Disqus - Latest Comments for ekunnen

Re: Innovation with a Purpose

ekunnen — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:00:17 -0000

Thanks for posting this Jon. I think this model connects well with the theme of your blog... "Begin with the End in Mind" That is, how will this new technology impact, shape, effect our faculty's teaching and our students' learning.

I do also wonder though, at what point there will be a crossover with institutional and enterprise tools with the "cloud" if you will. We already have some faculty using external tools for teaching, so in some terms, going through this model will be a personal faculty member's process, and not necessarily at the institutional instructional computing department's level.

Re: Learners, Goals & Technology

ekunnen — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:39:12 -0000

Great topic... especially technology tools that are increase and improve LEARNING activities... many tools focus on TEACHING activities or productivity for faculty... not as many are really really useful by students for learning.

Please do post more about your session, as I'll be headed home to make sure I'm back before Halloween Night! :)

Re: Learning Technology Customers

ekunnen — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:53:02 -0000

Jon, this is a good spin on the topic. At our institution, we often use the phrase "student centered" in discussions around the college initiatives, department activities, projects, etc. that we work on.

Clearly, CMS's are marketed to institutions and to faculty members as primary customers to provide a way to do common tasks that already exist, but to do them online. As many CMS's enter into the K12 area, another customer is parents. Yet, we still, at the end of the day, are talking about the primary user being the student, aren't we?

It has been brought up before in some other blogs that we should be teaching and using tools that students will end up seeing in the private sector as they start working. Usually this argument is made for using SharePoint or other more "business" oriented tools rather than traditional CMS's. I'd prefer to view the use of a CMS in teaching and learning to not only take care of the "clerical" types of things related to teaching in a defined semester, course, etc. but perhaps more importantly to provide students with the skills they can use no matter what system they will end up using in the future. In this regard, teaching students how to leverage the use of technology in their learning should be an important factor here. How to better communicate, create, share, collect, embed, and tag their learning experiences so that they are building lifelong technology skills that will enable them to be productive citizens.

So I think your right, that there appears to be some need around tools that enable students to easily take notes (Bb Backpack?), tag resources for research (Bb Scholar?), more effectively communicate (Bb Connect?), more effectively manage what is new or due or past due (Bb NG Dashboards?), and collaborate and communicate with others outside of a course (Bb NG Community System?).

You'll notice in the above paragraph that I made an attempt to connect various Blackboard software to the capabilities that learners really need in the parenthesis. What is still not clear to me is, in fact, your central question in your post. Are these tools there for faculty and the institution? Or are they really there for students to use to manage their learning?

All in all, I see a need for students to be educated on HOW to use technology for learning. They appear to be clear with how to use it to connect with friends on Facebook, access YouTube, etc. But they don't appear to have a set of deliberate *personal* educational tools that help them achieve success in their learning... Perhaps the Web2.0 tools already exist, but there is a lack of motivation or understanding of how or why they would use these tools to manage their learning?

In part, the problem here is the "institution of education" itself. What I mean here is that education is broken down from K-12 and into higher education in time and location based semesters and classrooms. Learning is not viewed as a contiguous process. It's viewed more like a checklist on your way to a degree, rather than a lifelong endeavor. So in a way, we attempt to connect educational elearning tools under this paradigm.

I think we need tools to support this paradigm, for right now, but I'd like to see elearning tools that break away from the bonds of the typical closed, semester-based, educational framework from which we continue to operate from.

Eric

Re: Blackboard & the Innovator’s Dilemma

ekunnen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:50:07 -0000

Jon -

What an outstanding and thoughtful post. You've brought references in that I've not heard of before... so thanks! :)

You prompted me to think more critically at what I think is the "life cycle" of learning from the lens of the faculty AND the student AND the institution AND the world at large.

From an institution perspective, faculty and students will continue to need the "online" version of the classroom for assessments, assignments, grades, communication, content delivery, etc. Some of this is clerical/administrative types of things in managing a classroom, while some of this is the basics of providing anytime/anywhere access to rich media and resources. In large part this exists already with Bb and other CMS's. However, we clearly have a way to go in fully leveraging this technology, since there are still large populations of faculty that do not take advantage of these basic features... while some top-of-the-line faculty are pushing the boundaries of the typical cms into social learning and beyond.

I think You hit the nail on the head here. The next direction of this market should look into the PLE - personal learning environment spaces. I think we still need the traditional "semester-based, content-delivery oriented, course management system", but for sure I see technology needed in the "student-centered learning management system" space. I think Blackboard Backpack was an early start at this notion, but I have learned that Bb is dropping the promotion of this tool. Maybe it's time to bring Blackboard Backpack online instead of a client install tool? One potential idea is an educationally oriented www.37signals.com?

Students need help and the technology to facilitate a better way to manage their time, find out what is important, what they forgot, what is new, etc. (Much of that appears to be coming with the student dashboard in NG). But it goes beyond this... beyond the semester framework. They need to be able to store their learning somewhere, package it, tag it, share it, embed it, locate it in the future - and wrap all of that into a social networking experience.

I think we need the best of both worlds here... we need to keep innovating in the traditional course management system space... while building a student-centered learning management system space.

We should keep talking about these principles together... I feel like we are scratching the surface... and not quite yet... completely out-of-the-box in our thinking! :)

I enjoyed reading your post and it was definitely thought provoking!

- Eric