More Mell Impressions

One week later, some parts of the building are moving along quite nicely -- more dry wall is going up, some rooms have the ceiling rack and network cables in them while others are still looking a little bare bones.

Mell looking down from 4th floor

Adding tiles

EASL room with wires and
ceiling grid

Framing for the Future

Lecture Hall

Mell Study Spaces

First time inside Mell

This week, I had the fun experience of getting into the Mell Classroom building @ RBD Library for the first time, hard hat, safety goggles and neon yellow vest and all.
The following pictures will give some impressions of the place
You will have some stunning views to the outside from informal and formal learning spaces:

Classroom on the third floor

Mell third floor

The view into the inside is also quite remarkable, giving the full view of the RBD Library original entrance way and the skylight at the top for natural light:

Skylight in Mell Classroom Building

RBD front with stair case

And finally classrooms and Panera in the making:

Tiered lecture hall

Monitor locations in classroom

Future Panera

The next few months will be so exciting to figure out how all the puzzle pieces will come together to form one new classroom building.

New Learning Spaces and Faculty Development Coordinator

March 1, 2017, sees a major change for me - I start as Auburn University's first Learning Spaces and Faculty Development Coordinator in the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning.
My first and primary responsibility will be the new Mell classroom building that will open its doors to Fall 2017 classes -- so a lot of stuff needs to happen between now and then to make sure this opening is as smooth as possible.

In the meantime, if you have not seen the latest images of the new building, check out this short video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HbDCxyZhQY

Opportunity to contribute to Mell Classroom Building

As you may know, February 21, 2017 is Tiger Giving Day here at Auburn.  You have some great choices to help your colleagues in different departments across campus, from saving bunnies to raising heroes.

What I want to highlight is the project that is raising money for the new Mell classroom building for a very particular cause:  to get a system that allows for students to reserve study spaces through their mobile devices.

This app will guarantee groups of students a reserved space - and with at least 50 study spaces to choose from, having that guarantee will make group work outside of class more successful.
Consider contributing a small donation towards this system to increase student success at Auburn University.
And enjoy watching this fun video about more details for the project:  https://rise.auburn.edu/project/4694.

E for Empathy -- and how being aware of Microaggessions can help

Chester Pierce coined micro-aggression as
offensive mechanisms

I am expanding my e-learning to include empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of someone else.  Over the last few weeks I have been in discussions, have read lots of articles, opinion pieces, and blog posts that very much lament the lack of understanding between different groups in the US population.
Empathy, to me, appears to be a skill many of us can practice more.  A couple of weeks ago Jaena Alabi, one of Auburn University's wonderful librarians, gave a talk on "An Introduction to Racial Microaggession," and what struck me about the talk were the specific incidents of microaggessions that were readily recognizable to me as things I have witnessed or even done myself.
Fortunately for all of us, the talk was recorded, and you can learn more about racial microaggessions by listening to Jaena herself.
I am adding some info that may be tough to read on her final slides to make sure we can all benefit from some of the sources she was referring to and the activities she is encouraging us to work through:
Start identifying your own unconscious biases by taking the Race Implicit Association Test.
Read

• McIntosh, P. (1989). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Peace and Freedom Magazine, July/August, 10-12.Available online here:
  http://nationalseedproject.org/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack
•  Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
• Tatum, B. D. (2003). "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" And Other Conversations About Race (Rev. ed.). New York: Basic Books.
• Mills, C. W. (1997). The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2013). Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People. New York: Delacorte Press.

Online Learning Consortium Accelerate 2016 - Day 2

Here are my takeaways from Thursday and early Friday before I headed back to Auburn.

Stephen Kosslyn showed off his university, Minerva University in

Pushing the reset button on higher education

 where he gave us examples of how the university focuses on practical knowledge that covers critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication, effective interaction through personal and interpersonal skills.  None of these can be taught in lecture, so classes are capped at 19 students, and the online learning platform incorporates tools that focus on student engagement and interactivity.  I am very much hoping that other LMS look at these options as well for future development.  In addition, Study Abroad is reaching a different level at this university with teams of 150 students going to 7 different international cities for 4 months each.

Takeaway for immediate application for everyone is the expressive focus on learning goals at the beginning of a lesson with a followthrough at the end of each lesson.  

A national study of leadership for online learning in us higher education

conducted by Fredericksen from U. of Rochester - he discovered that the leaders of online education in higher education tend to be faculty who have some online learning, but little online teaching experiences, at least 10 years of other leadership experience.

Yet again - new standards for calibrating fair use

Enghagen discussed the latest development in the law suit between Georgia State and textbook publishers.  The law suit is now in its 8th year, with Georgia State having spent over $3 Mio at this point.  In March, 2016, the Appeals court asked the original judge to review the judgement.  The judge did just that, with the outcome reducing the number of incidents considered copyright infringement from 5 to 4. The key difference appears to be the differentiation between fact and opinion, and a textbook that contains a lot of opinion cannot be distributed in parts to students under fair use.

More importantly, maybe, the judge also found that if a publisher has an easy way for someone to ask for permission to use partial materials, then this someone has less of a chance to claim fair use.  As a result, publishers are now adding Permission Request buttons to their web sites to make it easier for folks to ask for permission -- with a high chance that you will have to pay for excerpts.

So, we may now have new numbers for how much one can pull out of a textbook without violating copyright.

And now the publishers have asked for an injunction as it appears they are using this as a test case how far they can squeeze fair use.

The impact of personalized learning on low income and underserved post secondary students. Strategies for improved outcomes from early innovators

Georgia State and National Louis University shared their ideas about using adaptive learning to improve student success of students who usually are not that successful when going through college.  Scariest were the numbers that only 45% of high school students coming from households with ca $35000 annual income start college, and only 9% graduate within 6 years.  And this percentage of graduation has not changed since 1970.  Other income groups have seen dramatic increases in college attendance and graduation, but this group of students still very much needs our help.

 

Never see a syllabus the same way again. Alternative approaches to reflective practice 

This session shared some techniques to help faculty rethink and revision their syllabi and courses -- so maybe some ideas for Course (Re)Design.

Techniques were:  narrate your syllabus, turn your syllabus into an infograph, use blackout poetry, learn a technology tool you are particularly uncomfortable with, create a short animated video as a trailer for your class.

Tools were:  Voyant for a wordle tool with additional functionality 

Canva to create infographics

Blackout Poetry:  http://www.makeblackoutpoetry.com/

 

Online Learning Consortium Accelerate 2016 - Day 1

OLC

Day 1 in Orlando's Swan and Dolphin Resort brought some interesting and new ideas for technologies and digital content.

Emerging Technologies for Student-Centered Learning (University of Illinois Springfield)

 

My understanding is that this workshop has been a popular one for quite a few years - this was my first year, and the takeaways were a mixed bag or affirmation and new discoveries.  

Some of the affirmations:  use Todaysmeet, Notability, ExplainEverything, Kaltura, give faculty space to experiment and fail without repercussions.

Some of the new tools and insights:  most of us pick up our phone first thing in the morning -- before we get anything else -- to see what is new in the world.  That would be the moment to have a note waiting for me that something is going on with my learning. Use orientation courses to prepare students for online learning and online tools that your institution is using -- so a revamping of Camp War Eagle.  Get frequent student feedback on how the technology and learning is working.

 Here is one version of the iOS wheel of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Teachthought.com has an annual list of best apps.

And some of the technologies, both software and hardware, that folks may find interesting:

• Liquidtext for annotation on iPad 
• MyScript Nebo for iOS and Windows 10 for annotation
• Trello looked liked a version of Pinterest for project-based online learning
• Paper pile may be an alternative for Endnote or Zotero
• Polaroid cube is a small versatile inexpensive camera cube
• Bored panda translation in your ear -- moving towards the babelfish -- may revolutionize how we interact with folks whose language we don't speak -- and could have an interesting impact on language learning.  Not quite here yet, but they are building the prototype
• Leap motion-- use your hand movements in air to interact with your computer -- this is getting better
• Any of the virtual reality viewers and creators:  Google cardboard, Occulus Rift:  remember that folks with motion sickness will have a real problem with this.
• Microsofts Hololens and the concept of holoportation -- Startrek, here we come...
• The concept of Blockchain Architecture and how we need to figure out what effect it may have on what and how we teach

Talking Texts:  Making Textbooks and Instructional Materials Interactive with Augmented Reality

In contrast to virtual reality, where we immerse ourselves into a virtual environment and interact with it, somewhat isolated from the real world, augmented reality overlays digital content onto the real world.  Think Pokemon Go as the most popular example.  Farah Vallera is doing this for the Sociology textbooks and content she is using.
She is using a combination of Aurasma, an app that allows to overlay such contents and then view them, Audacity for the audio recordings and simple animation through Blabberize to create 19th century talking heads of Marx, Weber, Comte and other, potentially boring, social theorists.  https://sites.google.com/site/sociologyparadigms/ gives the instructions and examples on how this would work.

Keynote:  Goodbye, College as We Know it (Michelle Weise)

Weise reminded us that disruptive innovation as a force in higher education is something to be reckoned with, and that we need to have a plan on how to give the vast majority of non-traditional students the opportunity to get a higher education knowledge and skill sets without wasting their time and money.  So, no longer 4-year degrees but carefully selected and limited new skills that we may have not even thought of yet, but that companies like Nanodegrees, hack reactor, flatiron school, coursera, Minerva, openbadges,udemy, general assembly, pluralsight, Devbootcamps are already working through, with "graduates" who have honed a skill that can immediately be used.
Her talk was punctuated by a poetry performance by Jamila Lyiscott who reminded us of tangible hope.
And, no, this is not the performance we saw tonight, but I hope that you will still enjoy this performance piece: