New Power Management from Steelcase

A couple of weeks I indicated that I had seen something pretty cool from Steelcase.  They showed a group of us here at Auburn University their new system, Thread, to get power pretty much anywhere you want in a room by running it safely under the carpet.

Thread in action

So, notice that we have two layers in our sample.  The bottom layer is our regular floor, the top layer is our regular carpet.  The power module is very thin, making it invisible and infeelable under the carpet.  Specialized plugs make the appearance of the power outlets very flat as well.  And to top it off, a power pole can be added to this system that has 6 outlets.
The modules can be jigsaw puzzled together to cover central areas of a floor without power.
So, no need for a raised floor (expensive), core drilling (expensive) or trenching (really expensive, esp when asbestos gets thrown into the mix.

I am looking forward putting this kind of solution in place in some areas where power is needed in the middle of the floor.

Discussion with Dr. Jacob Wright

Yesterday, our college had the great pleasure to host Dr. Jacob Wright from Emory University to talk with us about how to publish successfully a fully enhanced ebook with the blessings of a major publisher.
While many of the discussions around epublications in education tend to center around text books -- and for good reason, the publication of scholarship, especially when focused on monographs, tends to be discussed less intensely.  Dr. Wright decided to see what happens and discovered that not only can it be done but done beautifully.

You may have read his article last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education:  What Enhanced E-Books Can Do for Scholarly Authors, 

Dr. Wright's book

His work in the field of biblical history may not strike folks as an obvious place to work on an epublication, but in many ways, this field is perfect:  the combination of very old texts that can only be accessed through digitized versions with a multitude of reimaginings these old texts allow for.  Combining a scholarly text with maps, art work, music, video clips, references to pop culture, and links to additional scholarly resources makes the potentially dense academic prose more accessible to a larger audience.  The result is an aesthetically pleasing work that the author very clearly enjoyed creating.

The discussions did of course move to such topics as how to negotiate with publishers, how self or semi-self publishing works with peer reviewing, how such publications may need to be considered for tenure and promotion -- I believe the participants came away with new ideas both for what kinds of tools to use and how to discuss these issues in their own departments.  The enhanced ebook we saw had been designed in iBooks Author and can be bought through iBooks.  Other tools mentioned were Atavist (https://atavist.com/) and Creatavist (https://www.creatavist.com/) to create engaging epublications.

I believe any such discussion would need to include the university library as its resources and knowledge are an invaluable ally in getting such publications accomplished -- maybe even going so far as having one's own digital university press...

EASL LITE

Here is one idea for turning a classroom space into an EASL space without spending a fortune.  The room seats 36 comfortably

EASL LITE

The tables are flexible but work best when sitting in groups.  We are sticking with the Steelcase Node chairs because of the flexibility in color and the comfort for the relatively short periods of time folks are spending in them.  With glass boards around the room, everyone has a space to collaborate.

Individual table in the EASL LITE

Teaching station with sharable display

Because we are not getting wiring to all the tables (power in particular), the room not only becomes more versatile but also costs considerably less.  As we are seeing an increasing number of iOS and Mac OS devices in student hands, we opted for Apple TVs that folks can connect to via AirPlay - not all students will have that kind of device but enough to allow for collaboration and sharing.







With two large displays, everyone has a good viewing angle, and the instructor still has a traditional computer with familiar software and/or the ability to connect a laptop via HDMI.

Control buttons for teaching station

So far so good -- though today I saw a really cool in the floor power solution -- but that is for another post.

Auburn University's Conversations in Celebration of Teaching

CCT 2015

Today, Auburn University celebrated its second Conversations in Celebration of Teaching, with lots of participation from faculty from all across campus.
For more information about the event, see http://wp.auburn.edu/biggio/cct/





Most exciting for me was the number of faculty who have been teaching in the EASL spaces and were showing off  how they have been engaging their students with the course materials.  Lots of pictures of students working hard.  Here are some of the folks who were presenting and what their topic was on -- I am hoping that down the line I can add some of their posters as well.

• Emily Burns (Art):  Breaking Out of the College Bubble:  Using the EASL Classroom to Engage the Community Beyond Auburn
• Ana Franco-Watkins (Psychology):  The Game of Life:  Active Learning Strategies Applied to Game Theory
• Yasser Gowayed (Polymer & Fiber Engineering):  Connecting Science to Practice:  A Function-Based Teaching Approach to Engineering Design
• Patrica Hartman (Libraries) and Sharon Roberts (Biological Sciences):  Teaching Students About Srouces Through Infographics
• Stuart Loch (Physics):  Exploring Active Learning Techniques in a Flipped-Classroom:  Lessons from an Introductory Physics Course
• James Zanzot (Biological Sciences):  Open-colleague Examination:  A Novel Approach to Testing Strategies in the Flipped Classroom

Something to Read

new EASL signs

On Monday, we are going to have our teaching retreat for the folks teaching in the two EASL classrooms.  As we are trying to model how to teach in these classrooms for faculty, they will be squarely put into the roles of students --minus the grades (would it not be great not to have to worry about grading when teaching?)

1.  Folks will learn from their peers -- four faculty will share a strategy, idea, assignment, activity each on how they are using the EASL spaces successfuly.

2. Folks will collaborate with their peers -- in groups, faculty will write language for a student contract that should clarify to students expectations and address at least some of the student expectations.  At the end, these drafts will be shared, and through a gallery walk, other groups can interact with these drafts.

3.  Folks will play with the technology in the room

For preparation, we are asking them to read at least 3 of the following articles that I found on the great blog post from Faculty Focus -- the best of 2014, bring a mobile device, syllabus and other course documents,  and find one online resource about active, collaborative, or otherwise engaged learning to share with colleagues.

Students Riding on Coattails during Group Work?  Five Simple Ideas to Try

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/students-riding-coattails-group-work-five-simple-ideas-try/

Seven Characteristics of Good Learners

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/seven-characteristics-good-learners/

She Didn’t Teach, We had to Learn it Ourselves

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/didnt-teach-learn/

Prompts to Help Students Reflect on How they approach learning

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/prompts-help-students-reflect-approach-learning/

Three Strategies for creating meaningful learning experiences

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/three-strategies-creating-meaningful-learning-experiences/

Putting students in the driver’s seat:  technology projects to decrease passivity

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/putting-students-drivers-seat-technology-projects-decrease-passivity/

You may have also seen the study Ball University published in Inside Higher Ed:  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/12/interactive-learning-spaces-center-ball-state-us-faculty-development-program

Some Student Work from this Term's EASL Classes

This is the time of the semester where I get to hear great stories from folks teaching in the EASL classrooms about how well it all went.
For example, in the CLA Perspectives publication at http://issuu.com/auburnliberalarts/docs/2014_15-perspectives/1, on page 5, you see one student commenting on how the EASL classroom experience helped her be more comfortable in boardroom meetings during an internship.  These kinds of "soft" skills may not be found in the course syllabus, but are valuable for students who are heading out into the work force.

student presentation in action

More tangible results of EASL work could be seen in an 18th century literature class where students used the space creatively for original theatre and puppet theatre productions, and quasi museum exhibits.  The Communication class focusing on Health Administration and Communication produced a series of student projects, consisting of posters, flyers, brochures, and PSAs.

18th century puppet show

Student presentation in CMJN

Student presentation in CMJN

And the Music in Physics course's final projects were musical instruments out of non-specialized materials that students collaborated on in the SCC EASL classroom and turned into a reality in a lab with the necessary tools.

Here some of these musical instruments:

Organ from scratch

Harp from scratch

cigar box electric guitar

Some Thoughts about the Recent ELI webinar on Redesigning Learning Spaces

For a couple of afternoons, we participated in this webinar that focused on redesigning learning spaces with different perspectives and dimensions for success.

One suggestion was the development of a learning spaces master plan that is rooted in the campus master plan and the institution's strategic plan.  The goal would be that all learning spaces, formal and informal, are in an inventory and can be assessed for upgrades, renovations, or reuse.  Over time, this would mean that the university needs to allocate resources to make this happen -- which may be a problem.  Currently, budget numbers seem to suggest that 4/5 of budget for upgrading classrooms goes towards technology while only 1/5 goes to furniture.  Indeed, one suggestion was that we should do with less technology as it needs to be replaced more rapidly than furniture.

We need to construct and redesign with brain and how we learn in mind.  We should consider the different levels of comfort zones.  Often, those spheres are seen as the most inner circle being the comfort zone with another circle the learning or growth zone, and moving to the outermost circle being the panic zone.  However, for this discussion, the zones were Intimate, personal, social, and public -- think of the physical space you are in and how close you let what kinds of people get. As one person put it, it is unethical for us to keep teaching in the traditional, teacher-centered way, unethical to keep building learning spaces this way with what we know about how our brains work.

Consider also that we are aiming for the t-shaped student:

T-shaped student

  T- shaped people have two kinds of abilities. The vertical bar of the T represents depth of expertise in a single field (being an engineer, biologist, computer scientist), whereas the horizontal stroke of the T is the ability to collaborate across the disciplines (being collaborative and empathetic)." http://asmarterplanet.com/studentsfor/blog/2013/07/why-do-you-need-to-become-t-shaped-person.html 








One argument about changing learning spaces from teacher to student centered, active learning spaces is that this will have a consequence fewer students per class.  Possibly so, but I believe that students will be more successful, leading to fewer W and F grades, better retention and graduation rates.  Is there research about this out there yet -- some, but not enough as it is of course rather difficult to show that taking a class in one particular space led to a student's increased success through her academic career.

A couple of other interesting ideas

 -- Maker spaces for prototyping are growing in numbers at other universities
 -- innovative library design:  http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/huntlibrary/photosandvideogallery at North Carolina State

 -- I think having tangram tables would be cool --

tangram