Dr. Dobb's Update - 06/18/09 - No More Teachers, No More Books (Okay, The Teachers Can Stay)

Harvey points out this article, "Ed Tech at its most fundamental."

http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=No-More-Teachers-No-More-Books-Okay-The-Teachers-Can-Stay-.html&Itemid=29

Interesting article on using Wordpress instead of a a traditional CMS

Interesting article on using Wordpress instead of a a traditional CMS
(in this case, Blackboard).

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i38/38blogcms.htm

From Rich Fagen

Classroom computers boost face-to-face learning

Harvey brings this interesting article to our attention:

Classroom computers boost face-to-face learning

Computers have been used for years to facilitate learning at a
distance. A new European research programme shows that computers can
also enhance collaborative, face-to-face learning and problem solving.
...
The primary software tool that the LEAD team created is called CoFFEE,
for Collaborative Face to Face Educational Environment.

http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&BrowsingType=Features&ID=90596

Educational Technology Survey Results

Caltech IMSS recently conducted a survey of Caltech Faculty, Undergraduate and Graduate Students with the purpose of gauging satisfaction with the current level of educational technology services. The survey will also provide guidance to IMSS and the EdTech Task Force as to which potential new services would have the greatest impact. The results of the survey can be downloaded here:
http://www.imss.caltech.edu/cms.php?op=wiki&wiki_op=get_file&id=478&name=2009CampusTechSurvey.pdf
(restricted to Caltech network.) Many thanks to Rich Fagen and his team for conducting the survey and summarizing the results!

New York Program Pushes Ed Tech

Harvey Newman has posted this interesting link:

New York Program Pushes Ed Tech
Administrators, school officials, parents and students collaborate to
revamp dated education policies that disregard digital content.

http://www.convergemag.com/story.php?catid=231&storyid=108581

___
Harvey also found an interesting article on
"Asynchronous Participatory Exams: Internet Innovation for Engaging Students"
http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MIC.2009.27

class lecture capture at other schools

Here's an interesting email thread passed on to me by Rich. Since I
haven't obtained permission from the authors to post it on our public
blog, I have snipped out their names. Apologies if I've done something
wrong; I'll make it right if you let me know!

Alan

______

From: [snip]
Date: January 23, 2009 12:27:26 PM PST
To: [snip]
Subject: Re: [EdTechAlliance] lecture recording?

Within the [snip] we record and stream
about 60 courses per semester for internal use by our on-campus
students (our Extension School runs their own distance learning
operation). We've done this for several years now and the students
rate it an extremely useful and helpful service. We are though
investigating video analytics software so we have a better idea of
exactly how the students use the video - do they fast forward, look
for certain parts, stop the stream after a minute, etc.

The faculty who ask for lecture capture seem convinced that it helps
students who may benefit from being exposed to lectures or
demonstrations more than once; I would add though that some faculty
choose not to use the service because they worry students will not
come to class if they know the video will be online later. We try to
alleviate these fears by allowing faculty to determine when a
particular video is released (i.e. a day/week after the class, only
during Reading Period, etc.).

-- [snip]

On Jan 23, 2009, at 3:15 PM, [snip] wrote:

>
> On Jan 23, 2009, at 10:00 AM, [snip] wrote:
>
>> Quick question for the group. Are any of your campuses currently
>> doing much with lecture capture? At [snip], we have a few
>> classes being recorded, but I'm curious if any of you know of
>> broader initiatives at your schools. I'm specifically curious about
>> what's motivating these initiatives, and how faculty/administration
>> see these recordings being used.
>
> The Medical School has been doing lecture capture for years, enabling
> freer scheduling of rounds, labs, etc. These days, there's an
> initiative out of the President and Provost's Office to look at the
> possibilities of an enterprise infrastructure for class capture, as
> well as a parallel effort looking at what uses would be served by such
> an effort... essentially parallel How and Why efforts. We're
> collaborating with the folks at [snip] to evaluate the
> use of a scripting environment leveraging Podcast Producer workflow
> for this use.
>
> [snip]
>

____________

[snip]

At the [snip] we've done hundreds of videos of instructors
doing worked examples in Calculus, Signals & Systems, Differential
Equations, Thermal & Fluids Engineering, and CAD-CAM. These are done
In our production studios using standard blue screen and some simple
techniques we invented to blow up the equations & solutions so they
would be legible on student computer screens. The students,
especially in Signals & Systems, value these online learning and study
aids more than I can express in this brief email.

Yours,
[snip]

Observations on the Newest Generation of MIT Students

All - our recent discussion reminded me of an article written by
Marilee Jones former dean of admissions at MIT. It's well worth
reading since it provides some insight into how students learn today.
Regrettably Jones was later forced to leave MIT for faking her CV but
the piece is still I think relevant.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~ajw/EdTech/Fnl141-1.pdf

Dan

Complaints about Moodle

The Caltech ARC (Academics and Research Committee) Chair sent me this recent email thread with complaints from Caltech students about Moodle (all names deleted). Please note that these are just the complaints; she didn't solicit any praise...

Alan

.....

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 6:42 AM

> Moodle seems to be becoming popular among the administrators...


Here at LSE they use Moodle.

I can't recommend strongly enough that the students of Caltech fight as hard
as possible to keep that piece of shit away.

If you thought the original Caltech REGIS was buggy, gratuitous and
annoying, moodle is so much worse.

Really, it is in every way inferior to a simple course website with links to
PDFs. If they really want some centralized way to password-protect homework
assignments, tell them to use mediawiki or some other reasonably sane piece
of software.

[snip]

________________________

As someone who has TA'd a class using Moodle, I second that it is a
horrid trainwreck of a program. A regular wiki with some access
controls on pages (and some that are student-editable, too!) should
suffice. We don't need our grades delivered to us through a
half-usable brushed-metal Web 1.1 interface.

[snip]
________________________


I'm the ARC (Academics and Research Committee) Chair, the top student government officer and main student representative to faculty on academics and research. I meet with the Vice Provost and academic faculty board chairs on a regular basis.

Anyhow, Craig tells me that you guys hate Moodle. This is my first term using Moodle, so I don't really know what really sucks about it yet. Could you guys could enumerate why it sucks, what it's missing, how it can be improved, what's a better system to use and why, etc.? The faculty, especially those on the Academic Policies Committee, seem to think it's really good idea and are trying to gradually push and expand Moodle to a bunch of classes right now, but if it's as god-awful as you say it is, then I will do my best to fight it.

We have a meeting this Friday, so if you could send me the comments/complaints before then, that would be awesome. Feel free to let others in on this as well.


[snip]
ARC Chair

________________________



> Could you guys could enumerate why it sucks, what it's missing...

I can't think of any benefit it has to anyone. The vast majority of users here solely use it to download course materials such as problem sets. For this purpose, it is wholly inferior to a simple course website with the assignments on it. Moodle is cluttered with a billion "features," that, to the best of my knowledge, essentially never get used and simply make it more annoying to deal with. It has forums and newsfeeds, etc., making it more like facebook and harder to use the few features that I need since it has displaced course websites.

It has technical problems. It uses client-side scripting for many things and is gratuitously complicated. For example, when a course document such as an assignment or set of slides is posted, it does not provide a link to get the file, but instead tries to embed it in a webpage for some unknown reason. Neither the school computers nor most students' home computers could display this, so for a week until the Moodle team found a fix to the problem, it was essentially impossible to see or download any course documents online.

It also crashes. Not so infrequently, and when the rest of the LSE web site is still up. When I can't get lecture notes before class due to a bloated piece of web software that is completely unnecessary, it is really frustrating.

> Could you guys could enumerate ..., how it can be improved, what's a better system to use and why, etc.?

I think the appropriate question is not "how can moodle be improved?" but "why do you want to put something buggy between students and the course materials they need in the first place?"

If your goal is to provide some central, easy-to-edit location for course web pages, why not use a more transparent solution such as MediaWiki (which, like Moodle, is free/OSS). It's incredibly easy to navigate as a user (student), incredibly easy for the editors (profs/TAs), easy to set up different levels of password protection if you want some student editable pages or whatever, and it is thoroughly tested (meaning essentially no bugs), doesn't cram useless features into every crevice, and can have password free sites for when you don't want to make students log in to get their assignments.

Summary:
A normal course website: I hit the bookmark for my course, and then click the assignment I want and I get a PDF file. Two clicks. Always works.

Moodle: I go to moodle. If I'm lucky, Moodle is working, and I type my username, type my password, login, navigate through a bunch of features I don't need, click on my course, scroll past the newsfeed and the list of all students at the school who have logged in in the past few minutes, etc, then click the assignment. Then, I get the assignment embedded in a web page, IF the computer has a working plugin (which some of the school computers don't). Then, I can save the file from within the plugin. Why exactly is this better?

Caveat:
I've only dealt with moodle as configured at the LSE. Perhaps it can be set up in a more reasonable fashion elsewhere.

For some reason, the administration here likes Moodle too, and is still encouraging more professors to migrate to it. I haven't found a student here who has positive things to say about it, and while I have not personally TA'd a course using it, some of my friends have and seem to universally find it frustrating.

Could you please tell me why it sounds so appealing to administrators?

--[ snip] Caltech alumnus

Lecture Capture & Publishing and Related DMS Activities

Notes re: Lecture Capture & Publishing and Related DMS Activities from Digital Media Services | IMSS :
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~ajw/EdTech/ETTF_NotesReLecCap_Jan09_2.pdf

Wayne Waller

Just out 2009 Horizon Report

Below is a link to the latest edition of the Horizon Report, the annual list
of technology trends to watch in education based on news reports, research
studies, and interviews with experts.

<http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/>

Wayne