and virtual reality (VR), its totally immersive counterpart, are tipped to be the hot trends in retail next year. Pioneers of the technology are set to find increasingly entertaining, useful and commercially viable ways of using it to tempt people into bricks-and-mortar stores, and fight back against the rise of online shopping.
WaveOptics’ technology could bring physical objects, such as books, to life in new ways
Completely realistic holograms, that will be generated when you pass a sensor, are coming to the high street.
From DSC: What might our learning spaces offer us in the not-too-distant future when:
Sensors are built into most of our wearable devices?
Our BYOD-based devices serve as beacons that use machine-to-machine communications?
When artificial intelligence (AI) gets integrated into our learning spaces?
When the Internet of Things (IoT) trend continues to pick up steam?
Below are a few thoughts/ideas on what might be possible.
A faculty member walks into a learning space, the sensors/beacons communicate with each other, and the sections of lights are turned down to certain levels while the main display is turned on and goes to a certain site (the latter part occurred because the beacons had already authenticated the professor and had logged him or her into the appropriate systems in the background). Personalized settings per faculty member.
A student walks over to Makerspace #1 and receives a hologram that relays some 30,000-foot level instructions on what the initial problem to be solved is about. This has been done using the student’s web-based learner profile — whereby the sensors/beacons communicate who the student is as well as some basic information about what that particular student is interested in. The problem presented takes these things into consideration. (Think IBM Watson, with the focus being able to be directed towards each student.) The student’s interest is piqued, the problem gets their attention, and the stage is set for longer lasting learning. Personalized experiences per student that tap into their passions and their curiosities.
The ramifications of the Internet of Things (IoT) will likely involve the classroom at some point. At least I hope they do. Granted, the security concerns are there, but the IoT wave likely won’t be stopped by security-related concerns. Vendors will find ways to address them, hackers will counter-punch, and the security-related wars will simply move/expand to new ground. But the wave won’t be stopped.
So when we talk about “classrooms of the future,” let’s think bigger than we have been thinking.
The IoT has major implications for our everyday lives at home, as well as in medicine, retail, offices, factories, worksites, cities, or any structure or facility where people meet and interact.
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The first application for meetings is the facility where you meet: doors, carpet, lighting, can all be connected to the Internet through sensors. You can begin to track where people are going, but it’s much more granular.
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Potentially you can walk into a meeting space, it knows it’s you, it knows what you like, so your experience can be customized and personalized.
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Right now beacons are fairly dumb, but Google and Apple are working on frameworks, building operating systems, that allow beacons to talk to each other.
Addendum on 1/14/16:
Huddle Space Products & Trends for 2016— from avnetwork.com by Cindy Davis Excerpt:
“The concept is that you should be able to walk into these rooms, and instead of being left with a black display, maybe a cable on the table, or maybe nothing, and not know what’s going on; what if when you walked into the room, the display was on, and it showed you what meeting room it was, who had the meeting room scheduled, and is it free, can just walk in and I use it, or maybe I am in the wrong room? Let’s put the relevant information up there, and let’s also put up the information on how to connect. Although there’s an HDMI cable at the table, here’s the wireless information to connect.
It’s a vision that involves a multitude of technologies — technologies and trends that we continue to see being developed and ones that could easily converge in the not-too-distant future to offer us some powerful opportunities for lifelong learning!
Consider that in won’t be very long before a learner will be able to reinvent himself/herself throughout their lifetime, for a very affordable price — while taking ala carte courses from some of the best professors, trainers, leaders, and experts throughout the world, all from the comfort of their living room. (Not to mention tapping into streams of content that will be available on such platforms.)
So when I noticed that Lynda.com now has a Roku channel for the big screen, it got my attention.
Lets add a few more pieces to the puzzle, given that some other relevant trends are developing quite nicely:
tvOS-based apps are now possible — and already there are over 2600 of them and it’s only been a month or so since Apple made this new platform available to the masses
Now, let’s add the ability to take courses online via a virtual reality interface — globally, at any time; VR is poised to have some big years in 2016 and 2017!
Lynda.com and LinkedIn.com’s fairly recent merger and their developing capabilities to offer micro-credentials, badges, and competency-based education (CBE) — while keeping track of the courses that a learner has taken
The need for lifelong learning is now a requirement, as we need to continually reinvent ourselves — especially given the increasing pace of change and as complete industries are impacted (broadsided), almost overnight
Big data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to pick up steam; for example, consider the cognitive computing capabilities being developed in IBM’s Watson — which should be able to deliver personalized digital playlists and likely some level of intelligent tutoring as well
Courses could be offered at a fraction of the cost, as MOOC-sized classes could distribute the costs over a greater # of people and back end systems could help grade/assess the students’ work; plus the corporate world continues to use MOOCs to cost-effectively train their employees across the globe (MOOCs would thrive on such a tvOS-based platform, whereby students could watch lectures, demonstrations, and simulations on the big screen and then communicate with each other via their second screens*)
As the trends of machine-to-machine communications (M2M) and the Internet of Things (IoT) pick up, relevant courses/modules will likely be instantly presented to people to learn about a particular topic or task. For example, I purchased a crib and I want to know how to put it together. The chip in the crib communicates to my Smart TV or to my augmented reality glasses/headset, and then a system loads up some multimedia-based training/instructions on how to put it together.
Streams of content continue to be developed and offered — via blogs, via channels like Periscope and Meerkat, via social media-based channels, and via other channels — and these streams of multimedia-based content should prove to be highly useful to individual learners as well as for communities of practice
Anyway, these next few years will be packed with change — the pace of which will likely take us by surprise. We need to keep our eyes upward and outward — peering into the horizons rather than looking downwards — doing so should reduce the chance of us getting broadsided!
*It’s also possible that AR and VR will create
a future whereby we only need 1 “screen”
Addendum: After I wrote/published the item above…it was interesting to then see the item below:
MUNICH, Dec. 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the opening of its global headquarters for Watson Internet of Things (IoT), launching a series of new offerings, capabilities and ecosystem partners designed to extend the power of cognitive computing to the billions of connected devices, sensors and systems that comprise the IoT. These new offerings will be available through the IBM Watson IoT Cloud, the company’s global platform for IoT business and developers.
7 trends that will revolutionize online learning — from ecampusnews.com by Andrew Barbour A look at new tools and new opportunities to create an instructional experience that is not only different, but better, taking online learning in mainstream higher ed to the next level.
Excerpt:
eCampus News looks at seven trends that have the potential to remake the world of online learning.
Blended Learning Is the Sweet Spot
Video Is King
Interactivity, Not Talking Heads
Mobile Is a Must
Identity Verification and Cheating
Auto-grading
Open, Intuitive Platforms
From DSC: I appreciated their thoughts re: adding interactivity to videos. A team-based approach may be helpful here.
8 characteristics of good online video — from ecampusnews.com by Meris Stansbury Instructor-led video is a must in online learning, but not all videos are successes. Here are eight tips to help educators create effective online videos for their courses.
Excerpt:
According to a report published in the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, instructor-generated video can have a positive influence on student satisfaction with, and engagement in, online courses. But not all videos are created equal.
Research conducted by the American Academy of Neurology also reveals that “watching videos helps boost brain plasticity,” or the ability of the brain to undergo physical changes at any age. Learners who were trained to perform a particular task through videos performed better than those who learned through images and text, the researchers found—and they concluded that video has a “higher impact on the brain.”
However, researchers emphasize that the format of the video, its platform, and the subject are all variables in the video’s effectiveness.
“Creating interesting, professional videos does take some planning and technical skill,” says eLearn Magazine. “There’s also a fear of perceived high cost. But none of these barriers are insurmountable. By employing … tips to know when to use it, how to maximize its effectiveness, and how to keep costs reasonable, you can make video a key part of your next online course.”
Here are eight tips to help educators create videos for their online courses…
From DSC: A quick reflection here. Frame rates, compression, having the right equipment and recording facilities, how best to frame a shot, knowing about proper lighting and placement of microphones, and more…hmmm…and we expect the faculty member to know/do all this as well as keep up with their knowledgeabase of their particular discipline? Not likely in many cases. Time’s too limited — even if all of the required gifts and/or interest levels were there (which is asking a lot).
This is why I’m big onusing TEAMS of specialists.Depending upon the quality of your products/services that your organization is willing to accept, flipping the classroom or using video in online-based learning requires a team of specialists.
From DSC: The world of learning lost a great contributor last Friday when Jay Cross passed away.
To me, Jay modeled lifelong learning — not only helping others to learn and to grow, but also seeking to do those very things himself. For example, he was constantly trying out new tools, experimenting with them, learning about them, and then taking what works and discarding the rest. He’d pick up a new web-based collaboration tool, make a recording, and then move onto something else.
He was a founding member of a great, collaborative team in theInternet Time Alliance, where members included Jay, Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings, Clark Quinn, and Paul Simbeck-Hampson.
One area of all of our learning ecosystems involves informal learning, something that Jay stressed and had a tremendous influence on. More recently, he tackled theThe Real Learning Projectwhich “aims to help millions of people learn to learn, increase their intelligence, and realize their life goals.”
We’re thrilled to announce that Coursera content will now be available onApple TV.
Since our beginning, one of our primary goals has been to make learning more accessible for everyone. Our mobile platform brought an on-demand learning experience to people’s busy, on-the-go lifestyles, and now, we’re extending availability to your home. Regardless of where in the world you are located, you’ll now be able to learn from top university professors and renowned experts without the expense of travel or tuition.
TV availability isn’t only a first for Coursera—it marks Apple TV’s first ever introduction of online learning to its platform. Everything you can do online at Coursera, you’ll now be able to do from the comfort of your own living room:browse our entire catalogue of courses, peruse new topics, and watch videos from some of the top academic and industry experts.
From DSC: Coursera takes us one step closed to a very powerful learning platform — one that in the future will provide a great deal of intelligence behind the scenes. It’s likely that we will be using personalized, adaptable, digital learning playlists while enjoying some serious levels of interactivity…while also making use of web-based learner profiles (the data from which will either be hosted at places like LinkedIn.com or will be fed into employers’ and universities’ competency-based databases). The application development for tvOS should pick up greatly, especially if the collaboration capabilities are there.
For example, can you imagine marrying the functionalities that Bluescape provides with the reach, flexibility, convenience, and affordances that are unfolding with the new Apple TV?
Truly, some mind-blowing possibilities are developing. In the not too distant future, lifelong learning won’t ever be the same again (not to mention project-related work).
This is why I’m big on the development and use of team of specialists — as an organization may have
a harder time competing in the future without one.
On their way to this month’s 70th United Nation’s General Assembly, the organization’s annual high-level meeting in New York, diplomats and world leaders will pass by a makeshift glass structure—both a glossy multi-media hub, and a gateway to an entirely different world.
The hub uses virtual reality to allow the UN attendees to see Jordan’s Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees through the eyes of a little girl. And, by using an immersive video portal, which will launch later this week, they will have the opportunity to have face-to-face conversations with residents of the camp.
The effort aims to put a human face on the high-level deliberations about the refugee crisis, which will likely dominate many conversations at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called on the meeting to be “one of compassion, prevention and, above all, action.”
From DSC: VR-based apps have a great deal of potential to develop and practice greater empathy. See these related postings:
When it comes to virtual reality, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County is going for full immersion.
Armed with funding from the National Science Foundation, the university is set to build a virtual reality “environment” that’s designed to help researchers from different fields. It’s called PI2.
In the 15-by-20-foot room, stepping into virtual reality won’t necessarily require goggles.
A visualization wall at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Lab.
UMBC officials say their project will be similar to this.(Photo courtesy of Planar)
Now you’re ready to turn your class into an immersive game, and everything you need is right here. With the help of these resources, you can develop your own gameful class, cook up a transmedia project, design a pervasive game or create your very own [Augmented Reality Game] ARG. Games aside, these links are useful for all types of creative learning projects. In most cases, what is on offer is free and/or web based, so only your imagination will be taxed.
If augmented reality could be a shared experience, it could change the way we will use the technology.
Something along these lines is currently in development at a Microsoft laboratory run by Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of VR since the 1980s through his company VPL Research. The project, called Comradre, allows multiple users to share virtual- and augmented-reality experiences, reports MIT Technology Review.
Because virtual reality takes place in a fully digital environment, it is not hugely difficult to put multiple users into the same virtual instance at the same time, wirelessly synced across multiple headsets.
vrfavs.com— some serious VR-related resources for you. Note: There are some NSFW items on there; so this is not for kids.
Together, virtual reality and augmented reality are expected to generate about $150 billion in revenue by the year 2020.
Of that staggering sum, according to data released today by Manatt Digital Media, $120 billion is likely to come from sales of augmented reality—with the lion’s share comprised of hardware, commerce, data, voice services, and film and TV projects—and $30 billion from virtual reality, mainly from games and hardware.
The report suggests that the major VR and AR areas that will be generating revenue fall into one of three categories: Content (gaming, film and TV, health care, education, and social); hardware and distribution (headsets, input devices like handheld controllers, graphics cards, video capture technologies, and online marketplaces); and software platforms and delivery services (content creation tools, capture, production, and delivery software, video game engines, analytics, file hosting and compression tools, and B2B and enterprise uses).
Talking about augmented reality technology in teaching and learning the first thing that comes to mind is this wonderful app called Aurasma. Since its release a few years ago, Aurasma gained so much in popularity and several teachers have already embraced it within their classrooms. For those of you who are not yet familiar with how Aurasma works and how to use in it in your class, this handy guide from Apple in Education is a great resource to start with.
The Oculus Touch virtual reality (VR) controllers finally have their first full videogames. A handful of titles were confirmed to support the kit back at the Oculus Connect 2 developer conference in September. But still one of the most impressive showcases of what these position-tracked devices can do exists in Oculus VR’s original tech demo, Toybox. [On 10/13/15], Oculus VR itself has released a new video that shows off what players are able to do within the software.
Much like sketching the first few lines on a blank canvas, the earliest prototypes of a VR project is an exciting time for fun and experimentation. Concepts evolve, interactions are created and discarded, and the demo begins to take shape.Competing with other 3D Jammers around the globe, Swedish game studio Pancake Storm has shared their #3DJam progress on Twitter, with some interesting twists and turns along the way. Pancake Storm started as a secondary school project for Samuel Andresen and Gabriel Löfqvist, who want to break into the world of VR development with their project, tentatively dubbed Wheel Smith and the Willchair.
Recently I learned about a new feature called Virtual Field Trips. In a partnership with 360 Cities, NearPod now gives teachers and students the opportunity to view pristine locations like the Taj Mahal, the Golden Gate Bridge, and The Great Wall of China. You can view famous architecture, famous artifacts, and even different planets! Virtual Field Trips are a great addition to any classroom.
Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., has opened a first-of-its-kind virtual reality learning center that’s been designed to allow students from every program—dentistry, osteopathic medicine, veterinary medicine, physical therapy, and nursing—to learn through VR.
The Virtual Reality Learning Center currently houses four different VR technologies: the two zSpace displays, the Anatomage Virtual Dissection Table, the Oculus Rift, and Stanford anatomical models on iPad.
Robert W. Hasel, D.D.S., associate dean of simulation, immersion & digital learning at Western, says VR gives anatomical science teachers the ability to view and interact with anatomy in a way never before experienced. The virtual dissection table allows students to rotate the human body in 360 degrees, take it apart, identify specific structures, study individual systems, look at multiple views at the same time, take a trip inside the body, and look at holograms.
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Addendum on 10/20/15:
Can Virtual Reality Replace the Cadaver Lab?— from centerdigitaled.com by Justine Brown Colleges are starting to use virtual reality platforms to augment or replace cadaver labs, saving universities hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A typical day at Altschool, the Bay Area-based school system that raised $100 million in venture capital in May, is anything but typical.
Kids take attendance on an iPad, complete a “playlist” of activities, and learn 3D modeling software to design a playhouse for the class pet.
Founder and CEO Max Ventilla previously helmed the personalization team at Google, where he helped build Google+ and other products that make the internet feel more personal.
His latest venture aims to transform the outdated, early-1900s model of elementary education for the digital age.
In May, we spent the day at AltSchool‘s Fort Mason location in San Francisco to see its revolutionary teaching style in action.
From DSC: Is there anything here that public schools would find attractive and/or could implement?
AltSchool divides students between the ages of 4 and 14 into three groups: lower elementary, upper elementary, and middle school. There are no traditional grade levels.
A typical day at AltSchool begins with attendance. As kids arrive, they sign in to the school’s attendance app on a dedicated iPad.
The attendance app is one of a dozen or so tech tools developed by the school’s 50-person product team, which includes former employees of Apple, Uber, Zynga, and Ventilla’s alma mater, Google.
The PLP is the foundation of the AltSchool experience. Teachers collaborate with families and students to design a set of goals for the learner based on the student’s interests, passions, strengths, and weaknesses.
Each child receives a weekly “playlist” of individual and group activities that are aimed at achieving those goals.This student is writing an entry for his blog on coin collecting.
Teachers pick activities for their students by creating items in their playlists or searching the My.AltSchool library to find items that other teachers have made.
This 8-year-old demonstrates a game of Pac-Man using MaKey MaKey — a simple circuit board that transforms everyday objects into touchable user interfaces …he attaches alligator clips to four mounds of clay and tapes one clip to himself. When he taps the clay and completes the circuit, the computer interprets the input as arrow key actions.
This streamlined instruction time frees up the teacher to walk around the classroom and interact face-to-face with students.
The lower elementary students spend the morning knocking a shared item off their playlists: “writing the news.” These guys are chronicling a recent trip to the park.
Many of the younger kids wear headphones during playlist time to drown out distractions.
Technology isn’t necessary to complete all activities, but it is used to document students’ work. This student takes a picture of her news clipping using an iPad and uploads the image to her playlist.
The classroom, like the tech, fosters AltSchool’s individualized learning approach. Students sprawl across the room on carpets, beanbags, and even lofts of their own construction.
Classrooms are treated like stations, rather than designated areas for particular grade levels, and students move from room to room throughout the day. It’s especially important for micro-schools to maximize space so that a four-room schoolhouse doesn’t feel cramped
Craft and cleaning supplies are stored where the smaller kids can reach them, giving them a sense of agency.
After lunch and PE in the nearby park, students put aside their playlists and work on more integrated group projects.
The middle-school students were tasked with a classroom redesign. This 11-year-old, who was wearing an Iron Man T-shirt, built a parkour course. He’s writing a parent permission slip on his Google Chromebook now.
His classmate learned from online tutorials how to use the 3D-modeling software SketchUp, and she designed an urban-garden-inspired seating area for the unused deck on the second floor. There’s an obstacle course inside the benches for a class rabbit to tunnel through.
Another student, who wants to be a veterinarian, lawyer, writer, and manga comic-book writer, grew an indoor tea garden. She says she loves how the assignments “bend to your ability.”
If Silicon Valley’s favorite elementary school has its way, personalization will remain king.
Harvard Business School‘s HBX digital learning initiative today launched a virtual classroom designed to reproduce the intimacy and synchronous interaction of the case method in a digital environment. With HBX Live, students from around the world can log in concurrently to participate in an interactive discussion in real time, guided by an HBS professor.
Built to mimic the amphitheater-style seating of an HBS classroom, the HBX Live Studio features a high-resolution video wall that can display up to 60 participants. Additional students can audit sessions via an observer model. An array of stationary and roaming cameras capture the action, allowing viewers to see both the professor and fellow students.
HBX Live’s virtual amphitheater (PRNewsFoto/Harvard Business School)
Convenience. I don’t have to travel to another city, state, country. That type of convenience and flexibility is the basis of why many learners take online-based courses in the first place.
Global — learning from people of different cultures, races, backgrounds, life experiences.
The opportunities are there to increase one‘s cultural awareness.
HBX Live is innovative; in fact, Harvard is upping it’s innovation game yet again — showing a firm grasp/display of understanding that they realize that the landscape of higher education is changing and that institutions of traditional higher education need to adapt.
Harvard is willing to experiment and to identify new ways to leverage technologies — taking advantage of the affordances that various technologies offer.
Anand, meantime, faces the images of 60 students portrayed on a curved screen in front of him, a high-resolution video wall composed of more than 6.2 million pixels that mimics the amphitheater-style seating of a class HBS tiered classroom
From DSC: I’d recommend that historians, geographers, geologists, archeologists — and many others as well — keep a sharp and steady eye on what’s happening with Virtual Reality (VR) — as the affordances that VR could bring seem very promising. Establishing collaborations with teams of specialists could open up some amazing learning experiences for learners in the future.
Virtual reality has been increasingly making its way into the museum experience. At London’s National History Museum, visitors can currently experience First Life, a 15-minute VR experience also using the Samsung Gear VR headsets, in which David Attenborough narrates a 3D journey depicting sea creatures from 500 million years ago.
Only a few major museums have hosted their own VR experiences, but several projects are working on bringing the museum experience to the masses using the technology.
Google recently launched its Expeditions project, allowing students equipped with a Cardboard headset and a smartphone to view materials from major institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History.
British Museum visitors will now be able to experience the past in a more vivid way. Apart from seeing the historical artifacts, you will be taken to the Bronze Age with the help of virtual reality headsets. You can don a Samsung Gear VR headset and explore a customary roundhouse from the Bronze Age. The exploration will consist of 3D scans of objects that are present in the museum. The museum is launching a VR weekend where this experience can be obtained.
… Recreation of Three Bronze Age Objects
Three Bronze Age objects have been digitally recreated and will be shown to the visitors through virtual reality headsets.
One is a gold object which was recently discovered and is still caked with mud. The second object is a splendid bronze Beaune Dirk, which is a princely dagger. However, its shape suggests that it was not meant to be used, as the blade was never sharpened and the end was also not attached to a wooden hilt. The third object is a twist of bronze which looks simple but is most enigmatic. Over 50 such loops have been found within 18 miles of Brighton. They were not found anywhere else in Europe. What they were actually, is still a mystery. Users will be invited to try a replica and provide their opinions.
Tech start up Alchemy Learning is using virtual reality as a tool for education.
“The ability to have a truly experiential learning moment has not been possible in traditional online education. Whereas with virtual reality you can see the students really are in a different world. They’re able to truly experience what’s around them,” Alchemy Learning co-founder Win Smith said.
“As an educator with 20+ years’ experience integrating technology into curriculum, it is exciting for me to see a technology that so quickly captures the attention of the students, motivates them to make the effort to learn the procedures, and then opens them up to the relevant content.“
-Larry Fallon,
Instructional Technology Coordinator,
Arlington County Public Schools
As faculty at colleges and universities are all too aware, it’s hard to do two jobs at the same time. Since the advent of the modern research university over a century ago, faculty have effectively held down two jobs: conducting (and publishing) research and teaching students.
Arguments for the dual-role professor seem logical. Knowledge production should make one a better instructor. Students should benefit from teachers producing the latest knowledge. But there’s precious little data to support that adding the research job to the instruction job improves student outcomes.
The downside is that both jobs require significant expertise and commitment to do well.
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There is an emerging consensus as to what works best for onground instruction. It’s called the Dynamic Classroom, and it looks like this:
Flip classroom so “transfer of information” occurs ahead of class
Incorporate technology in the classroom (handheld clickers or smartphone apps) to quickly ascertain whether students have understood key concepts
Integrate active learning techniques to improve understanding of key concepts, including peer learning, group problem solving, project-based learning and experiential learning via studios and workshops
Include “perspective transformation” exercises wherein students change their frames of reference by critically reflecting on their assumptions
From DSC: First of all, I second the idea of splitting up the responsibilities of researching and teaching. Both roles are full-time jobs and require different skillsets. With students paying ever higher tuition bills, students deserve to take their courses from professors who know how to teach (not an easy job by the way!).
But the unbundling doesn’t — and shouldn’t — stop with the splitting up of the teaching and research roles.
Let’s look at another of the instructional shifts that Ryan considers — and that is the move towards the use of smartphones and apps:
In this environment, we can imagine one app for Economics 101 and another for Psychology 110. They are also the ideal platform for simulations and gamified learning and can tailor the user experience further by incorporating real-world inputs (e.g., location of the student) into the material. But, like the dynamic classroom, apps require an unparalleled level of development and instructional expertise—a full-time job for faculty who will be teaching online.
I think there’s some serious potential with this approach, especially given the trend towards more mobile computing and the affordances that come with using mobile technologies.
However, when we start delivering teaching and learning experiences that involve the digital/virtual realm like this, we’re instantly catapulted into a world that requires additional skills. As such, I highly doubt that the majority of faculty members have the time, interests, passions, or the abilities/gifts to code such apps. They would have to simultaneously be (or become) a programmer/developer, an instructional designer, a graphic designer, a copyright expert, an expert in accessibility, instantly knowledgeable in user interface and user experience design, as well as continue to serve as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) — and I could list other roles as well. That is why we need TEAMS of specialists. If the trends towards moving more of our teaching and learning experiences online and/or into such digital realms continue, then our current models simply won’t cut it anymore, at least in the majority of cases.
I appreciate Ryan’s article and second the main idea of splitting up the teaching and researching responsibilities. But again, when we’re talking developing apps, we had better be talking employing the use of teams — or the students will likely not be better off.
At some colleges, media teams sit down with professors ahead of time and lay out long-term strategies to determine how video may enhance the learning experience of students in their courses.
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The media team offers instructors a number of planning worksheets to encourage them to think more about the purpose of videos in their courses.
This posting can also be seen out at evoLLLution.com(where LLL stands for lifelong learning):
From DSC:
What might our learning ecosystems look like by 2025?
In the future, learning “channels” will offer more choice, more control. They will be far more sophisticated than what we have today.
That said, what the most important aspects of online course design end up being 10 years from now depends upon what types of “channels” I think there will be and what might be offered via those channels. By channels, I mean forms, methods, and avenues of learning that a person could pursue and use. In 2015, some example channels might be:
Attending a community college, a college or a university to obtain a degree
Obtaining informal learning during an internship
Using social media such as Twitter or LinkedIn
Reading blogs, books, periodicals, etc.
In 2025, there will likely be new and powerful channels for learning that will be enabled by innovative forms of communications along with new software, hardware, technologies, and other advancements. For examples, one could easily imagine:
That the trajectory of deep learning and artificial intelligence will continue, opening up new methods of how we might learn in the future
That augmented and virtual reality will allow for mobile learning to the Nth degree
That the trend of Competency Based Education (CBE) and microcredentials may be catapulted into the mainstream via the use of big data-related affordances
Due to time and space limitations, I’ll focus here on the more formal learning channels that will likely be available online in 2025. In that environment, I think we’ll continue to see different needs and demands – thus we’ll still need a menu of options. However, the learning menu of 2025 will be more personalized, powerful, responsive, sophisticated, flexible, granular, modularized, and mobile.
Highly responsive, career-focused track
One part of the menu of options will focus on addressing the demand for more career-focused information and learning that is available online (24×7). Even in 2015, with the U.S. government saying that 40% of today’s workers now have ‘contingent’ jobs and others saying that percentage will continue climbing to 50% or more, people will be forced to learn quickly in order to stay marketable. Also, the 1/2 lives of information may not last very long, especially if we continue on our current trajectory of exponential change (vs. linear change).
However, keeping up with that pace of change is currently proving to be out of reach for most institutions of higher education, especially given the current state of accreditation and governance structures throughout higher education as well as how our current teaching and learning environment is set up (i.e., the use of credit hours, 4 year degrees, etc.). By 2025, accreditation will have been forced to change to allow for alternative forms of learning and for methods of obtaining credentials. Organizations that offer channels with a more vocational bent to them will need to be extremely responsive, as they attempt to offer up-to-date, highly-relevant information that will immediately help people be more employable and marketable. Being nimble will be the name of the game in this arena. Streams of content will be especially important here. There may not be enough time to merit creating formal, sophisticated courses on many career-focused topics.
With streams of content, the key value provided by institutions will be to curate the most relevant, effective, reliable, up-to-date content…so one doesn’t have to drink from the Internet’s firehose of information. Such streams of content will also offer constant potential, game-changing scenarios and will provide a pulse check on a variety of trends that could affect an industry. Social-based learning will be key here, as learners contribute to each other’s learning. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will need to be knowledgeable facilitators of learning; but given the pace of change, true experts will be rare indeed.
Microcredentials, nanodegrees, competency-based education, and learning from one’s living room will be standard channels in 2025. Each person may have a web-based learner profile by then and the use of big data will keep that profile up-to-date regarding what any given individual has been learning about and what skills they have mastered.
For example, even currently in 2015, a company called StackUp creates their StackUp Report to add to one’s resume or grades, asserting that their services can give “employers and schools new metrics to evaluate your passion, interests, and intellectual curiosity.” Stackup captures, categorizes, and scores everything you read and study online. So they can track your engagement on a given website, for example, and then score the time spent doing so. This type of information can then provide insights into the time you spend learning.
Project teams and employers could create digital playlists that prospective employees or contractors will have to advance through; and such teams and employers will be watching to see how the learners perform in proving their competencies.
However, not all learning will be in the fast lane and many people won’t want all of their learning to be constantly in the high gears.In fact, the same learner could be pursuing avenues in multiple tracks, traveling through their learning-related journeys at multiple speeds.
The more traditional liberal arts track
To address these varied learning preferences, another part of the menu will focus on channels that don’t need to change as frequently. The focus here won’t be on quickly-moving streams of content, but the course designers in this track can take a bit more time to offer far more sophisticated options and activities that people will enjoy going through.
Along these lines, some areas of the liberal arts* will fit in nicely here.
*Speaking of the liberal arts, a brief but important tangent needs to be addressed, for strategic purposes. While the following statement will likely be highly controversial, I’m going to say it anyway. Online learning could be the very thing that saves the liberal arts.
Why do I say this? Because as the price of higher education continues to increase, the dynamics and expectations of learners continue to change. As the prices continue to increase, so do peoples’ expectations and perspectives. So it may turn out that people are willing to pay a dollar range that ends up being a fraction of today’s prices. But such greatly reduced prices won’t likely be available in face-to-face environments, as offering these types of learning environment is expensive. However, such discounted prices can and could be offered via online-based environments. So, much to the chagrin of many in academia, online learning could be the very thing that provides the type of learning, growth, and some of the experiences that liberal arts programs have been about for centuries. Online learning can offer a lifelong supply of the liberal arts.
But I digress…
By 2025, a Subject Matter Expert (SME) will be able to offer excellent, engaging courses chocked full of the use of:
Engaging story/narrative
Powerful collaboration and communication tools
Sophisticated tracking and reporting
Personalized learning, tech-enabled scaffolding, and digital learning playlists
Game elements or even, in some cases, multiplayer games
Highly interactive digital videos with built-in learning activities
Transmedia-based outlets and channels
Mobile-based learning using AR, VR, real-world assignments, objects, and events
…and more.
However, such courses won’t be able to be created by one person. Their sophistication will require a team of specialists – and likely a list of vendors, algorithms, and/or open source-based tools – to design and deliver this type of learning track.
Final reflections
The marketplaces involving education-related content and technologies will likely look different. There could be marketplaces for algorithms as well as for very granular learning modules. In fact, it could be that modularization will be huge by 2025, allowing digital learning playlists to be built by an SME, a Provost, and/or a Dean (in addition to the aforementioned employer or project team). Any assistance that may be required by a learner will be provided either via technology (likely via an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled resource) and/or via a SME.
We will likely either have moved away from using Learning Management Systems (LMSs) or those LMSs will allow for access to far larger, integrated learning ecosystems.
Functionality wise, collaboration tools will still be important, but they might be mind-blowing to us living in 2015. For example, holographic-based communications could easily be commonplace by 2025. Where tools like IBM’s Watson, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google’s Deepmind, and Apple’s Siri end up in our future learning ecosystems is hard to tell, but will likely be there. New forms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) will likely be mainstream by 2025.
While the exact menu of learning options is unclear, what is clear is that change is here today and will likely be here tomorrow. Those willing to experiment, to adapt, and to change have a far greater likelihood of surviving and thriving in our future learning ecosystems.
Students are coming out of school expected to solve 21st-century problems and enter into occupations that haven’t even been imagined yet. Schooling is not designed in this manner, so we wanted to give students an opportunity to solve problems in authentic contexts, using 21st-century skills and collaboration techniques. We wanted to break down walls between classrooms and have students use interdisciplinary skills to solve problems with teams of their peers, with mentors, and with industry professionals.
Why a Hackathon?
Hackathons have become a new way of doing business, creating products, advancing healthcare, and innovation. The energy is high, and so are the stakes. Can you turn an idea into a product over the course of a weekend? But let’s move beyond that. Let’s look at the teaching and learning within a hackathon. Hackathons are really the ultimate classroom.
…
It is within hackathons that students are utilizing their skills and knowledge to solve problems. It’s project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and STEM all wrapped up into one activity! It’s about design thinking and truly a 21st-century learning opportunity. Students are working collaboratively within mixed-ability groups to examine problems and come up with solutions.
… Benefits For Students
A huge learning factor is failure. Often, school protects students from failure, and students always manage to mix A with B to get C. The hackathon, though, enables a support system where, once an obstacle or failure throws a wrench in students’ plans, they work as a team to get around it.
The past decade has seen exciting developments in learning space design. All across the United States and around the world, across seemingly every discipline, there is interest in creating new, active, project-based learning spaces. Technology-rich and student-centric, the new learning spaces are often flexible in size and arrangement and are a significant departure from the lecture hall of yesterday. These developments are not the result of any one factor but are occurring as the result of changes in student demographics, technology advances, and economic pressures on higher education and as the result of increasing demands from employers. The nature of work today is inherently team-based and collaborative, often virtual, and geographically distant. Companies are seeking creative, collaborative employees who have an exploratory mindset. Employers seek graduates who can be more immediately productive in today’s fast-paced economy. Colleges and universities around the country are responding by creating flexible, multimodal, and authentic learning experiences. It’s a complex ecosystem of education—and it’s evolving right before our eyes. What an amazing time to be in education and to be a part of the transformation of the learning space!
…
The next generation of learning spaces will take all the characteristics of an active learning environment—flexibility, collaboration, team-based, project-based—and add the capability of creating and making. Project teams will be both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary and will likely need access to a broad array of technologies. High-speed networks, video-based collaboration, high-resolution visualization, and 3-D printing are but a few of the digital tools that will find their way into the learning space.
Figure 1. The T-Shaped Professional
Credit: Developed by IBM (Jim Spohrer, IBM Labs) and Michigan State University and
modified on March 16, 2015. Reprinted with permission.
The active learning difference
Through state-of-the-art technology, students spend their class time in active learning classrooms collaborating on assignments and solving problems rather than listening to lectures. Faculty become coaches and guides instigating thoughtful discussions and debates. Often, students watch faculty members’ online lectures before each class session begins.
Studies have shown that active learning classrooms and their settings allow students to learn up to three times more and retain greater knowledge, strengthen student-faculty relationships and improve student performance. Active learning also is proven to increase the likelihood that students in STEM disciplines will continue in those programs and removes the gap between the success of male and female students.
…
The flipped classroom can be associated with more collaborative, experiential, constructivist learning. “Faculty become coaches and guides instigating thoughtful discussions and debates. Often, students watch faculty members’ online lectures before each class session begins.”
6 Secrets of Active Learning Classroom Design — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
While the basic elements of active learning classrooms are well known, no one-size-fits-all template exists. Here’s how to achieve the custom fit your school needs.
Excerpt:
4 Questions to Guide Classroom Design
By next year, the University of Oklahoma will have nearly a dozen active learning spaces, up from one in 2012. Every single classroom looks different from the others, and that’s by design. Chris Kobza, manager of IT learning spaces, and Erin Wolfe, director of strategic initiatives, have honed their process down to four simple questions:
What’s the vision?
What’s the focus?
How flexible?
What’s the budget?
The process starts when they sit down with the person or people who want to redo a room to find out what they envision — is it maximum technology or maximum flexibility? “It’s a real casual conversation but you can learn enough about what their expectations for the space are, what the expectations for their faculty are, what they hope the students get out of the space,” said Kobza.
The power of Active Learning: “Many of today’s learners favor active, participatory, experiential learning—the learning style they exhibit in their personal lives. But their behavior may not match their self-expressed learning preferences when sitting in a large lecture hall with chairs bolted to the floor.”
From DSC: Don’t like the phrase “active learning?” I’m compiling a list of other words/phrases/thoughts that one can use:
Collaborating on assignments and solving problems
Collaborative learning
Actively engaged learning
Peer instruction
Thinking out loud with one another
Constructionist / constructivist learning
Developing real-world skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, negotiating, and teamwork
Students have the opportunity to work in groups, solve complex problems and be creative
Emphasis on small-group activities
Immersed in discussion
Flexible in size and arrangement
Experiences and opportunities to better understand the material
Students are extremely engaged in what they are doing, and their thinking is being refined.
Creating and making; creativity
Effective interactions of small groups of people within communal spaces
Putting the focus on students doing the work of learning
Increased motivation via more hands-on opportunities
Sharing / exchanging ideas
Participatory
‘The shift is changing the way teachers plan, present lessons and share information. Students no longer need to all do the same thing to learn about a topic. This change is enhancing the quality of work teachers are receiving back from students, and is creating an environment where students are involved in the creation (versus consumption) of content that aids their learning. “A major change comes in the direct instruction piece. As teachers, we’re moving from simply giving information and offering a passive learning experience, to serving as a facilitator and guiding student inquiries. This method is allowing them to be active participants in their own education,” said Alder Creek Middle School teacher Vicki Decker. (Source)
Addendum on 7/17/15:
Designing Active Learning Classrooms — from dbctle.erau.edu; with thanks to Tim Holt out at holtthink.tumblr.com for the original posting that led me to this resource Excerpt:
Active Learning Classrooms (also known as Active Learning Spaces or Learning Studios) are classrooms or other physical spaces designed with active learning in mind. In particular they are student-centered rather than instructor-centered. Students often sit in groups instead of rows to support collaborative learning, and some classrooms even have movable tables or desks. Students also sometimes have their own computers or tablets, and there may be multiple displays around the classroom, since students are not facing in one direction. Researchers have found that active learning classrooms have positive influences on student learning and engagement. Below are videos, examples, research studies, and assessment instruments related to active learning spaces.
![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg)
