Welcome to HigherEd 2.0 at LTU!

Welcome! This workshop is about the HigherEd 2.0 project, and it focuses on using web 2.0 tools and strategies in higher education. The goal of the workshop is to inspire you: (i) to learn from each other about web 2.0 tools, and (ii) to employ these technologies in your education setting.

You can participate in this workshop in several ways.

• First, you can use this back channel as a way to discuss the workshop content, and, frankly, anything else that comes up. The discussion will be rich and meaningful only if you participate. Don't be shy! Comment on some of the existing threads I've set up, or start your own thread.
  
• Second, you can download and work with the workshop notes. Perhaps you would like to annotate the PDFs in Acrobat? Maybe you could use your tablet PC and Windows Journal to write on them? What if you made some comments and added some of your own ideas, then re-posted them to share with the group? You might also consider downloading the demo version of Quick Screen Recorder so you can create tablet-based videos at lunch.
  
• Third, you can discuss your own experiences during the collaborative parts of the workshop, share your insights, and even share your creations. This is all about collaboration and sharing of ideas.

Many thanks for your participation!

Integration of visual and audio components

The course that I teach at Purdue (ME 274: Basic Mechanics II) is one that requires the students to develop in both their mathematical and visualization abilities. 

• The math that was learned during the first three semesters is applied to problems in mechanics (physics) to learn how forces affect motion of bodies. This math is not at a particularly high level; however, they must be able to trust their math skills as the results of their analysis are not always obvious and evaluation of these results goes beyond the "intuition" that students have at this stage of their career.
• Visualization is important in setting up the problem as well as in the evaluation of their analysis. When several bodies are interconnected to form "mechanisms" the interactions among the bodies and their relative motion is hard to see. 

Included in the course blog for ME 274 are learning modules for many problems from the course textbook. These learning modules bring together videos from physical situations, "solution videos" (real-time audio and video of  handwritten problem solutions), animations of the motion of the system and text discussing the interrelation among these components. A good example of this is the Merry-Go-Round problem that Ed has introduced in today's work shop. You can see this learning module at:  https://engineering.purdue.edu/ME274/Videos/merry_go_round/

You can also see a number of other learning modules on the left side of the ME 274 course blog http://me274.blogspot.com/ under the "SOLN VIDEOS" links.

These learning modules are able to bring together the mathematics of analysis and the visualization of the motion of the physical system being studied. We have found them to be very effective tools for independent study by the students and for in-lecture teaching tools.

Structured learning activites using web 2.0 tools

What we have seen is that each piece of the web 2.0 puzzle can act discretely, as an individual entity which can add value to a particular learning exercise. But the real power of these tools is exposed when we coalesce them into structured learning activities. One clear path is to scaffold the student experience by introducing topics with lots of multimedia support and gradually build up student skills and confidence until they are ready to tackle new problems by themselves. For instance, we can provide a lecture which presents derivations of equations and some sample applications of a concept. Then we can provide a simulation/animation which shows the concept in action. Then we can illustrate the application of that concept on a simple problem via a video solution, then on a more complicated problem. Finally, a student will be ready to enter into independent problem solving, starting with simpler problems and gradually progressing to more complex problems.

That's alot of work for the instructor...how do we develop exercises like this based upon SGC? I think the mashup comes sort of close to this, but only if we can get students to create their own materials which they add to existing materials. What do you think? How would you structure learning activities (and evaluate them) in your discipline based upon web 2.0 tools and strategies?

(Sigh...) This is human subjects research...

Evaluation of learning outcomes. Ouch. This is the holy grail of our research effort, and per the latest thinking in educational evaluation we are using a mixed methods approach. This is probably the best we can do, but it's complicated by a number of very important considerations:

• a control group is very difficult to establish
• what are the ethics of denying treatment to the control group?
• confounding variables related to the student body's academic profile
• evaluation may depend on very granular data about individual student usage of the interventions and achievement on exams and quizzes

We have engaged in interviews, focus groups, surveys, usage/download data, etc., so we have a good story to tell. But what might be some other measureables that can give us insight about how important the web 2.0 tools and techniques are to overall student achievement and learning?

Student Generated Content: How, and how much?

John Sener has alot of really interesting ideas about integrating student-generated content (SGC) into educational environments, including ideas about peer review. Some disciplines have a long and vibrant history of incorporating student-generated content and peer review into their curriculum (think: architectural studio and design reviews), while many others do not. In engineering, there is not a long traditional of student-generated content except in the context team-based projects, which are typically longer-term endeavors completed over the course of a semester or longer. Even then, those team-based projects do not always result in educational products for consumption by other students.

So we have experienced the challenges of not only figuring out how best to implement SGC in engineering courses, but also how to overcome the institutional culture of engineering programs--which typically emphasize individual problem solving and "push" strategies from instructor to student. How can we combat the long-standing institutional cultures which work against SGC, while simultaneously developing proven, effective SGC strategies for teaching and learning.

Video technology: multimedia in the classroom

One of the really important features of multimedia course materials is their exactness. While engineering as a whole is a messy, imprecise business, replete with uncertainty and incomplete information, there are pieces of engineering analysis that are actually quite structured and well defined. We have been developing multimedia "video solutions" which serve several purposes:

• as a problem solving template for students
• as authoritative examples (with all the mathematics explicitly included)
• to provide multiple perspectives (i.e., multiple solution paths)
• to leverage the dual-channel nature of human cognition (aural and visual) and convey more information than we could in a written solution

Here's an example (Google video):

The idea here is that the process is laid out in a logical way, with every step shown to completion. Our data show that students love these videos, and use them actively.

How can you use multimedia videos like this one in your discipline?

Blogging as social democracy in class

Let's start with a question:  what's the appropriate role of blogging in support of higher education learning objectives?  Blogging's nearly-syncronous interactions and public presentation make it ideal for vibrant conversations among the student body--this is as true in engineering as it is in any other discipline.  But what are the alternatives...when is blogging preferable to, say, extensive in-class discussion?  When do small group meetings make sense, and when does it make more sense to try a wiki instead of a blog?

This is a key element:  what is the value of a social democracy in your class, when all voices are equally able to participate?  Is socially-constructed knowledge inherently move valuable than information pushed from a single instructor, or from knowledge constructed by a single individual in class?

In your educational context, what is the most promising/successful use of blogging?  To foster community?  To share and vet ideas?  To piece together threaded discussions whose narratives take longer to unfold than the duration of a single class meeting?