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Changing Fate with a Screen: High School Live Cast in China

From MIT’s open courseware to the proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), I have seen a lot efforts being taken towards blending advancements in technology with the goodwill of making knowledge accessible to all. As an online learning professional, I have been following reports and research on the impact of open education, but never before have I been so stunned by the results of a report. The report, originally published in the weekly edition of Chinese Youth newspaper in Dec 12, 2018, was about a program that provides a full-day live broadcast of a prestigious high school to 248 high schools in the rural areas of China.  

Instead of listening to their own instructors, students in the rural or “far-end” high schools watch a live broadcast of instruction from a high school in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province. According to the report, the launch of project faced strong resistance from teachers in these rural schools. They protested by tearing books apart. Some teachers even took a whole week off and left students “staring” at the screen by themselves.

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DePaul’s Mission in the Classroom

In common to most, if not all, teachers, I always commit myself to designing and carrying out successful teaching. In particular, I subscribe to the notion that teaching success correlates with students learning. Accordingly, part of my job as a teacher is to identify and facilitate ways of learning that best match the kinds of learning that needs to occur in my courses. Because there is no such thing as an all-purpose approach to teaching (or one-size fits all approach), I understand the need to maintain a life-long commitment to continuous improvement upon my teaching and learning. Thus, I intentionally make every effort to keep abreast with evidence-based developments on approaches to teaching and learning. For example, I regularly read journal articles and books related to teaching and learning. I attend the Annual University Teaching and Learning conference, the University Fall Forum, and other teaching and learning workshops. Among the many lessons I have learned is the critical role that the classroom climate has on students learning. Indeed, course climate has been suggested as a very important component in the design of effective instruction. For example, Ambrose et al. (2010) suggested seven principles for effective teaching based on literature research and their own teaching experiences. Two of these principles seem to explicitly connect learning with the climate of the course.

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Troubleshooting Common Videoconferencing Problems

With increasing technologies being used to facilitate global learning experiences (GLE) and guest participants in the classroom, technical difficulties are inevitable (as with any technology). Such unplanned technological mishaps often lie beyond the control of participants and instructors, so as with any collaborative effort to meet, it is best to prepare for common scenarios.

Consider the following scenario: You have invited a remote guest speaker in Germany for an hour-long class lecture. Since this lecture is a big deal due to the labor-intensive logistics planning (which include coordinating time zone differences, course scheduling, language coordination, appointments with the instructional technology support at your institution, and much emphasis for participation from your students), you are very much hoping that the videoconferencing tool you’ve selected will work. 

Despite your careful planning, testing, and prior use of the technologies at hand, sometimes, things just won’t work out. When things do not work out, here are some ways to save your videoconferencing event.

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Don’t Worry, it’s a Standards Feature

Congratulations, you’ve been selected to teach ABC-461 this coming quarter!  The department thinks you’re the perfect expert to update the course and a copy of the last professor’s syllabus has appeared in your inbox. Now retired, Dr. Otto Heare left you some of his notes and course materials, but seems you’re going to have to do some serious work.

Script of the word "standards"During your meeting with your instructional designer, you state that you have full freedom to modify the syllabus but note there are some pesky standards that must be included. Dr. Heare didn’t really give you much guidance on what they mean and your department chair told you there was documentation somewhere but they can’t find it right now.

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Augmented Reality, Korean Dramas, and Higher Education

You probably asking yourself what do augmented reality (AR)and Korean dramas have to do with each other? Well, in December 2018 Korea debuted a new drama on Netflix, Memories of Alhambra, which revolved around a groundbreaking AR game based on medieval battles in Alhambra. The main character of the drama, Yoo Jin Woo, is a CEO of an investment company that specializes in optical devices. One optical device he creates was a contact lens that allows users to interact with AR content. For Jin Woo, getting his hands on the next big AR game was imperative. This leads to a late night phone call from an AR game creator, Jung Se Joo, telling him they need to meet ASAP otherwise he might sell his game to Jin Woo’s competitor. This gets Jin Woo on plane to Granada, Spain, and thus begins his AR journey.

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Take a Break!

I sit here writing this as Spring Quarter is nearly upon us. I am finishing up the last two of many courses in a particularly heavy load, and still waiting on some materials for both. It’s a weird time; I know there are things that desperately need finishing, and there are other projects I am giving short shrift right now due to my development work, but there is a strange sense of calm that occurs just before the very end. It’s almost a sense of inevitability; the quarter’s going to start whether we’re ready for it or not, and so sometimes it’s better to just sit back and let things ride.

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Change Agent Training: Part 2

In my previous post, I wrote about how a recent moving experience prompted me to rethink the parts of my job where I encourage colleagues to consider new or different teaching methods. Since I’m a “yes, let’s always turn over a new leaf!” person by nature, moving helped me gain some empathy for those who might not be as enthusiastic about change as I am.

Two key findings emerged for me: The first was that I needed to practice asking for help myself, something I’m loathe to do. Framing this behavioral adjustment as “practice” was especially helpful because practicing is low-stakes and friendly. On a recent Home Depot trip, I practiced asking for help finding something right away, and once again, that request paid big dividends in time not spent wandering aisles.

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Video Lecture Production Tip: Extracting Videos from PowerPoint

I frequently work with faculty who want to create a video lecture for an online course using the PowerPoint decks they present in the classroom.

I have misgivings about PowerPoint as a classroom presentation tool to start with (not the least of which is the problem of cognitive load [Mayer1]), but that’s a topic for another discussion. Faculty like them, and an instructional designer (like yours truly) learns to pick their battles.

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Why I aim to Stamp Out the Use (or Overuse) of Acronyms at DePaul

That’s right, folks, I am on a mission (cue the Mission Impossible music)! That mission is to stamp out the use (and particularly, the overuse) of acronyms at DePaul. All of higher education is plagued with this issue, but DePaul, in particular, seems very fond of its acronyms. Why say the college of liberal arts and social sciences when you could say LAS? Public Relations and Advertising is so many syllables and PRAD is just one! It’s easy to see the genesis of this practice and even why it is so widespread. So what’s the problem? Does being pro-number make me anti-letter? No, my issue with acronyms is akin to my problem with the overuse of jargon. The problem is that these acronyms might not mean very much to those outside of your inner circles. Referring to CSH’s MENP program in NRSG will be perfectly clear to some and gibberish to most. The problem is that as we strive for more and stronger collaborations across our colleges, departments, programs, and courses at DePaul, acronyms will become more problematic. These acronyms, which were very clear in our department’s faculty meeting, might as well be a foreign language to the faculty we’re working with in a different college. They can also be overwhelming to new faculty, staff, and students who are adjusting to so many new things when they start at DePaul. It’s like everyone knows the secret handshake…and if you don’t, do you belong here?

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Increasing Instructor Presence with Weekly Video Updates

How present are you in your classes? If you teach face-to-face or hybrid sections, you may have an easier time responding to this question than if you teach fully online. When physically present in the classroom, it’s easy to take it for granted that students are able to see you, hear you, and respond to you. But in a fully online environment, especially one that doesn’t hold real-time sessions, it can be a challenge to establish your presence as the professor. 

Enter the weekly video update. The authors of a widely cited article published in The Internet and Higher Education report that asynchronous video “made their instructors seem more real, present, and familiar… similar to face-to-face instruction.”  This finding should resonate with instructors, who despite teaching online in increasing numbers still report feeling that online learning is less effective than face-to-face teaching.  

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