Oct
25
Riding the 2.0 Wave (Successfully)
October 25, 2007 |
Educause 2007 - Thursday 25 October
Presenter – Josh Baron, Director Academic Technology and eLearning , Marist College
Marist College was founded in 1929 and is based in Poughkeepsie NY. It has 5700 students with 200 full time, 500 part time lecturers. Technology is key part of the strategic plan and mission statement.
Currently most people use technology to automate teaching process eg using Powerpoint in replacing transparencies – in many respects the teaching is much the same. Automation is easy but innovation much harder. Marist started to introduce Learning Interactions Frameworks to help innovate learning with Web 2.0. The Framework covers interactions with content, subject matter experts and peers and the college used these types of interactions to discuss how web 2.0 could be used to innovate these interactions
Content – traditionally this is the text book. Web 1.0 used hyperlinks and hypermedia for students to interact with content and find their own ways through it. Web 2.0 touches on social podcasts and wikis to help students construct their own contents and make it a student centred instruction.
Marist used IdentityQuest to integrate overseas experience into an online course. They provided iPods and audio editing software so students could carry out interviews and produce social podcasts and then fed these back into the on-line course and so create their own content.
Subject Matter Experts – traditionally this meant lectures, with Web 1.0 it became video lectures only there was a loss of interaction. With Web 2.0 there is Skype, blogs and podcasts to increase access to experts and reintroduce interaction
Marist uses InterLingua with the aim to enrich language instruction. Students are linked to native Spanish speakers in Guatemala and they create informal conversations on cultural aspects
Peers – traditionally it is team projects and with Web 1.0 it extended to discussion forums extending the discussion outside of the class. Web 2.0 introduced audio conferencing both synchronous and asynchronous
The Marist example here is iNverse Distance Learning (IDL) with the objective to create distinct experiences to prepare students for work in global society. So they use lecturers on the ground (in China) overseas and place these audio conferences back into the course in the university using YackPack
Marist appraise faculty proposals for new Web 2.0 by requiring the preparation of a 3 page brief covering:
· pedagogical objectives
· strategic goals to be addresses
· learning interactions that will be enhance
· method for assessing success
· initial costs and a timeline
Accepted proposals are used for experimental and pilot deployments
They also use a Web 2.0 deployment cycle ‘walk through’ – starting with the experimental process to play with the application, evaluate this, move to pilot stage, evaluate that, and then move to production phase when technology comes in-house for support and integration. At this stage you get the question about keeping costs down which bring into play the open source strategy for Marist with their use of examples including Sakai, podcast generator, audacity and Opens Source Portfolio (OSP)
