Category: Computers and Education

Blended Learning Award for GWrit

The Game of Writing (Gwrit) project that I am part of just got support through a University of Alberta Blended Learning Award. See the 2014 Selected Courses. This award is going towards creating a flipped version of Writing 101, a service course that is being scaled up to support large sections by Roger Graves and Heather Graves. With the Blended Learning Award support from the Centre for Teaching and Learning and with Faculty of Arts funding we are redeveloping GWrit to be used in large sections of Writing 101. Here is part of the abstract of the proposal,

Research suggests that by creating a rich online environment for students to connect and interact with instructors and peers they can improve as writers. We are currently building a gamified online writing environment, The Game of Writing (GWrit), for Writing Studies 101 (WRS 101) that can support student writers and alumni. WRS 101 is a high demand service course required for many degree programs across the University. We are creating a large class version that blends face-to-face with gamification strategies. In GWrit students will choose and work on assignments or quests that are part of the course. Their progress on these assignments or quests will be shared with peers and instructional staff; in this way all students can see who is working on the same quests, and they can ask for help or advice from them. Informal assessment will be available online from peers in the class; from paid peer tutors; from GTAs; and from alumni. This represents a significant expansion of the informal assessment available in traditional face-to-face courses, where peers and sometimes the instructor give informal feedback. We also intend to invite alumni to post assignments/quests that come from a workplace writing context. Students who complete WRS 101 will continue to have access to GWrit throughout their undergraduate careers and as alumni.

GWrit started as a prototype developed with support from GRAND. The original idea was an open writing environment where folks could challenge each other to compete at writing and where you could get analytics on your writing (number of words written, tasks completed, and visualizations like word clouds.) This research prototype is now being completely redeveloped by the Arts Resource Centre as a learning tool that can be used by students of our courses. We are adding commenting features so that students (and later alumni) can provide writing guidance in a structured fashion.

Research Collaborations: Where to start?

Today, I have to say a few words about collaboration at a lunch-time Arts Research Group gathering. I thought I would gather them here:

  • First, collaboration needs to be explicitly discussed to go well. Don’t assume that everyone knows who is doing what or that they share your sense of the goals. Err on the side of saying too much too often.
  • In some cases a formal charter is a good idea. The iterative design of a project charter for interdisciplinary research.
  • One thing you need to work out explicitly is how credit will be apportioned. Discuss it and then follow what you agree to. Always be generous with those with less power than you in the collaboration.
  • Collaborations are not necessarily friendships between like-minded folk. Collaborations often cross disciplines and research practices. Collaborations are often between people with different levels of support, power, and engagement. Try to share support with collaborators (if, for example, you get a grant.) Be ethical in your collaborations with those with less power. Be careful not to ask too much of those not engaged in the whole project.
  • If you want to collaborate with someone ask them. Invite them out for a coffee and explain what you want to do. Try to figure out how this would be useful for them and build that into the collaboration.
  • There are lots of tools you can use for managing communication and collaboration, but none of them are a substitute for regular attention. I frankly find a weekly meeting is the best way to keep things on track.
  • There is lots of advice our there on collaboration and even grants to facilitate developing collaboration. Developing a collaboration takes time, so avail yourself of support to do it.

 

The Coming MOOC Copyright Problem And Its Impact on Students and Universities

From Eleni, a short article on coming issues around copyright at MOOCs, The Coming MOOC Copyright Problem And Its Impact on Students and Universities. These issues are not really new. Anyone working on distance education in the 80s and 90s had to face these issues, especially if you were a faculty member creating content. Our University IP approach to copyright has languished as it is not considered as important as patentable IP. University IP boards tend to deal with the types of IP that make money for the university and not those that are usually assigned to faculty. The problem comes when a university invests significant funds in developing a MOOC or Blended Learning course. A university wants to be sure the copyright issues are solved before investment. A university wants some clarity as to who, of a large team of faculty, graduate students, videographers, graphic designers and programmers, really owns anything. A University want to be able to offer the course even if members of the team move on (which faculty do a lot.) The approach I am pushing at U of Alberta is non-exclusive rights so that anyone in the team (including the University) can do what they want with the materials. A prof can take the materials to another university if they leave and rebuild a similar course. All that is expected is that people and institutions are given credit.

We need to talk about TED by Benjamin Bratton

The Guardian has reprinted the trasnscript of Benjamin Bratton’s We need to talk about TED talk that is critical of TED. He looks at each of the three terms in T.E.D. (Technology, Entertainment, Design) and here is paraphrase of some of his points:

  • TED talks conceptualize the future, but tend to oversimplify it.
  • TED wants to be about imagining the future, but it tends to promote placebo politics and technology.
  • We are told that change is accelerating, but while that may be true of technology, it isn’t true of politics and culture.
  • TED talks have too much faith in technology. Another futurism is possible.
  • Capitalism is presented as being about rocket ships and nanomedicine. It is actually about Walmart jobs, McMansions and government spying.

He ends by talking about design. He argues that it shouldn’t be about innovation, but about innoculation. Design is presented in TED as the heroic solving a puzzles that will magically fix everything. Instead he argues for design as slogging through the hard stuff – understanding the politics and cultural issues.

He ends by summarizing why he feels TED is not just a distraction, but harmful. He believes TED misdirects our attention by charming us with the entertaining simple solutions while avoiding the messy, chaotic, complex issues that can’t be solved by technology.

I sometimes wonder if Humanities Computing didn’t serve a similar purpose in the humanities. Is it a form of comic (technological) relief from the brutal truths we confront in the humanities … especially the suspicion that we make no difference when we do confront racism, sexism, surveillance, politics and technohype. Why not relax and play a bit with the other?

WPA: Uses and Limitations of Automated Writing Evaluation

The Council of Writing Program Administrators has made available a very useful Research Bibliography on the Uses and Limitations of Automated Writing Evaluation Software (PDF). This is part of a set of WPA-ComPile Research Bibliographies. There are paragraph long summaries of the articles that are quite useful.

What seems to be missing is an ethical discussion of automated evaluation. Do we need to tell people if we use automated evaluation? Writing for someone feels like a very personal act (even in a large class). What are the expectations of writers that their writing would be read?

Student game world takes London maps into 3D space

Wired UK and some other sources have been blogging the Student game world that takes historic London maps into 3D space. The flythrough (YouTube) is from the winning entry to the Off the map collaboration/competiton that brought together maps from the British Library, Crytek’s CryENGINE, and the GameCity collaboration. Undergraduate teams used game technologies to model historic sites from British Library maps. The winning flythrough by Pudding Lane Productions feels like a recreation I would want to play in.

Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It

The New York Times has a good story on Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It. The beginning of the article goes over the usual depressing factoids like

According to a 2011 National Science Foundation survey, 35 percent of doctorate recipients — and 43 percent of those in the humanities — had no commitment for employment at the time of completion. Fewer than half of Ph.D.’s are expected to land tenure-track jobs.

The articles then shifts to moves to try to define careers beyond the tenure track job for Ph.D.’s. For example they mention Katina Rogers Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure Track (PDF). This report from the Scholarly Communication Institute concludes with,

Equipping graduate students with the skills and literacies needed for 21st century scholarly work—from technical fluency to an understanding of organizational structures—is critical to ensuring continued rigorous and creative research and other work products. Remaining wedded to outmoded systems, including a model of apprenticeship in higher education that reinforces the false assumption that professorship is the only meaningful career for humanities doctoral recipients, does a tremendous disservice to all individuals and organizations that benefit from humanistic perspectives. (p. 21)

The article also mentions a white paper from Stanford on the The Future of the Humanities Ph.D.at Stanford that argues for reduced time to completion and “Redesigning graduate curricula to prepare PhD’s for a diverse array of meaningful, socially productive and personally rewarding careers within and outside the academy.” (p. 1) Finally they mention the Praxis Network which is focused on rethinking graduate training.

Lessons Learned from Vanderbilt’s First MOOCs

Derek Bruff of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt has posted a nice essay on the Lessons Learned from Vanderbilt’s First MOOCs. They have run three MOOCs starting with one on Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture for Concurrent and Networked Software. With this one they found only 7% were awarded some sort of statement of accomplishment (which is a measure of how many finished the course in some fashion.) They had better luck with the next two MOOCs on leadership and nutrition.

The essay then discusses a number of lessons learned (which I quote):

  • Teaching online is a team effort
  • There’s more to MOOCs than lecture videos
  • Open content is our friend
  • The cognitive diversity seen in MOOCs is far greater than in closed courses
  • MOOC students are well-motivated students
  • Cognitive Diversity + Intrinsic Motivations = Crowdsourcing Success
  • Accommodating students on different time tables can be challenging
  • Instructor presence is important

They have a MOOC coming up on Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative which I think I’m going to take. This raises the question of how many students of MOOCs are other pros wondering how MOOCs work.

Master’s Degree Is New Frontier of Study Online

The New York Times posted a story on online Master’s Degree Is New Frontier of Study Online. The story is a balanced discussion about how the Georgia Institute of Technology is going to offer a master’s in computer science through a MOOC. The story rehearses the usual opportunities and concerns. No one is really sure whether there will be significant savings for comparable quality.

I tend to think that free non-credit MOOCs are really just more content (to be compared with book or other web sites) that won’t do more than act as branding for institutions. It is the credit courses, and even more importantly credit programmes offered online or in hybrid formats that are worth watching as they could change access, costs, and the international distribution of higher education. For this reason the Georgia Institute for Technology experiment is worth watching. It is also worth remembering that there a number of online or distance graduate degrees already in place – MOOCs have drawn attention to the issue of scale and faculty attention, but distance access isn’t new.

“Online is a scale game, so the Georgia Tech thing is interesting,” said Phil Regier, executive vice provost of Arizona State University Online, which takes in $90 million annually in revenue. “What we’re seeing is different price points for different levels of faculty involvement. If you want no touch, or very little touch, they’ll deliver that for $6,000. If you want a higher-touch program, taught and graded by regular faculty, with a lot of faculty interaction, it’s going to be more expensive.”

I came to the story from Twitter post by Ian Bogost pointing to his blog entry WHAT GROWS WHEN MOOCS GROW? where he moves from commenting on the financial speculation behind MOOCs to asking what sort of growth we would see if there similar investment in other forms of growth,

The growth of private MOOC companies is driven almost entirely from financial speculation, speculation with an interest in private, short-term gain via industrialized scale. It’s worth imagining what other kinds of growth might be possible if we had the stomach for a different kind of speculation meant to benefit long-term social institutions like schools instead of just the market.