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Author: Karen Nichols

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Published on 1 Comment on Vertical Videos

by Karen Nichols

We have been touting the importance of the presence of the instructor in an online class by using videos, audio files, photos, discussions, etc.  The students should feel the teacher's presence throughout the course.  Many instructors are including videos and while at the Institute for New Faculty Developers last week, one of the presenters shared that they encourage their instructors to post a weekly video of themselves explaining the upcoming week's activities and assignments.  They use their smartphones with the YouTube app to record the video and upload it, then they link to it inside Blackboard.  What a good idea!  But can you hold your phone vertically to record this video?  Well, there are two sides to this argument as I have discovered in my research.  Vertical video syndrome is defined by the Urban Dictionary as "an affliction of those that record video using an upright mobile phone - as if taking a portrait photograph. My left eye is not in the centre of my forehead, my right eye is not on the tip of my nose. " When these vertical videos are posted on such sites as YouTube, they are skewed and appear unattractive.  There are even mock PSAs posted against the dreaded vertical video.

But here's an article from the Washington Post which details apps to help users either avoid vertical videos or make the most use of them with Snapchat or Mindie:

Vertical videos, long scorned, find a niche on smartphones

A recent article published on Litmos, Effective Use of Vertical Video for Training, offers an even more positive view of the vertical video.  Brent Schlenker believes we'll be seeing more and more of vertical videos in the field of mlearning (mobile learning) and sooner rather than later since mobile devices are becoming so prevalently used in distance education.  Here's a discussion from April 2015's International Journalism Festival on vertical vs. horizontal video:

Published on Leave a comment on Building or Updating Your (Online) Course? Here’s a Resource!

by Karen Nichols

Summer is a great time to build a course for the upcoming school year or to make updates to an already existing one. As you're choosing to add new content or perhaps provide some links to Open Educational Resources, check out the educational resource site for the Illinois Online Network (ION).  The site is easy to use and is chock full of a variety of information.  Click on the Online Teaching Activity Index to find dozens of mini-lessons on such topics as brainstorming and scavenger hunts.

Picture1

The Pointers and Clickers, Podcasts and Case Studies tabs are restricted to ION members only.  However, there is a section of posted blogs on current education topics. Perhaps most useful is the section on Articles and Tutorials.  This area is further subdivided into such categories as Assessment/Evaluation, Instructional Design and Intellectual Property.  The latter is a great resource if you're not sure whether or not you can use a photo or video clip that you'd like to include in a lesson.  It also outlines your rights to your course content should others wish to use it.  So check out the ION site and give us some feedback on what you've found.  Please also share any other resources you have found useful when creating your course content.  Wishing everyone a happy and productive summer!

Published on Leave a comment on Google Cultural Institute

by Karen Nichols

In a past blog, Enhance your (online) classes with virtual tours, I provided an overview of ways to take your students on virtual tours along with some sample sites.  Well, in order to help you find just what you're looking for, Google offers the Cultural Institute and the site has already been curated for you--Art Projects, Historic Moments, World Wonders.  You can also search for works by artist, artwork, collections and gallery.  Or just do a general search on a topic to see what you can find!  At present, the home page is chock full of Asian art exhibits of various media and from a variety of countries and regions.  A personal favorite from China is on Traditional Dress from the North.  But there is also an exhibit from Ford's Theater in D.C. and one on The History of the Italian Resistance in WWII.

But what is particularly useful, is that you can create your own gallery and then send your students to it.  You can tailor which parts of various museums they see as well as annotate the pieces.  For example, the user Obraza has put together a collection of Greek sculpture from several different museums and provided information on each work.  This collection has been made public for others to use as well.  So, when searching for certain topics, you'll find not only collections from the museums themselves, but from individuals as well.

In order to assist galleries, museums and archives to put their content online, Google also has created Google Open Gallery.  Here is a video showing how a comic strip gallery in Belgium used the tool:

I find this resource quite exciting and am already searching for exhibits for my French students this summer.  Please share with us ways you are using Google Cultural Institute.

Published on Leave a comment on Sharing from OLC’s Emerging Technologies Conference

by Karen Nichols

Actually, the above chart is an indirect find while researching, on my own, an item that came up during a few of the conference presentations I've attended virtually from the Online Learning Consortium's Emerging Technologies Conference. I hadn't thought about Personal Learning Networks (PLN's) as such but am now realizing just how much our learning landscape (Personal Learning Environment) has changed due to technology and social media. We're now learning from myriad sources that didn't exist when I was a child.

Just think of all of the interactions users of social media have with each other on a daily basis and all of the information that is shared.  Of course we can classify what we've "learned" into several different categories.  I place what my Facebook friend Marie had for lunch (fried shrimp, complete with photo) on a very low level, but found it very interesting and useful to learn what my Facebook friend who is a horticulturalist had to say about gerber daisies. (They release their oxygen at night unlike most plants so having gerber daisies in your bedroom may help you sleep better.)

In conjunction with creating your own PLN which will probably include various social networks, here are a few key points from conference sessions attended that I would like to share with you.

Bonnie Stewart (University of Prince Edward Island, CA) explained and explored the concept of many-to-many communication.  To visually illustrate the impact of using social media like Twitter to share information, she first asked us to think of our favorite color.  She then had each of us speaking to different people and those people would pass on what we shared.  While doing this, she asked us to imagine our flow of conversation as our favorite color and then to imagine all of the flows of conversation using everyone's favorite color.  She contrasted this form of learning with the old "sage on the stage" model still being used by some professors in academe.

Heutagogy or self-determined learning was the topic presented by Vickie Cook (University of Illinois Springfield, USA).  She discussed the increase in student use of mobile devices for learning and how we as educators can adapt.  In fact, here is a test sponsored by Google to determine if your website is responsive or mobile-friendly.

Much work has been done using Bloom's Digital Taxonomy.  Keeping this in mind, Ghania Zgheib (George Mason University, USA) shared with us several social media learning activities as well as the results of the student feedback.  She made extensive use of Facebook and Twitter and actually encouraged students to interact with people outside of their class.  A few audience members expressed concern about using such open social media and said they preferred more closed opportunities for sharing such as discussion boards.

So now I'm more aware of the Personal Learning Environment and the Personal Learning Network I've created for myself.  I'm paying more attention to the original source of a piece of information and the people who passed it on and on until it arrived on my desktop.  Since I'll be teaching online French again this summer, I'm thinking about my students' PLN's and hoping the social media activities I'm planning for their learning will be well-received.  I'm not quite sure if they are aware of the power they have over their own learning.  I believe we should each assess our PLN and see if there's room for improvement!

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Published on 1 Comment on Watching the Smartwatch for Possible Educational Uses

by Karen Nichols
My iPhone is one of the old 3G versions and serves me just fine so I'm not a person who runs out to buy the latest gadgets. However, I'm intrigued by the possible educational uses of wearable technology and therefore am on the lookout for ways instructors and students may use the Smartwatch.

I've mentioned before that the POD (Professional and Organizational Development Network for Higher Education listserv has much useful information including technology discussions. From a recent posting, I discovered that Chris Clark from Notre Dame created a Youtube video to show what possible educational uses the Smartwatch may have:

I love the idea of using the Smartwatch to conduct polls! For more ideas and discussion, check out Chris' article:  https://ltlatnd.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/smartwatches-in-higher-ed/

Do you think the Smartwatch will complement or even replace cell phones? Join me in the watch for possible pedagogical uses of the Smarthwatch and other wearable technology.

Published on Leave a comment on Grade Contracts With Your Students

by Karen Nichols

Have you tried grade contracts? There was a discussion about them in our POD (Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education) listserv. They've been around for several years now, but I've never tried to use them. I can certainly see pros and cons to having a grade contract, and I'm sure the subject being taught will influence how the contract is set up.

Contract clipart

After reading the recommended articles (links posted at the end), it seems the grade contracts take the essential elements of the syllabus and change the general requirements to more personal goals. So perhaps a grade contract would be an effective way to make sure the students have read and understood these course requirements.

The tricky part of a grade contract is that you are spelling out for the students what they must do in order to earn a "B" (or an "A" or a passing grade) in your course. It seems that a grade contract reinforces the emphasis so many of our students place on the grade earned rather than the material learned and I am not sure I can agree with that.

Having a set of straightforward tasks that must be completed at a certain level of competence in order to earn a specific grade also seems it will remove a great deal of subjectivity from the whole process. To some, I'm sure they would see this more objective measure as a positive, but in my French classes, I often reward effort or take into account other intangible elements so I'm not sure the grade contract would serve the students as well as no contract does.

Even though it seems I'm against the contracts, I'm really curious after reading how students' grades improved with them.  I may try them in my online French class this summer.  Check out these recommended resources and see if a grade contract may help you and your students, and let us know if you decide to try it!

Sources from the POD listserv
From Psychology:
http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/12/22/2158244011434103

From Comp/Rhet: http://works.bepress.com/peter_elbow/39/

In general:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-grading-contracts/25916

Published on Leave a comment on Improving Continuous Participation in Discussion Boards

by Karen Nichols

Are your students like some of mine in that they often wait until the last minute to post their discussion board assignments? When that happens, you have more grading to do all at once plus the opportunity for a really great discussion is missed because students are merely trying to complete an assignment before the deadline rather than practice engaged learning.

Tony Birch gives two ideas to help maintain a continuous flow of discussion posts in his article "How to Encourage Continuously Interactive Online Discussions" published in eLearning Industry earlier this year.  In his article, he recommends two techniques to improve the flow of discussion posts.

First, he suggests instilling a sense of social purpose for posting in the discussions.  Your objectives for each discussion should be clear to the students--they should understand why they are being asked to discuss a topic.  They should also be made to realize that their participation (or lack thereof) directly influences the success of the discussion and learning experience.  The students should take ownership of the discussions. To assist them in achieving this requires fairly quick feedback from the instructors which includes suggestions like, "Student X posted an interesting viewpoint on this topic.  Why don't you have a look and discuss your take on it?"  So, rather than giving the general direction of "respond to at least two of your classmates' posts", you are helping to direct students to certain posts.  In that way you can match up some students according to different criteria--a weaker one with a stronger student, two students with similar or different ideas, etc.  This type of feedback can also ensure that everyone has received some response to their post and no one is left out of the discussion.

Another way to discourage last minute or all-at-once posting is to reward students who post early and/or throughout the given time for the discussion board.  The author suggests adding Timeliness into your grading rubric.  Here is the one he uses for a week-long discussion:

Timeliness All posts are after Friday or all posts on a single day First post no later than Wednesday; other posts prior to end of week Posts early: First post no later than Wednesday; at least one other post Friday or before; posts on several days of the week
0 pts 1 pts 2 pts

The author notes that the total number of points is 13 so adding these 2 points affects the grade by 15%.  Explain to the students that they can potentially raise their grade by 15% just by posting on time.  The difference of a whole letter grade can be a significant incentive.

Well, what do you think of these two ideas?  Can they work for you with your discussion boards?  Are you using other techniques with success?  If so, please share!

Published on Leave a comment on Adapting Quick Formative Assessment Ideas to an Online Environment

by Karen Nichols

Edutopia's 53 Ways to Check for Understanding offers several quick and easy activities for formative assessment. While these were established for a face to face environment, I think we can adapt several of them to our online/hybrid courses.

A number of the formative assessments listed require defining, identifying objectives, explaining why a reading is important, etc.  For these types of assessments, Blackboard offers an array of discussion boards, wikis, journals, etc.  They can be set up for students to view other postings and comment, thus providing opportunities for dialogue and collaboration.

Suggestion 20 is to create a collage using the themes from the current lesson.  A word cloud can be used for this activity and it can be uploaded in a discussion board.  Wordle is commonly used, but here is one I created from Tagxedo (Also item 35 in this article)--can you tell the topic I chose?

tagxedo

I've successfully used Item 45, Bio Poem, in my French classes.  In my case, I used this idea for the students to practice using newly learned French vocabulary by describing themselves, but it can certainly be used to as a formative assessment check to make sure the students understand literary characters or historical figures.  For those unfamiliar with the Bio Poem, here are the items to include:

Line 1:  First Name

Line 2: 3-4 adjectives that describe the person

Line 3:  An important relationship

Line 4: 2-3 things, people or ideas that the person loved

Line 5: 3 feelings the person experienced

Line 6: 3 fears the person experienced

Line 7:  Accomplishments

Line 8: 2-3 things the person experienced or wanted to see happen

Line 9:  Person's place of residence

Line 10:  Last name

Let's be creative ourselves!  Complete this bio poem about yourself or a literary or historical figures and share with us in a post!

Published on Leave a comment on It’s Carnival Time–So Let’s Talk Avatars

by Karen Nichols

Did you experiment with avatars when they were the latest craze some years ago? Maybe you created one (or more) to enjoy gaming experiences such as Second Life. Mardi Gras is a great time to re-visit the use of avatars in education because, like masking for carnival, avatars can provide you and your students with opportunities for role-playing as well as creating conversations and presentations as well as providing information. Anecdotally, my students used to tell me that if I send them a message in the form of an avatar, they'll actually open it and listen to it because they're fun and different and not boring like words on a page. As a French instructor, I would ask the students to create an avatar that speaks French or have them use the avatar to explain a cultural event we were learning.

Voki is the most popular free site for education, although there is a paid version of it too. It belongs to the company that offers a premium range of services for monthly fees called Site Pal.

If you would like to use simple avatars to dress up an email or announcement to your students or have the students create an avatar for a particular assignment, then you can start with the free site, Voki. Voki will allow you to create one-time avatars and messages without signing up for an account. Here are the directions:

1. Once on Voki.com, click on the Create tab, top left of the page.

2. Choose Customize your Character and then play around a bit to check out the facial features, clothing, etc.  When finished, click the small green Done tab at the bottom right corner.

3. Next choose Give it a Voice.  You'll see a variety of options from calling in or recording your text so that the voki will have your voice, to typing a message and choosing one of the voices already programmed.  Note that if you type the text and choose a voice, there will be no emotion and some of the words may not be pronounced as you wish.  This is the choice I made for the little voki below so that you could hear what I'm explaining.  I also had to spell phonetically, Happy Mardi Grah, so that the US voice would not pronounce the "s".  Remember to click the green Done tab at the bottom right corner.

4. Choose a background next.

5.  Choose a player, the frame for the voki with the buttons the receivers will click on.

6.  Happy with your voki?  Click publish and name it.  When you click "publish" you receive the option to email a friend, link to it via the website, or copy the code to embed the voki as I did below.

http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=11002983&height=267&width=200

Site Pal, the premium site intended for the corporate world, is much more robust and not only offers simple avatars like Voki, but other ways to use them. My colleague who teaches Spanish and I have experimented with Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Graduate Assistant avatar. You may have seen something similar if you shop online catalogs. Our Grad Assistant was available with a click on any page in the language course. She popped up and asked how she could help. The student would type in a question, and if we had programmed in an answer for it, she would explain it to them. We used the idea of a Graduate Assistant, but you could design an avatar that's YOU answering their questions, and thus be available for your students 24/7! Instead of masking as someone or something different for Mardi Gras, here you would be creating a "virtual you" who can keep working as you try to sleep or grade or research. Sound intriguing? If so, contact me and let's talk avatars!

Published on Leave a comment on OpenCulture.com

by Karen Nichols

When Sue Frantz was here last week, she mentioned during one of her presentations that MOOCs are being used by people who already have degrees but who are interested in lifelong learning opportunities. Well have I got a website for those of us who seek self-improvement! Do you know about OpenCulture.com?

This site is edited by Dan Colman, director of Open Culture at Stanford, and not only has links to MOOCs on myriad topics, he also searches for lectures, audio books, digital books, movies and any other educational media that he believes may be of interest to lifelong learners.

The curation of the multi-media items is well organized, so whether you're looking for a lecture lasting a few minutes or an online course on a literary movement, you can easily find what suits your needs.  If you have young children, there's even a K-12 resource site.  It's good to have a safe area to send the children to for their multi-media needs as well.

In addition, there's an area for learning another language or two. Since languages are my area of specialization, I'm anxious to try some of these sites. Having recently begun tracing my genealogy, I've become interested in Gaelic. Sure enough, there's a site in the list for learning the basics.

I also think this site may be of use to your students. Take a look at your subject area to see what may be available. If you see a film or lecture or even an introductory course for students who may need a refresher on the basics, you can post the links inside your Blackboard course for your students. There's also a section on free textbooks that are available. With the rising costs of textbooks, wouldn't it be useful if there's one that students can use for free?

I'm quite interested in the lectures available.  There's an entire series in French of Roland Barthes, one of the sources from my dissertation that I'm looking forward to listening to.  Here's one from Leonard Bernstein, part of his 1973 lectures on music at Harvard:

lb

Check out the site and let us know what you find interesting and useful.