Activity Report

Second Quarter

Jean Kreis

NLII 2004 Fellow

July 12, 2004

 

1.      Research Project: MOATS

 

The second quarter was a time of intense research and successful configuration of the algorithms for the backend of the MOATS instrument. The solution lay in examination of the roles of instructor and student. Whereas for instructional designers and educational theorists, the importance of approaching learning from within theory parameters that is under investigation or use is a given, the same is not so with instructional practioners. Or rather, while higher education faculty would remain within whatever disciplinary they investigate, their time is always limited and their efforts in instruction, even in the best of circumstances, do not permit extraneous study for the best set of instructional theories to meet their needs. Consequently, most instructors have not been exposed to the minimum of instructional design and when they have been, the limited exposure becomes rigid and unhelpful. The emphasis on “learning outcomes” that almost always accompanies such instruction is less than useful and quickly forgotten in the pursuit of “teaching the content.”

 

As a result of this continuing cycle, the approach taken in MOATS algorithms is to invite the user to begin with learner role, instructor role, and/or problem statement. This approach was evaluated by participants at the NLII Summer Focus Session and found to be very helpful. 

 

2.      Bridging Community of Practice: Co-Facilitator

 

There have been a number of activities this quarter in which the Bridging VCOP has been centrally located.

 

1.      We recruited an additional co-facilitator: Danilo Baylen, an Asst. Professor, with extensive experience in instructional technologies and instructional design. He has been very active in the Bridging Community from the moment of his joining it with the Spring Focus Session.

2.      We attended the AAHE conference in San Diego in April, holding a joint face-to-face and synchronous digital meeting as part of the Spring Focus Session. We focused at that time on Communities of Practice, their instantiation and evaluation; assisting the various institutional teams to develop their own evaluation rubrics for their particular needs. Communities of Practice became the focus for the community at an institutional level.

3.      5 sponsored Teams – as the Spring Focus Session concluded, enough participants expressed continued interest in ongoing support and involvement, that we set up a Sponsored Project Application. Five teams from different institutions, varying in sizes and types, submitted projects ranging in scope and domain from “Technology Fellows Teaching & Learning Collaboration” to “Exploring the Characteristics and Motivations of Faculty” to “VCoP: Collaboration in Distance Learning.” Each team is comprised of about 25 participants of again, varying expertise with technology and/or instructional technology. The Bridging Community is the gathering space for support, resources, and idea-generation as well as practice-sharing.

4.      1st and 3rd Wednesdays – Each VCOP needs ongoing activity to keep its membership lively. One way the Bridging VCOP does this is by holding synchronous sessions twice a month on topics pertinent to the membership’s needs. This quarters’ topics covered taxonomies, ontologies, communities of practice, initial stages of appreciative inquiry, and specific needs to the sponsored projects.

5.      The membership also doubled with the inclusion of those registered for the NLII 2004 Summer Focus Session.

 

 

 

3.      Summer Focus Session: Bridging Communities of Research & Practice to Transform Higher Education Teaching and Learning

 

At this focus session the NLII, in conjunction with the University of Southern California's Center for Scholarly Technology and in affiliation with the 6th Annual International Conference of Learning Sciences hosted by University of California, Los Angeles, worked with representatives from the research and practitioner communities to explore multiple ways of describing and explaining learning in complex settings.

 

The day consisted of 3 primary activities in which all of the participants (featured speakers & panelists, as well as attendees) worked together. Through out the day, the featured speakers and panelists shared information and presented questions and ideas which, along with the activities, aided the participants in grappling with this topic in the new stage of discussion.

 

In the 1st Activity, participants interviewed each other, focusing on “Cooperation [which] allows people and groups to maintain their separate and unique identities, while at the same time contributing to the achievement of a larger purpose. Diverse partnerships [that] offer the strength and flexibility that comes from sharing multiple perspectives and looking at issues though different lenses. Exceptional partnerships result when all parties mutually gain from the relationship. In that endeavor, we begin this process with a methodology for gathering the best experiences among us so that we might all benefit from each other.” They then pulled the top three themes from those stories. The focus session attendees decided on the following as the overall top three themes that were most important in successful cooperation, diversity, and partnerships:

 

·        Support from university: sustained institutional commitment to teaching and learning scholarship

·        Multiple roles are the bridgers (but are not necessarily respected)

·        Allowing time, infrastructure, and space to develop clarity of purpose and roles within partnerships

 

In the 2nd Activity, working in triads, the participants examined two articles “to make a body of work accessible.” In the first phase of the activity they identified the audiences, the potential barriers and gateways to the content of the articles. In the second phase of the activity the participants focused more strategically. They suggested what was needed in terms of infrastructure and mechanisms for addressing those gateways and barriers or for aligning different audiences to make content accessible beyond original audiences. These results were gathered into tables during the lunch hour, then printed for use in the 3rd Activity.

 

The 3rd Activity took the results from the first two activities and asked the participants to suggest concrete strategies and projects for addressing the themes, the infrastructures and mechanisms suggested already. What could been looked at, at the national level, at the community level. We asked the participants to think at the large focus since we were in the initial stages of this topic and gathered ideas on that level.