Archive | Intermediate

Despite increasing demands to use technology, teachers often feel frustrated in knowing how to use technology productivity tools efficiently. At a private high school, teachers are required to use productivity tools available through the school website to do their work. However, through informal feedback, teachers expressed frustration that information was difficult to find and was not current or relevant. Therefore, the purpose of this usability study was to evaluate the content and organization of a newly designed website. Teachers who reported little to no use of the website were asked to participate. Six teachers were observed and audio recorded using a talk-aloud technique while using the website to complete eight tasks commonly asked of teachers. Data collected included field notes, screencastings, and surveys. Analysis included qualitative coding of field notes and audio transcripts and descriptive statistical analysis of the survey data. Findings indicated teachers preferred having information simplified, in one location, with fewer drop down menus. Additionally, there were a variety of preferences in terms of how information was presented, with some preferring video, some text and images, and some downloadable PDF files. These findings have implications for how the website is designed to best meet differing teacher needs.

• Timothy Freitas, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

Google Apps for Education offers many new technologies that are not only changing the way we teach but also the way we collaborate and plan. Google Calendar in particular can allow for cloud based storage of lesson plans that can be organized and set to be readily available on any given day, year after year. Yet even the small amount of time and practice it may take to learn how to use a new technology can create a large chasm between digital natives, comfortable with exploring a new product, and those not ready to leave the comforts of familiarity and migrate to the digital world. This usability study aimed to evaluate the usability and intuitiveness of a module prototype, designed to teach educators how to use Google Calendar as a cloud-based lesson planner, in order to determine how to make the module more approachable to new learners. Participants were asked to “think aloud” as they performed a series of tasks and explored the module in an effort to gain an understanding of how users might perceive the learning module and any potential areas that might inhibit learning. Data were gathered on participants as they interacted with the module, on any frustrations, confusions, and overall impressions. The results of the study highlighted areas of concern, frustration or confusion which helped further shape the design of the module and provide possible implications or generalizations that may be made when designing future training modules.

• Dana Ishii, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Haleiwa, Hawaii, USA

The new phenomenon of MOOCS is promising to revitalize the educational landscape, shake up the key players, and reform higher education. MOOCS are a recent development in distance education and are known as Massive Open Online Course( s). They originated in 2008 with the Open Education Resources Movement ( OER) ( Open Educational Resource, Hewlett Foundation) and are courses offering lectures by world class professors with videos, quizzes, learning material, etc., now being offered by elite institutions like Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, etc., which provide free access and offer certificates of completion, but typically do not offer academic credit, or charge tuition fees. MOOCs signal a trend in the application of “connectivism” which emphasizes learning taking place in a social and cultural context with the infusion of work /life experience
(Downes, 2011).

This interactive presentation will discuss the challenges and opportunities that MOOCs present to “for-profit education.” Is self-paced learning truly successful? What is the success rate for students registered in such courses? Do MOOCs signal a trend in higher education away from degree programs requiring students to pay tuition, to the accessibility of free resources that provide proof of completion and mastery of content as being the requisite outcome necessary in today’s workplace? Will the greater transparency provided by the web, lead to greater accountability of individuals, organizations, and business practices? If the human race is to survive and thrive, accountability needs to infuse every human endeavor–from that of the individual, to nations, and to the world, at large.

References
Richard Pérez-Peña (July 17, 2012). “Top universities test the online appeal of free”. The New York Times. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
Horacio Reyes. “History of a revolution in e-learning”. Revista Educacion Virtual. Retrieved Aug 10, 2012.
Downes, Stephen “‘Connectivism’ and Connective Knowledge”, Huffpost Education, January 5, 2011, accessed July 27, 2011
^ Kop, Rita “The challenges to connectivist learning on open online networks: Learning experiences during a massive open online course”, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 12, Number 3, 2011, accessed November 22nd, 2011
“Open Educational Resources”. The William and Flora Hewlitt Foundation. Retrieved 27 March 2013.

The “Flipped Classroom” model has grown in popularity over the last few years. At RIT in the 3D Digital Design department we teach a combination of design critical thinking and technical skills. In the past we struggled to find a balance between teaching the tools and also design and aesthetic concepts. We found a great amount of extra time was dedicated toward teaching the tools to the students. Initially many of the video promoted in the Flipped classroom are long, lecture length. In our department we have found that, the creation of modular videotaped technical lectures for offline viewing significantly leverages our and the students time by redirecting the delivery of quantified, finite technical information to self-paced, individual study. This model allows for more classroom time to address issues that require increased student interaction and participation. Additional benefits and techniques will be discussed for optimizing video production as well as combining social media elements to away from classroom discussion.

Retaining students has always been a major problem in our university because of their family problems, works, weather, illness or other conflicts. These problems pose more challenges for mathematics instructors because of students’ poor attendance, high dropout, and insufficient preparation of high school graduates, and lack of motivation. In order to address such issues, we are currently developing an online model of teaching undergraduate mathematics that is purely learner-centered and it has synchronous and asynchronous communication and assessments systems. Our goal is to investigate how new technologies may significantly enhance dynamic learning environment, engage and motivate students, and help them in improving their learning and retention. These courses are delivered using Blackboard Learn as a course management system, supplemented with math oriented websites such as MyMahLab and webassign. In this presentation, we also look at how Wimba classroom, e-Board, application sharing with virtual graphic calculator, virtual tutorials, online discussion board, remotely proctored exams, recorded lessons and you tubes, MyMathLab, and webassign have improved student outcomes in our fully web-based math courses.

This work focused on computer-mediated tutoring and its interaction with perceived cultural barriers. I was interested in how cultural background, cognitive load, and communicative involvement would interplay with a tutor’s instruction and a listener’s ease of comprehension. The results to this 5-experiment quantitative and qualitative study were quite complex, showing that users’ cognitive load threshold interacted with whether they perceived their conversational partner to be from the same or a different culture.

That is, those in the most difficult condition (challenging descriptions and perceived cross-cultural communication) actually put forth the least amount of effort of any group. Unsurprisingly, the difficulty manipulation in same-culture teacher/learner pairs caused the pairs to work harder. However, this same difficulty manipulation caused contrasting-cultural pairs to put forth less effort than those in the easy-manipulation group.

That is, when conversational participants were not from the same perceived cultural group, they did not try as hard in a difficult task. However, when they were in the same perceived cultural group, they did try harder in the harder task. Importantly, the cultural group manipulation was a deception, and all participants were from the same culture.

The findings of the study reiterate the well-established finding that Bruner’s scaffolding is indeed an important aspect of learning—when teachers and learners reach a load threshold, they will no longer be willing to try. The study also revealed interesting features of three theories of communication, which, at the time were thought to be at odds with each other. The dissertation showed that depending on the parameters of communicative setting, one or the other theory might be correct. The key parameters were cognitive load and perceived in-group/out-group status as manipulated by cultural preconceptions of the interlocutor (conversational partner).

One of these theories addressed in my work was Herbert Clark’s theory of common ground, whereby speakers and listeners try painstakingly to take each other’s perspectives into account. In this research, I demonstrate that such factors can amplify content difficulty, and need to be taken into consideration when determining how to scaffold tasks for learners.