CT and CTLR Collaboration

Alex met with Mary Ellen Bertolini, JoAnn Brewer and Shel Sax to discuss ways in which the Curricular Technology team and the Center for Teaching, Learning and Research (CTLR) can collaborate.  It was agreed that at the very least we would cross link our sites in a consistent way so that visitor of either site could easily move from one to the other.  Beyond that we discussed documenting “teaching with technology” stories that we would organize by means of “pedagogies” and “technologies.”  The CT team with the help of Academic Consulting Services (ACS) would take the lead on developing an initial site for these stories and a basic organizational schema with the CTLR would review.

Review of Technology in Education Sites

Of the sites about technology in education that were compiled, The Tufts Academic Technology site seemed the best organized and well-written.  Many of these sites included documentation such as A/V classroom support that we have decided is best maintained in our wiki.  The team struggled with how to handle tech buzzwords that so many people use but so few really understand.

Curricular Technology Site Information Architecture

The overarching objective of the CT site IA continues to be finding a way to connect technologies/tools with pedagogies/uses with case studies/stories.
The team continued to struggle with the challenging task of categorizing different types of technologies and uses and how to label and describe these. Two strategies were debated:

Lists of specific Uses and Tools
This approach favors creating potentially long lists of different uses/objectives (real-time discussion, asynchronous discussion, collaborative writing…) and tools, both hardware and software (Audacity, Blender,…,Microphone,…,MediaWiki,…,WordPress).  If the lists are properly organized, efficiently laid out and contain simple descriptions, then people ought to be able to find what they are looking for…  Key to this strategy is short simple labels when possible for categories, particularly for higher level navigation (e.g. Uses, Tools, Stories, Help)

Categories of Technologies/Tools and Uses/Pedagogies

This approach favors categorizing technologies/tools and uses/pedagogies into a limited number (no more than 10).  If these categories are well thought out and taken as a whole form some sort of narrative, then people ought to be able to browse and find what they need…  The strategy requires longer, more descriptive navigation labels (Tools, Platforms and Media, Teaching and Learning Strategies, Case Studies, Help)

Tech Buzzwords

There was a lively discussion of tech buzzwords and whether or not to use them in our navigation.  Many felt that it might be better to avoid these as much as possible and include a section on Buzzwords/FAQs

While part of the CT team charge is to create a “tech incubator,” it was briefly considered that we might include a section on Initiatives, many felt we hadn’t done enough in this area to include such a section in our initial IA.

MiddMedia

Adam added server-side transcoding to MiddMedia which will allow users to upload a wider range of audio and video formats (see: MiddMedia now supports more video formats).  He chose video compression settings that sought a balance between quality and deliverability for most formats, settling on 720px X 480px as the largest resolution and a maximum data rate of 1000 Kbps.  MP4-H264 (and the lower quality FLV) are the only formats in which the original user’s resolution and data rate is preserved and so MP4-H264 is the best choice for the highest quality video.

The LIS wiki has documentation for how to use MiddMedia and how to export video files as .mp4 files. Mack noted that the new version of Quick Time “dumbs down” some of the earlier features – and that we should look at Quick Time 9 to confirm comparable export options.

ShadowBox WordPress Theme

Education Studies e-Portfolios

Shel has been recommending to the Education Studies program to move e-Portfolios to WordPress – The team noted that WordPress does NOT meet the requirements of at least some of the faculty in Education Studies including Gregg Humphrey and Jonathan Miller-Lane. Apparently both Gregg and Jonathan ask their students to include information in their e-Portfolios that should have different access settings than other parts of the portfolio.  Thus for these faculty granular access control is critical.

UPDATE: Shel has discussed the use of WordPress with all faculty in Education Studies and explained its pros and cons as as platform for e-portfolios.  Some faculty in the department are currently trying out WordPress, others are observing…

BreadNet recommendations

Shel has reviewed our BreadNet recommendations and supports them.  He has requested these be put on the agenda of the next AD team meeting.  A proposal that First Class (the application that powers Breadnet) might be a possible solution for large file management was briefly considered.  The team agreed that there are likely better solutions for this particular problem, solutions that would probably better integrate with our existing platforms.

CT Team blog to merge with New LIS blog

The team decided to include CT Team blog as part of the new LIS blog, but did not come to consensus as to where to put meeting minutes.  Possible platforms for these would be the blog or a wiki or even Google Docs.  Critical to this discussion was whether all meeting activity was suitable for public discussion.  Some meeting activity might be too sensitive or unresolved for public debate or may simply be too boring!

CTLR and CT Collaboration

Present: Alex Chapin, Joy Pile, Adam Franco, Joe Antonioli, Bryan Carson, Dan Frostman
Minutes joyfully taken and presented by Dan Frostman

Discussion started out around the new CT home page. We came up with a partial sentence for the page:
“There are resources and support available for the use of technology…something something.”

Alex proposed links with short descriptions
Joe proposed more of a “story” approach
Adam – a list of projects, case studies, possibly in a feed?

Alex proposed that the case studies, tools, and pedagogies could all be interlinked – in other words, case studies have links to the tools, and vice-versa.

Adam proposed that these things be our Tier 1 links (case studies, tools, pedagogies).
Joe proposed adding Support to that list.

Short discussion about linking to CTLR – decided it was not an issue for this meeting.

Joe proposed new labels for the Tier 1 links: Tools, Use(s), Support, Stories
(much applause)

Recent stories could be a feed, not necessarily a link.

We looked at the Spark website. Dan wondered why we don’t just copy that.
Based on Spark, Bryan proposed “Support” becomes “Help”.

Adam predicted that Tools will be the ultimate endpoint for most users, no matter how they get there. But then conceded that this would possibly not be the case.

What now? (blank stares)

Joe: How do each of these things (the Tier 1 links) get represented on the home page?

Featured use case (story)?
Featured tool?
Blog feed
All of these could be on the page, too.

Dan wondered why we don’t just do a page with 4 links?
Joe explained that is not interesting or engaging.

Adam proposed more text on the home page with the links to the four Tier 1 links embedded in that text. More of a narrative with links rather than a list of links.

Joe threw in a crazy idea and showed us the Film and Media mock-up page, which has 3 tabs along the top, a sidebar, and a quick links box at the very top right. This helped us envision the new page a little better.

Homepage seems basically done. Now – What goes on the sub pages?

We need to go through the URL list and decide where (in which of the 4 links) will each thing live (if it is going to make the transition at all).

The Wiki will be the “how to” destination.

“Hardware” could be under Tools, with links to the Wiki.

Meeting adjourned to go to the next meeting.

Review of charge and priorities

• Much of our work to date has focused on determining what technologies are needed to replace Segue.
• Main projects we have started to get at this are the CT feature matrix, the CT Need Knowledge grid, course site platform survey questions and CT usage analysis
• Other projects we have done that are related are a review of BreadNet and our course site platform recommendations
• Not much work has been done to date on evaluating teaching spaces and creating a tech incubator
• We have had discussion of curricular technology documentation and the team is expected to provide this for the new LIS site

Determining one or more replacements for Segue

We all agreed that we need to determine what people need before we can replace Segue and that the primary methods of determining technology needs are surveys, focus groups and discussions with individuals.  We also agreed that we needed more understanding of how to create surveys.  Joy agreed to review her notes on creating surveys fr0m a workshop she did at Dartmouth as well as contact the psychology dept for surveying tips.

Web Redo Project

We compared what we are trying to do with what the Web redo project has done:

• Both projects need to find out what users want and what users need.  Web redo identified stakeholders from various areas in the college.  We probably ought to cull our stakeholders from academic depts
• Web redo delegated responsibilities into following groups: 1. Platform 2. Requirements 3. Design IA.  Since our users will be using these technologies to create their own IA and design, we may not need to focus on this in thinking about Segue replacements (other than assuring the platforms we are considering support IA and design needs…)
• The web redo project focused on identifying a single platform for the college website with ancillary platforms supporting it.  We are not sure whether the same strategy is appropriate for curricular technologies.  Cases can be made for a single primary platform or multiple platforms…
• The web redo project intentionally did not look at how the college website was currently used, but focused on how people would like to use the college site in the future.  It is not clear whether the same should be done for curricular technologies.  Cases can be made for focusing on survey questions that get at what people want or for focusing on an analysis of how people are currently using curricular technologies. Surveys
  By looking only at survey questions, we might get a sense of what people want but we can’t be certain that what they want is what they need.  However if we ask the questions correctly and avoid buzz words like “wiki” we’ll likely get better answers.

  Usage Analysis
  By looking at how people have used existing platforms like Segue and WordPress, we run the risk of identifying features that people use only because they are the features available and not necessarily the features they want or need.  However, if we identify users of particular features (e.g. online discussion) and then look more closely at how they are using discussions as well get these individuals into a focus group, we’ll likely get better answer.

Technology Needs vs Wants

There was considerable discussion of how to get at what technologies people need and how to confirm that what people want is really what they need…  This came through in the discussion of survey vs usage analysis as methodologies of getting at this information….

Curricular Technology Documentation

Part of the web redo project is creating a new LIS site.  Ian McBride from the LIS website team joined us for a meeting earlier this summer.  At that meeting it was agreed that the CT team would provide the content for the Curricular Technology portion of the new LIS site.  It was agreed by all the a good model for how this is the Tuft’s Spark site.  Here is a comparison of the Spark site to our current documentation:

• The Tuft’s Spark site presents a list of tools (wikis, blogs, webMeetings, podcasts, mediaMarkup, forums, maps) with a consistent UI for each tool that includes an overview of the tools, a Quickstart guide, FAQs, Suggested Uses and feature use cases.  This site focuses on “web 2.0″ technologies and doesn’t include BlackBoard, Tuft’s primary course management system
• The primary site for curricular technologies that is one the current LIS site is the “Technologies for Teaching, Learning and Research” (TTLR) site (though many on the team were not aware of the existence of this site…).  The TTLR site is modeled on the Tuft’s Spark site in that is tries to give an overview of available technologies including course sites, blogs, wikis & collaboration, audio, assessments & surveys and video.  In addition to this site there are a host of other sites with curricular technology documentation including Curricular Technologies, iPods and 2nd Language Acquisition, Ed Tech Wiki, MiddBlogs, Digital Media Tutors blog
• Whereas the Tuft’s Spark site focuses on discreet tools, the TTLR site focuses on features of various tools (see: Feature Glossary) or types of media and often describes more than one way to meet a particular need.
• Whereas the the Tuft’s Spark site contains all the documentation, the TTLR contains minimal documentation (comparable to the Tuft’s quickstart) with links to the LIS wiki for more in-depth documentation
• Whereas the the Tuft’s Spark site contains easy to use standardized UI for using tools, the TTLR site links out to various other sites for actually using the tools.
• Whereas the the Tuft’s Spark site has lists examples of usage and recent activity across tools the TTLR site has nothing comparable.

Documentation issues that were identified:

• How much should be consolidate our documentation into one place?
• How many level of documentation should we have?
• How will we coordinate our documentation efforts with those of ACS and the Helpdesk?
• How much overlap will there be between curricular technology documentation and documentation of other platforms/tools/services that are not used in the curriculum.

BreadNet Review

We agreed we should make recommendations for how to proceed with BreadNet:

1. Check our license agreement and confirm we have what we need to update.
2. Upgrade to the latest version we have a license for
3. Identify a system administrator to manage FirstClass and get them the training they need to maintain the system
4. Identify someone at Breadloaf who can be an application administrator and get them the training they need
5. …. other?

We have a lot of projects started whose focus is to find one or more replacements for Segue including a CT feature matrix, a CT needs “knowledge grid” (i.e. what do we know and not know about technologies that faculty and students need), course site platform survey questions.

• What we know about how faculty/students are using curricular technologies now
• What we need to verify about their technology usage
• What we don’t know about what faculty/students want or need in terms of curricular technologies now and/or in the future

The objective of this brainstorming effort was to determine what questions we need to ask faculty (and students?) about their technology needs.  It is hoped that many of the items we come up with, particularly those related to what we need to verify and what we don’t know could be used as the basis for survey questions and focus group discussions.

There was no consensus about what would constitute a good survey other than that it should give us information useful for determining alternative solutions to Segue.  Some of the questions the team had were the following:

1. How many questions should the survey contain?
2. Should questions be multiple choice or open-ended
3. Should we have one survey to all faculty or different surveys for different groups of faculty (i.e. Segue users, WordPress users, course folder users)
4. Are survey questions focused on learning technologies in general or questions specific to course site platforms
5. Should survey questions seek to find out the proportion of faculty/students that use a particular technology (e.g. proportion of faculty who give feedback a) on paper b) via commenting tools c) via email)

Here is some things we think we already know about curricular technology use at Middlebury:

• Students in class need to be able to post comments in a threaded discussion that is appended to a block of content (e.g. blog post)
• faculty need to be able to evaluate/grade student work.  Some do this by with spreadsheets, some with desktop grading apps such as Gradekeeper…
• faculty need to give feedback to students beyond simply a grade.  Some do this by writing comments on student’s assignments, others by using commenting features of apps like Word or Acrobat.  Still others use email.  Others via websites
• Some faculty have students do peer review.  Some do this on paper.  Some do this on sites via discussion.  Others via inline comments on site
• upload video/media to course site.  Web-based audio/video capture tools are needed
• Many faculty require students to submit paper copies of assignments.  Some ask students to email papers, others use course folders, still others have students post papers to course site
• many faculty currently make use of granular access control in Segue (i.e. portions of their sites are restricted to the class, other portions many be open to Midd users or public)
• Many faculty require their students to create websites as part of their assignments.  Many use tools like Segue or WordPress for this.  Some of these student sites are public, other restricted to students in class, others restricted to the student and instructor
• Some faculty, particularly in languages, but also in writing courses, require students to submit audio recording assignments.  Many do this in Segue.  USB mics, or headsets with mics or digital voice recorders or iPod recording accessories are used.  Some faculty give feedback via website
• Many faculty copy course sites from previous semesters to reuse for current or upcoming semesters.  Some also copy sections and pages of sites and reuse in other sites.
• Faculty combine namespaces from various sections of a course into one site so that all students from all sections will have access to the course site.  Some programs of study, particularly in the Language Schools use one site for many courses
• Segue provides a number of site templates for creating sites.  These templates have sections and pages useful for courses, as well as other types of sites
• Course website UI needs to be localized for various languages
• Many programs of study use online exams including many Language Schools and departments.  Some courses have given mid-term and final exams online
• Many faculty want to be able to blog
• Some faculty want to have wikis

Some things we need to verify about curricular technology use and needs is the following:

• Do students in class need to be able to see a list of discussion topics with the # of replies to each topic listed (i.e. forum)
• Does grading this need to be integrated with course site platform or can it be separate?
• Proportion of faculty who give feedback a) on paper b) via commenting tools c) via email.  Segue v1 allowed discussion posts to be restricted to the instructor and student who made post.  Is this important?
• How many faculty want assignments a) printed b) email c) course folder d) upload to private section of course site e) upload for peer review
• How important is granular access.  What percentage of faculty want it?
• What kind of websites do faculty require students to create.
• Do faculty [and students] want to use the same tools for teaching as they do for publishing their research. (learn once, use multiple ways) Corollary: Do faculty prefer general purpose or course-use-specific online spaces (Segue/Drupal/WordPress/etc versus Moodle/Blackboard/etc).
• Do the current Segue site templates have sections and pages that are useful to faculty/students

Stuff we really don’t know about curricular technology needs are the following:

• Would faculty be open to online discussion via IM?  Are faculty interested in voice-based online discussion (i.e. web-based audio/video recording widgets)
• Are there grading apps/services that can interoperate with course site platforms.  Would rating tools fulfill some evaluation needs.  Would faculty be open to grading by students via peer review or rating services such as PollDaddy
• Would Google Docs commenting tools be useful?
• Do faculty WANT to go paperless?

We determined more research needs to be done for the following:

• Do students in class need to be able to see a list of discussion topics with the # of replies to each topic listed (i.e. forum)
• Are there grading apps/services that can interoperate with course site platforms.  Would rating tools fulfill some evaluation needs.  Would faculty be open to grading by students via peer review or rating services such as PollDaddy
• Would Google Docs commenting tools be useful?

We felt the following could be the basis for one or more survey questions:

• Does grading this need to be integrated with course site platform or can it be separate?
• How many faculty want assignments a) printed b) email c) course folder d) upload to private section of course site e) upload for peer review
• How important is granular access.  What percentage of faculty want it?
• What kind of websites do you require students to build
• Do faculty [and students] want to use the same tools for teaching as they do for publishing their research. (learn once, use multiple ways) Corollary: Do faculty prefer general purpose or course-use-specific online spaces (Segue/Drupal/WordPress/etc versus Moodle/Blackboard/etc).
• Do the current Segue site templates have sections and pages that are useful to faculty/students
• Do faculty WANT to go paperless?

Research Focus: Needs vs Technologies
The discussion of curricular technology platform segued into a discussion of the relative importance of surveying what user’s need vs research new technologies.  Everyone agreed that it is important for us to find out what user’s need.  Not everyone agreed on the value of researching and implementing new technologies that have NOT been widely requested.  As well, not everyone agreed on the best way to find out what users need.

• Some argued that any research into new technologies is pointless without knowing what people need
• Others argued that many people in the Midd community don’t know exactly what they need and that it is our job to show them what is possible
• Some argued that the best way to find out what people need is to survey them, form focus groups…
• Others argued that much can be learned from informal discussions with users and by analyzing existing usage patterns
• Some argued that all new technology implementations should be based on fulfilling an clearly identified need
• Others argued that it is our role to also explore and promote emerging technologies and to be proactive as well as reactive

CT Platforms Configuration:
WordPress
The themes currently available in WordPress were briefly reviewed.  Suggestions were made to disable side-wide access to certain themes, particularly, those designed for specific blogs.

• Joe and Alex agreed to review these after the WordPress upgrade
• The ShadowBox theme created by Alex was briefly reviewed.

Measure
The configuration and usage of Measure was briefly reviewed. Measure currently is configured such that only the quiz module is activated.  It was agreed to not make any major configuration changes to Measure:

• All requests for Measure sites will be handled by Alex

Next Meeting:
Everyone agreed we should invite Shel to our next meeting (and/or have a subset of us meet with him at an alternative time).  We also agreed that we should focus on survey questions for upcoming meetings.

Ian was the guest at the meeting.  RE: LIS Web Team and the curricular resources presence on the LIS website.

• part 1: what key terms do we want to turn up which results?
• part 2: develop the resources that you land on after the search.
• Us: figure out landing pages, presentation.  Develop a process.
• Ian: Will assist with interoperability  of systems.
• Ian will find out how the team can have access to Google analytics so we can determine which of our current web resources is most used.
• Brian will send out to team the project manager workbook and url inventory sheet.

In tackling this, we should think about:

• How to target our audiences (faculty, students, staff) (i.e. as a single group, as separate groups, as overlapping groups…)
• How to determine definitive sources of documentation
• How to contextualize documentation so it is where people need it and is surrounding by related content
• How to distinguish “how to” documentation from “what can I do” documentation

Essentially we’ll need to get an inventory of all the CT related content we have and review it.  Ultimately, what the LIS website team needs is the specifications for a CT “landing page” which would be appear for searches of “curricular technology” (and presumably synonyms such as “educational” and “academic” technology) as well as appearing on the customized search results page for searches of “LIS”

Great work Ian!

Discussed the survey questions.

Newly added:

• Opening paragraph
• Are you Humanities, Languages , etc.  (Divs)
• Whom do you want to access/participate your course site?

We’ll finish this in next meeting.

• FirstClass, the platform that is used by BreadNet, has functionality that is similar to email, mailing lists and forums.
• BreadNet has enabled the development of strong community of users who seem to be satisfied with the platform
• the version of FirstClass used by Breadnet is difficult and time-consuming to backup
• newer versions of FirstClass may offer improved functionality and be easier to maintain

Action items:

1. Adam will meet with Rick and get more details about issues with maintaining FirstClass server
2. Dan will research newer versions of FirstClass
3. Summary of Findings to date will be posted to the CT Blog

WordPress Plugins

• SlideShare seems like a useful plugin for embedding presentations, would need to review it.  Does require uploaded presentations to slideshare site and making public.  Google Apps has a presentation tool that may also provide similar functionality
• CommentPress plugins also seem to be useful, again plugin code needs to be evaluated.
• With all of these need to find make sure we don’t force WordPress to provide functionality that it isn’t design to support….
• These plugins and tools that offer similar functionality also need to be evaluated in terms of the “best of breed” strategy vs. using what is available….

• Can’t upload large files.
  • Recommendations: use Segue, classes folders, Docutek.
• cForms inhibits the upgrade in WP.
  • Best of breed vision should be followed to alleviate this issue.  Make WP be the best blogging platform instead of its being held hostage to data collection feature that has been grafted on.

Recommendations for course websites for fall semester posted to various blogs (including this one).

Discussion about how to gather information from faculty.

• surveys?
  • what are your needs?
  • not “let’s look at moodle, drupal, etc. and tell us what has the feature set you like.”
• informal conversations?
• Information-gathering strategy? (Joe)

Action Item: Survey.

• Alex will set up in google spreadsheet.
• Think of ways to gather the information
• LIS Advisory Groups?