Sr. colleagues stretch comfort zone in safe ways: 1-to-1

#tutechday via Temple U. mentoring program ripple effect - J. kessler 20110407   

With respect to helping an additional senior colleague who is not now participating in the Temple University "Faculty Mentors for the Future of Instructional Technology" Program, a colleague who has already demonstrated some interest and some uncertainty...
Julie Kessler hopes to include him in the next phase because this program can enable him to “Stretch his comfort zone in a safe way,”  based on trust and mutual respect because this program “this program is about relationships”

Videorecording Lectures - Changes Teaching?

Student (re)watching class improves learning? 
Teacher watching own class improves teaching?

"Professor Shankar is working on his second semester of recorded videos, and says that the experience has improved his teaching. This time around, he is trying to liven up his lectures.... 'since any mistake would affect larger numbers of students listening online,' he says, he thinks harder about every topic he teaches in the classroom." Higher Education Reimagined With Online Courseware - Education Life - NYTimes.com: By KATIE HAFNER, Published: April 16, 2010

Not clickable - link from image in NYT article

Session 1 - Course Introduction and Newtonian Mechanics — Open Yale Courses  2010? PHYS 200: Fundamentals of Physics, Ramamurti Shankar, John Randolph Huffman Professor of Physics, Yale University

Improving Teaching and Learning with Technology-Conflicting(?) Schools of Thought

Interesting post by Phil Long (University of Queensland, TLT Group Senior Consultant, and formerly Senior Strategist at MIT) about how to think about improving teaching and learning (with technology).

I think Phil, Steve Gilbert, and I each have slightly different views about how to proactively improve teaching and learning with technology (TLT) in an academic program. Dramatizing our disagreement will, I hope, be an aid to deepening and widening the conversation. Here's my summary of what each of the three of us currently think:

1. Wait until external conditions are really demanding (a near crisis, perhaps). Then marshall your forces and push for a big change that responds to that crisis. A big change might be, for example, a combination of a curricular redesign, a fresh approach to teaching and learning, and the facilities to support both of them.
   If there is no external pressure, try rallying staff effort and resources around an inspiring vision of the future. Use that enthusiasm to create change that will last. Change will come faster when change agents can take advantage of a crisis, however. An evolutionary metaphor is suggested by Phil and by a comment by Trent Batson about Phil's post. I think that's misleading, however. Evolution is a 'mindless' metaphor to apply to programs, but Phil (and I) each tend to think in terms of faculty and staff who are trying to change the larger institution or program of which they are a part. (Phil Long, as translated by SteveE)
2. In contrast, Steve Gilbert has been working to promoteevolution in small steps, an inductive approach to improvement that emerges from relatively independent actions taken by each faculty member. SteveG suggests that staff help each faculty member find or invent small steps that make sense to that individual faculty member. Then help them use feedback to guide what they're doing. Finally, help them each to share their ideas and materials with a few more colleagues who can quickly adapt them with little or no risk or expense.
   SteveG rarely talks about helping faculty to change in any particular direction. I think he's wary of the lure of Big Changes. Remember what Newton said: Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction. Big pushes create big pushback. The small approach is sneakier, producing change that is too invisible, and too grounded in faculty freedom, for anyone to oppose. (Steve Gilbert, as translated by SteveE)
3. Here's my perspective: identify small steps being made by faculty (here SteveG and I agree). Then try to spot a subset of those changes that could be the beginning of something big and important for the programs' students, faculty and other stakeholders. Then start consciously supporting progress in that direction through small steps and, where warranted, big steps. When identifying directions for improvement, pay special attention to outside pressures and rewards:e.g., falling enrollments and the potential to increase enrollment; trends in thinking in the discipline. (SteveE)

Do you buy any of these strategies? Have a fourth to suggest? or perhaps you think the whole idea of a proactive strategy to improve teaching and learning is futile?

10. TLT support: Why and How

You can't understand teaching if you ignore learning. And you can't understand either unless you pay attention to the facilities, resources, and tools used to accomplish them: classrooms and computers, libraries and the web, and other such 'technologies.' At one time staff could ignore classrooms, textbooks, and other traditional technologies because the choices were few, and universally familiar. That's no longer true. Especially in the last decade, the options have multiplied. Because these technology options are not equally good, equally easy, or equally inexpensive, the choice of technologies requires conscious attention, just as teaching and learning themselves do.

That close relationship of teaching, learning, and their technologies
is one reason why it's important for institutions to have units that
function as TLT Centers, real or virtual.

A virtual TLT Center is a constellation of two or more units such as faculty development, technology support, the library, the facilities program that supports classrooms, distance learning, and departmental TLT experts -- units that work so closely together that they act like a single service provider. For example, their staffs continually learn about each other's resources and from one another's experiences; that way each staff member can draw on all the capabilities of the virtual center.

These things I do believe.

But some of my beliefs have changed. I once believed that, when helping faculty, TLT staff needed to focus on (just) two things:

1. WHY: Teach enough about a new technology and its teaching/learning uses so that instructors would want to learn more, and, for those who are persuaded,
2. HOW to teach in those ways.

Is that a good summary of the kinds of help that TLT staff provide faculty at your institution? Or is there something additional that faculty are taught about emerging TLT topics? Please post your observation by clicking 'comments' below.

My second old belief was that support for faculty should be provided directly and entirely by experts in TLT support. At your institution are there people in addition to TLT staff who provide such support?

My third old belief is that this training should be entirely interdisciplinary: faculty are specialized by discipline but TLT staff are not. So this faculty support service should be 'one size fits all departments.' Is that true at your institution?

PS Anyone who knows the work of "the Steves" knows how many of the thoughts in this series come wholly or partly from Steve Gilbert. Our thinking has been so intertwined over so many years that it's not even possible to point out which of the observations in this series originated from him and which from me.

PPS You probably know that this post is part of a series called 'Ten Things I (no longer) Believe about Transforming Teaching and Learning with Technology.' If you like these posts, please spread the word. Perhaps you can use these ideas to help with a more intentional approach to TLT planning.

And join us online for a free, live discussion of these issues on Friday, October 23, at 2 PM ET. It's part of our FridayLive series. If you don't already have a FastPass, click here to register. Thanks!

I. Programs make faster, better educational progress when they're world class scroungers

Earlier this week I described my mistaken belief that one should pay most attention to the newest ideas, especially if you can create your own idea or phrase, or at least your own wrinkle, and then claim the credit for being first.

The folly of that belief was pounded home for me in 1996. That was the year that Arthur Chickering suggested that we write an article on how to use technology to implement the 'seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education.' He and Zelda Gamson had summarized these seven lessons from educational research a decade earlier.

I replied that such an article was unnecessary. “Everyone knows how to do this already,' I told him. 'According to your seven principles, when students cooperate, educational outcomes usually improve. Anyone can see that using email can provide new avenues for students to cooperate. And the kinds of complex, real world projects made possible by computing often compel students to work in teams. Who needs an article to tell them that? It's old news.” Chickering persisted. So we wrote the article, got it published in a little newsletter, and soon put it on the web. Very quickly, 100 people per month were visiting our article. Then 200, and 400. A decade later, over 5,000 people per month were taking a look at it . Not bad for an article about ideas so obvious that I'd thought an article totally unnecessary.

Crucial question: How do you spread ideas and skills from the 5% of faculty for whom they're old news to those who would also respond, “That's wonderful!” if they ever heard about the idea or tried the skill? These blog posts are about using technologies in a way that can improve what's learned, who learns, and how they learn. To achieve that kind of change, engaging large numbers of mainstream faculty can be important. Each of them may not need to change what they're doing very much, but they each would probably need to change a little. Suppose it's a change they'd like if they ever heard about it; how can we help them notice the possibility in time?

Steve Gilbert, Flora McMartin and I did a major research study for MIT and Microsoft several years ago. Microsoft had made a multi-year, $25 million grant to MIT, and chunks of that money were being awarded to MIT faculty to do pioneering projects involving educational uses of technology. Our research: discover factors that influenced whether the best of these innovations were ever used by faculty other than their original developers.

One story from this MIT/Microsoft study suggests an important lesson for any program that wants to accelerate the pace of improving teaching and learning with technology.

Pete Donaldson is a Shakespeare scholar at MIT. For years before the Microsoft grant became available to MIT faculty, Pete had been experimenting with ways for his students to use film clips (without violating copyright) in their papers and online discussions. He'd had some success, enough to give workshops on the topic and to be a keynoter at the Shakespeare Association of America, where he gave a spectacular demonstration. His use of video clips, however, relied on an assembly of expensive equipment. Then he received a grant from the MIT/Microsoft iCampus program. The support enabled programmers to work with him, and to figure out a much more inexpensive strategy. The resulting software was called the Cross Media Annotation System (XMAS). Pete used the SHAKSPER, a popular listserv in the Shakespeare community and a mailing list of people who had attended his prior workshops to ask if anyone would like to use this free service in order to incorporate film clips into their Shakespeare courses. Quite a few did, especially because they knew and trusted Pete. One comment we heard from several adaptors: Pete wasn't threatening because he wasn't a techie, himself. He was like them. So if he could use XMAS, so could they.

The story is not all success. XMAS ought to be a great tool for film courses taught by film scholars, even more than for Shakespeare courses taught by English professors.

But Pete Donaldson is not a member of that community of film scholars, doesn't go to their conferences, doesn't know their listservs, and doesn't write in their journals. Nor do the other English faculty he has helped.

At some point, XMAS and Donaldson's techniques for using it may be adapted by a film scholar who, like Pete, uses the idea for teaching and for research and who, like Pete, has a yen to help his or her colleagues. And then the use of XMAS may begin spreading like a virus in that community.

Let's pull these threads together.

In the real world, instructors rarely have much time to uncover new ideas. Nor can they can take many risks (e.g., fear of embarrassment, wasted time when they're already over-committed, risk to a tenure case). That's one reason why new ideas about teaching and learning tend to spread so slowly. However, it can help to hear about such ideas from peers with a reputation for this kind of improvement (especially from peers who teach similar courses to similar students, even at other institutions).

Therefore, I suggest that any institution that wants to make unusual progress in TLT ought to help create and sustain faculty learning communities whose members often (a) teach similar courses, and (b) come from different institutions. If those similar courses have similar students, and the faculty have similar styles, so much the better. That way, if one faculty member has an idea, or uses a technology, or has a puzzling experience, it should be relatively easy for others to emulate. And, by including faculty from other institutions, you and your colleagues will hear about new low threshold steps much more quickly.

You can't search everywhere for everything. That's another reason why it's so important to set one or two focused priorities. Those priorities should help faculty and staff focus their searches for ideas. Become a world class scrounger and borrower of appropriate teaching ideas and materials from around the world! Ironically, that's also a great way for faculty members and their program to get a reputation as world class innovators.

PS. If you don't have much money, search for great ideas in countries where money has been scarce for some time.

H. Faculty support for programmatic improvement: The Treblig Cycle

This "Ten Things" series of posts is discussing some counter-intuitive ideas about how technology can enable major, long term improvement in academic programs: improvements in what is learned, who learns, and how they learn.

Such deep programmatic improvements are more likely to develop when most faculty feel that a change is important enough to warrant patient, persistent effort over a period of years. In these days, when money is tight and competition ferocious for many academic programs, an unusual number of faculty may feel this way.

What kind of faculty support could help such sweeping programmatic improvements develop?

The most problematic requirement for such faculty support is scale: the need to involve most faculty in this academic program. If the program's leaders hope to improve what's learned, who learns, and how they learn, they need to help most faculty develop some new skills, tools, and materials.

My colleague, Steve Gilbert, has been developing the concept of 'frugal innovations,' innovations that can work, and spread, when time and money are scarce. He recommends a cycle of individual improvement and peer-to-peer sharing of those experiences and mateirals. He has called this process 'nanovation.' Lewis Hyde would call it a 'circle of gifts.' I call it the Treblig Cycle (pronounced treb'lig). If you're curious why I suggest that name, read this article'.

As I interpret what Steve has been saying, the Treblig Cycle consists five steps:

1. A faculty member learns about (or invents, or reinvents) an improvement for teaching and learning with technology. The materials or tools needed should be freely available or nearly free to this faculty member and his/her colleagues. To make this cycle work, the improvement should also be low risk, obviously rewarding, possibly time-saving, and easy to learn. Steve has called such tools and materials “Low Threshold Applications” and such improvement ideas “Low Threshold Activities.” We usually refer to both as “LTAs”. "Low threshold" is a relative term, not an absolute. Something which is low threshold for some people in their institutional context may be expensive, high risk, or too hard to learn for other faculty in a different institutional context. For the Treblig cycle to work, however, the improvement must be low threshold for most people who learn about it. And, for the Treblig Cycle to help the strategic change of interest, this particular LTA should be an incremental step in that direction. If the faculty are trying to slowly and, eventually, dramatically improve the creative skills of their graduates, for example, then this LTA should help advance that effort just a little bit: a tiny step in the right direction. The fact that many faculty agree that this programmatic change is important - that's one of the things that attracts their attention to this LTA.
2. The instructor tries the improvement, and finds it rewarding. (If it weren't rewarding for him or her, the process would stop here.)
3. He or she tries the idea again, gathering feedback to guide the activity and/or to describe its outcomes;
4. In the process of trying the idea, he or she may also tweak, personalize or otherwise improve it;
5. He or she helps at least two colleagues inside or outside the institution to begin this same cycle; in other words, these colleagues are now at step 1 of the Treblig Cycle. If each of them in turn gets two or more colleagues to enter the cycle, the low threshold improvement will spread in an accelerating way.

The Treblig Cycle is more likely to work if the environment rewards (a) faculty sharing information with colleagues inside and outside of the institution, (b) improvements that aid the chosen programmatic goal.

Obviously, many improvements can't be spread by the Therblig Cycle. Some improvements don't meet a widely felt need so they won't be rewarding enough to excite their users to share them. Other improvements aren't low threshold for most people.

So, if your academic program is developing a strategic academic/technology plan for the next 5-10 years, or considering which of several strategic options to choose, ask whether each proposed strategic change could be implemented with the help of the Treblig Cycle.

Relying on the Treblig Cycle does not eliminate the need for faculty support units. Quite the contrary. Faculty support units can use the Treblig Cycle as a tool for supporting faculty. For example, the faculty support unit could search for relevant LTAs, could create materials describing the LTAs, and find more ways to encourage faculty to share such ideas. (We'll return to some of these themes in coming weeks.)

To summarize: crucial elements for applying the Treblig cycle to transformative uses of technology are (a) agreeing on a direction for change that reflect widely felt needs among the faculty, (b) collecting Low Threshold Applications and Activities that many faculty would find rewarding, and (c) encouraging the sharing of such ideas and movement in those directions.

Your comments? Can you imagine an academic program or institution using the Treblig Cycle to support a 5-10 effort to transform itself, eg., internationalizing its curriculum? Developing a world class reputation for the design skills of its graduates? Does the Treblig Cycle suggest a reasonable route to a slow revolution?

8. Support strategy: Help a few faculty; teach one new technology after another

The topic of this series of blog posts is how to use technology in ways that, over time, result in substantial improvements in teaching and learning. When I say "substantial," I am pointing to hopes that many have had for educational evolution, perhaps even revolution, triggered by the use of technology. Each Monday I describe something I once believed about how to make such major, long term improvements, a belief I question today. Last Monday, we discussed the content of faculty support offerings (services focused either on technology OR on teaching/learning).

Today, I'd like to hear your observations on scale of faculty support: size of the change in teaching practice by faculty, number of faculty helped, time scale (frequency of change of topics for support), and total budget for support.

Traditionally small support budgets for faculty have divided among two or more units (one in the technology unit, perhaps someone in distance learning, staff in the library, staff in the teaching center, staff in colleges or departments).

Historically, many of these units would respond to technical changes as quickly as possible ("Which technologies are the subject of the most buzz this year?"). Then the unit would offer faculty workshops during the term and during the summer to help faculty learn to use that new technology. To attend such a session, faculty would need to set aside more than hour (sometimes much more) and go to a different building. Limited interest, that time requirement, and size of computer labs would combine to limit attendance: a few faculty at a time. Help desk operations would assist one faculty member at a time.

Costs: Because only a few faculty members could be helped at once, because each person was being helped to master a major technology, and because the topics of support might change rapidly (with expenses to develop each new support unit), the cost for each faculty member receiving support (including the faculty member's own time to attend and to master that new technology) was probably substantial (though it was rare to see estimates of such total costs).

Outcomes: Even after backbreaking effort by each tiny support unit, it's possible that only a few faculty could describe how they had improved teaching and learning in their courses by using that support. And I'd guess that no academic department could describe any cumulative improvement in teaching and learning made in one their degree programs over the years with aid from a technology support unit.

Is this a good description of what used to happen, or what still happens? What have you seen? (Depending on which URL you used to see this post, you can post your observations either by clicking on the phrase "Post a Comment" below or else by clicking the word "COMMENTS" to the right of my name below.)

G. To engage most faculty, support must meet many needs

How should an institution help faculty improve teaching and learning (with technology)? I'll respond to that question in different ways over the next three weeks. Here's my first set of suggestions for faculty support (e.g., teaching centers, information technology units, library staff, distance learning staff, ...).

At most institutions, support programs only influence a small fraction of the courses each year. And support staffs are usually so small and under-budgeted that they're often kept pretty busy serving just the small fraction of faculty who actively pursue their services.

But if you're looking for a reason why we haven't seen major improvements in teaching and learning (with technology) at most institutions over the last thirty years, this is certainly one of them. Faculty aren't getting the help they need. Or, from the point of view of the helper, we might say instead, "Not enough faculty are asking for the help we think they need."

Under what circumstances does an institution need to engage large numbers of faculty in some teaching and learning improvement (using technology)?

1. When a major is being transformed (e.g., to offer a degree program at a distance, or reshape a degree program as MIT did when it created the CDIO program) many faculty need to be engaged in order to offer a full constellation of courses, provide advising, etc.
   
2. As that Reed senior said about learning how to rethink his reasoning and writing, 'I don’t think I could have learned that from just one course. But, over the years, it gradually sank in.' If one's goal is to improve what the average graduate is able to do, or think, or feel, make many small changes across many courses. That requires the participation of lots of faculty.
   
3. (Technology-supported) innovations are sometimes resisted by students who say, "No one else is asking me to do this but you." For innovative faculty, there's safety in numbers.
   
4. Get enough faculty engaged in an improvement big enough, visible enough, and last enough to gain an advantage in the competition for new students, new faculty, donor support, grants, and other resources that the program needs to function, as we discussed in an earlier post. That's why a degree program or an institution might decide that it's a priority to work for 5-10 years to internationalize the curriculum, to develop a national reputation for the design skills of its graduates, or to become widely known for the work of its faculty and students in responding to climate change. Those are just three examples of technology-supported improvements in teaching and learning.
   
5. Accreditors might have targeted this area as a deficiency that needs to be remedied over the coming years.
   
6. Sometimes a new foundational technology is introduced which works better and better as more students and staff use it, e.g., email, sharing of documents and social networking.

In any of these circumstances, faculty support units will need to ask themselves, "How can we engage large numbers of faculty to work in this chosen direction?" One key is to recognize that different faculty members want different things. For example,

• Headline some of your offerings with the issue itself as your headline (e.g., adapting curricula to respond to climate change.') If you've chosen the right issue, that should attract a significant number of faculty. But probably not enough. How can you attract more faculty to learn about and work on your issue?
  
• Some faculty love fooling around with new technology. So, if the goal is important, some support offerings for your issue should be headlined, "Play with this new technology" (even if the priority only uses that technology as one ingredient in a larger strategy).
  
• Some faculty are focused on their own teaching (i.e., lecturing, writing). Can they advance your priority by developing that skill? If so, headline your offering with the skill, and use your issue as the example. (Here, as in the other bullets, we're talking about a fraction of your total offerings relevant to the chosen priority.)
  
• Some faculty member see it as important to understand their students so that they can help each student excel. If your priority can help with that, headline some offerings with that need (e.g. learner-centered teaching). (What's marvelous about many educational uses of technology is how many of these headlines can be used with integrity. To internationalize the curriculum effectively, for example, all these kinds of changes are enabled.)
  
• Some faculty want to survive. Can something about your priority save them time? help make their teaching less like pushing a boulder up a mountain? If so, make that the headline some of the time.

To repeat: don't make promises you can't keep. If you headline a workshop with 'time-saver for faculty,' it had better both advance your priority and also save participants some time. Support for a high priority issue should also be offered in a variety of modes, each designed to engage a different subset of the faculty, e.g.,

• summer workshops;
  
• online tutorials;
  
• brown bags;
  
• 5-10 minute sessions led by faculty as agenda items in departmental faculty meetings.
  
• enlisting one or more faculty in each relevant department to play a more active role, e.g., studying what other institutions are doing in this arena and then sharing their findings with relevant colleagues in their department.

To sum up, it's important that faculty and support staff work together to set a few priorities for improvement. For those priorities which require engagement of large numbers of faculty, staff should offer support in several modes (e.g., workshops, one-on-one consulting, peer-to-peer strategies) and frames (e.g., new technology, educational priorities, saving faculty time).

It may seem counter-intuitive to suggest priority setting in a culture that values academic freedom. And I certainly wouldn't rely on this strategy alone. But such a widely-embraced priority has the power to mobilize the resources needed over many years to power major, cumulative improvements in education.

7. What I once believed: Train faculty how to operate the technology

This is what faculty support offerings look like at many institutions:

• The IT department offerings are about “How to use (operate) our course management system,” and “How to Use Photoshop.”
  
• The faculty development program's offerings are about “Using collaborative learning in the classroom,” and “What to do on the first day of class.”

In other words, there is a sharp division of labor. Most IT units help faculty mainly with “how to” use the technology, while many teaching units mostly help faculty with “how to” teach (they ignore the technology, which is the business of the IT department).

This isn't an arrangement I ever recommended. But I didn't initially question it, either; it seemed the natural way to do things. I did notice that at most institutions the attendance was low at the workshops. Nor was there much sign that average faculty members used other forms of service (e.g., web sites, phone-in for help) unless they had to (for example, when using the course management system was required).

Does your institution divide support this way? Are support services mainly about “how to?” Please use the “COMMENT” button below, just to the right of my name, to add your observations about how your institution handles these tasks.

(As you may know, this blog post is part of a series, “Ten Things I (no longer) Believe about Transforming Teaching and Learning with Technology”. To see a summary of the whole series, where this entry fits, and links to all the completed posts, see http://bit.ly/ten-things-table.

F. Organizing to Improve Teaching and Learning with Technology: Collaborative Change

How do we organize the process of improving teaching and learning (with technology)?

At most institutions, the context is a sharp division of labor. The most important divisions:

• Individual faculty exercise relatively personal, private control over the content and methods of each course. (In most departments, this individual ownership of individual courses is far more meaningful than any collective faculty responsibility for the degree program.)
  
• Various facilities, resources and services are controlled by various staff units (e.g., classrooms, course management systems, libraries, study areas and their equipment) and by outside organizations (e.g., Internet sites, Google tools, textbooks, ...)

The implication: each can handle those responsibilities relatively independently of the others. Presumably, the sum of their efforts will yield sufficient return on the institution's investment in expensive technologies such as course management systems, classrooms, and libraries. Many of us had hoped for much more: computing would revolutionize how students learn, what they learn, and who can learn. Perhaps the cost structure of education would be transformed, too. Or maybe not. That division of responsibility has been a major roadblock. Of course, we occasionally overcome that division. I have already talked about how a variety of independent choices by faculty led to a coherent pattern of change in learning activities and outcomes at Reed College in the 1980s. Here's an example of an unusual degree of collaboration. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that this story unfolds at an entrepreneurial research university where team research is the norm. A few years ago, my old undergraduate department, the MIT Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, decided that major curricular change was needed. Faculty started by asking what skills their graduating students would need. To develop those skills, faculty decided, students would need plenty of practice in four activities:

1. the conceptual work of design,
   
2. converting those ideas into plans for something that could be built,
   
3. actually constructing the engineered work, and
   
4. testing the product.

Faculty called this four step cycle “Conceive – Develop – Implement – Operate (CDIO)”. And they realized that most of CDIO needed to occur outside classrooms, 24 x 7. Conceiving such a reform is one thing. To actually develop, implement and operate such an innovative academic program would require collaboration involving many faculty in the department along with many individuals and groups outside the department. For example, faculty realized that their building (which was due for renovation) was unsuitable for this kind of 24x7 approach. When the institution's architects balked at planning such a facility, the department responded that it would raise its own money and hire its own architects. (One advantage to having a faculty with a track record of raising large sums of money and well-to-do alumni– it changes the internal balance of power!) 'Support staff' and faculty from other departments and offices then teamed to develop these plans, e.g., figuring out how, in order to work on their projects, engineering undergraduates could use keyless access to enter otherwise-locked rooms in the building at any hour of the day or night. That MIT success story is the product of a coalition of effort, complementing a division of responsibility. How are things going at your institution? Who takes responsibility for improving teaching and learning with technology? Do those folks have the respect and budget to carry out that responsibility? For example, how does (or might) your institution deal with questions such as these:

1. Should your institution switch to Google Mail? What are the educational, budget, and policy implications of relying on such an external service?
   
2. The monograph and article no longer have a monopoly on academic expression. More work in the disciplines is being developed and shared through web sites, video, email, and multimedia. In each department, what media do your advanced students need to use to do their projects and communicate professionally? To prepare for that, what kinds of multimedia skills should your entering students learn in the first year ? Who should help them acquire those skills in the first year? How do you assess those skills?
   
3. What issues of policy and practice are emerging as a result of ePortfolio use at our institution? Should projects and the portfolios themselves should become part of the student's formal academic record? How long should they be saved? Who has the right to change those records?
   
4. Much of what faculty do to improve their teaching is the result of informal learning. How can such learning be improved and extended? What roles might other staff (e.g. librarians) play in helping faculty learn about teaching and learning with technology in their disciplines at other institutions?

“It takes a village.” Steve Gilbert and I have been supporting collaborative change for fifteen years. Here are just two of the ideas and resources we've developed at The TLT Group:

1. Your institution has what we would call a Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable if you have a council or conclave that meets regularly, advises the chief academic officer on issues of policy relating to teaching and learning with technology, and convenes many kinds of stakeholders. To assure that the Roundtable balances a variety of points of view, it's important to include faculty (tenure track and adjunct) who represent a variety of degrees and types of technology use, for example. TLTRs have advised on budgets and tricky policy questions. They can help faculty and support staff to understand one another's perspectives. And they can accelerate the sharing of information between junior faculty and senior technology administrators, senior librarians and junior facilities staff, student affairs staff and academic department heads, as TLTR members from all these areas work together to develop a policy position for the institution. A well-functioning TLTR helps the institution seize opportunities and deal with problems that are not the responsibility of any one office, department or segment of the institution. We can help with getting a TLTR underway and providing resources for its agenda.
   
2. Gathering information from stakeholders: Flashlight Online, our web-based survey system, has been used by a few institutions to regularly gather input from different segments of the academic community. Sandy Shugart, president of Valencia Community College, has said that Flashlight Online is one of the keys to their strategy for shared governance. Tenure track and adjunct faculty are regularly surveyed so that they can contribute information, ideas and opinions for use in developing new policy at Valencia.

What steps has your institution taken to exercise collaborative responsibility for improving teaching and learning with technology? What do you suggest as next steps? Click on the word “COMMENTS” below, just to the right of my name, to share your observations and suggestions. REFERENCES For a bit more on the history of CDIO at MIT, see William Litant's article, “Learning in a Landmark Laboratory,” in http://bit.ly/MIT-CDIO.

Priorities for TLTG Online Symposium 2009 - Fac/Pro Dev/Support

Priorities for Faculty/Professional Development/Support Online Symposium

August, Sept, 2009, the TLT Group, Inc.
Frugal Innovations: Faculty Roles and Programmatic Support
What should we focus on first, next?

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Include Exclude 1st results from similar online poll 8/4

This Web Page: http://preview.tinyurl.com/TLTG-FrugalPriorities09

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Try to Include topics, issues, questions, activities, challenges, strategies - In what order?

We seek participants' input for determining the
order in which we address some of the following in this 2009 Symposium. We will also welcome
polite responses to "How could you have been so stupid as to omit
XXXYYYZZZZZ, which should be one of the top priorities for this
series?"

• Cope with $ Cuts
  How to cope with current budget cuts just for now? or forever? Planning/hoping for return to "normalcy"?

• Info for Decisions
  What kinds of information or data will really effect related decisions (by whom?) in the next 12 months?

• Nanovation, Extermissions, & Milli-Everetts
  See also: "Milli-Everetts - Smallest Essential Steps for Incremental Exponential Education Revolution: Nanovation?"
  Nanovation = Intentional use of new resources for "sharing forward" improvements
  and innovations in ways that multiply impact (like "viral marketing,"
  - morally and intellectually responsible version of "Ponzi
  scheme"/Pyramid/Chain Letter; Extermission = Intentional, informal outreach - used during TLT Group's online
  sessions about Twitter in July, 2009.
  Milli-Everett = The smallest effort required to enable and encourage at least one teacher to at least:
  

• Make one improvement in one course,
  
• Get a little feedback and improve that improvement,
  
• Help two at least colleagues each make similar improvements - and each help at least two more colleagues ....

• Mid-Level Roles
  Role of mid-level academic professionals (dept
  chairs, division leaders, deans, …)in success/failure of dissemination, innovation, ...
• Gmail Decision
  Tools that appear to have great potential for
  teaching/learning and become even more accessible when all students and
  others have Gmail accounts - implications for budget, policy, operations, teaching/learning
  
• Using Un-Owned Resources
  Web 2.0 -
  the difference between "free beer and a free puppy"; who is
  responsible for what kind of support and usage policies, standards when
  the college or university cannot own or control the resource? - implications for budget, policy, operations, teaching/learning
• Handheld Devices
  Love em or leave em? Use in courses or forbid in classroom? Clickers, PDAs, smart phones, netbooks, audio & video recorders - - implications for budget, policy, operations, teaching/learning
• Back-Channel Communication
  Constructive "back-channel" communication - anonymous or not,
  sanctioned or not!
  
• Brief Hybrids
  Taking advantage of these compact combinations of plans, media, activities, references, to make small low-risk, low-cost course improvements: Dipping a toe in the shallow, quiet end of the raging technology sea!
• Textbooks: Evolution or Extinction?
  Emerging alternatives and variations. How
  changes in technology are both impeding and facilitating the
  opportunities for students to take their own notes and engage actively
  with readings and other learning resources.
  The myth of standardized resources for independent learning.

• Fundamental Paradox of Faculty Development
  Recognize and try to reconcile these two approaches:
  A. Rational: emphasizes data, assessment, "scalable" strategies
  B. Personal: emphasizes trust, individual differences, relationships and growth
  
  Address these provocative-but-useful questions:
  Why is Faculty Development a low institutional priority?
  
  
  

  Why are so many
  faculty members still, in 2009, ''assessment-phobic'' and ''rubric-ignorant''? [Maybe we need to
  find Latin or Greek terms for ''assessment-phobic'' and ''rubric-ignorant' -
  ha! ha??]

  
  
  What could be done to avoid or reduce disproportionately large budget cuts for faculty development? So that when we return to better economic times, a larger portion of institutional resources will be committed to faculty development?
  
• Collection & Dissemination Challenge
  Agree/disagree/deal with: Most conscientious and valuable efforts to collect, assemble, publish, and get others to use valuable practices, policies, and ideas for improving teaching and learning in higher education fail to reach more than a few percent of all faculty - ever, certainly not in a year or two. Its getting even more difficult to get anyone to pay attention to any message or information - even about resources they need and are already entitled to!
  How can we enable and encourage effective exchange of information and innovations among Symposium participants, their own Institutions, even more widely!
  
• Faculty Learning Communities - Communities of Practice
  
  

• Even More Important!
  "How could you have been so stupid as to omit
  XXXYYYZZZZZ, which is the one that REALLY important to me? It should be one of the top priorities for this
  series!"
  

Return to Top

---

Try to Exclude the Seductively Plausible and Unrealistically Contingent:
topics, issues, activities, challenges, strategies

We'll try to exclude from our discussions topics, etc. that are

Seductively Plausible but we already know they just don't work or they're unlikely to be
accomplished in a short time with scarce resources

Unrealistically Contingent on
major changes in campus culture that are still not within reach (e.g., changing the promotion/tenure system)

Return to Top

Resources for workshops on assessment and evaluation

1. Do something.
2. Pause.
3. Gather some more information.
4. Then decide what to do next.

Sounds easy. A lot of what we do at the TLT Group is helping academics with #3, whether you call it "assessment," "evaluation," "scholarship of teaching and learning," "accreditation self-studies," or something else. We provide Flashlight Online so people can gather their own information. We do external evaluations. Of equal importance, we help educate faculty and other staff so that they can ask the right questions for themselves: questions whose answers are likely to be useful in deciding what to do next.

We continually revise and expand our educational resources, including workshop materials and the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook.

For example, we just added some new material to our list of 'frequently made objections' to assessment. If you're doing an evaluation, or training others, and get some push back, it's time for you to do steps 1-4 above: why are people really objecting? This web page should help you ask them the right questions.

And, if you run workshops or give talks about evaluation, a little humor can help lighten the mood while making a point. Here are some cartoons and stories you might find laughable.

We assembled these resources for our subscribing institutions. If you find them useful and your institution isn't supporting the TLT Group's work, perhaps you could pursue a subscription.

Organizing workshops for participants who differ in needs, excitement, ...

The TLT Group is well-known for its faculty and staff workshops. Here's one technique we've used to organize workshops for faculty who differ in many ways: in skills, in degree of excitement, and in reasons for attending.

Several years ago, the Butler University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences decided to plan a laptop requirement for its entering students. In the 18 months leading up to the entry of the first laptop cohort, faculty would redesign their courses in order to take advantage of the new technology. The University subscribed to The TLT Group to get some help for those 50 or so faculty. We planned a day-long workshop for Butler staff. As part of that workshop, we wanted faculty to learn from the findings and experience of an expert at another university.

Usually, a workshop has to pick one of two strategies to help participants learn from an expert. The expensive option is to bring the expert to campus to be a featured speaker in the workshop. The inexpensive alternative is to have participants read an article written by the expert.

We used a technique that combines virtues of those two approaches, while also doing better than either at meeting the needs of a diverse group of faculty.

1. Before arriving at the workshop, participating faculty read an article by the expert.
2. At the workshop, we spent about 10 minutes planning questions to ask the expert. As they read this long and provocativ research report, our faculty had noticed different things, liked different things, and objected to different things. So there were lots of questions and comments. (At the time we had picked the article, we had asked the author if he would be willing to take our call at the time of the workshop so that our faculty could ask him questions. He was delighted to do so.)
3. Then we called him and began with the questions we'd planned, as faculty handed a microphone from one questioner to the next. We could hear our expert over a speaker. He didn't give a talk; he just responded to our questions and comments about his article. We actually spent far more time quizzing the expert then if he had given a talk.

Cost: just the price of the phone call.

Time-saving: People were able to read the article (which was quite long- 15 or 20 pages) in far less time than a speech would have taken. Even with the time for discussion, it was a great time-saver. : each person could focus just on those points that had excited or provoked them the most.

"The Lecture is Dead. Long Live the Lecture."

"The Lecture is Dead. Long Live the Lecture."

Role of Note-Taking

Response to previous postings "The best 'lecture' ever"

Excerpt from posting to POD listserv by Steve Gilbert Aug 29 2007.

"The Lecture is Dead. Long Live the Lecture."
That's the new title that emerged yesterday during a conversation I was privileged to have with Paul A. Lacey in preparation for a free online Webcast next Friday (Sept 7) about pedagogy.
Click here for full digital recording of this event:

Paul often referred to his experiences as the first Director of a Lilly Endowment project to support young faculty members. He described the rapidly growing movement to oppose lecturing in college courses, the over-zealous advocates of eliminating all lectures who claimed that students could learn more efficiently from textbooks, etc., and, eventually, the evaporation of this issue. All in the 1970s.

Paul noted the disappearance of note-taking by students during lectures as one of many important changes since then. He described some of his work with a variety of faculty colleagues over many years to help them improve the effectiveness of their lecture-dominated courses. He often focused on helping the faculty members to shape the students' purposes and practices in note-taking.

I want to suggest that student note-taking may be viewed as a valuable lens for focusing more clearly on the intersection of new technology options, changing educational practices, and common misconceptions about "engagement" and "active learning."

First, do you agree that most students do not arrive in most lecture-based courses prepared to take notes effectively? Is that quite different from a few years or decades ago?

Second, technology as culprit. Many teachers and learners have been seduced by the capability of recording and publishing live events in various ways, as the relevant technology has become so easy to use, available, and inexpensive. They have leapt to the conclusion that a full audio recording or full video recording of the entire event is superior to and removes the need for note-taking by individual students.

Third, the practice of a faculty member or student or other authorized person serving as official note-taker for a course is also seen as superior to and removing the need for note-taking by individual students.

The Misconceptions
I learned rather painfully by trial and error over many years that if I do not take notes myself during a lecture, presentation, or meeting I do not focus as sharply on what is being said and I do not engage as actively as when I am constantly trying to rephrase, summarize, identify main points, and jot notes - including my own questions, ideas for further actions, etc. Even if I never review those notes again, the process of writing them (by hand or by computer) makes a big difference for me. I don't think this need of mine is especially unusual. I also don't believe that everyone needs to take notes in the same way that I do. Nor do I believe that taking notes oneself is incompatible with making use of notes, guidelines, or recordings prepared by others.

Many students CAN entirely avoid engaging with what is being "delivered" in a lecture, and that is the beginning of a legitimate complaint about lecture-based courses. However, if the students are helped to take notes in an effective way or to participate using other structured activities and devices (many already described in this series of email messages), lectures can be quite effective. Students can be "actively engaged" without having to speak aloud to anyone.

Many college and university faculty members still begin their teaching careers with the tacit beliefs that all their students have career goals, enthusiasm for the discipline, and study/learning habits similar to the teacher's own. Overcoming that predilection has always been an important step on the path to becoming a good teacher for undergraduates who are not destined for graduate school or majoring in the teacher's field. With the increasing numbers and variety of backgrounds of undergraduate students, this step becomes even more important. And so does a faculty member's acceptance of responsibility for guiding students' efforts to learn in a course.

If a teacher includes lectures, the teacher may need to offer some suggestions about how and why to take notes. If the teacher decides to make some kinds of recordings or approved notes available that practice should be explained carefully. Students should be encouraged to use the other resources effectively in conjunction with their own note-taking. And, of course, students may need to know about the increasing variety of effective ways to take notes so that each students can determine which kinds of note-taking are most useful for that individual student in which kinds of courses. [Some examples of useful note-taking methods: outlining, concept mapping, drawings, verbatim phrases, indications of priority, follow-up goals, … etc.]

I'm looking forward to learning more from Paul Lacey next Friday and hope that some of you will join us. Oh, I personally prefer to include some kinds of visible interaction with students/audience/participants at least once every 10 or 15 minutes even in a "lecture" - whether that happens to be with a group of hundreds of people in a single room or in an online session.

Steve Gilbert
President, The TLT Group

SOME REFERENCES/INFO FROM /ABOUT PAUL LACEY:

Paul A. Lacey,
Emeritus Prof. of English, Earlham College
Clerk [Board Chair], American Friends Service Committee

"Boundaries in Academia: Personal, Professional, Political, Spiritual?"

"Terror and Other Threats to Humanity"
Fifth World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, Rome, November 2004

Is the lecture dying? Should it?

"There are some students that are upset that I do not lecture. Some students say, "I'm not paying Harvard $45,000 a year to learn it all myself." At the end of each semester, students fill out a questionnaire, and a few students will write: "Professor Mazur is not teaching us anything. I have to learn it all myself.""

"Once, all professors spent entire classes talking nearly nonstop while students furiously scribbled notes. Today, a growing number of professors are abandoning that tradition, saying there are better ways to keep students focused and learning."

"time-honored college lecture course, which is undergoing significant change at some universities because of technological innovations and the desire to hold the attentions of the highly structured 21st-century student.

""If the old traditional lecture is dying, it is because we are relying so much on the template of technology to make up for the lack of content," said Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. "PowerPoint has done more to kill the lecture than people really are aware of.""

" clicker, ... allows professors to determine almost instantly what percentage of students have the right answer." [implies that there always is a "right answer" in a class?]

""Physics is about data. Our first intuition is not quite right. We have to modify our intuition."" - Quote from Edward Redish

"Of course, there are still some professors who can galvanize a class by using dramatic storytelling, internal structure, movement and a strong voice." [and what about thoughtful insights? impressive breadth of knowledge? caring about students? deep commitment to the topic?...]

"The problem, some educators say, is that few teachers can bring a lecture to life.

""Far too many lecturers tend to read aloud material students could readily read on their own," " Coleen Grisson

"poll of college courses would find that many professors still rely on traditional lecturing as a primary mode of instruction.

"Professors often spend their adult lives researching a particular topic and feel they have a unique synthesis and understanding of the research. ... And although the process of putting together the lectures is a creative, intense experience for professors, it doesn't always translate to students who have to sit and listen,..." Julie Reuben

SIDEBAR (Q&A with Harvard University physics professor Eric Mazur, author of "Peer Instruction" )
"...We should teach everybody to develop problem-solving skills. Lecturing is an inefficient way of doing it.

"You said that some teachers spoon-feed their students but you force them to learn the material on their own. How do your students like it?

"There are some students that are upset that I do not lecture. Some students say, "I'm not paying Harvard $45,000 a year to learn it all myself." At the end of each semester, students fill out a questionnaire, and a few students will write: "Professor Mazur is not teaching us anything. I have to learn it all myself.""

Breathing Life Into the Lecture Hall - washingtonpost.com, by Valerie Strauss
pp. B1, B2, Sept 24, 2007

Accessibility Guidelines for eClips & Brief Hybrid Workshops

Are these simple accessibility guidelines for Brief Hybrid Workshops clear, adequate, reasonable, useful? Too simple? Pls respond via Email gilbert@tltgroup.org or (preferably) comment to this post, below.

My emerging conviction is that our work with 5-Minute eClips and Brief Hybrid Workshops
(for definitions, see below) can be served best by embedding each one in a Web page that includes at least these options or versions for users:

1. Includes enough text that is manageable by screen readers for those who have vision needs or prefer to use screen readers to get enough of the information.

2. Includes enough visible text so that those with hearing needs or preferences can get enough information.

3. Accessible to people who use computers (Macs or PCs) configured in the ways most common during the most recent 3 years.

4. Accessible to people who have Internet connections of most commonly available speeds.

5. Not yet? Accessible to people who use handheld devices (smart cell phones) configured in the ways most common during the most recent 18 months?

The good news is that we now have tools that make all of the above possible more easily, quickly, and inexpensively than ever before - even for those who do not have the resources of major institutions available to them.

If you have suggestions for improving them or other comments, send via Email gilbert@tltgroup.org or, preferably, add a comment at the end of this blog posting (you can do so anonymously or, preferably, with an indication of your name and contact info so that others can respond to your contribution).

For more comprehensive information about Web accessibility, see:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/

http://easi.cc/

Definitions (from www.tltgroup.org/tlt5.htm):

A "brief hybrid workshop" (BTW)
is an activity of less than 15 minutes (preferably closer to 5!) for participants that includes the use of one or more Internet-accessible media clips AND some other files, instructions, activities, documents, plans, guidelines, etc. It is intended to help a group of people produce or learn how to do something useful to them. Participants usually interact with each other and with a leader/presenter/facilitator during the activity. (When run without interruption, all the pre-recorded media elements - the eClips - require less than 5 minutes total. Of course, some groups may find the materials so fascinating that they extend the entire sessions well beyond 15 minutes!)

A "brief hybrid teaching/learning module" (BHTLM)
is the same as a "brief hybrid workshop" EXCEPT for purpose and audience. These modules are intended to help students to learn something in a course (usually undergraduate).

Low-Threshold Approach
The TLT Group is committed to finding, developing, sharing, and publishing Brief Hybrid Workshops that reflect our longstanding work with LTAs - applications and activities that are reliable, accessible, easy to learn, non-intimidating and (incrementally) inexpensive. And we are committed to advocating and demonstrating how to use low-threshold Brief Hybrid Workshops to help others design, produce, use, and improve BTWs.

Steve Gilbert

Curriculum as "Exercise Field" for Human Development

Excerpt from “Turning Water Into Wine: Giving Remote Texts Full Flavor for the Audience of Friends” Journal of College Teaching (forthcoming Spring 2005), by Marshall Gregory, Butler University

http://www.marshallgregory.com/rPed1.htm as of June 27, 2007

"My point is that teachers who love specific kinds of content often misrepresent the kind of usefulness that content will have for most of their students. Mostly, students do not get educated because they study our beloved content. They get educated because they learn how to study our beloved content, and they carry the how of that learning with them in the world as cognitive and intellectual skills that “stick” long after the content is forgotten. In short, the curriculum is not an end in itself. Curricular content is a means to human development. The curriculum is the playing ground, the exercise field, for the development of those human capacities that tend to distinguish human beings as such, and the fullest possible development of which defines the true ends of a liberal education. . . .

"If these are the capacities that mark human beings as such, then these are the capacities that students bring to the table of education, and they are also the capacities the expansion, empowerment, and completion of which constitute the educational end that teachers work toward, or should work toward. Since the failure to develop these capacities constitutes a kind of existential deprivation, the same way that blindness or the loss of a limb, for example, constitutes a physical deprivation, it is appropriate for teachers and students alike to view the kind of education which focuses primarily on the development of basic human capacities as an existential need, and to view curriculum and pedagogy as the primary means of fulfilling that end, or need."

"Paris je t'aime" and Brief Hybrid Workshops

"Paris je t'aime"
18 brief movies (average 6 minutes, many less than 5) one after another, each filmed in Paris, each a complete episode, each having something to do with Paris and with love. The directors, actors, crews had no other obvious limitations and the composite they achieved together is funny, surprising, poignant, and memorable.

Wikipedia (June 24, 2007):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris,_je_t'aime

Official Web Site (June 24, 2007 - according to Wikipedia):
http://www.firstlookstudios.com/pjt/
Watch the trailer! (Just under 2.5 minutes)

The trailer is charming, and only slightly dilutes and misrepresents the quality of the entire movie. Can't blame them too much for trying to use the popularity of Natalie Portman's face as the beginning of the trailer, but this movie absolutely does NOT dwell on her face or any other easy option. Together, the 18 clips offer glimpses and insights into many more dimensions of love than suggested either by the trailer or by my own expectations of what could be done by these filmmakers under these limitations.

When Sally told me she wanted to go to a movie last night and that this was the one, I reluctantly overcame my end-of week lethargy and joined her. Especially after she told me she had already purchased the tickets online. We were a little later than we liked arriving at the theater (parking on a beautiful, warm summer night in Bethesda Maryland was challenging).

Sally went in to get our seats while I waited in line to buy the largest popcorn bag and some bottles of water - and I thought several times about when I would get to the restroom. I decided that I would try to last through the section with Juliette Binoche (one of my favorites - especially since seeing her in Blue) and then would slip out to the bathroom. I didn't expect I would much mind missing one or two episodes.

I joined Sally in the theater just in time for the beginning. Juliette Binoche was not in the first few. But I never thought again of leaving my seat. Each clip was complete. Some were quite funny. Many were poignant. Some were powerful, memorable, surprising.

In the last year I've become obsessed with the educational potential of "Brief Hybrid Workshops" - combinations of brief "eClips" with face-to-face or online synchronous interactions. By "eClips" I mean multimedia recordings available via the Web. We're combining the new power, availability, ease of use, and low price (much free) of new tools and resources for producing and publishing eClips with Todd Zakrajsek's idea of "5-Minute Workshops". Visit our growing set of ideas and resources and links to some great examples about Brief Hybrid Workshops at http://www.tltgroup.org/tlt5.htm

"Paris je t'aime" demonstrates the remarkable variety and power of what can be communicated in a few minutes by talented people. I don't expect that our educational "brief hybrid workshops" can often achieve anything close to this level, nor do we need to. But if we move even a little in this direction, we will achieve a lot!

I hope you will be inspired - not daunted - by the quality and variety of episodes in "Paris je t'aime," to join our work on Brief Hybrid Workshops.

Please send more examples of brief, effective "eClips" or ideas for using such things for educational purposes - especially to help with enabling and encouraging faculty members to take advantage of new opportunities to improve teaching and learning with technology.

Send to gilbert@tltgroup.org or, better, add a comment to this posting - click on "comment" below. Please include your email contact info so that we can invite you to introduce your idea in one of our online sessions!

Sally and I are going to return to see "Paris je t'aime" again soon - maybe tonight.

Hope you enjoy it, too - soon!

SteveG

What is Your 8th Principle?

What is the 8th Principle for Improving Undergraduate Education? Caring, Authenticity, Loving to Learn, Reflection...?

FridayLive! June 15, 2007 2PM EDT
Online Registration - free, but required in advance

Moderator: Steven W. Gilbert, President, TLT Group

Guests: Karen Casto, Kathleen Young, Western Wash. Univ.

We're not really proposing to extend the classic Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, but we do hope to engage people in thinking about what they might add to make the original seven more applicable to themselves, to these times, to their own experience, to their own institutions.

I've already used this activity quite successfully on some campuses, and I've begun to collect some interesting nominations for 8th Principles: Caring, Authenticity, Loving to Learn, Reflection, etc.
What are your suggestions? Click here to add your nomination for an 8th Principle.

In this June 15, 2007 FridayLive! session I'll be leading a discussion - both online and involving anyone who joins me on the Earlham campus.

We'll begin with a very brief review of Chickering & Gamson's Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. We'll "play" a couple of pre-recordings (each less than 5 minutes) of comments that might inspire a variety of new "nominations" for the 8th Principle. This session is intended to provide and demonstrate a way of inviting people to think more deeply than usual about their own values, priorities and goals for education, for teaching and learning - and the role of technology.

One of the remarkable "clips" we'll play is "Attending Genocide Conference" by Kathleen Young of the Anthropology Dept., Western Wash. Univ. "http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/showcase2005/young/showcase3.htm" - about 4.5 minutes. Young describes taking some of her undergrad students to the International Genocide Conference in Sarajevo in 2005. The video-recording is embedded in a Website and related portfolio of materials (including student essays both text and photographic). See one of the student essays by clicking on "Because I was there" at http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/showcase2005/young/default.htm.

Another clip - perhaps an even more personal comment - "How I came to teach the holocaust" - a 2.5 minute YouTube eClip produced by Cayo Gamber, Univ. Writing Program, Geo. Wash. Univ.

I hope you'll be joining one of the activities described above!

Steve Gilbert

Constructive Criticism - Podcasts, eClips, Hybrid Workshops

Helping Colleagues Improve Podcasts, eClips, and Brief Hybrid Workshops

Guidelines for:
1. Author/originator who is going to ask someone else for constructive feedback
2. Someone who has been asked to give helpful feedback

Google Document - where we're building lists for guidelines (send email to star@tltgroup.org if you would like to be added as a "collaborator" so you can edit; otherwise, if you wish to add a comment, do so at the bottom of this blog posting)
Web Page - for same topic

Thoughtful comment from Cindy Russell, UTHSC (visit her valuable blog, web pages!):

Some of what I started thinking about as I looked at the above (comprehensive, certainly) is that beauty/evaluation is in the eye of the beholder. Too many words for some are not enough for others. Evaluators are crucial to select correctly - but evaluators can't be all like the developer of the clip. If they are, then the thoughts may be too similar and there won't be sufficient diversity in the evaluative comments. I wonder if part of what I'm struggling with is how many different versions/variations on the delivery of material we need. Not the difference between a YouTube and a Google video. But the difference between a video, a text page (with and without screenshots), audio only, a website with additional links, etc... There will always be "power" users who just need a bullet-pointed list of items and they're good to go. There will always be some folks who need the very complete version - and still want more. I struggled with this when I created the Audioclips site (http://technology-escapades.net/?q=node/22). And I still think I need to do something different with the content.

One of the things that I also struggle with is the narrative overload of a lot of what we do. It's a real challenge. I think it can be a turnoff for some people as they may think "if it takes that many words to say it, then it's too complex for me." While I'd never want to prevent anyone from entering any portion of a site that they wanted to explore, sometimes I think it can be overwhelming to people and then they stop instead of doing something more/different. Solutions????? -CynthiaKRussell 6/9/07 8:24 AM