Educational Technology

New Media Consortium 2014 conference

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Mike Kolitsky 3D prining workshop imageThe New Media Consortium annual conference is a great opportunity to discuss trends within Higher Education and educational institutions from around the world.  This year’s conference in Portland brought together innovators and trail blazers delivering education through technology from around the world.

Even before the conference began pre-conference sessions were held, including a session on 3D printing and scanning which I attended as ODEE looks at options for bringing 3D printing to students on campus.  New application ideas for 3D that were striking included a program called Photo To Mesh which converts light areas of a photo to raised surfaces and dark areas to lower areas, the application might be a representation of a cell mitosis that a vision impared student would be able to feel rather than see.

The opening keynote address was by Jason Ohler, an educator and author who developed early Jason Ohler keynote imageeducational technology training programs for teachers.   Ohler’s talk highlighted several accelerating trends that will effect higher education including Big Data, and Immersion or Augmented Reality.

Technology companies of all sizes are storing increasing amounts of data tracking everything from location and network settings to engine monitoring in large machinery.  Ohler pointed to a recent case where an airliner developed engine trouble in flight, so the plane manufacturer and the airline reviewed gigs of engine data in a web conference from around the country, identified the problem, and created a list of likely solutions, all before the plane landed at the destination airport.  Impossible a decade or two ago, this instant access to data and ability to collaborate across the world empowers people in new way that we’re just beginning to grasp.

Consumer data is also being collected and stored at exponentially growing rates.  In many cases, when customers log into a store’s “free” internet connection they are tracked as they shop, and that data is likely cross referenced to the actual purchases when they swipe a shopper card and check out.  The collection and analysis of these sorts of data are beginning to occur within higher education.  Analytics around student grades and engagement around course discussion boards and homework assignments are going to be gathered and analyzed more and more in the future.  As technology evolves students must know this data is being collected and analysts must utilize this data in ways to help students achieve their greatest potential and improve the university; both goals are tenants of good digital citizenship.

Eric_Cooper_Intel_Emerging_TechnologiesUnlike Virtual Realty, which cuts a viewer off from their surroundings, Immersion is a blended environment like one created when wearing Google Glass. The street you walk upon can be tagged with information about events, movie times, or whatever information might be pushed to a passer-by.  The advent of smaller processors, GPS, and wireless/cellular communication gear ensures we’ll see more devices soon.  Google Glass, FitBit, and the rest are strictly version 1.0 in an area of vast potential.  Ohler sees great potential in this space for systems that improve learning outcomes for students in fun and engaging ways.

Another session of interest was conducted by Intel’s Eric Cooper, showcasing some of the facial and gesture recognition technology beginning to emerge in the computing industry.  Cooper suggested future laptops will have dual video cameras built into the machine, which will allow programers to develop gesture based commands for this next generation of equipment, much in the way a Microsoft Kinect uses two cameras and user motion to control games written to utilize this system.  Facial recognition using measurement of distances between the features on a person’s face is an established technology, however now work is being done to translate facial expressions into a ‘mood’ interpreter which might be used in future consumer or security products.

Bill Frakes delivers his keynote presentationNot everything revolved directly around technology during the conference.  Digital Storytelling has always been an area of interest within the NMC, and this year a master, Sports Illustrated photographer Bill Frakes led a session showcasing some of his recent work in his childhood home of Nebraska, where cranes pause on their migration route each spring.  The photography and video work was simply beautiful.  View the story Cranes here.  Frakes also shared a piece he had recently created about his mother’s work teaching in a one room school house; an interview with one of the students she impacted through her work was a moving part of this digital story.

The 2014 NMC conference offered sessions on myriad changes and trends coming to higher education, however the message imparted by Nik Honeysett of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative might have been the most important.  Honeysett suggested the 5 year planning and implementation cycles of old no longer allow institutions to remain competitive when new breakthrough technology like the iPhone, iPad, and Glass are appearing on a three year cycle.  Rather than following the old model, an ongoing cycle of technology review and realignment is necessary to keep an institution on track toward its goals in a constantly changing technology landscape.  As we look at the tremendous changes we have experienced and continue to experience as technology evolves and improves, agility and flexibility remain our best guard against long term decisions that lock our institution into a model from the past.

The New Media Consortium Horizon Report: How does OSU stack up?

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The New Media Consortium is an Education Technology group that has tracked the role and trends of technology use in Higher Education for many years. I first became familiar with their work when I began working at the Digital Union in 2005 with a Flash generating template for websites called Pachyderm.

Each year NMC puts out a Horizon Report identifying the technologies that will be implemented soon in Higher Education. NMC staff and advisers from higher eduction categorize the growth of these trends into very near future implementation or burnout, a medium term time frame between two and three years for implementation, and a far view of four to five years before the technology or trend is implemented.

This year the report referenced The Ohio State University in the area of Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative learning, in large part because of the work the Statistics Department has done in developing a high-flex class where students can attend in person, watch class from home, or view recorded video of the class time. The Statistics Project was supported by an impact grant from The Office of Distance Education and eLearning (ODEE).

While thinking about this success, I began to think about the other trends showcased in this report, and considered how Ohio State is doing in other Horizon areas. Discussions with members of the Digital First team are the basis for this overview of The Horizon Report section on Key Trends and how The Ohio State University is responding to these trends.

One to two year adoption or burnout:

Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning: This is the area of the report where the Ohio State Statistics was highlighted. The implementation of lecture capture and live streaming in some colleges and large pool classrooms is beginning to be utilized in other departments, like The College of Medicine, where 40 ~ 50 students watch their daily lecture from a remote location daily. In open materials, like those on iTunes U, the future may bring curated courses bringing together materials from the best courses on a particular subject in the world.

Social Media Use in Learning: We see a continued reluctance on the part of students to bring their class worlds and social worlds together in the same space. For the most part, students seem to reject any tool that brings their established online social presence in contact with a class where the fellow students are not friends or peers beyond the context of that shared class time. In class activities could be scheduled that might foster friendships and possibly real social connections, however students resist having such connections imposed on their spaces.

A better implementation of social learning might be some technology like shared comments in the course reading materials, where students could see other student’s comments, reply, and create a discussion within the community for that course. The Canvas Course Management system has a ‘Facebook-like’ interface that highlights community around a course; as long as the community is being created around the context of course study and isn’t hijacking the student’s personal space this trend could easily spread.

Three to five year adoption or burnout:

The Creator Society: We’re supporting this trend strongly for students and faculty. The first Digital Union was our early attempt to support student and faculty multimedia creation with hands-on assistance from our students. Commitment to this support has allowed the service to grow with 3 Digital Union locations around campus. A second audio recording booth and an advanced video studio will open this fall, and a 4th Digital Union location will open by next winter.

The University WordPress site, U.OSU.EDU is a newly launched venue for students and faculty to create content on a university supported site. Yet another example of faculty support for content creation are the iTunes U and iBook author bootcamps, where faculty receive 2 days of intensive training and support around getting their content into an iTunes course or iBook for their students.

Data-Driven Learning and Assessment: Ohio State University is looking at ways we can utilize the Insights module for Carmen which will track student engagement, assignment completion, and student performance on tests. The information alone will be of no use unless instructors and student advisers can engage students having trouble to determine what support they need, and offer support or tutoring when needed. The university as a whole is also interested in this data in aggregate, so departments can identify courses that drive students to change majors and determine if changing elements within that course or adding supporting material for students prior to taking that course can lead to better success.

Five or more years to adoption:

Agile Approaches to Change: This is a challenge at a school the size of Ohio State; changing direction at a school this size is a little like turning a battleship. University IT Leadership is aware the days of two or three year technology projects where the landscape has changed by the time the project is complete are a thing of the past. New projects to test and implement technologies for campus within ODEE are proceeding on tight timelines, with the hope that we aren’t chasing the wave so much as we move forward. Even with this new philosophy and the One University Framework Plan to reduce redundant services on campus this is a huge change for our campus.

Making Online Learning Natural This is another challenging area of the NMC report. Course Management Systems like Carmen should consider improving the mobile interface view for students and they need to add community tools that faculty and students will use in their courses.

In a future post I’ll talk about the next section of the Horizon report, Challenges Impeding ED Tech Adoption, and how these specifically relate to our work at The Ohio State University.

A new soapbox

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Dave Hooker in 3D glasses, Harvard NMC tour
Welcome to the new blog site and digital soapbox of Dave Hooker, Innovation Lead for the Office of Distance Education and eLEarning. This site will serve as a space where I plan to call attention to interesting opportunities, shifts, or changes in technology that may effect the world of higher education, especially at OSU. My past year has been spent focusing on selecting a tool for use across OSU for capturing lecture content and rolling that tool out as a production service. As we approach completion of the pilot to production transition I expect to have more time for exploration of new technologies.

The next technology we’re examining for ODEE is Student Response Systems.  In the past students had to trundle over to the bookstore where they would have to purchase a clicker so they could respond to polls in class.  These clickers cost about 30 or 40 bucks, and interfaced with the podium computer in the room to receive votes on polling questions or a/b/c/d/e answers.  The technology was limited, and the tools available can do some pretty incredible stuff.  With virtually every student on campus already carrying a smart phone, a phone with SMS text, a tablet, a laptop, or an iPod (and often more than one) it’s time to examine what’s available now.

The new generation of student response systems go way beyond the a/b/c’s of the past.  Current tools can accept answers from students like hot spots on images, graphing, and vectors in addition to traditional polling sorts of answers.  The new tools open up a whole new range of possibilities for keeping students engaged in class,

As I look at the new generation of clickers I’ll work with a committee of faculty and technology support staff from across the university to identify what features are needed or desired in class, how various devices will work on OSU wireless or cellular networks, and whether attendance or quiz grades can be imported into Carmen easily or automatically.  After we figure out the best ones to try we’ll set up interested faculty to test a few and get their feedback and the feedback of their students.

What’s the point? If we can standardize on one recommended student response system that means students won’t have to buy subscriptions to two or three different solutions for two or three different classes.  The other benefit is a consistent student experience, so our students don’t have to learn to use three different systems.  If you are a faculty member who would be interested in participating in these tests please let me know.  We plan to begin testing for the Spring 2014 semester.

Dave Hooker, hooker.24 at osu dot edu