|
|
16 Rapid Report Reactions: "Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012" |
| Friday, August 24, 2012 |
Steve Kolowich from Inside Higher Education asked for my comments on the second of two reports from surveys conducted by Inside Higher Ed and the Babson Survey Research Group. The first one was on college faculty perspectives related to online education ("Conflicted: Faculty and Higher Education, 2012"). The second one is titled "Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012." The new report relies on a survey of more than 4,500 college faculty members across the United States and 591 administrators who are responsible for academic technology on their respective campuses. You can access both an HTML and a PDF version of this report. You can also sign up for free and find both reports.
Steve's review of the second survey report came out in Inside Higher Education this morning (August 24, 2012) with the same title as the new report, Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012 (Steve's overview and expert reactions). It is an excellent review with many insights into the findings, connections to recent technology trends (e.g., flipping the classroom), and reactions from experts. Unfortunately, he was unable to include my comments in this report. Hence, I offer them below after checking with Steve that it was ok to blog them. I do not comment on every aspect of the report, but perhaps reading Steve's summary as well as my blog post below, you can quickly grasp some of the key findings detailed in the report before or after reading it. My comments should also indicate some possibilities for future research in this area. Read on....
16 Rapid Report Reactions: "Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012"
1. E-Textbooks (page 5-6 of report): With the emergence
of thousands of open access journals and resources, many faculty members are
creating online article compilations instead of requiring textbooks; thereby
saving students money and potentially expanding the class resources 10 or 20
times beyond what they might have received from a publisher of a single
textbook (Steve: see my 64 page emerging learning technology syllabus that I
just posted today as a case in point;
everything is a hot link...no books to buy). Hence, the question
e-textbooks (while it is clear) can have many interpretations. For instance, some might view an “e-textbook” option for students as when the professor or department compiles online or digital articles to replace a textbook.
2. E-Textbooks (pages 5-6): Another aspect to
point #1 above is that while over one-third of faculty members regularly assign
books that have e-textbook and traditional formats, I bet that a significant
percentage of additional faculty members are using free and open online
articles, reports, news, referenceware, books, and other resources to
substantially supplement their books and perhaps replace them as I have done. I
hate to venture a guess about the percentage but it is likely quite huge.
However, it will depend on what is available online in each discipline.
3. E-Textbooks (pages 5-6): While the percent
of faculty members who assigned books that were only in e-textbook format was
quite low at 12.1 percent, this is 12 percent that was not doing so a decade
ago. And another 16 percent is occasionally doing so. So, stated another way,
more than 1 in 4 college professors have replaced printed books at least
sometimes with digital ones. That is a sign that the trend toward digital books
in higher education has more than reached a tipping point. There is no going
back. With such numbers, the publishers and other content providers can
creatively experiment with such books and place greater financial resources
behind their attempts to e-purpose textbooks.
4. Digital Materials such as Videos and Simulations (pages 7-8): Digital materials such as simulations and shared online video content are being used regularly or occasionally by most higher education instructors. Such a finding reveals that faculty have come to rely on resources shared and found on the Web to support their instruction. As a result, during the past two decades, we have moved from using traditional media centers to support instruction with their stockpile of videotapes that had to be requested, reviewed, and returned, to an age when millions of free videos are available at one’s fingertips. Such videos, of course, can be watched at any moment and easily replaced when they are no longer available. Importantly, research in psychology has shown that such video content helps learners store information visually, thereby providing another retrieval track. These are exciting times indeed.
5. Digital Materials such as Videos and Simulations (pages 7-8): The problem with
this question, however, is that I see far greater use of videos in higher
education than the use of simulations. Naturally, the use of share online video
as well as simulations varies by discipline. In field like medicine,
engineering, and business, more research and development money exists to create
rich simulations that can be shared and reused compared to areas like history,
religious studies, or education. In addition, there are other contents
available online today that the Digital Faculty report did not ask about,
including animations, podcasts, interactive timelines and maps, online
referenceware (e.g., discipline-based multimedia glossaries), etc. Such
contents are exploding in use on the Web, especially interactive maps and
timelines. Consequently, while this particular survey item is highly
intriguing, there is much follow-up research that might be conducted.
6. Digital Materials used in FTF, Blended, and Fully Online Courses (pages 7-8): Naturally, faculty
members who teach in blended and fully online formats use such pedagogical
supplements more often that those teaching in traditional classrooms. One
plausible reason is that faculty members with such technology interests and
leanings may self-select into online environments. A second reason is that
their students will expect them to take at least a little bit of risk and
experiment with new simulation tools and digital books. Many other reasons
exist.
7. Faculty Creation of Digital Materials (page 8): More than 4 in 10 faculty members are creating content regularly or occasionally to use within their classes. This finding can be interpreted in at least a couple of ways. First, college instructors (and teachers in any setting) always create content. However, what is unique here is that the content produced now is digital—podcasts, blogs, portals, simulations, e-books, online lectures, etc. While, as revealed in this study, a fairly small percent of faculty members are creating open educational resources in the form of lecture capture, it is difficult to create content with all the different media formats and technologies available today. Lectures, while vital in many content areas, are not the only type of open educational resource that can benefit students. It may be vital to explore the different types of content creation activities that college faculty partake in today. It might also be useful to try to understand why 90 percent of college faculty are not using lecture capture on a regular basis.
8. Faculty Used Lecture Capture to Record or Stream-In Instruction (pages 9-10): The fact that those teaching fully online are doing lecture capture makes sense. Today, synchronous conferencing systems like Elluminate (now Blackboard Collaborate) and Adobe Connect Pro have tools to record synchronous sessions and make them available for students who missed them for whatever reason. Weekly guest expert presentations as well as instructor lectures can be saved not only for current students but also for those who will take the course in the coming semesters. In effect, faculty may not go into an online course with the explicit intention of capturing lectures; it just might be a by-product of teaching online. Hence, the data highlighted in the “Digital Faculty” report about lecture capture is not too surprising. In addition, some faculty members who are teaching online might be nervous about it or might want to make sure that online students have the same lecture materials that face-to-face ones have. Hence, they will record a set of lecture videos before the class starts or as it is ongoing.
9. Fairness of Reward Structures for Digital Pedagogy (pages 10-11): Another straightforward and expected finding relates to the data in this report on reward structures for digital pedagogy. Some institutions are perceived to be making a concerted effort to reward faculty and some are not. The statistics are split. Still, the data revealed in this report are much more positive than surveys of 10-12 years ago. And sure, when there are vast institutional differences and perhaps competitive systems of rewards in places that do have rewards, the administrators who are funding such programs are going to be more positive about the fairness of such systems than the individual instructors who receive (or don’t receive) the rewards.
10. Training and Support for Lecture Capture (page 34): The data reported on training and support
for digital tools in the classroom is also quite a bit better than was witnessed
a decade ago. Still nearly a quarter of faculty members surveyed believe that
such training needs improvement. Clearly, higher education institutions still
have a ways to go in terms of supporting faculty teaching with technology.
11. Faculty Perspectives and Rewards Related to Digital Publishing (pages 12-16): It is unfortunate that college faculty do not see rewards from publishing their research in a digital format. Perhaps, like perceptions of online learning, this will change as we all become more familiar with digital outlets for our research. The low percentage of regular digital scholarship is particularly disappointing given all the avenues for such scholarship to be displayed today. Digital scholarship is not just seen in online papers. I have seen it displayed in wiki compilations of various publications from a research team; blog reflections on the progress of one’s research and links to online research articles; video interviews and podcasts of one’s research that get posted with the open access publications; publishing research in free open access articles; wikibooks of research on a topic from a set of researchers in a particular institution or across research sites; online interviews about one’s research; digital books; etc. All of these avenues for dissemination make it difficult for promotion and tenure committees as well as external reviewers of faculty dossiers to make decisions about tenure. Decision making was much less complicated when the outlets where fewer in number. Many of the traditional outlets still exist, and so the easiest way to award tenure is to place perceptual blinders on the other ones for now. Such practices will undoubtedly change in most disciplines during the coming decade or two. Such a case can be made from the data in this report given that faculty believe that the online quality of contents has been getting stronger lately.
12. Use of Social Media for Interacting with Students and Colleagues (pages 17-18): It is not surprising that faculty use
social media to interact with other their colleagues and not students. College
instructors only have so much time and personal resources available. If
hundreds or thousands of students had their Skype contacts and were friends
with them in Facebook, it would be difficult to get day-to-day tasks completed.
13. Digital Communication Technology and Media Impact on Productivity, Creativity, and Scholarly Collaboration (pages 18-23) and Stress (pages 28-29). The data on enhanced communication,
productivity, creativity, collaboration, and connections with others in your
scholarly community is perhaps the most important finding of this study. And
the fact that female instructors have experienced such enhanced creativity,
productivity, and collaboration from digital technology is certainly worth
discussing further and following up with additional research. Sure, this
constant connection to others and to rich veins of data with this technology
can be daunting and quite stressful. Without a doubt, we are getting requests
to respond to others via email from the time we wake up to the time we go to
bed. Case in point, I had 157 emails in my in-basket to read during the day
today (Wednesday) that were not spam. In addition, I had 139 emails that I
composed and sent out to others. Despite these email stressors and constant contact
from others, the survey data shown here signals that we are more creative
creatures who are making contributions today in global venues that would have
been impossible just a decade or two ago without such technology.
14. Daily Email and Responsiveness (pages 24-27): Teaching online and blended brings with it
more email. Sure, students want to connect. They want a sense of social
presence. Email and synchronous class sessions can provide that sense of
instructor caring and feedback.
15. Use of LMS (pages 30-32): Interesting that the main features of a learning management system (LMS) is to share a syllabus and communicate with students. These two tasks can be accomplished today without an LMS. Also interesting to see the gap between administrators and faculty in terms of tracking student attendance. Administrators are sold on these LMSs since they can track attendance, participation, grades, etc. They manage learning. From my perspective, most faculty members could really care less about such computer log data. College instructors and students are more concerned with the pedagogical and motivational side of learning with digital technology than simple counts of butts in seats—they want rich interaction, engagement, meaningful learning, goal-driven pursuits, feedback, collaboration, etc. In effect, they want powerful and transformative learning. Faculty live in the moment of the course. Administrators fly over the top of the course and rely on sometimes computer log data to determine the course or system effectiveness. Hence, the survey reveals different perceptions of importance on these digital learning technologies.
16. Excitement or Fears About the Future (pages 35-36): The fact that free content, digital
resources, blended learning opportunities, and additional data on teaching are
all deemed positive and exciting, while for profit and online education is less
exciting and even stressful makes sense. The latter are major structural
changes in higher education. The former are enhancements to the present system.
I hope the above comments on the Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012 report are helpful (HTML, PDF). More information on both reports is here: Babson/Inside Higher Education reports). Steve's overview of this report today in Inside Higher Education is here.
Anyone not yet drowning in data, can read dozens of other similar reports from the past couple of years as listed in my 64 page "monster" R685 syllabus on Emerging Learning Technologies. Class started this past Monday. it is an online class. Many guest speakers (typically Monday nights at 7 pm EST). We had Michael Horn from the Innosight Institute this past Monday. He was fantastic. Anyone is welcome to attend (see syllabus for details). Wish me well in managing the monster. More on this in my next blog post in a couple of days.
Labels: Babson survey research, blended learning, digital faculty, digital media, e-textbooks, Inside Higher Education, lecture capture, online learning, professor perspectives on technology |
|
|
|
|
|
Unabridged Interview: "Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style" in Big Think |
| Friday, August 03, 2012 |
Some people are wondering when I will post to TravelinEdMan again. How about tonight? Perhaps.
Why have I not been blogging you ask? Well, after finishing my Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for Blackboard back in May (see blog post with archive), I have been working on a book on online motivation and retention using my TEC-VARIETY model which I hope to give away free as a PDF and sell cheaply in Amazon CreateSpace as well as Kindle. One chapter left to write--on goal setting and yielding products. Each chapter takes about a week to write up. Hope to be done after I get back from the 28th Annual Wisconsin Distance Teaching and Learning Conference next week. Will I take a break from writing and hang out in Madison, Wisconsin next week and jog along Lake Monona and Mendota in early August? Yes! But I will try to finish the book before I leave or right after I get back. Then, it will take a few months of editing (and cutting) and copyediting before it I get the book done. I wrote too much....as per usual.
In the meantime, below is my unabridged interview by David Berning from Big Think which took place a few weeks ago and was posted yesterday. Some of you might want to read the article that appeared in Big Think, Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style. It was, in fact, the lead article in a set titled: "Today's big idea: Disrupting Education" (see list of these article).
First, I think I must explain how this interview came about. My
team and I have been tracking Big Think as part of our extreme learning research and
contacted them to help us collect survey data on informal and extreme learning (you can take the survey, in fact). A couple of wonderful people at Big Think replied that they wanted to
talk to me about the research we were doing. Since only part of my reply is in that article in Big Think, I thought I would post the full response here in my TravelinEdMan blog.
What
is Big Think you ask? Some might check out their Wikipedia page or their YouTube Channel. Bascially, Big Think includes short video interviews, multimedia presentations, panel discusions, and blog posts of hundreds of intellectuals around the planet. If you browse through it, you might find information on topics like stem cell research, happiness,
global warming, technologies or foods of the future, etc. See the About. I heard that some of the founders have experience with producing the Charlie Rose show on PBS. It shows. Suffice to say, this Website is top notch. I remember some of their early interviews when I first explored it around 2007 were with folks like Richard Branson from Virgin
Airlines and Deepak Chopra. People now listed in their expert list include John Seely Brown, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Larry King, Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom (IU Professor, recently deceased), Ken Burns, James Gleick (author of "The Information"), Salman Khan from the Khan Academy, Dana Boyd, Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and many other artists, novelists, neuroscientists, filmmakers, politicians, and economists. Way cool.
This is the age of the open education world. Websites like Big Think are playing a huge role in that openness. It now focuses on topics like the future where my interview appeared as well as history; life and death; love, sex, and happiness; science and
technology; the environment; beliefs; media and the internet; identity;
politics and policy; etc., among the experts of the world. I definitely plan to use this resource in my emerging learning technologies class as well as my class on learning theories.
For those interested in shared online video sites, see my portal listing of nearly 80 such sites.
Ok, now, on to that full interview with David Berning from Big Think (and remember, you too, can take our informal and extreme learning survey).
Unabridged
interview of Curt Bonk, Instructional Sytems Technology Department, Indiana University, by David Berning, Big Think.
(Please Note: Resulting article in Big Think can be found here: Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style, Posted August 2, 2012.)
David (Big Think) Q#1. What is, in
your opinion, the main purpose of education? Is this purpose being fulfilled
today? How can the integration of technology better serve this purpose?
Curt Responds: Among the chief goals of education is to help the human
species deal with unique problems, issues, or situations as they arise.
Education offers possibilities for reflection on the credibility, appropriateness,
relevance, and reliability of information sources. The education person knows
when she knows, what she knows, and how to obtain information and new skills
and competencies which she presently lacks. And that is where technology often plays
a significant role. Learning technology, when thoughtfully integrated, can
assist in efforts to seek, find, and filter knowledge that is appropriate and
timely. It can share the cognitive load with the learner by offering cognitive
maps of key concepts, interactive timelines and notecards, images and graphs,
assorted referenceware, and sequenced data upon demand. Technology supplements
and augments what the learner already knows.
Today, much of the dialogue about education is about
catching up to those deemed ahead on various standardized test scores.
Unfortunately, most highly used tests measure the basics and not much beyond.
Web-based technologies, however, can give us all the information we need within
milliseconds. When we can have the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria in
our pockets on an inexpensive flash drive, we must begin to question exactly what
should be taught and ultimately what knowledge is. As the forms of such
knowledge-based technology multiply and reduce in price, a new dialogue needs to
open up about the benefits and intensions of education.
The purpose of education has swiftly pivoted from knowing
what something is to knowing how to find out about that thing. The basic tools
of knowledge discovery are now Wikipedia and other wiki-like tools, YouTube, Facebook,
Twitter, TED talks, online news services, digital books, and a vast array of online
learning courses and modules.
David (Big Think) Q#2. Your study
focuses on understanding the motivating force technology can have on the
learning/teaching process and the capabilities it has on sharing knowledge and
information. What exactly do you wish to do with the results of your study?
Curt Responds: We hope to create a space for sharing stories of how
technology has impacted one’s life in a significant or life empowering way.
Such cases and stories can be used to inspire others. We want people to imagine
new careers and discover how learning opportunities on the Web can lead them
there. We plan to put these s tories, with proper permission,
of course, into a book or report that is indexed across ages, cultures, and
learning situations. Whether one is a young person or more experienced adult,
we hope to build an assembly of stories that anyone can use to find role
models, new learning vistas, and innovative ideas about education. We intend to
help open up the educational world to people who have had it closed for far too
long. Open educational resources, opencourseware, open content, open source software,
open access journals, and so on, bring immense possibilities for change. The
world is now open for learning as I discuss in my book, “ The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing
Education.”
I also want to document aspects of human development during
the lifespan that heretofore have been hidden from view. This particular goal
will admittedly take much more time. However, we are living longer and there
are myriad more ways to learn today than just a few years back. It is likely
that there are not only human learning gains from the expansion of learning technology
and open content on the Web but also wholly new forms of human development that
need to be revealed, mapped, and understand.
David (Big Think) Q#3. You distinguish
between two separate types of 'informal teaching/learning methods' in your
study: simple self-study and "extreme" learning. Can you briefly
elaborate on distinction of these terms?
Curt Responds: We are attempting to distinguish between everyday
informal activities such as looking up travel or health information in a
Wikipedia page or finding an article in a learning portal on Shakespeare, Hemmingway,
or Jane Austin, from something that is much more novel and unique which we are
calling extreme learning. An example of extreme learning happened to me this
past May when over 4,000 people enrolled in a course I was teaching for
Blackboard using their free course management system in CourseSites. The course,
“Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success,” was focused on
how to teach online and people who completed it got a badge ( registration remains open; in addition, a recap of the course can be found in my blog).
You might think that 4,000 is a lot of students. So did
I. However, there is a course on social networking this summer at Stanford with
over 400,000 students. And last fall, a professor at Stanford taught an online
course on artificial intelligence to over 160,000 students. Not too
surprisingly, the success and potential of such massive open online courses or
MOOCs has fostered a number of new ventures including Coursera, Udacity, and
Udemy. Those wishing to stick to branded universities are in luck as MIT and
Harvard recently formed a new partnership to offer such courses through edX.
Other forms of extreme learning include teenagers
navigating the globe as solo sailors and keeping up with their high school
studies using Skype, satellite phones, and other technologies. Another example would
be when researchers in the Amazon provide educational resources and blog posts
for kids in schools to read, analyze, and respond to. Still other forms of
extreme learning are evident when a researcher listens to a podcast of a chemistry
or physics course while involved in a scientific project on polar ice. Perhaps
you have heard about people who bike ride through the Americas and blog about their
adventures. Or maybe you have been one of the millions of people around the
world signing up to take or teach a language in Livemocha, Babbel, or The
Mixxer. These, too, are examples of extreme learning.
David (Big Think) Q#4. Surely, it
could be argued, that the internet exposes its users to a more distracting
environment than what is experienced in a classroom setting. Is this a problem
you have witnessed first-hand with your students? Does this argument at all
hinder the appeal of online learning and its overall efficiency?
Curt Responds: Sure. There are times that I have to ask my students to
turn off their screen or power down their devices. However, one might also
think about how to enlist their services with the technology that they bring
into the classroom. For instance, you might assign someone the role of “Google
Jockey.” The person in that position might find and display Web resources and
tools as you mention them in a lecture or as a small group is presenting their
project or ideas. In effect, instead of banning various technology that
learners bring with them, you are endorsing it. With such a policy, the learning
resources of the course dramatically expand.
Another Internet problem is being distracted by
inappropriate content. There are trillions of pages of content on the Web. If
just one percent could be used in education, there would be more content than
anyone could ever hope to use. What each instructor and every department should
be doing is finding and agreeing upon 20 or 30 of the highest quality Web tools
and resources (e.g., The Encyclopedia of Life, the Khan Academy, The British
Library “Turning the Pages” Website, TED Ed, LinkTV, Big Think, The New York
Public Library, Sophia, MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Educational Resources Commons,
Impossible2Possible, Polar Husky, Earthducation, iCivics, MedTube, Livemocha,
BBC Learning English, etc.). Once selected, they should design innovative and
pedagogically engaging curriculum activities around these resources and
programs.
My research team and I have been finding and rating
hundreds informal and extreme learning Websites during the past couple of
years. We are looking at the learning potential, scalability, novelty of the
technology used, content richness, functionality of the technology, uniqueness
of the learning environment, extent of technology integration, and potential
for life changing experiences. If successful, we think we can alter and perhaps
elevate the discussion about online learning quality.
David (Big Think) Q#5. What are
critics' primary concerns about the integration of technology and education? In
your opinion, are these concerns valid?
Curt Responds: There are many issues that have been repeatedly raised
for decades. Among them is the cost. Once you purchase laptops, iPhones, or Smartboards
for a particular learning purpose or need, at some point, they will need to be
upgraded or replaced. This is an expensive undertaking, especially in these
tough monetary times. However, if technology can help to blend the learning
environment, thereby reducing the time for face-to-face instruction, it can offer
significant monetary benefits.
Second, is the concern about technology replacing
teachers or the entire school or university. Some charter and innovative school
programs, for instance, are experimenting with different types of blended
learning. With blended learning, students might learn online as well as in
physical buildings wherein lab assistants handle student questions and concerns
instead of higher priced teachers. Naturally, there are debates about the
quality of such instruction and the role of traditional teachers. Despite the
debates and concerns, I expect that this trend will accelerate in the coming
years. The role of the teacher will dramatically shift as basic skills are
handled with computer technology. Teachers will play a more vital role in higher
order tasks. For instance, such instructors will orchestrate online collaboration
activities with students and classrooms around the world. I predict that
increasingly, teachers will be concierges, tour guides, and expedition leaders
who find content and make it available for learners to explore, instead of
force feeding them with precanned lectures and prepackaged content.
A third concern related to technology in education is the
continued digital divide. Many students lack technology access at home and
hence are often behind their peers in both technology-related confidence and
skills. As a partial solution, stimulus monies in many communities (including
my own) were used to get an iPad or laptop for all children enrolled in lower
SES schools. But such initiatives are only going to have a modest impact
without proper teacher training.
A fourth concern relates to the types of technology tools
that should be integrated. The arguments made between using technology for
basic and higher-order thinking skills began decades ago with Skinner machines,
were extended in the 1980s with the emergence of hypermedia and multimedia, and
persist today with in the world of the Web 2.0 and beyond. Fortunately, the
tools for collaboration, interaction, engagement, and authentic learning have proliferated
in recent years. Still, many educators and politicians view learning technology
strictly from what it can do to help boost standardized test scores.
David (Big Think) Q#6. Where can
readers go to learn more about you and your study?
Curt Responds: They can explore our extreme learning research project.
Once there, they can read our recent conference papers, explore extreme
learning Web resources, tools, and projects, and scan through the interests and biographies of those involved in the project, including my own.
They can also read some of the life changing stories that have been shared to
date.
Labels: Big Think, e-learning, extreme learning, Informal Learning, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), motivation and retention, research, TEC-VARIETY, the Matrix, Wisconsin Distance Teaching and Learning Conference |
|
|
|
|
|
|
