While listening to the Digital Campus podcast out of George Mason Univ., a biweekly podcast about how digital media and technology are affecting learning, teaching, and scholarship at colleges, universities, libraries, and museums, two sites authored by Lisa Spiro, director of the Digital Media Center at Rice University’s Fondren Library caught my attention.

First, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities is a blog about how digital resources and tools are affecting scholarship in the humanities and consider the potential for digital scholarship. She poses questions (taken from her about page):

• What kind of resources do I find by relying on databases and search tools? What kind of searches work best? What hasn’t yet been digitized or is difficult to find?
• Does tagging help me to organize and share my research?
• What new insights come out of using text analysis and text visualization tools? What’s hard about using these tools?
• How do you make available not only research conclusions, but also the detailed research process that undergirds these conclusions–the successful and unsuccessful searches, the queries run in text analysis software, the insights offered by colleagues and commentators?
• How will all of this information be preserved for the long-term?
• What effect will making the research practice transparent have on the way that research is conducted, and what kind of scholarly community will come out of this work?

The second site, also edited by Spiro is DIRT – http://digitalresearchtools.pbworks.com/ which is a wiki that collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars. Here’s an example of the list….

I want to…

• Analyze statistics
• Analyze texts
• Author an interactive work
• Blog
• Brainstorm/generate ideas
• Build and share collections
• Collaborate
• Collect data
• Communicate with colleagues
• Compare resources

The approach on these two sites is interesting because it approaches the problem from the prospective of “what do i want to do?”, or “what outcome or goal am I trying to obtain?”

Another blog mentioned on the podcast was Found History “which explores public and digital history in all its forms. Found History is produced by Tom Scheinfeldt, Managing Director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.” While very thought provoking the Briefly Noted postings have a lot of information to digest, with many many links. I fear sifting through all of them would take the better portion of my day….

The Map is the Territory: Course “Engagement Streams” as Catalysts for Deep Learning
W. Gardner Campbell, Baylor Univ.
Robert German, Millersville Univ. of Pennsylvania

Portals have become like telephone books, providing information but no engagement which is boring. They provide information aggregation, pushing information to the end user (student) rather then sparking learning. How can these online tools amplify information literacy?

The question asked: What if we could create visualizations of students engagement with their learning while it
was happening so that it would inspire and augment their in-class experience?

The use of blogs gives the students an arena where they discuss and formulate the progress of the learner. Blog posts essentially write the course into being. The cognitive process of learning is viewable – a sort of catalyst feedback loop. It is here that students’ engagement becomes visible.

The Mythical Man Month says that software creation is pure “thought stuff”, perfectly malleable because it is so intensely cognitive and imaginative. It can not be done without the human brain.
So too is computer aided education – technology tools give us a way to communicate and represent experiences in ways that are hard to represent elsewhere.

How do we harness the catalytic process? How can we produce an organic system of catalytic agents – not randomly but particularly designed. Instructional technology should no longer in the business of automating tasks. Technology can now be used to address the larger goals of helping a student to understand how they learn and how to make meaningful connections. Our success should be measured by the creation of catalytic agents to better enable learning. There should be a transparency to the learning experience.

Such basic technology issues such as authentication are necessary but should not be the focus – the focus should be on the acquisition of tool skills beyond these points. We need to intentionally design the tools used to create the knowledge project.

Take Away Quote: “Users own the technology space. Privacy, confidentiality and security needs to focused on relative risk. There is honor in defeating them rather than surrendering to them.”

Exercise:

Imagine what kinds of student engagement you would like to display to the class to show it’s work believing that it would catalyze learning. How would you arrange that in a portal space?

*put in link to the images on flickr….when I find them…

Questions/Ideas:

Have i3 students create an i3 portal, pulling in all the items that they think would be a “catalyst” to doing their jobs better. Something more dynamic then the sakai site, perhaps pulling in the sakai stuff as well?

Target a class that has students using popular culture references and create a sandbox where they can post video/audio/images that spark discussion.

Have students “take turns” creating a catalytic portal site for their peers in the class each week.

The message once again – the whole is greater then the individual.

A Mixed-Method Institutional Study – http://go.carleton.edu/CUVM
Paula Lackie and Andrea Nixon, Carleton College

Based on the research study that asked the question “Are Carleton Colleges sources of support well suited to the work demanded of the students and faculty as they make curricular use of visual materials?”

The study was conducted with the help of student researchers that were trained by a cultural anthropologist in the library. Emphasis was placed on student class status (freshman to senior) and how students became “aculturated” to scholarship over the years.

Results of the study showed that the majority of work done by students was happening in the residence halls between the hours of 4pm and 4am. The the library and other areas where students study were used less.

Sources of support was sought (in order):

1. from other students in the class or from professors – freshman were more likely to use peer support, juniors and seniors were more likely to ask the “experts” – professors or staff – then first year students.
2. there were a number of students who didn’t seek support at all
3. support from TA’s and CA’s
4. a very small number of students actually turned to IT staff for assistance.

The study hoped to identify the points at which the curriculum met the support model of the institution. The integrated support model’s mission is to provide faculty and students with expert reference so that students and faculty need not know the organizational support structure of the institution.

They began to look at consultation with faculty – where goals regarding course pedagogy were discussed, assignments considered and materials needed – not as project managment outlines (though there is a time and place for this structure) but rather as production meetings. Unlike project management where there is a “product” or outcome and tasks required to obtain those ends, faculty were encourage to voice ideas, discuss assignments and outline teaching and learning objectives of a particular course. The project management part was secondary to those initial meetings.

The use of the visual is well established in curriculum. Students and faculty are asked to find, access, create, interpret and present visual materials for course and research work. Working with visual materials requires support from many different departments across the university. Digitizing materials – whether they be library objects or personal collections – can require a long list of support providers some of which include:

• content specialists
• media creation specialists
• catalogers
• software/hardware specialists
• course management specialists
• system administrators

In order to support students in their visual literacy mastery, these items need to be considered:

• the times and places where students work
• recognition of others sources of support (student techs, teaching assistants, peers).
• providing a model of exceptional work (rubrics or examples of high level scholarship in a discipline)
• providing support beyond the struggling student to counteract any negative perceptions of support
• course specific instruction (providing clear concise online documentation)
• supplemental training for high end tools
• identification and advertisement of sources of support.

Items that need to be considered in order to support faculty in their use of visual materials:

• the times and places where faculty work (including their availability for training)
• production meetings to discuss the academic goals of the course
• project management outlines for deliverables with clear deadlines with “fail safe” or “exit strategies” if technology fails to meet the needs of the goal
• providing a team-based support system with an expert reference as point of contact

Take away quote:

“I am amazed by how much my need to help clouded my ability to see what kind of help was needed”

This quote resonated with me, just the day before I had mentioned that at one point in my career as support specialist I felt that my value in the job rested on the amount of tasks I completed for others. I now see my job less as “the person who accomplishes the task” but now “the person who facilitates, enabling others to achieve their goals.”

Ideas/Questions generated:

How, when and from whom did you seek support? – this question should be added to the course assessment surveys.

Possibly using i3 funds – identify a student or TA associated with the course or senior in a the discipline who is paid to provide student support for technology used in the course.

Use the i3 graduate student in History and English as first point of contact for student support for technologies used in courses in these disciplines

Partner with residence halls to see what is available for student use in the areas where they live – if indeed this is the place where the majority of the work is taking place.

Mine the i3 program for feedback regarding support models, course technologies used etc – have them work closely with the TLC staff to help support specialists understand their needs. Though our mission is the support of faculty, ultimately this support affects the student body. It is possible that interns could conduct exit interviews with students?

Student interns are para-professionals. In order to keep the work quality/output high, those interns must be excited about and engaged in the process.

www.dartmouth.edu/~ssimon/NERCOMP-SIG08

Development of seamless support services between curricular computing, library media center and peer-tutoring center.

Faculty form for setting up projects for students – this allows them to think offline about all the components of such a project
how will they assess?
what is the pedagogical outcome?

After the form, the group meets with the faculty
Timeline for equipment availability
Timeline for due dates
iMovie workshop (tailored for course) for students
Check-in sessions that help students to stay on task and timeline
Set up Final screenings (have students give feedback about the process at these sessions)

The Jones multimedia center (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/mediactr/) has 20 editing stations! Which includes scanners and apple computers.
They barcode the equipment to keep track of usage statistics. Part of the hardware includes checkout of hard-drives (which quickly became hard to manage) and a dedicated media server. The workflow would be to use the hard drive to work on the project but also save a copy to the server as a back up, the students “should” not work off the server.

Equipment check out:

“This program has
grown in five years from 3 used cameras given to us to twenty Camcorders, 6
Digital still cameras, and 5 Marantz digital audio kits, 6 analog cassette recorders. We
have been held back by the amount of time it takes to add establish training,
procedures, Maintaining (Charging batteries) cleaning and storage. We out grew
my office and have spilled out into several other areas.

We feel this program
is one of the most popular services we offer. We check out several hundred each
term.”

They have between 30 and 40 students works that the help do this work, with approx. 10 that are trained in-depth on the equipment and software.

There is a quick reference booklet online and in hard copy available to users of the equipment and software.

Considerations of budget and maintenance:

“

Each camcorder kit
cost $1,000 with bag & tripod, extra battery and lens. Price per kit X 20

We charge students
for missing parts and replace aging / broken parts. And late return $.5.00 per
hour per item.

We try to order the
same model, (for training purposes) and replace every three years, rotating
each year.

Labor is the major
factor in planning growth, it takes 30 min per camera check out/in

We average ?# of
check outs a week/month/term.

We are looking at
brining in HD camcorders this year, rotating out the oldest camcorders which we
canabalize and use as back
ups.”

Student survey link: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ssimon/NERCOMP-SIG08/survey/survey.html

They created a Treatment Plan which helps students to focus the project to keep expectations and outcomes realistic. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~rwit/files/video/student-video.pdf

Palor Trick helps them to learn hands on about video production – http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ssimon/NERCOMP-SIG08/parlor-trick.pdf

There is a site that shows past video projects, both for students and for faculty. Helps to frame future projects for courses. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~videoprojects/

A form is given to students to fill out a release form for use in IT presentations and outside viewing.