The Cocktail Party: The App That I Would Like to Develop

Discussions don’t usually happen in a linear, carefully delineated way.  Early bulletin boards had files (topics) and users could easily pick a topic and make linear comments to that post and further comments could go off from those until the discussion died off.  A good discussion board might have pages of topics, and over time these would gradually fade away.  It was very easy to program this type of interaction in the computer, easy to use, but it wasn’t very conductive for encouraging continued interaction. However, it is a very good system for developing a product, working on a team or tracking a response in a defined environment. It was about the best that could be expected for that time and that level of technology.

Times have changed, and the possibilities for discussion-assistive tools are comparatively limitless.  For developing my app, I looked at the natural, biological processes that seem to replicate how societies function.  There is often a central node (stalk, stem, host) that other, smaller nodes break off from.  These in turn grow, and they develop clusters of life that grow to the point where they break off and form new clusters. 

To see this demonstrated in the real world I like to think of a cocktail party—a place where people could go and mingle with many people, make connections and have some good discussions.  There is one central node, usually around the host or hostess; from that group smaller groups branch off to discuss other topics.  Some people work the room going from group to group before settling into one deep discussion.  My app tries to replicate this experience (without the alcohol—although users can add this if they want). 

The overall layout is a large central node, or discussion area, that has many discussions breaking from that main topic and further breaking into comments on comments.  The user can easily see the topic, and as they come into the room they can “see” where most of the comments are and join that discussion, or they can dig deeper into a tangent that they find particularly interesting. The goal of the app is to get the participants to move freely from group to group, to easily see the topics, to engage the participants, and to encourage participation at any point of the discussion. It is a more organic design than the traditional discussion board, it encourages a free flow of discussion and movement rather that isolating users into “rooms” or “chains”.  The initial view would be much like Prezi; the user can zoom in and move from group to group very readily.  The theoretical drawing I have included shows color-coding for each level of discussion; this could be one possible view of the discussion room.  Another possible view would be all the circles are color coded with each participant having their own color and pattern combination.  This way the group facilitator, as well as each user, can easily see who is participating and the level of involvement for each participant.

I think this tool could be extremely useful for education.  The instructor could readily observe participation levels, evaluate the subjects they are discussing, and contribute in areas as needed.  The circular and organic layout encourages more interaction and movement between topics and among the participants.  The circles would contain a box where the student could post comments, pictures or links.  The circle would grow larger as more people affix comments to it; this could also help users to quickly have a visual “feel” for the dynamics of a discussion.  For example, a second level comment on a topic might generate responses from many students, so it could potentially grow and draw even more attention.  I think that the students might enjoy seeing that their comments make a physical difference in the shapes and it helps them visualize how their input truly “expands” the discussion and adds value.  Instead of being a static comment in a line of comments, their comment gives growth and influence to the overall discourse. 

I could see this app as being part of a suite of applications used for online instruction; additionally, it could be used in any situation (business or education) where an online discussion forum would be desired.

Book/ Article Review

This actually isn’t a book, but it almost is.  It is a report issued by the State Educational Technology Directors Association, a national organization that is serving the educators and leaders in each state.  The title is - Maximizing the Impact: The pivotal role of technology in a 21st century educational system. It covers areas such as “proficiency, innovation in teaching and learning, and developing robust educational support systems”.  It chronicles how different states have applied technology in the classroom and what has worked and what has not worked.  Unlike some reports that seem to put a sugar coating on anything labeled “technology,”  it asks some hard questions and thinks of concerns that stakeholders have in educational changes.  Even though the target market is K-12 education, the principles still apply to the college level.  It is also important for us to be aware of what exposure to technology the new college students have who are coming into the university level.  Things are changing at a very rapid pace in some districts and states, while others have barely budged. 

Key words that pop up in this document are “comprehensive” and “proficient”.  The danger in teaching a technology based class is that we pick all the newest and coolest software and apps without thinking about the overall picture and what our goals are.  The second danger is that we introduce too many things too quickly...this forces the student to race to just finish the projects and complete the tasks needed to get their grade and never become proficient at anything.  I found the report easy to read and having some very interesting points.

Vockley, Martha. Maximizing the Impact: The Pivotal Role of Technology in a 21st Century Education System. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. 1 Massachusetts Avenue NW Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001. Tel: 202-312-6429; Fax: 202-789-5305; Web site: http://www.p21.org, 2007. ERIC. Web. 12 June 2012.

Pen Computing App

If I could build my own app it would be something that would work with pen computing in mind (see example smart pen).  Although I haven't had a chance to use a smart pen myself, I have interacted with many students over the years that could benefit from such a device.

My favorite part about teaching at a community college is getting to meet and be inspired by non-traditional students.  To me non-traditional students demonstrate the courage it takes to keep learning even when you don't quite fit in.

Many non-traditional students are not only intimidated by technology, but discount the powerful writing practices they bring with them to 'digital' classrooms.  This is where smart pens and my dream application would come in.

Smart pens like Livescribe already offer the capability for students to record their handwriting and with the help of a computer change the recorded writing into typed text.  These capabilities let students participate in a writing course while not being slowed by keyboarding skills.

What my dream app would do is offer the kinds of interactive mark up abilities on paper that word processing programs offer via computer.

Without going to much into how a smart pen like Livescribe works, I would like to provide a bit of background in an attempt to describe my dream app.  For the smart pen to work special paper is used that has tiny dots on it.  These dots help the smart pen record (photograph) handwriting.

My dream app would let the writer lay a second piece of the special paper under the original writing (or be a larger format) so that a student could circle, underline, or other wise add comments / revisions to their written text.

I think such an app would be great because it takes advantages of things students already do in handwriting.  It is important for all students, non-traditional students even more so, to acclimate to the technology used in the classroom.  However, having to depend on a word processing program during the semester for all stages of writing - especially when such a program might not be easily accessible from home - seems unrealistic at points.  I think my dream app could help address this situation for many non-traditional students and offer a flexible tool for all students.

Affordances and Apple

Affordances-

         Very rarely has one term been embraced by so many and redefined by almost every discipline that uses it. The concept of affordance is very important in all areas of design- whether it is design for a computer interface, design of a commercial building, or the design of a writing course. These areas often use the term affordance with different meanings, but underlying it all (in my humble opinion) the basic concept of affordance is essential to successful design of everything. To me it is much like Einstein's Unified Theory, there should be some basic principle that holds everything together in successful design. However, like the Unified Theory- it should be there, but somehow it hasn't been found yet. Even though Norman's interpretation of Affordance is quite different from Gibson's, they both have important elements of truth that shouldn't be overlooked. And because of their importance I wanted to offer a few more thoughts on the subject, even though our major focus on this topic was last week- it should be in the back of our mind in all the technological choices we make.

      In Donald Norman's article, “Affordances and Design”,  the goal of the educator- their affordance- should be apparent to the student (or user). If the affordance of the activity is to encourage interactivity among students with a group writing assignment, then the tool that is chosen to accomplish this task should not only really do the task, it should be apparent that this is the way the task should be accomplished. This is especially important for educators preparing the environment for our students. The technologies we use should facilitate the learning and not offer barriers and frustrations that are not necessary to the learning process.

Norman's guidelines-

1. Follow conventional usage, both in the choice of images and the allowable interactions
2. Use words to describe the desired actions
3. Use Metaphor
4. Follow a coherent conceptual model so that once part of the interface is learned, the same principles apply to the other parts.

      The tools that we use to accomplish our goals should be following a “coherent conceptual model” to make sure that our real goals are met. Unified interface helps tremendously in allowing the student to focus on the learning task and not be distracted by simply struggling with the interface.

         This philosophy of User Interface was fully embraced by Apple in their products. Their philosophy is that users should be able to accomplish their task in a way where they don't really feel like they are interacting with a computer, it should flow intuitively. For many years I was a whole hearted Windows person. I programmed with Windows products, I understood what was happening in my computer, but it took years of serious study to get to the point where I could load a program and be able to find out what was happening when the computer got slow, needed to be reformatted, or just needed to be taken apart to fix. Finally I tried a Mac because we had to use it for my computer graphics class, it was amazing. Within a few minutes I was able to figure out the interface and adjust. Drawing with it was so smooth, and the user interface responded effortlessly to me. After my new Windows laptop broke down three times in the first year I had it, I started getting all Apple products (along with the rest of the world). I grew to really love the ease with which I could accomplish my tasks.

       As we choose technology and design interface- it should DO what we want it to do, and it should be intuitive in usability. As with any writing project, I always ask my students- WHO is the audience. If we don't write in a way that speaks to the audience, then we need to rewrite. If we design and choose technologies that the students can''t understand or use, then we need to redesign and rethink our choices. Each item we choose should make sense and be accessible for the users. Learning a new way to do things will always be resisted, unless the user sees a benefit in learning this new task.

This adds a new layer to get to our affordance, we need to convince the user that it is worth the effort to learn how to use this tool to get the goal accomplished. This is where metaphors and storytelling can help people adapt to new technologies. Much like the Apple iPad ads- “This is what we believe. Technology alone is not enough.  Faster, thinner, lighter -- those are all good things.  But when technology gets out of the everything becomes more delightful, even magical.  That's when you leap forward.  That's when you end up with something like this." (Apple, 2011, iPad2 commercial).

Hopefully we can get to that point, where our classes become "delightful, even magical".

Finding Balance - Meeting Competing Needs Through Multiple Testing Modules

As promised, here is my analysis of the two types of exams we use as a part of bcpLearning: traditional multiple choice exams and situational exams. In my post from Tuesday, I mentioned that, because many of our customers are companies seeking to train their employees, we've discovered a bit of a competition between the employer's need for quantifiable results and the employee's (student's) need for confidence in their new knowledge and their ability to apply it on the job. In an effort to meet the needs of both parties, we've begun using two different testing tools.

I. Multiple Choice Exams

These are your typical, run-of-the-mill, graded multiple choice exams. The questions are designed to cover the range of topics discussed throughout a particular course in order to provide a quick assessment of the student’s retained knowledge of those topics.

Affordances

• Assess-ability. The employee (student) either passes or fails. If the student gets 80% or more of the questions correct, they get a passing grade and their manager is sent a certificate to keep on file. If the student fails, they have to retake the course.


• Cheating block-ability. We’ve put a number of tools in place to assure employers that the employees are actually taking the courses and passing the exams fairly. For example, a student’s access to the course is cut off when an exam window is open, keeping students from clicking through the course for an answer. Also, the exams can automatically shuffle questions through a larger database, creating a different exam every time. Employers can also print out reports to track each employee’s usage. If the employee spends five minutes just clicking through everypage and calls it good, the employer will know. Employers can also set the amount of exam attempts allowed. If someone wants really wants to cheat, they can find a way…but at least we make it pretty difficult to do so.


• Easy Assemble-ability and Maintain-ability. From the developer’s end, these exams are incredibly easy to build and maintain. Just create a new exam, enter the number of questions, type in each of the questions/answer choices, select the correct answer, click submit, and you’re done.
  

Disaffordances

• Student Automaton-ability. These exams ask students to spit back a series of facts mentioned in the course, without thinking critically about the information as a whole. Students can easily learn what they need to get a passing score and then forget everything immediately afterward.
  


• Lack of Feedback-ability. During the exam, there's no opportunity for immediate feedback and growth. After the students finish the exams, they get to see which questions they answered correctly and sometimes an explanation, but that’s about as far as it goes.
  
  
• No Practice-ability. Students aren't prompted to think about the information in the course as it applies to their work. They may not be able to take what they learned in the course and convert it from a series of facts to actual job-related skills.

II. Scenario Exams
These exams constitute our attempt to combat the cons presented by Multiple Choice Exams. Here we present a series of situations where the information from the course can be used to solve legitimate, real-world problems.

The following description/images will give you a good idea of how a question works in a Scenario Exam. First, the student is provided a scenario description that will provide the context. Then, the student is presented with a series of questions that might pop up as a result of the posed scenario (See Image 1). If the student selects a wrong answer, he is sent to a screen that tells him why he was wrong, provides a hint for solving the problem, or both (See Image 2). Because this is a tricky question, the student is given a hint telling him where in the government databases he might look to find the answer. After receiving the hint, the student is sent back to the question to try again. If the student selects the correct answer, he is congratulated and given a detailed explanation of why the answer was correct and the easiest way to find it (See Image 3).

Affordances

• Genuine Applicability. Students are asked to think about what they've learned and use the information as a new skill set to solve a series of problems that are taken from real-life situations. (In this case, using the new skills to classify an imported article for the student's company.)


• Immediate Feedback-ability. If a student gets a question wrong, he is immediately told his answer was incorrect and given either an explanation or a hint. Then he's sent back to the main page to tackle the problem with the help of the additional information he just received.


• Confidence-ability. By learning how to apply the information to their work instead of just learning the information in order to spit it back at the end, student's gain the confidence they need to turn the information into a new skill set. Guiding students to actually apply their new training not only helps the students improve their job performance, it meets the employer's overall goal of actually training their employees and achieving better work performance.

Disaffordances

• No Grade-ability. Because everyone eventually gets to the solution and there's currently no way of tracking a student's progression through the exam, we have no way of measuring a student's skill level or retention through the situational exam.
  
  
• Avoid-ability. Because these situational exams are not graded, they are not part of the course certification process. Students can choose not to apply themselves by just guessing randomly until they finally get through the exam.


• Difficult Assemble-ability and Maintain-ability. Currently, these exams are incredibly time-consuming to build and even worse to maintain. Each exam can require hundreds of individual pages that have to be carefully linked together. Building a new exam can take over a week. Even making a small change to one question can require hours of work. There are also a lot of limitations on flexibility within the exams.

In Conclusion
As Bill described it the other day, the goal of combining "summative" and "formative" evaluation to meet the needs of both employer and employee (student) is an important one that we've taken a positive step towards achieving by utilizing this "double testing" approach. While the situational exams present extensive logistical difficulties and it would be much easier to just focus on a results driven training module, I feel 1.) the situational exams represent an important step in improving our testing procedures and 2.) the value added for the employees and, as a result, their employers, far outweighs the difficulties and should not stop us from moving forward with these projects.

Inspirational Sites, Studies, and Resources

Twitter

Twitter offers immense educational benefits. Users frequently tweet content that is personally and/or professionally pertinent. I have found an array of useful content via my Twitter timeline. Some tech-savvy users that I follow are: Cole (colecamplese),  Coop (Soul4Real), and Shelley Rodrigo (rrodrigo). These individuals generally post content in the writing and technology realm. Thus over the months of following them, I have learned a lot about helpful websites, studies, and scholars in the field.

Higher Education Academic Journals

Higher education academic journals provide collegiate individuals with a voice. It’s refreshing to hear the perspective of diverse individuals from a myriad of backgrounds. The brief information regarding academic theories and studies is valuable. I frequently read electronic articles from College Composition and Communication, The Chronicle of Higher Education, College English, and Computers and Composition. Articles such as James P. Purdy’s, “The Changing Space of Research: Web 2.0 and the Integration of Research and Writing Environments,” published in Computers and Composition (2010), serve as a useful instructional guide. Purdy believes that writing and research is strengthened with the combination of Web 2.0 electronic components. He uses a detailed analytical method to support his theory. Similar approaches (theory/research oriented) are advantageous to my pedagogy.

Wayne State University Office for Teaching and Learning Blog

This is an extremely resourceful blog! The OTL staff generally post content to the blog; however, WSU faculty and staff have contributed as well. The teaching-oriented postings help educators facilitate an effective classroom structure by introducing concepts and resources pertaining to technology and education. The blog posts introduce distinct electronic websites like Folksemantic and Phoebe Pedagogic Planner (as modernization becomes prevalent). Additionally, the OTL posts previously presented electronic material from various campus teaching and learning symposiums.

http://www.lib.wayne.edu/blog/otl/

Teaching With Technology: Scholarly Overview

 Overview 

In “Portable Composition: iTunes University and Networked Pedagogies,” Alex Reid examines the convergence of mobile technology and composition. Reid believes that the conjunction is advantageous. His theory is based on accumulated results derived from an innovative composition pilot course.

Reid’s article profoundly impacts the composition field. In the article, Reid notes the prevailing use of iPods and “Web 2.0 applications” among students (61-62). He believes these media platforms have reshaped the author/audience relationship in composition. Reid draws on Stuart Selber 2004 study regarding the “critical technological literacy” advanced by rhetoric and composition’s acknowledgement of technological advancements (62-63).

In particular, Reid addresses his institution’s experimental implementation of iTunes University via a pilot composition course. The multifaceted pilot course allowed students to compose written content for podcast incorporation. The inclusion of iTunes University into the pilot course presented slight student problems (such as operating media files and developing the appropriate language formality for the media platform). However, the experiment was largely beneficial. The podcasts helped form a cohesiveness among students in the mobile realm and within the class environment. Additionally, the pilot study allowed iPods to be seen as educationally beneficial.

Significance 

Reid’s article outlines a current issue with composition courses today, traditionalism in authorship. Reid notes the traditional written content that is acknowledged by authorship (essays, dissertations and scholarly articles) and the written content that is not acknowledged by authorship (informal conversations and blog posts/comments) (71). This discrepancy can present a hindrance. Students are using electronic devices to compose written content in "informal" settings. Therefore, the continual lack of authorship/formality acknowledgement in certain realms can present a division between compositional teaching and learning.

Reid dismisses the belief that iPods are for entertainment purposes only. He effectively proves that it could be used for composition curriculum purposes as well. His article encourages composition instructors to embrace multiple formats for presenting written material.

Future Studies

Reid believes, “As… mobile networks become more powerful and pervasive, they will have a greater impact on compositional practices…” (61). Additionally, he believes that new studies in the mobile technology and writing realm are forthcoming. This composition instruction paradigm shift will present potential implementation issues that future studies will need to address. How can quality and quantity be enforced via mobile compositional development (or will quality and quantity importance decrease)? How can potential accessibility obstacles be eliminated? How can institutional policies efficiently align with desired mobile curriculum practices?

Conclusion

Reid's insightful study has eradicated some of my composition instructional confinements. Cynthia Selfe states, “to make it possible for students to practice, value, and understand a full range of literacies—emerging, competing, and fading—English composition teachers have got to be willing to expand their own understanding of composing beyond conventional bounds of the alphabetic” (qtd. in Reid 77). 

Reid, Alex. "Portable Composition: iTunes University and Networked Pedagogies."

            Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 61-78. Print

When Course Blogging Goes Well (Hopefully)

One of the readings for Teaching with Technology is this cautionary tale by Steve Krause called "When Blogging Goes Bad." As the title suggests, it is about a time when his decision to use a blog as a way to facilitate learning in a course didn't go terribly well.

Steve passes along several bits of advice to his colleagues who are considering using a blog, and this piece has proven particularly useful for many people based on how frequently it has been cited and even re"printed" (even though the original version linked above was published in an online journal, it has in fact been printed in one or more edited collections as well). One of the goals I've set for AL 881 is to engage in reflective use of technology, modeling the kind of decision-making that I hope to encourage all members of the course to do as they design their own instructional experiences for students.

In the course syllabus, I've laid out my expectations for posting to the blog. Here, following Krause, it seems like a good idea to lay out an explicit rationale for using this blog as an instructional medium.

First: blog entries persist. The "sprint" format of this course means that we won't have a weekly face-to-face meeting where we can coordinate, reflect, and review material as we might in a traditional graduate seminar. Instead, we will have 2 weeks of online interaction, 1 week of intensive in-residence meetings, 1 month of individual work with peer & instructor reviews and consultations, and a final symposium where members present their projects. This blog is a place, then, where I ask members of the course to contribute their thoughts on the readings, their work in progress, and their own goals for the course. The posts will stay up, so the class members can come back to them as they do their own reading and writing over the summer, coordinating and calibrating their views with those of their peers.

Second: blog entries are just formal enough to foster reflection, and informal enough to permit a mix of personal and professional connections with the class material. Folks can comment on posts to keep discussion going, but even if the comments are few the posts themselves, taken together, can give us all a sense of how others in the group are thinking about the material we are reading and the work we are all doing. Here I am acknowledging Krause's discussion of blogs as a "publishing space" rather than a "discussion space." We'll use e-mail and group chat for discussion, and the blog to encourage folks to take their ideas and views "public" within the space of the course.

Third: blog posts allow me, the instructor, to monitor the level of engagement for each participant. The posts tell me where you are finding things valuable and where things are less valuable for your own interests. This, in turn, lets me know what additional or alternative readings I might suggest to you as you work on your major project, for instance. This is not just a matter of making sure each of you is visible - that is always a challenge for online instruction, but blogs are not the only way to solve that particular problem. Rather, it is a way to for me to get to know who you are as a professional and a scholar just a bit better and perhaps faster than I might otherwise.

Finally, using a blog in this way lets us have a conversation about a particular technology - a particularly common one, in fact - that we can now bring some personal experience to with regard to what it does and does not help instructors and students achieve. We will do that with other technologies in the course as well: Angel, Convore, Twitter, Google Docs, and perhaps others along the way.