Caltech Educational Technology Task Force

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

2009-06-18T20:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-09T12:31:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-30T17:03:00.001-07:00

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

2009-03-12T21:09:00.001-07:00

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

2009-01-26T14:36:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-26T14:28:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-26T14:21:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T19:32:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-23T19:25:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-13T14:16:00.000-08:00

New York Times
January 13, 2009

At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard

By SARA RIMER

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — For as long as anyone can remember, introductory physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was taught in a vast windowless amphitheater known by its number, 26-100.

Squeezed into the rows of hard, folding wooden seats, as many as 300 freshmen anxiously took notes while the professor covered multiple blackboards with mathematical formulas and explained the principles of Newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism.

But now, with physicists across the country pushing for universities to do a better job of teaching science, M.I.T. has made a striking change.

The physics department has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning. Last fall, after years of experimentation and debate and resistance from students, who initially petitioned against it, the department made the change permanent. Already, attendance is up and the failure rate has dropped by more than 50 percent.

M.I.T. is not alone. Other universities are changing their ways, among them Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North Carolina State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Harvard. In these institutions, physicists have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.

The traditional 50-minute lecture was geared more toward physics majors, said Eric Mazur, a physicist at Harvard who is a pioneer of the new approach, and whose work has influenced the change at M.I.T.

“The people who wanted to understand,” Professor Mazur said, “had the discipline, the urge, to sit down afterwards and say, ‘Let me figure this out.’ ” But for the majority, he said, a different approach is needed.

“Just as you can’t become a marathon runner by watching marathons on TV,” Professor Mazur said, “likewise for science, you have to go through the thought processes of doing science and not just watch your instructor do it.”

Another proponent of the new approach is Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who directs a science education initiative at the University of British Columbia.

In an article in the education journal Change last year, Dr. Wieman noted that the human brain “can hold a maximum of about seven different items in its short-term working memory and can process no more than about four ideas at once.”

“But the number of new items that students are expected to remember and process in the typical hourlong science lecture is vastly greater,” he continued. “So we should not be surprised to find that students are able to take away only a small fraction of what is presented to them in that format.”

At M.I.T., two introductory courses are still required — classical mechanics and electromagnetism — but today they meet in high-tech classrooms, where about 80 students sit at 13 round tables equipped with networked computers.

Instead of blackboards, the walls are covered with white boards and huge display screens. Circulating with a team of teaching assistants, the professor makes brief presentations of general principles and engages the students as they work out related concepts in small groups.

Teachers and students conduct experiments together. The room buzzes. Conferring with tablemates, calling out questions and jumping up to write formulas on the white boards are all encouraged.

“There was a long tradition that what it meant to teach was to give a really well-prepared lecture,” said Peter Dourmashkin, a senior lecturer in physics at M.I.T. and a strong proponent of the new method. “It was the students’ job to figure it out.”

The problem, say Dr. Dourmashkin and others in the department, is that a lot of students had trouble doing that. The failure rate for those lecture courses, even those taught by the most mesmerizing teachers, was typically 10 percent to 12 percent. Now, it has dropped to 4 percent.

Another big concern was attendance.

John Belcher, a space physicist who arrived at M.I.T. 38 years ago and was instrumental in introducing the new teaching method nine years ago, was considered an outstanding lecturer. He won M.I.T.’s top teaching award and rave reviews from students. And yet, as each semester progressed, attendance in his introductory physics courses fell to 50 percent, as it did, he said, for nearly all of his colleagues.

“M.I.T. students are very busy,” Professor Belcher said. “They see the lecture as dispensable, that is that they can get it out of a book more efficiently than getting up, getting dressed and going to lecture.”

After three years, Professor Belcher had had enough. “I had poor attendance, and was failing 10 to 15 percent, and grading the tests and shaking my head in despair about how little was getting across,” he said. “And this is a subject — electromagnetism — that I love.”

The new approach at M.I.T. is known by its acronym, TEAL, for Technology Enhanced Active Learning.

A $10 million donation from the late Alex d’Arbeloff, an M.I.T. alumnus, co-founder of the high-tech company Teradyne, and former M.I.T. corporation chairman, made the switch to TEAL possible. The two state-of-the-art TEAL classrooms alone cost $2.5 million, Professor Belcher said.

Unlike in the lectures, attendance counts toward the final grade, and attendance is up to about 80 percent.

Classes meet three times a week, for a total of five hours. Homework is due three times a week.

Monique Squiers, a sophomore who intends to become a surgeon, liked her TEAL classes so much that she has signed on as a teaching assistant. “You can say, ‘Hey, professor, I didn’t really get what you went over at this point, could you explain it to me a little more?’ ” Ms. Squiers said. “If anything, they’re happy when someone doesn’t get it.”

Of the core science curriculum required of all freshmen, only introductory physics follows the new method, Professor Belcher said. Math, biology and chemistry are still taught through large lecture classes and small recitations.

In the physics department, debate over teaching methods continues. Younger professors tend to be more enthusiastic about TEAL than veterans who have been perfecting their lectures for decades.

One of the newer professors, Gabriella Sciolla, who arrived in 2003, was teaching a TEAL class on circuits recently. She gauged the level of understanding in the room by throwing out a series of multiple-choice questions. The students “voted” with their wireless “personal response clickers” — the clickers are essential to TEAL — which transmitted the answers to a computer monitored by the professor and her assistants.

“You know where they are,” Professor Sciolla said afterward. She can then adjust, slowing down or engaging students in guided discussions of their answers, as needed.

Lecturing in 26-100, she said, she could only look out at the sea of faces and hope the students were getting it.

“They might be looking intently at you, understanding everything,” Professor Sciolla said. “Or they might be thinking, ‘What am I going to do when I get out of this bloody class?’ ”

What to do (regarding EdTech) in the financial downturn

2008-12-11T13:57:00.001-08:00

The Caltech endowment has dropped significantly since Melany Hunt first thought about setting up an EdTech committee. Substantial increases in expenditure on classroom technology at Caltech over the coming two years is improbable. Our committee is, of course, concerned with the long term. This note, however, only addresses the coming two years.

Caltech should utilize the NewMedia Classroom. It has excellent features and support. I think it's unlikely that Caltech can purchase the same sort of equipment for another classroom in the short term.

When I brought up the idea of acquiring funds for a NewMedia Classroom for our new IST (Information Science and Technology) building with the faculty responsible for the building, the reaction was cold. This reaction was primarily because of the cost of maintainance. The discussions of our committee have also highlighted the problems and costs of mantainance. The NewMedia Classroom is, however, maintained well. So despite its limitations (small size, no restrooms, no ramp) we should use it over the coming two years, report our experiences, and analyze its technology. This will prepare us for getting appropriate classroom technology when the endowment does get back to its earlier peak.

-- Mani

A Unique Caltech Opportunity: Apprentice-Based Learning

2008-12-10T10:17:00.001-08:00

Caltech has two characteristics that allow us to offer a different kind of education to undergraduates:

Caltech has perhaps the highest ratio of PhDs (faculty members and postdoctoral fellows) to undergraduates among the top 20 universities. The ratio of faculty + postdocs + graduate students to undergraduates is over 1.5.
Caltech has among the brightest and motivated undergraduates in the country.

These characteristics allow us to offer a learning experience in which undergraduates learn by doing. They can learn by solving problems and doing reseach with a community of faculty members, postdocs, graduate students and fellow undergraduates. The Caltech culture today is already a learning-by-doing culture. Students live from problem set to problem set. We have an opportunity to make the student experience more valuable.

Though our culture is one of learning-by-doing, students complain of limited faculty interaction. Some undergraduates complain of limited interaction with everybody in the community except fellow undergraduates and TAs. We can change that. We can offer students a community-based learning experience in which undergraduates work closely with a community including faculty members, postdocs and grad students.

Let's explore the possibility of turning lectures into joint problem-solving sessions and research discussion sessions. We could provide all the material - notes, presentations, video, homework sets, research ideas - on the Web (e.g., Moodle). Students would be expected to read the material before coming to an interactive problem-solving session.

We could also set up research groups of faculty, postdocs, graduate students and undergraduates who interact synchronously in research sessions and asynchronously through chat rooms and blogs.

We should start exploring apprentice-based learning by first running an experiment with moderate sized (say 20 - 30) students. The experiment is to convert one or two courses into problem-solving or research sessions which may only meet formally for an hour a week and in which there are continuing asynchronous interactions through chat rooms. Let's try this out in 2009 and then report the results of the experiments to the faculty.

We could use Moodle as is, or ideally use the New Media Classroom to develop courses for the experiment.

-- Mani Chandy

Educational Technology and the Context of Learning

2008-12-09T09:48:00.001-08:00

Below is a link to the opening keynote address at this year's NMC Summer Conference at Princeton University. It presents a very relevant and, I think, very important discussion of educational technology and the larger context of learning. I think you will find it valuable.

When you go to the site below you will find multiple viewing options listed. If possible, I suggest you view it using the first option, i.e., the Sonic Foundry Mediasite link. Once the presentation begins, you will need to fast-forward a bit using the play-head controller <the small white dot beneath the video window> to approximately 24:45.

http://www.nmc.org/vodcast/technology-and-global-commons

Wayne

Comments for 11-25-2008 meeting

2008-11-25T04:45:00.001-08:00

I think that trying to gather information from the whole Caltech community by asking the Vice Provost to send an e-mail to everyone is appropriate. However, do faculty read their Directory e-mails? Is there a better way to encourage faculty response? For graduate students, I can send a reminder about the e-mail sent by the Vice Provost via our weekly graduate student announcements. Also, my understanding is that Melany Hunt is significantly revising the TQFRs. Perhaps we could ask that a specific question be added regarding how technology was helpful in the class and how it could have been used more effectively.

Moodle is a constantly evolving program that has an ever-growing functionality. Is it feasible to have IMSS identify the top ~10 functionalities that Caltech faculty would like to see, then make/design solutions before a campus wide launch? Can IMSS commit to supporting (within reason) new functionalities as faculty begin to use Moodle and test its limits?

We should certainly make use of the work that other schools/groups have done in setting up Moodle, such as at UCLA's Office of Instructional Development (http://www.oid.ucla.edu/units/tec/tectutorials/tecmoodle). Specifically, I can help with contacts at UCLA and perhaps arrange for some grad students working on Moodle at UCLA to give tutorials to our IMSS staff, if that would be useful.

My understanding is that one convenient feature of Moodle is that, like access.caltech, it allows for a single log-on for a wide variety of features, including all classes that a student is enrolled in. Thus, though it may not be efficient for Moodle to be used for quick survey in a single class, if its being used (to varying extents) in most classes and students can use a single log-in, then it may be worthwhile. Moreover, this could make it particularly useful for students to coordinate their schedule between their several classes. In addition to helping with timelines for problem sets and exams, this could be useful from the TA/faculty point of view, since it might facilitate better coordination of assignment timelines, especially among core courses.

As a result of a recommendation by the Academic Policies Committee last year, Moodle is already being implemented to a limited extent this year. Courses that were using it (at least in part for students to report the number of hours spent on homework) as of early this term include:

Bi/Ch 110

Ch 021A

Ch 001A

Ch 112

MA 002A

MA 112A

MA/CS 006A

ME 019A

Ph 106A

Ph 125A

Ph 129A

Ph 136A

The chair of the undergrad Academics and Research Committee (ARC) indicated that video taped lectures would be quite useful. In fact, she prefers having an online video so can go at own pace, as well as several of the reasons listed under point 7 of the previous meetings minutes.

One of the topics addressed by The Horizon Report (Educause) that Rich Fagen posted is Collaboration Webs. Virtual meetings and conferences are useful on the research side, and could play a limited role in classes. Perhaps more relevant, are online documents that can be jointly edited. Caltech is small, and so students can often meet face-to-face when working on projects. However, timing is often an obstacle, so the online group editing features provided by google documents (http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour1.html) may be useful for some classes, especially when preparing joint powerpoints. This also saves us from having to e-mail large files back-and-forth.

A major concern about implementing any new educational strategy at Caltech is coordination across the entire Institute, including the Core Curriculum, TAs, and faculty. The appointment of two Vice Provosts, including one for primarily academic/educational concerns, represents a major first step. However, there still remains a deficiency of staff dedicated to pedagogy and educational issues, specifically. I think that Caltech is nearly unique in this deficiency. In addition to whatever other recommendations we eventually make, I think that we should seriously consider suggesting a 'Caltech learning center'. Although our temporary task force is a good starting point, a learning center which constantly monitored and assessed the quality of teaching and learning in Caltech's educational program and provided assessment and recommendations for improvement, would represent a major improvement. Such a center could also serve as a hub for future discussions of teaching technique and new faculty/TA support as well as discussions of how to continue to implement technology to enhance our educational programs.

Note that the concept of a 'Caltech learning center' was discussed with the WASC accreditation committee during their visit last week. Moreover, other committees are likely to address the issue over the course of the year, and a joint resolution in support of a learning center by, at least, the Educational Technology Task Force, the Academic Policies Committee, the Graduate Study Committee, the Graduate Student Council's Academics Committee, and the undergraduate Academics and Research Committee would likely help this important concept to gain traction.

Sincerely,

Jai Shanata

G4, Chemistry

GSC Academics Committee, Chair

Educause survey on student use of Information Technology

2008-11-20T15:00:00.001-08:00

Educause (the consortium of Higher Education IT professionals)
recently released a comprehensive survey regarding student use of
Information Technology.
It provides some information that might help frame our discussions.
The results are at:
http://www.educause.edu/ers0808/135156

Rich Fagen
Chief Information Officer
California Institute of Technology

Some more links relevant to EdTech

2008-11-10T16:40:00.001-08:00

Some more links relevant to EdTech:

- Caltech IMSS did an IT survey in '07. the results are posted here:
the UGrad and Grad responses to the IT survey are located here:
http://www.imss.caltech.edu/cms.php?op=wiki&wiki_op=view&id=478
IMSS has already addressed the 3 top concerns: wireless, webmail, and
access.caltech.

- There will be a "Webinar" on
"How to integrate digital video into everyday curriculum" on November
12, 2008, 1pm PT.
More info: http://www.techlearning.com/makingmoviesinfo/

- Harvey points us to a couple more course-management systems:
Sakai: http://sakaiproject.org/portal
Sloodle: Moodle in Second Life: http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/

Welcome to the Caltech Educational Technology Task Force blog!

2008-10-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Caltech Educational Technology Task Force blog!

Our charge: To suggest technologies that would be benefit the undergraduate and graduate educational programs and be appropriate for the Caltech culture, both inside and outside the classroom.

Time frame: two quarters, so that by spring term we can be making recommendation to the administration. Quarterly updates to CUE. The CAC and CUE will be the committees that think about these issues long term.

Our work will primarily involve information-gathering, so I ask that you please spend some time thinking and researching various educational technologies. The list of things that I know of is not large:

. Things that live on computers, like:

- moodle-like things:
http://moodle.org/
https://courses.caltech.edu/login/index.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle
http://www.blackboard.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_learning_environment

- Blogs, wikis, web forums, etc. For courses and/or for everyone and
everything at Caltech ...

($ mainly for FTEs)

. Hardware like:

- clickers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classroom_Performance_Systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response

- smartboards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_whiteboard
http://smarttech.com/

- video ...

(ranging from $ to $$$)

We welcome your input.

Questions? Alan Weinstein, ajw@caltech.edu

Caltech Educational Technology Task Force

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

Interesting article on using Wordpress instead of a a traditional CMS

Classroom computers boost face-to-face learning

Educational Technology Survey Results

New York Program Pushes Ed Tech

class lecture capture at other schools

Observations on the Newest Generation of MIT Students

Complaints about Moodle

Lecture Capture & Publishing and Related DMS Activities

Just out 2009 Horizon Report

At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard

What to do (regarding EdTech) in the financial downturn

A Unique Caltech Opportunity: Apprentice-Based Learning

Educational Technology and the Context of Learning

More EdTech links

Comments for 11-25-2008 meeting

Educause survey on student use of Information Technology

Some more links relevant to EdTech

Welcome to the Caltech Educational Technology Task Force blog!