New study on Undergraduate Students and IT

Some interesting points, as summarized by ACRLog's Steven B , on 11/6/08:

The annual ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology is a good indicator of the state of college students’ application of technology. The report provides insight into our students technology tools and their skill and comfort levels with different types of technology, and their preferences for learning technologies. The 2008 Study contains information of interest to academic librarians.

There’s a lot to learn from this document. For example, despite claims that students seeking information go everywhere but the library website, the ECAR Study suggests that’s not the case. In fact, there were three technologies that were most frequently used by many respondents. Two were spreadsheets and presentation software. The third was the library website. An average of 68% of students reported accessing the library website during the semester. That sounds encouraging, but without knowing more about what they are accessing the library website for I would withhold my excitement. Are we talking about just using the library catalog? Does that mean just going to the library home page to click on a link to a database? At what level of engagement are the students using the library’s website? Table 4-4 on page 47 tells us what Internet and technology activity in which students report they are engaged. Social networking sites and course management systems are heavily used (in the 80% range), contributing to blogs and wikis is less popular (in the 30% range) and virtual world activity is still quite low at only an 8% participation rate. That may help us make better sense of how we can get the most out of “being where the students are”.

Read the key findings.
Read the full study.

Digital Natives

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser have just published a book called "Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives." In this interview, they talk about some of the concepts they cover in the book. Here's a really interesting description of how digital natives gather information:

"Digital natives gather information — as a building block in any learning process — through a multistep process that involves grazing, a deep dive, and a feedback loop. Digital natives are good at grazing through the vast ocean of information online. While browsing the Web, digital natives might decide to go beyond the headlines of a story and to take a deep dive, for example by following a hypertext link, listen to a commentary, or download a video clip on the topic of interest. In this way, they are searching for what’s behind the bit of information that got their attention in the first place. The feedback loop, finally, includes some sort of enhanced interactivity with the content they’re interested in."

There are also some suggestions for how institutions should adapt to handle digital natives including:

• having libraries figure out how to best "acquire, catalog, and make e-resources accessible to users"
• educating student in basic digital literacy that goes beyond the standalone computer class by being integrated into what people learn throughout their educational experience.

Teaching with Twitter (and introducing 12 Seconds)

Hear how David Parry, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, uses Twitter, a messaging service, for his courses here.

See 12 Seconds for a video tool that functions in a similar manner.

Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students

1. Ineffective Contextualization
2. Unclear Learning Outcomes
3. Misuse of the environment
4. Illusive grading practices
5. Inadequate time allocation

Read more on this at: http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/68089_1/

Encyclopedia of Information Technology Curriculum Integration

New in the Campus Library reference collection (1st floor)!

Encyclopedia of Information Technology Curriculum Integration
(ebook version, too)
Edited By: Lawrence A. Tomei, Robert Morris University, USA

From the publisher:

As more and more universities, schools, and corporate training organizations develop technology plans to ensure technology will directly benefit learning and achievement, the demand is increasing for an all-inclusive, authoritative reference source on the infusion of technology into curriculums worldwide.

The Encyclopedia of Information Technology Curriculum Integration amasses a comprehensive resource of concepts, methodologies, models, architectures, applications, enabling technologies, and best practices for integrating technology into the curriculum at all levels of education. Compiling 154 articles from over 125 of the world’s leading experts on information technology, this authoritative reference strives to supply innovative research aimed at improving academic achievement, teaching and learning, and the application of technology in schools and training environments.

Succeeding in Distance Learning

There's been some discussion about increasing our distance learning courses at UWB, so here's a good article by the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness which surveyed over twenty higher education institutions in 2005 to come up with a number of best practices. Some of the best practices include:

• prevalent support services such as faculty helpdesk, course development help from a support center, student phone helpdesk, technical training for faculty, one-on-one instructional design consultations for faculty
• strong commitment by both administration and faculty to distance learning initiatives
• focusing on getting entire programs online rather than individual courses

The executive summary is at http://www.a-hec.org/research/study_reports/IsL0205/exec_summ.html and the entire report is at http://www.a-hec.org/research/study_reports/IsL0205/TOC.html

Understanding the Net Generation's Texts

From TL Infobits August 2008 (thanks to Rob Estes for sharing..):

UNDERSTANDING THE NET GENERATION'S TEXTS

In "Why Professor Johnny Can't Read: Understanding the Net Generation's Texts" (INNOVATE, vol. 4,no. 6, August/September 2008), Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley of Purdue University Calumet discuss the difference in literacy skills between the current generation of college students and the faculty who teach them. They describe the differences between the two groups as "not a generation gap but an information processing gap" that can be bridged by faculty experiencing the digital world from the students' perspectives.

"Much has been written about the way in which the [Net-Generation] learner acquires and processes information. Coming of age in an environment saturated by technology, where the digital world interacts more and more seamlessly with the "real" world, means that these students represent the first generation of virtual learners--learners accustomed to seeking and building knowledge in a technology-enhanced environment. When these learners seek information, they are more likely to look for it online than anywhere else since this is the environment with which they are most familiar. Are educators rising to the challenge of teaching these students? Some evidence suggests that they are not."

The paper is available online at
http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=510
Registration is required to access articles; registration is free.

Delivery Modes Matrix

A straightforward explanation of various modes of delivering distance learning (e.g., traditional, synchronous video, hybrid, fully online) from Old Dominion University. The matrix does not seem fully comprehensive but it can serve as a primer.

David

George Orwell: Blogger?

Starting August 9th, George Orwell's diaries will be published online in blog format at the Orwell Diaries. Each blog post will mirror the diary entries - only 70 years in the future. It's an interesting way to present the material (which, prior to this project, hasn't been widely published) & hopefully it will introduce Orwell's writing to a new audience.

As someone who hasn't always been the hugest fan of blogs, I am intrigued by the idea of one of my favorite authors being portrayed as a proto-blogger (will Orwell's personal minutia be more readable than the typical blog's?? I sure hope so!). I've got my feed reader set for the 9th!

Flow Journal: the value of user-generated content

Flow TV is one of my favorite media studies journals, the fact that it is online and open-source makes me like it that much more.

The newest issue features the article "Keep on rockin' in the free (virtual) worlds: why user-generated content matters." The article discusses Google's virtual life experiment, Lively, its relation to Second Life and earlier user-created virtual worlds, and the co-opting of user-created design, content and creativity.

"From the very beginning, the personal computer industry has been fueled by the desire to empower users, and it is disheartening when virtual world entrepreneurs overlook this bedrock principle.... What about the international cadre of volunteers who make sure that the Second Life Library on Info Island is staffed around the clock with reference librarians? Or the global teenagers who combine their creative energies to organize symposia and create multimedia presentations about transnational political issues?" Read the article here.

Elit 2.0: A Guide to Literary Works on Social Software

Do you want to teach Web 2.0 technologies but need some exemplary creative texts for students to "read" as examples and/or illustrations of the tool's creative potential?

Check out ELit: A Guide to Literary Works on Social Software

"While students are still developing literacies in new technologies it is important that their adoption involves more than just accepting the software at interface value. What these technologies are and can be has yet to be decided and this set of electronic literary works offers an artistic exploration of their possibilities that will enrich the quest for software literacy."
From: WRT: Writer Response Theory: a blog and podcast dedicated to discussing text arts forms

Social Technographics defined

I hadn't heard this phrase used before to describe the various roles users entail when using/interacting with social technologies.

This online slide presentation from Forrester quickly outlines the multiple roles, which are:
Creators
Critics
Collectors
Joiners
Spectators
Inactives

I think many users can operate in multiple roles depending on the social network and tasks at hand.

These role definitions also offer a nice conceptual structure in which to introduce students to the current internet landscape of production, consumption, and socializing.

Web 2.0 and Institutional Challenges

Juan Freire writes a thought-provoking article on the challenges educational institutions are having adopting Web 2.0 tools in eLearning Papers. He lists the bottlenecks for adoption as:

1. "Rejection by the users, personnel and students. Many of the users of the tools available in the Internet 1.0 are reluctant and fearful of learn new abilities needed to use new software and change their attitudes about education and knowledge. Also, in most cases, change is a matter of personal interest and work without any specific incentive system adapted to these objectives.
2. Lack of an incentive system or perverse effects.
3. Available pre-web 2.0 technology. Universities have made large investments during 1980 and 90s to develop in-house or buy software platforms. This infrastructure could become a barrier . . . .
4. Universities show in some cases a culture of aversion to innovation and entrepreneurship. Bureaucracy, governance, procedures for decision-making and inertia in large institutions are in many cases the worst environment for inside innovation and entrepreneurship. However, the adoption of technology and working methods associated with web 2.0 requires a high dose of experimentation and creativity. "

His solution would involve:

1. "Learning from previous and on-going experiences. Successful uses of web 2.0 are yet an experimental field where trial-and-error is the basic approach. A considerable base of experience is being developed (and shared) by lead users and organizations that could be mined by other interested parties to gain efficiency in their processes of adoption.
2. Open access and use of contents. Web 2.0 is especially useful and creative when knowledge is digitized, modular and allowed to be used and distributed in a flexible way.
3. Design the organization as an open platform for knowledge creation and sharing, both among members of the internal community and with the participation of external users."

You can read the full article at http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/media/media15530.pdf.

Pedagogy 2.0

Great article on how Web 2.0 can create pedagogy 2.0. Here's a snippet. The rest of the article is at Innovate, a journal on online education.

"Pedagogy 2.0 is defined by:

• Content: Microunits that augment thinking and cognition by offering diverse perspectives and representations to learners and learner-generated resources that accrue from students creating, sharing, and revising ideas;
• Curriculum: Syllabi that are not fixed but dynamic, open to negotiation and learner input, consisting of bite-sized modules that are interdisciplinary in focus and that blend formal and informal learning;
• Communication: Open, peer-to-peer, multifaceted communication using multiple media types to achieve relevance and clarity;
  Process: Situated, reflective, integrated thinking processes that are iterative, dynamic, and performance and inquiry based;
• Resources: Multiple informal and formal sources that are rich in media and global in reach;
• Scaffolds: Support for students from a network of peers, teachers, experts, and communities; and
• Learning tasks: Authentic, personalized, learner-driven and learner-designed, experiential tasks that enable learners to create content.

With this learner-based, communal, media-rich, flexible approach, Pedagogy 2.0 uses social software tools to enable the development of dynamic communities of learning through connectivity, communication, and participation."

Online mini-lectures

Here's an article in the Chronicle on the value of creating "mini-lectures" when converting a traditional class to online. A snippet is below, and the rest of the article is at http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i41/41a00901.htm.

"Dalton A. Kehoe, an associate professor of communication studies at York University, in Toronto, has for decades won teaching awards and praise for his lectures. So when he was asked to do his first online course, a couple of years ago, he was excited to head into a studio to capture his 50-minute talks on video.
When the recordings went online, however, they were anything but hits. The main complaint: They were much too long.
"It was the most extremely boring thing my students had ever seen," Mr. Kehoe acknowledges. His course evaluations, usually glowing, grew dismal.
"I had to sit to down and look at these lectures and realize that when you're looking at someone online as a talking head and shoulders in video, you just want to kill yourself after about 20 minutes," he says with a laugh.
So, for the first time in his 40 years of teaching, he decided to overhaul his lectures. He broke them up into 20-minute segments, each focusing on a narrow topic."

All things Twitter

You'll find an impressive list of both Twitter tools and ways to use Twitter at http://www.typepadhacks.org/2008/03/twitter-tools-t.html. Some favorite listed uses for Twitter include:

• Microblogging
• Note to self
• Link Sharing
• Polling

Plus there are dozens of links to Twitter tools and related applications including:

• Twhirl
• Tweetscan
• Twitpic
• Loudtwitter

The author of this blog entry (John T. Unger) said that he went from wondering why anyone would use Twitter to having it become one of the most important tools he uses to work and socialize, and he provides plenty of reasons why. A very interesting post to read and explore!