Toolbox or Trap? Course Management Systems and Pedagogy
May 18, 2008
Lisa Lane has an article in the most recent issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly, “Toolbox or Trap? Course Management Systems and Pedagogy.” For a brief article, she does a good job laying out the criticisms I hear most frequently about course management systems: their design is focused on integrating resources (as “inventory control”) instead of being focused on innovative teaching.
“The construction of the course syllabus, a natural beginning point for most instructors, is a good example of how the software imposes limitations. When they first enter a CMS, new instructors see the default buttons of the course menu, which are based on type rather than purpose: Announcements, Course Content, Discussion, even Syllabus. The buttons link to pages that simply provide a place to upload a document, which is exactly what most instructors do: upload a word-processed file of their in-class syllabus. It would be more natural for novice instructors to see a blank schedule in which they could create each week’s (or unit’s) activities. Most professors think in terms of the semester and how their pedagogical goals can be achieved within the context of time rather than space. The default organization of the CMS forces them to think in terms of content types instead, breaking the natural structure of the semester.”
Lane suggests that constructivist, learner-centered, or inquiry-based approaches are better supported by Web 2.0 applications, or by learning management systems that focus more on pedagogy than content management.
We’re exploring these tools at Richmond now, but at this point we’re connecting with our early adopters, not the majority. I wonder what it will take for most faculty to embrace social tools: they require more consideration up front, and if they want to use more than one tool, it’s multiple logins for them and their students. The effort has to be justified, and I think we’ll see that as early adopters share compelling stories of transformed learning. But is there something more we need to do, either to be sure the stories are communicated effectively or the administrivia streamlined?
I guess I’m trying to step into our learners’ shoes, to be sure our plans are effective. I can be patient, as social technologies work their way into instructor toolboxes, but I also want to be sure I’m not missing any opportunities.
RMA First Friday with Dr. Edward Ayers
May 14, 2008
Dr. Ayers speaks to the Richmond Merchants Association on May 2. An interesting overview of the University, but it’s especially interesting to see how he’s reaching out to make connections to the community.
Thanks to Andy Morton for the link.
SCS Directors - Presentation Outline
March 10, 2008
The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology
- Organization
- Kevin Creamer, Director ( kcreamer at richmond.edu, 804.289.8677)
- CTLT Liaisons (web site coming soon)
- Allison Czapracki ( aczapracki at richmond.edu, 804.287.6657)
- Jim Groom ( jgroom at richmond.edu, 804.287.6872)
- Hill Scott ( hscott at richmond.edu, 804.289.8452)
- Kenneth Warren ( kwarren at richmond.edu, 804.287.6656)
- Tom Woodward ( twoodwar at richmond.edu, 804.289.8258)
- Allison Czapracki ( aczapracki at richmond.edu, 804.287.6657)
- Terry Dolson - Faculty Development Specialist (804.287.6038)
- Mark Nichols - Lab Group ( mnichols at richmond.edu, 804.287.6877)
- Technology Learning Center [TLC] ( tlc at richmond.edu, 804.289.8772)
Resources
- Blackboard
- Oracle
- Acrobat Connect (Breeze)
- Blogs
- Wikis
- Second Life
- Web 2.0
Faculty Support
- Answering questions
- Connecting with resources
- Coming to class
Faculty Development
- Technology overviews and workshops
- Learning 2008 (web site coming soon)
- NITLE workshops: Visual Literacy, Web Mapping
- Instructional workshops - suggestions to Pat Brown
- One-on-one teaching consultations - contact Terry Dolson
- School-specific programs
A Very Nice Place to Start
January 28, 2008
On my way out to the ELI Annual meeting in San Antonio, I started reading Derek Bok’s Our Underachieving Colleges. It’s fascinating reading, and I know the book is something our president has been discussing recently.
I don’t have enough time to respond to everything I’m reading, but Bok has a definition of critical thinking that is good enough that I want to write it down someplace. Too long for a tweet, so it will live here.
Bok says of critical thinking:
Among these qualities are an ability to recognize and define problems clearly, to identify the arguments and interests on all sides of an issue, to gather relevant facts and appreciate their relevance, to perceive as many plausible solutions as possible, and to exercise good judgement in choosing the best of these alternatives after considering the evidence and using inference, analogy, and other forms of ordinary reasoning to test the cogency of the arguments.
Bok goes on to say that critical thinking also may include “certain basic quantitative habits.” I think his definition is a great starting point. What’s missing? What could be expanded upon or clarified?
Technorati Tags: critical thinking, curriculum, ELI, ELIAnnual08, students, teaching
Content systems: Joomla! vs. Drupal
October 4, 2007
Since 1991 I’ve been the list owner / moderator of Milton-L, a discussion list on the life, literature and times of the poet John Milton. In 1994 I created The Milton-L Home Page as a support site for the discussion list.
I’m now ready to take the web site to the next level, allowing the community of Milton scholars to contribute events, publication notices and more to the site. It’s my hope that the site will become as useful as the discussion list has been.
The current site is on a static (i.e. non-cgi enabled) web server. This server is slated for some big changes and I know the web address for the site is going to change. A few months back I purchased the johnmilton.org domain, and I plan to use this domain for the new site.
When I first started with hosted servers, I looked at several of the open source content management systems. I settled on Joomla! because both the front end and back end were intelligible not only to me but to the community that will use the site. I also liked the theme templates that are available.
In the back of my mind, though, Drupal has always been lurking as the best solution. D’Arcy loves it. NMC switched to it. It seems infinitely configurable, but that makes it seem infinitely complex, to me and the community. Unless I could wrap my brain around it all and architect the site well.
The most recent upgrade of Joomla! broke both of the installations I was using. Users can no longer log in on the front end. So now I’m really looking at Drupal. Here are my questions:
- What’s the state of spam and spam protection for Drupal? Is there a Spam Karma 2 equivalent to keep me safe with a minimum of effort? I plan to create user roles carefully, but I’d love to have a good security system in place.
- What are the best plug-in modules for Drupal? I’m already looking at the Events module, since I need to have that kind of content on my site. But what are the best plug ins overall? I’ve always appreciated blog entries listing WordPress plug ins - love to see a Drupal list too.
- Do you have any theme recommendations? I want to keep things simple, but Drupal’s default themes are a little plain.
- Other than Drupal.org, what are some good web sites for Drupal admins to follow?
- What am I not asking that I should?
Technorati Tags: blog, drupal, humanities, JohnMilton, learning, Milton, Joomla!, socialsoftware, teaching, web, WordPress
Seminars on Academic Computing 2007
August 7, 2007
I’m in Snowmass Village for the 2007 Seminars on Academic Computing. It’s my first time at SAC, and, after 33 years, the last time SAC will be held in Snowmass Village.
I’m not the type that pays much attention to the venue of a conference. I’m not usually interested in exploring the towns that host these events. I am interested in making connections with colleagues, in learning, and in reflecting on what I have learned and on how I can apply what I’ve learned to my work back on campus.
But Snowmass is beautiful. The flight into Aspen was breathtaking. I haven’t seen mountains and valleys like this since Jean and I visited Salzburg in 1989. Even after I had landed, I found myself staring at the mountains that surround everything. There are few places I find myself wanting to revisit, but I would really like to come here again someday to explore.
My first morning here I took a walk on some bike trails on the mountain, and came across flowers in each of my girl’s favorite colors.
More on the seminars in my next posts.
Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE, EDUCAUSE_SA07
Transmedia Learning
July 8, 2007
In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins spends a chapter describing how the creators of The Matrix engaged storytellers in many different media to tell complimentary parts of the entire Matrix story. Playing the video games, reading the comic books and watching The Animatrix extended the story with some overlaps to the movies.
In the May/June 2007 issue of EDUCAUSE Review, Carie Windham makes suggestions to faculty considering podcasts for their classes in her article “Confessions of a Podcast Junkie“. One particular suggestion struck me:
Offer something more: For the professors who have implemented podcasting technology, the most common concern they hear from their peers is that students will stop showing up to class if the material is downloadable. In reality, they say, the opposite is true. The trick, students say, is to make sure that there is something to gain by attending class and downloading the lecture. Podcasts should add a new perspective or offer supplemental material. If lectures are podcasts, faculty should use classroom time to facilitate discussion, demonstrate models or simulate problems. “You’re going to gain something out of the classroom experience — it’s that personal lecture experience,” says Maier. “You get comments from other individuals, and examples are brought to the table by other parts of the class.”
This reminds me too of the e-mail that’s sent out a day or two after each installment of the BBC radio show In Our Time is recorded. The host, Melvyn Bragg, extends the story of the broadcast by sharing the conversation he and his experts had before and after the show.
By using different media to discuss the subject in complimentary - and not redundant - ways, faculty can create an engaging and complex learning environment that, like The Matrix or In Our Time, lets the learner build the bigger picture.
Technorati Tags: creativity, EDUCAUSE, information fluency, learning, podcast, students, teaching, technology, transmedia
Welcome, President Ayers
July 1, 2007
The Times-Dispatch had a profile of our new President, Edward Ayers, earlier this week. Today President Ayers writes about the strengths and directions for the University as he takes the reigns. His reflections are juxtaposed to two others who assume leadership roles at other institutions in the region.
It’s really going to be a few weeks before President Ayers is on campus full time. But I am exited to see where he wants to go, and how I can help. For now, I’m focusing on the new school year and how we in The Center, along with our colleagues in the Library, can engage the faculty in discussions on the scholarship of teaching and learning, learning spaces, and IT fluency.
Interdisciplinary Thinking
June 3, 2007
I’ve just started Being Fluent with Information Technology, a study produced by the National Research Council, and in Chapter One, “Why Know about Information Technology?”, the authors cite Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms, in which he asserts that “a deep understanding of programming, in particular the notions of successive decomposition as a mode of analysis and debugging of trial solutions, results in significant educational benefits in many domains of technology per se” (quoting the NRC book there, not Papert directly).
All this reminds me of something Ken Robinson says towards the middle of his presentation at TED:
Intelligence is dynamic: if you look at the interactions of a human brain… intelligence is wonderfully interactive: the brain isn’t divided into compartments. In fact, creativity, which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value, more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.
Both of these thoughts come together: it is increasingly important that we learn to think in multiple ways. I suspect the value that Papert found in students gaining a deep understanding of programming is the ability to combine that understanding with the deep learning they’ve gained in a different discipline. By having more than one way of approaching an issue we are able to understand it in a way that a singular background doesn’t allow.
All of this reinforces for me the value of the liberal arts education. In addition to the major, students are exposed to many different disciplinary ways of seeing things. We may question whether we are providing a deep enough exposure to these other ways of understanding through our general education requirements. Would it be more beneficial to require students to study more deeply in a specific, different discipline than it is to provide brief introductions to so many?
I’m not sure I have the answer to that, at least not yet. And I know I’m not addressing Robinson’s larger issue that creativity must be given (at least) equal emphasis as literacy in education if we are to give children the tools they will need for the future. But it’s nice to make these connections as I continue to read.
Technorati Tags: learning, reading, students
Civic Engagement House Videos
January 28, 2007
Wednesday night I attended the Civic Engagement House video presentation. Last semester Amy Howard offered her students the option of producing documentaries instead of writing papers. She was surprised to find that every student opted for the documentary. Four videos were created with the assistance of Sue McGinnis and Hil Scott.
The videos were a little rough — neither we nor the students were ready for the extent of work that was accomplished — but each of the videos speaks with an authentic voice. Originally the videos were to be about five minutes long, but each of them was longer than 15 minutes.
The first video was entitled Youth, Violence and Gangs. The interviews in this video were fascinating. One gentleman in particular spoke with experience and authority on the challenges facing youth, and how gangs are the only refuge for so many.
The second video was my favorite. Entitled Homelessness: It Could Be You, the video took a systemic and personal approach to describe the problem of homelessness. Experts, including a
The other two videos, Not Just Sticks and Bricks: Affordable Housing in Richmond and Crossover Ministries: Improving Health Care in the Latino Community also explored serious urban issues.
Over the course of the evening, I couldn’t help but think how much more effective these documentaries were compared to the papers that each student might have turned in. Each video was designed to explore a problem and to urge individuals to do something to improve that situation. By producing and sharing these documentaries Amy Howard and her class have had a much greater impact on the
Amy seems to have come to the same conclusion. I know she has spoken with Hil, who plans to help her and her students on the technical aspects next time. But the videos were used as promotions to recruit students to apply to the Civic engagement House for next year. Amy has begun a virtuous cycle which I hope grows and grows in the coming years as the University community learns more and does more about the urban issues in our area.
