Keynote: Expect to be Disrupted: The Next Wave of Innovations in Online Education
Richard Edwards, Ball State UniversityShiny New Instructional Technology Syndrome (SNITS)
- Garageband (2004)
- Online Portfolios (2006)
- Virtual Reality Cave (2007)
- Second Life (2008)
- Flip Cams (2010)
- Google Glass (2013)
A great quote from Edwards:https://twitter.com/slamteacher/status/568806750914113536Edwards talks about Gartner’s Hype Cycle, which is very true from my experience. In many cases, individuals want to implement a technology right out of the gate (technology trigger), but over time, the technology goes through various stages (similar to the 5 stages of grief).The next thing that Edwards discusses is Promise vs. Delivery.https://twitter.com/jjulius/status/568809507289108480https://twitter.com/kfrisch/status/568808828143169536I hadn’t thought about harder LMSs, but I have considered the watering down of projects and technology. Having worked in Sakai for a few years, it’s open source which allows for multiple ways to complete a task. This forces instructors and students to problem solve, to come up with their own solution to a scenario. I wonder what the LMS companies think about making the systems harder to promote hacking and problem solving…An interesting notion that Edwards talks about is failure. Failure happens to all of us, but he provides some insight as to how fail should occur.https://twitter.com/emilykingatcsn/status/568812664710762496When you fail over a multi-semester study, institutions start wondering what they spent time and money on and be more skeptical to allow future innovation. In looking at an innovation model & timeframe, Edwards has put together a model based on the Classic Model by Everett Rogers.https://twitter.com/evinsmj/status/568812073007779840If you think about early adopters in a different setting (outside of technology), here is an example. Sorry if you don’t know the show being referenced.https://twitter.com/ajwms/status/568813387095781376https://twitter.com/ajwms/status/568813727140569088Edwards prompted the audience with a thought experiment:
If you re-imagined the perfect eLearning course from scratch, what would be in its DNA?
2 of the things that came up from the audience
- Self-regulated learning
- Lack of set course length (instead based on competencies)
As Edwards closes out his morning keynote, he has provided a list of takeaways.https://twitter.com/kfrisch/status/5688186679384514567 tips for jumpstarting your own “ideas lab”
- Start with your objectives and work backwards.
- Embrace constraints
- Engage in design thinking (we are designers, after all!)
- Remix and reuse everything
- Use what you know. Your unique point of view matters.
- Use its of whiteboards and post-it notes.
- Build what you need. Use what you build.
Overall, this was the best keynote for #elearning2015 so far. I wish that Edwards participated in the Great Debate and I hope that the remaining keynote(s) are as engaging as him. I think he has been preaching to the choir for the last 90 minutes, but it’s been framed in a unique way. Great session!
The Faculty View of Technology-Enabled Education: A Survey
Based on the first 5 minutes, I think this session should have been marked as a sponsored session—the presenter kept going on and on about Inside Higher Ed (his affiliation), the topics that he writes about and what IHE is/does. It’s always a waste of time to talk about that type of thing because it has no bearing on the presentation topic. Move on.I understand that the presenter had to “go it alone” because his colleague had health issues and couldn’t make it, but I got the impression that he had no idea what to say or what he was presenting. Within the first 15 minutes, he had presented 1 survey question, but I felt like he had no critical analysis of the data. Asking audience feedback on their interpretations of the data is certainly a good way to engage the audience, but audience responses seemed to be the only critical analysis during the session.Given the different avenues the presentation could have gone, I was disappointed at the seemingly surface-level analysis of the data by the presenter. I hope it got better as the session went on, but I had to leave. Such a shame – it could have been a great session.
Active Teaching Online
Dawn Kemp, University of Maryland University CollegeTypical online classes have
- Reading
- Discussions
- Some project (paper, etc.)
In order for real learning to occur, students should:
- Hear
- See
- Question
- Discuss
- Do
- Teach
The first thing that I took away from this session was her take on group learning. Students (myself included when I was in school) hate group work. There is always going to be the group members who don’t pull their weight. The presenter’s thought on this is:https://twitter.com/evinsmj/status/568856707830411264I think all assignments should be thought out, but the grading is something that I’ve been missing. We all know that rubrics are key to grading, but I’ve always had a hard time structuring grading for group assignments. I need to think more about this…Why do we use introductions?
- Facilitates engagement
- Collaborative learning environment
New way to do introductions – “Getting to know you Bingo”
- Forces students to read all students’ introductions
- Winning can get students out of discussions for a week, pass on an assignment, etc.
Really Getting Acquainted Assignment
- Students are given interview questions
- 1-on-1 interview (can be done through Skype)
- Students have to present on the person that they interviewed (video, audio, etc.)
I like the thought of having learning teams, where groups of students are split into different categories (agreers, antagonists, etc.). Students then present on topics and those in the groups participate in the conversation. It’s a great way to get different points of view.I really liked the ideas and examples that were presented, I just wish she had more content or activities. For an active learning session, there wasn’t any active learning.
Matthew Evins 