I have a built a web page that consolidates the work done at MCCCD on iCampus so far. It also contains links to iCampus resources found on other sites. The blog is a great communication tool but is not as effective as a resource. Hopefully this web site will fill that need.
You can link this page at http://glory.gc.maricopa.edu/~gmarrer/icampus/
Final Day Dog Days of Summer (last day)
The final day was a short one. Many of the conference attendees were heading back home. It was a short schedule and I attended two presentations. One presentation reviewed the experience of the University or Virginia's MBA program setting up and on-line executive MBA program. Although the problem was launched with dedicated planning and research it was not as ground breaking as many of the other presentations I attended. Whereas many of us have already started with on-line learning, the U of V experience was much more about how one would launch given what has been already learned by others. A more mature and less revolutionary implementation then what would have been experienced five years ago. They did the presentation with one attendee from Adobe using their Adobe Breeze product. The Breeze product had a few bumps and hiccups but those in the audience spoke very positively of it.
Assessment of Technology Mediated Learning?
I attended a spirited discussion on the lack and/or weakness of assessment data in regards to technology and learning. The central theme was the proposition of Dr. David Singer (MIT - Brain and Cognitive Sciences) that assessment data was non-existent. The panel admitted that it was weak and likely to be ignored by most projects (somewhat like system/user documentation) there was research being done. The MIT staff shared what they have done with the MIT experience and although they had areas of learning that had limited assessment, assessment was done. I suspect this presentation will be revisited next year as many schools are looking for evidence of success or to isolate areas of improvement. I suspect everyone believes technology mediated learning (I love this term. Someone used this in a presentation and I though it was a good way to describe what is happening.) but many would like the evidence to show administration to secure the funds necessary to build the infrastructure and content to do the most effective job.
Conclusions:
If I had to narrow down on the buzz of the conference I would list the following products/presentations:
The Future of Tech Learning
· Neo-Millennial learning systems(Dr. Chris Dede - Harvard) understanding the new student is critical to creating active learning environments. These students are what we have been calling knowledge workers.
· Immersion simulation and graphics intensive content will become more prevalent
· Ubiquitous computing The cell phone PDA appears to be the winner
· Data storage will increase exponentially as active learning is implemented (simulations and graphics) on systems.
Surprises
· The popularity of open source products (Sakai, UPortal, Open CMS) on most campuses
· Private companies actually focus on supporting open source university computing
· How many Apple laptop computers and Cell phone/PDAs attendee brought with them. (I am very jealous)
Interesting Vendor Product
· TechSmith (Camtasia/ Snagit) is comes out with a site that will allow users/universities store/manage Camtasia/video content. These files are very large and need a management plan.
Things to Watch
· Assessment is not going away
· Open Source (watch out BlackBoard and WebCT to name a couple)
The conference was excellent. If you only consider iCampus, it was worth it for me. I would strongly recommend this for faculty on the bleeding edge and a definite for university infrastructure support professionals who support computer services for students and faculty.
Bye from Boston....
I would love any questions and comments from my Campus Tech Conference blog entries.
Blog Note: On day three, my Laptop decided to take a couple days off and it is now in Dell-Land being repaired. Because of this, I was not able to post my same day journal as was done for days one and two. I find it better to blog while everything is still fresh in my mind but given the technical problems, I had to wait until I returned to Phoenix.
"Immersion" Learning Active Learning via Virtual Reality
Day three started off with a presentation on immersion learning environments. The title and description seemed intriguing and I am not sure what I was expecting but it was a pleasant surprise. The moderator and presenters were excellent. The audience also came prepared for a lively discussion. Immersion was explained primarily by the faculty at Purdue University but the definitions varied. This is clearly an evolving topic. As a technology, it relies heavily on graphics, simulation and the mass storage of data. They discussed wall (1 plane), cave (2d) and cube (3d), virtual realities (GCC has experimented with wall simulation) that represent state of the art in active learning. The student is placed in a world that simulates the topic taught via sound and headset graphics.
The technology is becoming more prevalent in University instruction but based on startup estimates (10K to start with just a wall) it still seems a ways away from reaching critical mass for most instruction. This is an area to watch.
One of the interesting side discussions in this session was the talk of a product called Condor. This product can be installed across a campus network and when an application needs additional machine cycles (which is true with heavy CPU bound simulation software) the software would go out and borrow cycles from unused PCs using Condor. Like a bank that loans money in a pinch, Condor allows inactive PCs to give up they CPU time to an application running on another PC. Almost sounds to good to be true. I did a quick Google of Condor and found the following web page (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/doc/WiscIdea.html)
Much of the research done on immersion learning was made available via NSF (National Science Foundation) funding. Their web site is a great place to find out more.
Open Source Lessons Shared
I attended an interesting conference concerning UC-Merced's goal of creating an open source university computing environment (academic and administrative). Open source is typically free software with source code included distributed through a community of users who all agree to participate in making the applications better by sharing improvements and knowledge.
UC-Merced (UCM) is a school which opened with 800 students last year. It is slated to have many thousands of students in the very near future. UCM's CIO and Computer Architect reflected on their experiences and products used in computing environment. UCM uses Apache, Sakai, UPortal, OpenCMS, MYSQL, Linux, TomCat, Postgres and PHP to name just a few of their open source products. I was impressed by the depth of their planning and concern for quality. I think the long and short of their presentation was to not under estimate the support costs associated with training staff to be able to contribute and collaborate with the open source communities. You save money on the cost of the product but you take on a larger role in support. You need to hire quality people and have in place outside open source expert integrators and consultants to assist. These consultants need to understand the open source products used at universities. Fortunately, this type of open source service support organization does now exist. Several attended the vendor demonstrations on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Consortium Approach to Portals Joining a Portal Club?
This presentation seemed to be interesting since my own college is looking at a college web portal (as I expect other campuses are also doing). Is there an out of the box solution, is there something open source and ready to use, has anyone made this easier? The answer is I am not sure. CampusEAI is a group that supports this effort but I am not completely sure from the presentation how it all works. It appears to be a combination of Oracle and open source university tools. Like the previous presentation on UC-Merced, there are now organizations to help with the setup and support of open source solutions to college web portals. Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Montana have used CampusEAI to deliver. It presentation was interesting but this is one topic I need to spend some more time with.
Highlight of Day
I got a chance to spend some more time with Dr. Phil Long from MIT concerning iCampus. He listened to my wish list and also gave me a contact in Australia to help us ramp up our iCampus activities. I feel like the information shared by MIT on iCampus was worth the trip alone.
On to day four..... Many of the conferences are exciting and inspiring but the Boston heat and humidity is getting a little tough. I am a little more tired after today with tomorrow mornings session signaling the end of the conference.
If yesterday was about MIT and iCampus today was about the maturity of blogging and podcasting and prediction about the future (more later).
The State of Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts...
I was clear from the speakers at two different presentations that blogs, podcasts, wikis, vodcasts (video podcasts)and portable devices where approaching a new point in there lifecycle. They have moved beyond the initial acceptance phase (remember when you first used the word blog and had to explain what it meant) and now are main stream. Research evidence has proven their effectiveness and with the popularity of social networking software products like MySpace and FaceBook, blogging the capture and publishing of digital content is very mainstream. On presenter cited that 5 of 7 students already had experience with blogs. The tools used to produce these alternatives have also become more standardized with many schools talking about the integration of blogging with content management tools like BlackBoard and Sakai. It is clear these pedagogies are prominent on most campuses and will only see increased use.
What I found interesting was the reports of faculty on some of the next generation issues associated with blogging and podcasting. Many campuses are considering blogging guidelines to help student in protecting their privacy and also warning students that what is blogged is not longer private but very public with no date of expiration. As one presenter pointed out, with blogs suddenly your opinion matters. Many campus officials were concerned that the content on some Blogs (via social networking) sites would come back to haunt students as prospective employers did name searches only to find web pages with not so flattering pictures or text content. Some colleges were providing blog servers which were public only to the university and shielded from outside search engines.
At some institutions blog rules also took in consideration blogging behavior which demonstrated bullying and harassment. This was considered equally as offensive as that same behavior done in person.
Many blogs were now including video content with one college making extensive use of Camtasia for the instruction of physics. A dominant theme of several of the presentations was how various universities have implemented video.
One interesting presentation by MIT ( Dr. Katie Vale) told of how blogging was helping them with some of the problems MIT has historically experienced with getting freshman integrated into the MIT community. Another college used blogs from the admissions department to help answer concerns of student applicants. The blogging and podcasting has extended beyond the classroom to promote the interests of the campus community.
Note: I was impressed with the number on computer subjects that had been taking advantage of new technologies. As a CIS instructor, many people expect my discipline to embrace technology as part of instruction;I was impressed by the number of technology pioneers who can from non-computer subject areas.
On the podcast front many colleges were dealing with delivery options and the impact of iTunes U from Apple. More and more faculty were using podcasts so that student could pace their learning. Students who were having problems could slow the delivery of content via the podcast and advanced students could speed it up. Podcasting was not a replacement for class time but helped when a student needed remediation (forgotten pre-requisite math skills in a stats class).
Wake Forest University ( Dr. Jay Dominick, CIO moderator) discussed their work with developing a PDA/Cell phone device that is used by faculty and students for learning. Wake Forest was one of the first schools to have all students get a laptop as a freshman. They now are in the second generation of PDA/Cell phones and have developed software that can be used for learning and also keep students abreast of what is happening in the campus community. The initiative is called mobileU.
The Future ... not quite yet
Today we had and excellent presentation from Dr. Chis Dede of Havard University (Graduate School of Education). He outlined his work regarding the future of technology and education. I am going to hold off on presenting this until the end of the conference. I want to include it with the views of other presenters but I will give you one hint. For Dr. Dede, the future of technology and education will take the form of Multi-User Virtual Environment Experiential Simulators much like what is seen in on-line multi player video games. I found a web reference that reviewed some of Dr Dedes work and specifically a project he reviewed at the conference called River City.
Sorry for the long blog post. Given the quality of the presentations at the Campus Technology event, it could have been much much longer. I only hope I have accurately reviewed and represented what was a lot of excellent presentations and a very active discussion.