This blog provides information on grants, policies, workshops, resources, and other activities related to Faculty Development. I will write posts from time to time on developments in the area of teaching and learning and on issues related to higher education. Please take a close look at the pages on policies, and be sure to save a link to the blog, so you can return every now and then to read posts and updates. I welcome any questions, comments, or suggestions.
My first post is about web-based applications, or what has become known as Web 2.0, a popular term for the changes the WWW has undergone in the past five years. Before Web 2.0, skilled designers created HTML web pages for personal use, for the public and private sector, and for creating repositories for information on almost any subject, but something was missing, something we now take for granted, and that something was greater interactivity on every subject imaginable. All kinds of applications exist today to make the web more accessible, inclusive, and interactive, and more and more are being developed.
With the advent of the blog, anyone with a little training could create a presence on the web, and it provided an interactive component that we now see everywhere–the post and comment, but since blogs do require some time and effort to create, an even easier way to create one’s own site evolved. Sites, like MySpace and Facebook, allowed millions to share information about themselves, their interests, friends, and day to day activities with much greater ease. Other forms of interaction have continued to emerge to form what we now call social networking.
In this new networked environment, we also have easier access to information. Unlike HTML, where form and content are inseparable, XML has made it possible to move content from place to place without any formatting constraints. Since information no longer relies on a particular format, it can move more freely. This greater access, along with the almost unlimited amount of information available, has changed the way we look at information and the way we try to categorize it.
When the web emerged, Yahoo was one of the first most used search engines. It searched for information through the use of hyperlinks designed in a hierarchal structure that moved from general to specific content. The Google search engine soon followed. Using Boolean searches, one could search for a word or relations of words to find any site that happened to have that word or fit that combination of words. This method itself may soon be followed with Web 3.0 search engines based on semantic searches.
With these new tools, students and instructors can use an RSS feed to receive updates from websites, blogs, microblogs, newspapers, journals, magazines, podcasts, and radio and television programs. Students can use applications like Diigo to read articles and essays and highlight, comment, and annotate them, so that later, other students can access the same site and read whatever annotations and comments they left. Google, Zoho, or wikis allow students to collaborate on documents and projects and revise and edit them, from anywhere and at any time. Instant messaging, chat programs , groups and forums, and web conferencing, allow students to communicate in text, audio, and/or video and upload or exchange files.
If one has a blog or bookmarking program, they can tag and share information for others to find. They can even take all these tools and more, place them on a blog , or a site like Netvibes, and make them all readily available. We call this new space for interaction through web applications cloud computing, and it offers so many possibilities that companies offering learning management systems cannot update their programs fast enough to keep up with the changes.
Educational institutions and private companies have begun to explore and use these tools for operational, educational, and professional development activities. Often, they have done so to cut expenses since these new technologies are often free, or more cost effective, than other forms of communication and collaboration. As educational tools, these new applications allow students new ways of discovering, organizing, structuring, and representing ideas, feelings, insights, experiences, and knowledge so that it belongs to them and not to a system that has already configured and designed the process for them.
Several articles in a recent issue of Campus Technology examine some ways these new tools are being used in higher education to carry out important functions and to reinforce teaching and learning practices. One article, on the use, or lack of use, of these applications looks at their use in advising and counseling students; another looks at their use in recruiting and retaining students; and a third on their use in teaching students how to collaborate in the collection and organization of information to assist them in acquiring skills necessary to work on team projects, solve complex problems, increase deeper understanding, and create new forms of knowledge from existing information.
In a recent survey on retention rates, at-risk students were asked questions related to the modes of communication they prefer when speaking with professors, counselors, or administrators. In-person meetings scored the highest with a 4.5 mean score, followed by one-on-one phone conversations with a 4 and social networking and email with 3.3 and 3.1, respectively. Text messaging (2.6), voice mail (2.5), postal services (2.2), and MP3 files (2) received even lower scores. Although 3.3 does not seem like a high score, the study found that 64 percent of the respondents felt social networking was “very important” or “somewhat important” for use in increasing retention rates, and two-thirds had never even used social networking for counseling and mentoring.
Last year, over 300,000 students used the social networking site Zinch (www.zinch.com) to connect with colleges and universities that might be interested in recruiting them. The site allows students to enter profiles that colleges and universities can data-mine for students interested in their institution. Using what might be an even more exciting recruiting method, Butler University (www.go.butler.edu/cs) placed an advertisement on Facebook about a blogging program they were using to recruit students. Eight students were in the program, and they blogged about their day to day experiences and uploaded videos to You Tube of various campus activities, such as speakers on campus. When they received comments on their blogs, they were able to begin conversations with prospective students about the university. Since no studies have been done on the effectiveness of these recruitment practices, no clear measures or best practices are yet available.
As an educational tool, social networking allows students to participate with a larger group of people and to see themselves as contributors to an ongoing dialog or project. Ruth Reynard, director of faculty for Career Education Corp., says traditional forms of education often reduce the learning process to “passive reception, predetermined levels of interaction, [and] regulated outcomes of information,” whereas learning theorists have been telling us for quite some time that different forms of collaboration increase knowledge-building and allow for the creation of new knowledge.
Students can use social networking technology to collaborate in groups or teams and discover, create, and apply new knowledge to particular projects or assignments. Reynard recommends a “project-based approach” where students begin with the outcomes in mind and acquire the necessary resources to carry out the assignment and engage in different forms of “‘production’ or ‘publishing.’” With tangible results, students feel a sense of accomplishment and ownership based on the contributions they make to the project.
She says instructors must create innovative, appropriate, and acceptable learning environments. They must think of what students are already doing and what is most familiar to them. Moreover, the learning process and the working environments must be relevant and apply to the students’ needs and experiences. Then, when they are placed in new learning environments, they can achieve higher levels of learning and work with more originality, creativity, and authenticity.
Michael Wesch, a professor of anthropology at Kansas State University and the U .S. Professor of the Year for 2008, is one person who has thought about the new challenges we face and the new possibilities we have for opening up the classroom. A few years back, he made a short video on the way Web 2.0 applications are changing our world and ourselves. He became a celebrity overnight after receiving more than a million hits in the few weeks after he uploaded the video to You Tube.
This video examines the changes this technology has introduced, especially in our attempt to give up old ways of categorizing and finding information. The other video considers how we will begin to classify and categorize information within this new media. Past methods of categorizing are not too useful; new forms of order and new possibilities of arrangement seem necessary.
Suggestion: To start the video, click on the arrow in the bottom right corner of the screen and click the second button in the bottom right corner for full screen.