mookie

In regard to MOOCs at SU... we should not expect to scale the same way courses are scaling with Coursera, Udacity, EdEx. We've already presented this. IST or whoever is the first to launch needs to think modestly in the spirit of the MOOC as part of a broader experiment. Think about expanding a 50 seat course to 350 seats. That would be success. This eliminates the need to locate the super star faculty (which we don't really have) or the hot topic course (which we don't really have).

The most important thing moving forward is access to the instructional design models and resources necessary to do a MOOC well. It's not only about the tech. We have to be concerned about quality and rigor or we're going to look extremely foolish. Do we have the ability to make a MOOC experience as good as a residential experience on campus? That should be IST's benchmark. Anything less is a brand-compromising activity.

random connections: idde

I'm recovering a thread I started to follow a few years ago that considered TC's and Comp's treatment of heuristics. My coordinating theme was Speech Act Theory. I argued then that TC departs from Comp's treatment of heuristics at the point were traditional rhetorical techniques fail to help readers adequately learn complex tasks. Such tasks require representations at a level higher than what is possible with traditional rhetorical tropes and techniques; readers/users can see their conceptions described in the documentation.

As with most of my writing, thinking, and teaching, things look so much more narrow and limiting through the lens of experience. However, I do still space for Speech Act as a bridging theory for TC and IDDE. In a recent re-reading of a few Redish essays, I'm again intrigued by the way she invokes the reader/user as an active participant in the writing process. More importantly, her treatment of "reading to do" and "reading to learn" activities places the TCer in the same design/development space as the IDer when creating particular types of information products. Reddish illustrates this common location by having us consider the tutorial as a specific type of information product -- one that requires the user to read "to learn to do." "... treating reading-to-learn-to-do materials like traditional reading-to-learn materials doesn't work. Tutorial users will not read long prose passages, advanced organizers, or prose summaries... we have to build knowledge through their use of the product, not by giving them pages and pages to read."

This is the point at which I see TC looking toward IDDE. While there are a few TC programs that include exposure to instructional design theory, most practicing TCers "do" ID without much theoretical framing. Consider this comment from Tom Johnson, a highly respected practitioner and TC blogger: "From what I could gather reading Kulman’s blog, the basics of instructional design are fairly intuitive. Create active versus passive learning, give the user control, help the user apply the learning while he or she is learning, select content using the 80/20 rule... Not sure I would need a PhD in instructional design for this, but surely the same could be said of tech comm."

I'm digressing a bit here... I'm still trying to fit activity theory into this space between creating "reading-to-learn" and "learning-to-do" information projects. In a very tangible way, activity theory gives the TCer the means by which to shape text in such a way as move the reader to learn and to do.

More on this to come.

three-tiered approach to online faculty development

The folks down at Drexel have a nice stable model for developing online faculty. I like this approach because it's a "cover all the avenues" strategy. It's not a shotgun splatter that hopes to hit something.

Tier 1: Workshops and Courses

• Online and F2F (faculty presenting to other faculty)
• Use Adobe Connect Pro and Captivate

Tier 2: Just-in-Time Support

• Faculty samples site
  -- Repository of samples, examples, best practices
• Resource Portal
  -- Emphasis on the technology, tutorials

Tier 3: One on One
Instructional designer and faculty relationship to deliver and design an online course.

The ratio of designers to courses at Drexel? 70 courses per designer. Holy crap that's a lot of courses for one designer to manage! Their workshops and courses have the lowest use rate of faculty (adjuncts included), which doesn't seem too surprising since the workshops and courses are optional forms of faculty development. They've also stated that faculty report the online resources as the "least useful" of the three tiers of support. Why? Usability? Searchable? Awareness?

The most valuable and most used by faculty? Tier-Three! Why? Because faculty are getting discipline-specific support -- meeting them on their turf. Instructional designers are assigned to specific programs and become highly familiar with the faculty and the subject matter.

What I really like about Drexel's approach is that faculty are required to complete training if they're teaching online, regardless of their faculty standing. Focus of the sessions is on pedagogy -- design and development is embedded in the activities. Similarly, the instructional technology is "infused" into the instruction. The required training leads to a  certification -- takes about 4-6 hours to complete.

A nice model. Easily replicated. The solutions are out there.

putting the pieces together

We continue to work toward an institutional vision for online undergraduate instruction. It continues to be good and challenging work. In regard to the challenges, we have many. The biggest (at this point -- today) may be effectively communicating or providing a clearing house for information regarding online teaching and learning. Should it be web-based, a dedicated site, a series of road shows, or frequent workshops? Should it be all of the above? There is no way currently to share best practices here; no forum in which to vet and consider options, policies, procedures, etc. On the tail of that challenge: Getting faculty to understand that the LMS -- the platform -- is not the process of teaching online. We need to broaden their understanding of online teaching and learning, then help them find the appropriate technology to support the teaching processes. 

So here are my random thoughts regarding faculty preparation/development options:

• New Instructor Orientation/Workshop
• Continuous Development Series (monthly online sessions)
• Instructor Webinar Meetings (includes veteran online instructors
• Comprehensive Faculty Resource Site (OLS)
  -- We can/should base this within Blackboard (?)
  -- Wiki for best practices
  -- Instructor news blog -- should be external facing (?)
• Online Teaching and Learning Newsletter - monthly. What feature? Sustainable? How much work?
• Online Faculty Certification Program (you are certified to teach an online course at SU)

Get 'em while they're starry eyed: During new faculty orientation, can we survey or discover new faculty preferred mode of professional development. Also inquire about experience teaching online; interest in teaching online. This is what I need to do. What is her frequency of the new faculty sessions? Is there a first-year community/forum to engage with this population? What about adjuncts? This is the bulk of SOM and IST instructor cohort.

We have the technology/LMS training opportunities, but they are not required. How do we require them? How do we get a sign-off or performance of some level of competency before we let them "use" Blackboard for F2F courses?

Lots of pieces to come together -- one piece at a time.

progress at any pace

I had the opportunity yesterday to attend an online teaching and learning prep session hosted by the SU Writing Program (WP). The WP has shown extraordinary vision in this regard, as they’ve been hosting these events at least once a year for the past six or so years. The sessions are now required for any Professional Writing Instructor (adjunct) or doctoral student interested in teaching an online writing course.

This year, a scholar who I’ve long admired as a teacher’s teacher gave a terrific overview of her strategy for engaging students in an online course. It was interesting to see how someone who is keenly aware of pedagogical moves in the writing classroom was challenged to make her online course less about technology and more about learning. By that I mean selecting specific tools and technologies based on pedagogical requirements, rather than the other way around. If I can convince her to deliver a version of her presentation to faculty outside the WP, it would go a long way toward moving antagonistic faculty beyond the problem of conflating the concepts of online teaching/learning and instructional technology.

I also found during this year’s session that the small group in attendance expressed the same valid concerns we’ve been wrestling with for a long time. For example, there remains a concern about the lack of more rigorous or formalized options for preparing faculty (and others) to teach online. This may be changing here on the iceberg – stay tuned.

tech no faculty

I just read two more articles bemoaning the challenges of getting faculty to use instructional technology in ways that benefit students. Both articles offer the same staid suggestions for technology adoption, as well as the standard 5-step approach for implementing technology -- any technology -- to address a specific problem.

These regurgitated suggestions always fail to recognize the audience -- the faculty we are asking to rethink and retool. Beyond the anecdotal generational differences among faculty, there are a few other "conditions" that cause faculty to not fully accept our best efforts and good intentions in regard to instructional technology. For starters, faculty will not read anything that is not specific to their discipline, area or research, or something they've written themselves. Countless hours have we scribed workbooks, templates, tools, and guides to assist faculty in preparing to use instructional technology, only to find the wealth of knowledge therein committed only to the ether. Instead, faculty prefer to learn about instructional technologies by simply calling the help desk and asking, "How do I use [mention technology here] for my class that starts tomorrow?
 
To compensate for the lack of engagement with our written materials, we've fallen back on face-to-face training sessions scheduled around proven and well-designed project plans. Yet when provided a chance to sit and work hands-on with a new technology, faculty disregard the schedules, project plans, and other activities associated with having a course structured and complete prior to the start of the semester. They prefer, instead, to not interact with others -- particularly when with their peers -- nor to engage with support staff when in group training settings. Maybe it's an ego thing. Most likely, it's an ego thing.
 
So what are we left with? Beyond the old 5-step solutions, here's what seems to be working in places that have the balls to do it: First, link faculty training directly to an incentive -- pay them or reward them in some other way to learn and adopt instructional technologies for their courses. As with any effort involving faculty, get to know the culture in which you're working. Find out what motivates faculty and leverage those motivations in the cultural contexts of your school, college or university. Money and release time seem to be the most popular motivators. Second, teach faculty as they go -- don't jam them up with the traditional show-and-tell type training. Let them move through the technology in ways that scaffolds their use and competency -- make the technology seamless to their instructional objectives. This is the ego rub -- it's where you can make them think it's their idea. It works really well when done tactfully.

Two things to consider. Lots of issues associated with both. Of course, nothing is as easy it should be. All we can do is to keep chopping. Chop, chop, chop.

ia is about structure

continuing with my previous post...

We've come to understand Information Architecture (IA) as the practice of structuring information (often according to context) for a particular purpose. Tom Johnson and Donna Marsh circled around this definition last week. From their discussion, it seems that defining IA is problematic because it is most commonly applied to web development. However, from Donna and Tom's experiences (and those of others) it's quite obvious that IA also applies to disciplines such as TC, software programming, and user experience design (Peter Morville has said as much about a decade ago).

To complicate things a bit more, an alternate popular definition of IA exists within the field of information system design, where IA refers to the analysis and design of blocks or chunks of information (and their inter-dependencies) within a system. Beth Mazur has used this definition in her efforts to draw distinctions between IA and information design.

The practitioner perspectives that Tom and Donna provide and the academic definitions that Morrville and Mazur provide are built on features of information interaction, content analysis, classification, information hierarchies, information navigation, and information structuring for particular purposes. It seems to me that if I can invoke TC practices that include these features, I can illustrate to my students a range of practices that will help them understand the complexity of their design activities. For this purpose, I need to begin by locating design activities, as an aspect of IA, within TC practices and embedded engineering writing instruction.

dual design

Giving a presentation last week - faculty asks, "Mike, when you say design, what do you mean?" Good question.

When discussing online course design, I'm tend to confuse instructional design with information design (and to complicate it even more -- information architecture). Lately, I've been trying to talk about design in two ways.

First, I address the basic concepts of instructional design. This is important because we want faculty thinking about their instructional strategies early on in the course design process. How are we going to instruct? What are the engagement opportunities? How are we going to assess?

Second, I address issues of organization and emphasize the concept of heuristic for the course space. How are we going to sequence the instructional blocks? What metaphor are we going to use to organize the content? What structures are imposed by the LMS?

I have to make an effort to keep these two aspects of course design separate and clear. I think faculty will be better able to work through our design/development model if we clearly differentiate between the types of design activities.

thicker threads

I've long proposed that the relationship between technical communication and instructional design needs to be explored more deeply than it has been. In fact, it's an area of my yet-to-be-taken qualifying exams. As an extension of that relationship, I've recently started pulling on the thread that runs through online course design (as a generic practice) and technical communication.

We covered some of this ground in Krista's class last year -- specifically the relationships among information architecture, information design, and technical communication. In a current online course design project, I'm finding that understanding these relationships helps me better describe and illustrate to faculty what they have to do when creating an online course.

For example, technical communication is all about content. Online courses are all about the content. Structuring that content in a logical, meaningful, and usable way is sometimes difficult for faculty new to online course design. Technical communicators, on the other hand, intuitively understand how to do this. By introducing basic concepts of information architecture to faculty -- even rudimentary folder/item metaphors -- I've been able to show them the connection between instructional content and instructional sequence.

Similarly, technical communicators have long struggled with presenting content in usable, useful, and effective designs. On the successes and failures of these struggles, it's easy to introduce faculty to basic concepts of information design -- working with the options (and limitations) of the interfaces through which their course content will be served. After faculty understand the role of heuristics in the online course space, they are always less intimidated by multi-layered content and web-based instructional technologies.

About twelve years ago my little technical writing department was making a case to be positioned as the information hub within a software development company. It seemed a bit of a stretch at the time, but now I think we may have been on to something. The (rapidly changing) nature of technical communication places the TCer in a unique position to weave together threads of a wide range of disciplines, practices, and theories. Maybe this is what makes it so hard to define technical communication. Maybe it's what makes practicing technical communication so much fun.

ccr 760: on o’reilly

I intentionally read O’Reilly last this week. It was required reading a few years ago when we were attempting to commercialize instructional design and development with the goal of spinning off into a for-profit venture. Before we could deconstruct, embrace, and apply the principles of Web 2.0, our over-capitalized experiment imploded.

I like this article because it provides a survey of where and what the web was, is, and can be. By intentionally not describing the web as a collection of HTML-based resources, the article allows us to see the web as a space in which things happen. Terms like platform, service, and architecture make more sense when used amid discussions of specific efforts over the years. If one thing is clear, it’s that the web (arguably the Internet as a whole) continues to be about choice and openness – about participation. From a business perspective, Web 2.0 tools, technologies, and initiatives have simply elevated that participation in ways that allow for commercialization outside of traditional product/revenue models. From a more holistic perspective, participation is now expected if not demanded by users. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

O’Reilly mentions in the article that as early as 2005 the term Web 2.0 had been high-jacked and improperly applied. Indeed, I’d noted my own personal disgust with rampant and disingenuous references to Web 2.0, which is why I continue to thoroughly enjoy this:

760: on carliner

Not to belabor the inability to define information design (ID), but Carliner refers to ID first as a notion -- IDers "look at the bigger picture: What problem is the client trying to solve, what can I bring to address the problem, and how does this solution support the larger business situation" (43). A page later he defines ID as a discipline: "Design as problem solving ... designers focus on the solution ... design is a problem-solving discipline" (44).

Knowing that I need to move on and not make this definition-deficiency an issue, I really like Carliner's three-part goal-oriented framework for ID (the notion, practice, field, discipline, whatever).

• Physical - the ability to find information
• Cognitive - the ability to understand information
• Affective - the ability to feel comfortable with the presentation of the information

In many ways, the framework represents my understanding of heuristics and something I'm pretty sure that most composition scholars are/should be familiar with.

I also like what Carliner is attempting to do with the framework (as he qualifies it in his conclusion) because I can locate my own practices within it. I seem most comfortable with the physical and cognitive levels of the framework. The affective level seems like "point of failure" motivation to me, although I know that's incomplete and inconsistent with what Carliner is describing here. It’s just that things like behavioral change, change management, and performance improvement are always the moving targets of the project. It is, quite honestly, often easier and sometimes necessary to avoid the affective level just to get the project done.

As a complete aside: I could probably have gone without Carliner's clarification of what he meant by "pre-digested information" on page 51. Dude, really? A description of how LactAid works?

quite hogging my scene

Scenario-based instruction -- I love it. And I love this presentation from Cathy Moore.

We spent a lot of time some years ago developing scenario-based instructional models. Our designers didn't seem to care much for it. I think they found it too practical -- really. They typically preferred more theory-based strategies that emphasized complex assessment activities. When we moved instruction (problem solving) to shop-floor activities, most of the designers backed away.

I like linking learning activities to work activities. It's an approach I've seen work exceedingly well in many of Dana's courses and programs. I need to keep scenario-based instruction in the toolkit as we begin to work with more faculty on undergraduate online courses. Having faculty consider real-world scenarios in which to embed their instruction could make the design and development processes more interesting and rewarding -- for them and their students.

i am stuck on band aids

I've been working on a loooong-term online course for a corporate HR group. We did the whole analysis and design thing. We prototyped an instructional model with pre- and post-tests, and even got into designing a course evaluation tool. At the outset, when everyone at the site wanted a say in the product, I tried to impress on them the need to focus on the content. When some hack with a VP title started blathering on about adherence to the corporate color schemes, I implored them to worry about all that later -- that we could address the colors, buttons, and spinning burning skulls when we got to a point of development. At that point in time, I really needed them to focus on the content.

Two years into the project, I get an email from a kid in their marcom group requesting a copy of the course so she can "brand" it correctly. I emailed her and the project coordinator stating that I'd be happy to deliver the course (and all associated source files), if the coordinator was ready to sign off on the project. That would mean I'm done with my stuff, I submit my final invoice. Within minutes of my reply -- literally minutes -- I received an email from the coordinator stating that he still had content to provide and that he was, by no means, ready to conclude the project.

Why? Why is it so hard to get through to people? I've tried a range of tactics -- from hard-liner to soft-shoe -- to get people working on learning products to understand the value of content. I've concluded that they resist, squirm, and avoid content because it's the hard part. Any monkey's ass can sit around and talk about color schemes and button choices. The content takes time. It takes focus. It takes thought.

So I'll spend the next two days making interfaces changes around barely enough content for a three-page comic book. I'll submit the revision and an iterative invoice, and patiently wait for the content.

touch too much

The next time a Luddite faculty member tells me there are some things you just can't teach on line:

be cool or be cast out

The academhack had the following comment in a post about the launching of a new major in emerging media:

"There is a new type of literacy developing, one between those who will understand the digital network media landscape, and who use it to produce, to organize, to take ownership over their lives, responsiblity for their community, to be critical of it, to engage with it . . . and with those who merely consume it. A divide between those who will be passive consumers at best, victims at worst, and those who will be active participants."

There are implications embedded here for higher education -- particularly in regard to online teaching and learning.

On which side of the divide will we find "older" faculty who are facing increasing presure to move lower-division / high-volume courses online to accomodate increasing student demand for flexibility and access?

On which side will we find adult learners returning to school with limited information and technology literacy skills?

And perhaps most importantly, how will those of us supporting these populations be asked to bridge the divide?

de-zine-r

A few years ago, a provost here took the lead on a "spires" project. The idea was that brilliant people from across disciplines would gather in the spirit of collaboration beneath or within one of many spires -- each spire with an emphasis on a particular aspect of the business of higher education.

One of the more interesting spires (or so it seemed at the time) was the Design Spire. I recall a conversation with a part-time instructor at SOE about how exciting it would be to work with faculty from other disciplines on every and all possible treatments of design. I don't know that the design spire ever materialized. I do know that entire spire project went the way of the provost who owned the effort.

The point: I attended a workshop today to prepare first-time online writing instructors to teach online. The sessions are always interesting me for two reasons. First, I really enjoy working with the person who conducts the workshops -- a kindred spirit. Second, it's fascinating to observe writing instructors navigate the concept of design in the context of online teaching and learning. The many different definitions and disciplinary practices of design come tumbling together into a gooey mass on the table. And you can actually watch these really smart people struggle to build a usable framework from the mess.

In teaching writing, we always talk about complicating the subject to force critical consideration. I don't know that we should, could, or necessarily need to do that when working through the concept of design with first-time online instructors. Design is complicated enough. Starting from an overly generic definition might be more useful (and beneficial).

Note to self.

fine lines

I was invited to an interesting meeting on Monday morning. We were gathered to discuss options and possibilities for measuring/rating instructional technologies in such a way as to provide decision makers with a means to prioritize projects and resources.

It's an interesting question and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to develop or locate a usable model. What is more interesting is how the conversation teetered on discussions of teaching with technology and who (organizationally) on campus is responsible for supporting these efforts. It's a series of posts yet to come.

What came out of one particular thread were comments implying that instructional design is somehow tied to or dependent on technology-mediated instruction. I find this opinion troubling because it complicates discussions intended to identify the discrete, yet inter-related, activities involved in creating courses - all modes of courses. In fairness, the blurring of the line between instructional design and instructional technology makes it difficult to separate design and development activities into nice clean buckets.

Which is all to say that I am encouraged that our approach to online course design and development is valid.

wasted space

A quote from here:

"Teachers and tech directors need to concentrate on the learning environment, not the myriad of potential technical issues. Technology should be an extension of the teacher.... It's one thing to have the tools, but they won't do much good if they're not connected and easy to integrate and use in the classroom."

This is the conversation we need to be having on campus. Faculty are coming to tools like Blackboard with fear in their eyes. We're not asking the right questions or positioning teaching and learning technologies as simple tools. We're not doing enough to coordinate the efforts of faculty in ways that allow them to exploit existing technologies and services -- to dismiss the enamoring fads and trends, and to focus on doing the basics extremely well.

talk amongst yourselves

I'm working with a professor from the College of Human Ecology on a new online course. She has an extremely content rich course. Our Instructor's Toolkit is proving to be useful and extensive, which is encouraging.

In a recent design meeting, she mentioned that she wasn't planning on using a discussion board. My suggestion was to create one or two forums in which the students could create a dialog around select topics. Participation should not be optional -- students should be prompted to work through a question, problem, or topic with some general guidelines. I tried to reinforce this suggestion by emphasizing the need to provide socialization opportunities for students in the course space.

This post and the accompanying comments come at the issue from a humanistic perspective. Which, I guess, is essentially how I've always considered use of discussion forums in online courses.

technically professional

In pre-preparing to re-prepare to prepare for my qualifying exams, I came across an interesting comment made by Patrick Moore in an essay titled Instrumental discourse is as humanistic as rhetoric (JBTC, v10 n1 p100-18 Jan 1996):

"... when the purpose of technical communication is rigorously instrumental -- to govern, guide, control and help people execute physical actions -- technical writers work hard to make their language unambiguous, unemotional and strictly denotative ... But when the purpose of technical communication is rhetorical (as in a proposal or technical sales document), writers can use language with more connotations, emotional associations, and potential ambiguity."

This is why I try to differentiate between technical and professional communication when teaching WRT 307. This also the reason why I think instructional designers need to be exposed to theories in Composition, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication. As the principal authors of texts that "govern, guide, control and help people execute physical action," IDers control the nature, purpose, mechanics, and structure of the instructional communication.

Said it before. Will continue to find reasons to say it again.