The Flipped Classroom

I am so excited about the concept of the Flipped Classroom. What is it? The Flipped Classroom is a pedagogical paradigm where the bulk of the course content is available outside of class, frequently through video instruction. Those videos can be online open content (http://www.khanacademy.org/) , commercial (http://www.lynda.com/) , or individually created by each instructor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H4RkudFzlc). Then, face-to-face class time is used for problem solving, discussion, debate, application, and so forth – class is where you come to practice your new knowledge with your peers under the guidance of your teacher.

One of the key reasons I’m so excited about this is that it puts an umbrella over much of what we as a teaching and learning community at Dominican have been talking about for a couple of years:

• Dee Fink’s workshops via the CTLE where we’ve been learning about creating Significant Learning Experiences;

• A focus on Team Based Learning, again through Jodi’s work in the CTLE and via Dee Fink;

• Trends in society and in higher education that continuously point to ubiquitous online connections and anytime/anyplace electronic access to tremendous amounts of information and educational content;

• More trend information that emphasizes collaboration, both in education and in organizations.

What does this involve in regards to technology? Content creation is one big way. There are many, many resources online that we can take advantage of – commercial and open content (see above). But to truly get great at this, we at Dominican could extend our relationship-based culture by creating our own [high quality!] recorded lectures and instructional videos. I know many of you are already doing this, with great success. I’ve created and posted instructional videos with JingPro, and many of you use Camtasia Studio. Most of us do this with our online teaching, but the Flipped Classroom emphasizes the use of these tools for face-to-face classes as well, thus opening up the classroom time for those Significant Learning Experiences, problem based learning, and team projects.

The Flipped Classroom does raise come questions, of course: what if the students don’t watch the videos, how does this affect accountability and grading, how do I as a teacher learn these new skills, and so forth. There is a lot of conversation about all of this online – just do a quick search for “flipped classroom” and see the long list of returns in your search results. I think it would be wonderful to talk more about these questions, and discover some answers for our own community. Here are two excellent resources to get the conversation started:

1) TED talk by Salman Kahn (of the online teaching resource Kahn Academy) at http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

and

2) See also what some of the conversation is in Higher Education about this concept, at Higher Ed / Chronicle: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/debating-the-flipped-classroom-at-stanford/34811.

Google+ Hangouts

I have really been enjoying getting to know Google+ Hangouts this semester. Google+ Hangouts is a video chat program for up to ten people through Google’s social networking service Google+.  In this Google+ system, instead of joining and then sharing information online with the full community of users, you can group your connections into categories and select specifically what you share with whom.  Google+ calls these Circles.  Examples of a person’s Circles could be family, neighbors, and colleagues.  For us in academia, we could create groups for certain classes, committees, or even something like a writing group.  Then, you select all sorts of things to share within that Circle, including collaborative work such as a Google document or form.  Ken blogged about Google+last July, shortly after the service was launched.

This semester I tried Google+ Hangouts for real-time discussions with my online classes.  I offered the students multiple online meeting times and let them choose the ones that worked for them.  The students had the the discussion topics and readings ahead of time. and each person was to bring a key idea or question to share.  So the discussion format itself was pretty standard.  What was new, and I thought very special for the online learning environment, was the opportunity to see each student and hear his or her voice.  Not only that, we could all see a small personal slice of everyone’s life — that piece that was projected to us as the backdrop to the person’s webcam headshot.  We saw offices, libraries, and all the various spots people set up their work stations at home. This is really something we have been waiting for in online courses — an opportunity to get to know each other in a more personal way than we can do when we communicate only in writing.  The audio and video quality are great; I even used Google Chat last semester to bring in a guest speaker to a f2f class, and it was extremely successful.

Google+ Hangouts does not replace the potential of Web conferencing, which for us is Blackboard Collaborate.  I see BB Collaborate as being the better tool when you have a more formal, one way presentation such as a lecture or a series of student presentations.  Also, since Google+ Hangouts are so far limited to ten people, you would still go with a more robust system for larger numbers.  Right now the Hangouts can’t be recorded, although you do get a list of participants with the date and time for an online session.  As with all the Google basic products Hangouts are free, and anyone with a Google account can participate.  If you don’t have audio or video, you can still hear the conversation (pretty much everyone these days at least has sound), and you can use the text chat feature. However, when I saw a commercial the other day for video chat via a smart phone, I was reminded once again that electronic communication is fast expanding around us.

I’m thinking I will expand my use of Google+ next semester, using the Circles and the Hangouts for full classes, individual teams, and discussion groups.  Let me know what you think.  You can email me at kmarek@dom.edu — or use my kgmarek@gmail.com address to invite me to G-Chat or to a Google+ Hangout!

EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2011

One of the benefits of being the Borra Technology Fellow is the opportunity to attend the annual EDUCAUSE conference through the Borra Center’s support.  I recently attended that annual conference, October 18-21 in Philadelphia.  EDUCAUSE is an organization which seeks to “advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology” (http://www.educause.edu/).  The organization is made up of memberships within higher education and related institutions and businesses, and it focuses on resources, research, and professional development.  The annual conference is always excellent, and the regional conferences are also great learning and networking opportunities.  There were a number of learning tracks at this year’s annual conference:  eight domains and 34 themes…. There was a lot going on.

Being surrounded by 2,000 people who were passionate and knowledgeable about the cutting edge of higher ed technology was of course both intimidating and exhilarating.  Everyone is there to learn and to share.  As with most conferences, keynote speakers deliver the big ideas and breakout concurrent sessions provide more practical information.  This year, I heard keynotes from Seth Godin  and danah boyd, as well as several other featured speakers interspersed throughout the conference.  I’m looking forward to describing these presentations in more detail when I present next week’s Technology Bytes session (Thursday, November 3, at 1:00 in the CTLE).

In general, attending EDUCAUSE really gets one thinking about what’s going on in higher education and how we at Dominican University are navigating the rapid changes in our society.  For example, here are some of the ideas and phrases from the big ideas part of the conference:  the demise of the college-industrial complex, the unbundled university, precision education, assessment analytics, fundamental shifts in the learning process, and the social nature of learning facilitated virtually through technology.  Here’s a thought that could seem mundane (i.e. so 19th century), or could seem incredibly cutting edge:  education = content + socialization + accreditation.  What does that mean in the 21^st century?  Answer:  we truly don’t know yet, but we all need to be in the mix as it evolves.

Here are some of the more practical areas of continuing education and emphasis:  mobile applications, online teaching and learning, open access to educational content, and institutional information policies regarding social networking.  Of course there were also excellent exhibits, where one can often find ideas for the most immediate innovations and/or solutions.  I am going to try Google+ Hangouts, which looks like an easy, high quality way to gather online via voice and video (kind of a group video chat program for up to 10 people).  There are other things I found in at the conference that I will use immediately in my teaching.  I also hope to extend the value of the conference by talking to lots of people about these big ideas, the practical applications, and possibilities for Dominican University.

Musings from a Technology Fellow

This fall, I have been challenging myself to include a few new technologies in my teaching, and to expand the use of others.  As this year’s Borra Technology Fellow, I have the opportunity and the impetus to be more intentional about trying new things.  I decided to focus on two areas within my online classes:  social networking (I chose Twitter ) and building classroom community (I chose Jing Pro ).

I’ve been a little slow to incorporate social networking into my classes, mostly because I’ve been a little slow to incorporate them into my life!  But knowing this is a regular part of our students’ lives, and teaching students (future librarians) who must provide services using social networking, I decided it was time to move forward.  I added an assignment in my online class that includes posting Tweets, using a hashtag (#) specifically for our class.  The hashtag in Twitter basically allows you to add a subject heading (in librarians’ lingo) to your Tweet.  Then, everyone can search that hashtag and see others’ Tweets about things they are sharing relevant to our course.  Here’s the Twitter information page on using hashtags. So far it’s going well… I’ll keep you posted!

I’m also trying to expand community in my online courses by being more visible (literally) in the online environment. (See Ken’s discussion of this in a post from last March, “They Really Need to See Me!” )  I’m experimenting with this using an easy, web-based program called Jing Pro.  Last Spring Jodi Cressman and Ken Black did a Technology Bytes program on interactive feedback in the classroom, and Jodi reported on her use of Jing.  I’m using the Pro version, which costs only $14.95.   Jing Pro allows you capture your desktop, including your webcam (they can see you!), and your narration.  It’s got a five minute limit, but that’s about our audience’s limit as well, so I think it’s fine.  What I’m doing this semester is providing an ongoing series of short mini-lectures using these Jing Pro videos.  I do a brief on-camera greeting and introduction, and the rest of the video I use to show documents or websites from my desktop as I continue to talk.  Jing Pro gives you a variety of options for storage and dissemination; I’m using a cloud-based solution for now and will see how that goes.  I give the students a URL to the website, where they can watch the video. So far, students seem to really like the increased sense of connection the videos provide.

Coming up at Dominican:  iPad: Effective Use in the Classroom – See Ken’s email this week which announces our Dominican access to this webinar on Tuesday, October 4.  This looks like it will be a very interesting presentation, and it will be fun to watch it together in the Springer Suite and then discuss.  This year I’ll also be adding blog posts on my progress with our web conferencing system Blackboard Collaborate, the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference  (October 2011), and on other technology related topics.

Google+ a Facebook Threat?

Stop me if you’re heard this before:  Google just developed another application. 

Never an organization to take failures too much to heart, Google is diving into the world of social networking again with the new Google+ application.  Launched exactly one week ago on Tuesday, June 28 to a select group of invitees, Google+ has been widely seen as a threat to Facebook.  Not that I would know from personal experience, since much like the failed Wave project, Google has limited its access to a select number of invitees, and early demand was such that “insane demand” caused them to stop their issuance altogether.

Even with a limited number of invites, it has not taken long for the always-on-top-of-things Search Engine Watch site to run not only an article on privacy issues, but a second article that was concerned about Google+‘s requirement that users define their circles of friends.  Let’s hope that sounds easier than it is, since it’s primarily the Wave interface that caused that project to fail.

Actually, from an educational perspective, the idea of “circles” of friends has some interest.  Most of us don’t—and shouldn’t—invite current students to be “friends” on Facebook, unless you’ve developed a course site to be a “fan” of.  With Google+, it SOUNDS like one can post things that only apply to a specific circle.

Detailed information—from the Google perspective—is available via several videos posted on their blog site. If you scroll to the end of that entry, you will find LOTS of links to other sites that talk about the project.  (Selected by Google, of course.)

If you’re interested in seeing what the welcome screen, at least, looks like, it’s available here:  http://plus.google.com. At the time of this writing, however, don’t bother with signing in with your  Gmail account; you will get a screen saying that it has “temporarily exceeded our capacity.”  

As with everything Google-related, this bears watching.

“How do you cite this?” Teaching students to incorporate sources

Over a thousand linguists came together at the Sheraton Chicago March 26-28 for an American Association for Applied Linguistics meeting and conversations around the theme “In the Changing Contexts of Globalization.”  Informal conversations abounded, as some researchers and educators gathered in the coffee shop or took in the bright sun as they sat in armchairs and even in the window seats overlooking the dazzling Chicago River.

Each hour over 20 workshops and presentations were offered.  Over the next weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the work presented there.  In a colloquium, “Students’ use of sources in academic writing,” several faculty members presented findings from their study of graduate students’ use of citations that may have important implications for our work.

After conducting a study through interviews with faculty and students in an MA TESOL program, in her talk entitled, “Graduate students’ motivations for citing sources,” Charlene Polio of Michigan State University identified several types of problems for students in the use of sources for a book review assignment.  First, Polio did not find plagiarism to be a big problem.  Rather, students had problems with “hanging citations,” that is, citations in a text which do not clearly indicated what it is that the cited person said and how the cited article contributes to the text.  She also found lack of agreement with faculty on what common knowledge is and therefore does not need to be cited.  Finally, she wondered if the writing genre of book review was an appropriate one to require outside sources be used as support.

While Polio reported that students were able to identify errors in their peer’s work, they reported that they themselves cited at times because they knew the instructor wanted more references and they wished to impress the professor with their diligence, or they did so to support a definition, or tried to “mix and match” their ideas with outside sources, and in some cases the students had not fully understood the sources they had read.  While instructors had students read professional literature with a lot of citations, one issue is that many citations in literature require the reader to know what the cited study is about.  In addition, what does not need to be cited, that is what can be considered common knowledge is relative to where a writer is in her career.  Common knowledge for the professor may be new information for a graduate student

Polio recommended that when we are reviewing another writer’s work and we question whether a source is cited appropriately, we, instructors, tutors, or peers, ask the writer the function of a citation. The answer will give insight into the appropriateness or inappropriateness.  Finally, Polio suggested that we acknowledge that the way one individual cites is not equal to the way another cites. 

Polio’s findings may invite us to reconsider teaching students how to use sources in their writing.  We may want to acknowledge that using and citing sources appropriately is a complex task and one that varies depending upon the individual and upon how familiar one is with the field.  We may find it helpful to ask students why particular citations are used and how they can be more appropriately used.  And since students seem better at identifying errors in their peers’ papers, we may wish to have students do peer work on citations.

Translingual Approaches to Writing

I’m blogging amidst the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Atlanta Georgia, 4 C’s to all you English geeks. The dogwoods are blooming across from the Georgia Aquarium, where amongst all the sea creatures, from the beluga whales to the giant pink anemone, it is the delicate leaf dragon sea horse, that is the most costly to feed.

 

I’ve met scholars across the nation and the world, and in second language writing circles, the concept of a translingual approach to language and writing is making waves. Bruce Horner, Paul Matsuda and Suresh Canagarajah spoke on a panel, “(Re)Defining Translingual Writing.” I’d like to share a few highlights.  Assumptions of the translingual approach are that: 1) multilingualism is the norm, 2)that language is dynamic and ever changing, and 3)that language differences/misunderstandings are expected in every communication.  Every time you open your mouth, people are trying to understand who you are and what you mean, and in global business situations, in particular, there is a great deal of negotiation of meaning and cooperative communication.  While a structural approach to language sees language communication as transmission of meaning by reproducing that code.  A functional approach to language sees language as a socially shared repertoire from which each individual draws in shaping and reshaping her own repertoire.  Communication is then a negotiation of meaning and language.  A translingual writing disposition focuses on the concrete labor of reading and writing in producing meaning, and assumes communication requires tolerance for variation, patience, humility, and strategies of cooperation, accomodation, and negotiation.  This acknowledges the role and responsiblities of writer and the readers.  All writings, then, are in need of translations or interpretations. 

 

So the translingual writing is not a new kind of writing, not a thing, or an act. Rather it is an acknowledgement of how langauge and writing is and has always been. 

 

Suresh says both monolingual native English speaking students and multilingual students are competent in negotiated literacy and everyone brings these practices from contact zones outside.  In the classroom, teachers can acknowledge these realities that go on in real life and can set up conditions in the classroom that more closely reflect the realities that we and our students live in every day, shifting registers and voices, languages and dialects, integrating words and phrases throughout our communication.