Hanging out at ELI -- Day 2

Today's sessions were a mix of vision, strategy, challenges, tools, connections, and ideas -- no major surprises, some nice confirmations, and some unexpected uses of terms that I had not heard before.

For example, I did not know what it means to flip a web site -- I have to admit, I am still not sure I understand it, though it sounded like adding interactivity and responsiveness to audience needs was the definition.

Talk more with students -- as a whole -- whether it is for vision, strategy, tools, connections -- they are part of the vision, they can help with the strategy, they know the tools and can create the connections.

When implementing new technologies, keep the tone exploratory and playful to lower the stress level -- everyone is already stressed out enough about getting it right.

Culture trumps strategy -- I guess that means you have to bluff really well for strategy to be successful.

Yes, there were other things, more hands on, like 3-d printing -- and what does that do to copyright and entrepreneur questions?  Customized textbooks -- and what does that do to copyright, creative commons if you embed such videos into the text and then have students pay for the compilation? Medical students studying in a cohort that will have as a problem/project to solve the issue of lower life expectancy in low income neighborhoods -- and how to raise the expectancy.

Hanging out at ELI -- Day 1

Hanging out at ELI -- in New Orleans

 As our poster session happened this afternoon, focusing on "Changing the Culture of Learning One Class at a Time," we got involved with lots of conference attendees who chatted with us for almost two hours about designing classrooms and faculty development.  We received lots of good ideas, some new technologies to follow up on, and new connections.
Oh, and who is we?  Vicky Cardullo from Auburn's College of Education and Scott Simkins from Auburn's College of Liberal Arts worked with me on the poster presentation and came along to the conference to give the faculty side of the story.  All around, a great success.

Scott, Wiebke, and Vicky at ELI

In the meantime, we also had a great keynote by John Medina on The Learning Brain, which is partly based on his book Brain Rules -- very engaging, with great stories, examples and memories -- and some of them made it even past my working memory into the nomadic phase of my memory...
Clearly, learning more about how the brain works can lead to some interesting discussions in education.

First EASL workshop of 2014

In spite of a delayed opening of the university due to a certain athletic competition beyond my control, the initial EASL workhop had 20 attendees -- about 10 more than I expected, so that was quite exciting.

After introductions and a brief collaborative exercise to bring home the point that we can do more in a group rather than as individuals, we moved into a lightening round:  Five faculty who taught in the EASL space during the fall took three minutes to talk about various aspects of teaching in this space:  What kind of time/energy commitment does it take for the faculty member; using the technologies inside and outside the classroom; teaching the same content in the same term in the EASL space and a traditional classroom, using Team-Based Learning; and strategies for students to share their content in the classroom.

After the lightning round, the presenters were available at the tables, and workshop attendees chose which topic they wanted to learn about, meeting at the tables in small groups, and rotating to another group after a fifteen-minute discussion.

Later on, with a mini-lecture under their belts that touched on such points as Bloom's Taxonomy, group formation strategies, student expectations and how to address them, meaningful connection between the flipped material and the classroom activities, and assessment, faculty started working on an assignment of their own with the question on how to restructure it so that it could be turned into a group activity.

We will have three more workshops during the Spring 2014 term that will focus on collaborative work, student expectations, and assessment, so that participants have plenty of time before they start teaching in the Fall.

Some News Items about E-learning

As I don't have any new news about anything related about the EASL spaces at Auburn (ok, so I just sent out all my emails with the survey), I thought I would instead point folks to some recent news items that are connected with some form of e-learning.

You may have seen this article about "Still in Favor of the Flip" in reaction to an apparently lonely study out there suggesting that flipping the classroom does not work well:  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/30/despite-new-studies-flipping-classroom-still-enjoys-widespread-support.
Note that the majority of studies, of anecdotal evidence, of stories, suggest that flipping the classroom increases student learning, student engagement, student ownership of the classroom and of the materials -- but I can see quite a few people being uncomfortable with that kind of student role.  And of course we should not underestimate, understate the increased faculty involvement with that course if flipping is done well and meaningful activities happen in the classroom.
Note also that the study itself is emphasizing its findings as preliminary, with the sense that quotations were taken out of context, thus distorting the findings.

But what about having students get e-books?  Well, apparently at least young folks in the UK prefer paper books over digital books, according to http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/25/young-adult-readers-prefer-printed-ebooks
We have seen similar research in this country as well, though the sense is, I believe, that folks distinguish between reading for pleasure and reading for work -- and with reading for work, aka studying, the possibilities for annotation and sharing of annotation are growing in leaps and bounds.

Second EASL Room in 2014

Auburn University is planning on a second EASL room for Fall 2014.  We are starting to plan how this room will be set up.  Chances are that we will not have different table shapes in it, as we have in the first space, but rather that we will be able to use the soon-to-com student and faculty feedback to make some decisions on what kinds of shapes are preferable.
Chances are also that the space will be quite a bit larger than what we currently have, possibly allowing for twice the number of students.  A great opportunity to rethink the way some of the natural sciences and math classes can be taught here.

Brandon Butler on Copyright and Fair use -- Challenging some Urban Myths

If you are one of the folks who has been concerned about fair use and what that means for your use of other folks' materials in your teaching, you may find Brandon Butler's reading of the law a breath of fresh air.

Butler, from the Association of Research Libraries, has worked with copyright and fair use for many years.  He came to Auburn University at the end of October to provide us with a new way of thinking about fair use.

Lesson 1:  Do not worry about percentages or how much you can take

These seemingly set in stone rules are simply special agreements that were created for particular cases and then got lives of their own.

Lesson 2:  Think about transformation and community practice.

So, instead of getting hung up on how many words, pages, or seconds you are using, think instead about
Is the use of the material transformative, that is, am I providing a new framework, or perspective for it that let's us experience the material in a new way, different from the original intent.  For example, if I take an image of an art work and add it to my web site for beautification, then I am not really changing the original intent of the art work.  However, if I am then discussing the image in the critical light of a social, cultural, historical context, the image is transformed.

And if you are a member of a community that does things in a certain way, has always done things in a certain way (eg, display multiple choices on a draft board) then moving this kind of display online does not change the community practice -- key is that the practice has to be accepted.

Some more Resources

Butler shared a couple of handouts with us
Infograph about Fair Use
Online Resources
Video of Butler's Talk

New web site for EASL

Last week saw some fun new developments for the active learning space(s) at Auburn University.

1.  A mini crowd sourcing, using facebook, yielded some potential new names for the space as incubator is just not quite cutting it for the long haul.  With EASL and EAGLE acronyms, we moved into a spirited email vote and discussion of what name we should adopt -- LEAP was added during that discussion, and after two rounds of voting the narrow winner emerged:  EASL aka Engaged Active Student Learning.
So, our EASL rooms and spaces can be seen as the connection to Canvas, and a scaffold for creation.

2.  We now have one Youtube video live, and some more in the works that showcase our first EASL space:



For more and continuing information about various aspects of EASL and future videos, go to http://auburn.edu/easl/

3.  Our joint proposal for a poster session at the next ELI (Educause Learning Initiative) conference in February 2014 was accepted, so hopefully we will have some more news by then about the results the classroom has yielded so far.  And yes, now waiting to hear the verdict on my IRB proposal.