Last week we had a small workshop on how to create videos for your class. There are a variety of technologies available to use, but before you start make sure to know what your objective is in creating a video. We talked about 3 types of videos as:Spontaneous- videos with content that won't be kept more than 1 semester, used for feedback to the class, calling on specific students, or deadlines. They are instantly available to students.Step-by-Steps- screen captures that show a student a process, software, steps to complete a lab, etc. These are instantly available to students.Core Content- "rich" videos that are meant to be used multiple times, or in multiple courses. The production is more intensive, but the quality is better, and more professional. They may take 1-3 weeks to produce, but can include interviews, groups, special graphics and videos.For instant "at home" videos, technologies include Adobe Connect, Blackboard and Camtasia Relay. For more professional videos, faculty can work with the CPCOM studio for support.Finally, we discussed some best practices, like using a case study, or narrative to engage students in a story, and adding 'pop-up' quizzes to be sure students are actively watching the videos.Thanks to Matt Robinson and Peter Van Leusen for some of the great resources we shared:MOOC study - How Video Production Affects Student Engagement: An Empirical Study of MOOC Videos (Guo, Kim & Rubin, 2014) PowerPoint SlidesVideos in Blackboard

Different formats for Web-conferencingDuring last week's TeachT@lk webinar on Web-Conferencing: Engaging Your Students in Real Time, Peter van Leusen, PhD and Amy Pate discussed best practices and "demoed" how to engage students in active learning exercises. We focused on Adobe Connect, as it is available to all ASU faculty for free, and fully supported by UTO.Among other educational applications, web-conferencing allows for:Class discussionsVirtual office hoursScreen/software demonstrationGroup workGuest presentationsSupplementary course materialsLecture RecordingsMini lessons with audio and visualsStudent-created contentAssessmentOverview of Web-Conferecing tools at ASUBelow are some of the resources mentioned during the webinar, along with the slides and recording.  If you have questions, or are interested in trying out web-conferencing for your class, please contact me at amy.pate@asu.edu.Webinar Recording (57 minutes)Webinar SlidesEducause article: 7 Things You Should Know About Video CommunicationASU Adobe Connect Site: Adobe Connect OverviewASU Vidyo Site: Vidyo Desktop ConferencingExamples:ASU’s Vidyo’s Education in Biological Diversity Penn State’s Adobe Connect Use Cases ASU TeachOnline Student Success with Video Chats To Register for future TeachT@lk Webinars: http://utotraining.eventbrite.comAs always, feel free to make comments to this post, and share your experiences! (Also SHARE the blog, and help us get the word out!)

Sarah Dalrymple, PhDOur guest blogger this week is Dr. Sarah Dalrymple. Sarah got her Ph.D. in Population Biology, but is currently a postdoctoral scholar in Biology Education at the University of Tennessee. This summer she will join the SoLS faculty at ASU as an Academic Professional. Her primary interest is in teaching and exploring new ways to make learning more fun and effective. She also works with grad students and faculty to help them improve their teaching and is interested in the factors that determine whether or not instructors adopt evidence-based teaching practices.Clicker systems are an interactive technology used by many instructors in large lecture courses to get immediate feedback on student understanding. When used properly, clickers can increase student engagement and learning in a course. However, instructors have the ability to enhance or impede these effects by the way they deliver and review clicker questions. The following three tips on how to use clickers more effectively are based on educational research and my own personal experiences using clickers in my classes. 1. Let students talk while answering and give specific discussion prompts. Unless you are specifically trying to assess individual student knowledge, you should consider allowing students to talk to one another as they choose their answers. Students learn more from explaining their reasoning to peers than they do by simply choosing the right answer (Smith et al., 2009). In addition, research has shown that the prompt instructors use when delivering the question influences the quality of student discussion (Knight, Wise & Southard, 2013). Rather than just saying "Discuss the question with your neighbor," give a more directed prompt, such as:· Explain to your neighbor the reason the answer you chose is correct.· Discuss the reasons why each of the incorrect answers is wrong.· Explain how you would change the incorrect answers to make them correct.2. Review the right and wrong answers. In addition to providing feedback to instructors about student understanding, clickers can also be used to provide feedback to students. If you simply reveal the right answer and move on, the students who chose the wrong answer may never know why their answer wasn’t correct. Take the time to discuss the reasoning behind correct and incorrect answer choices. One strategy I use is to ask different students to explain to the class why each incorrect answer is wrong. This provides another opportunity for students to teach one another. In my experience, students are very interested in knowing why they got a question wrong, so they are always very attentive during this time and often ask good questions to clarify confusion.3. Know when to re-poll a question. I will often write clicker questions to reveal common misconceptions or errors that I anticipate students will make on exams. Since these questions tend to be difficult, a large number of students often choose the wrong answer (see slide below). The first time this happened to me my initial reaction was disappointment, but I now recognize these moments as rich opportunities for productive discussion and peer instruction. I don’t have a strict cutoff, but if < 50% of the class gets the answer right on the first try, I will give them another chance to answer and encourage them to talk to new people in the class. The volume of student discussion often grows louder during the re-poll and students are more engaged in discussion with one another. The result is usually that a greater number of students answer correctly on the second try. In addition, the follow-up whole class discussion is more productive than if I immediately reveal the right answer without the re-poll.Leave a comment below if you have any tips to add to this list!References and ResourcesASU's Clicker Information Page: https://ucc.asu.edu/clickers/Knight, J. K., S. B. Wise, and K. M. Southard. 2013. Understanding clicker discussions: student reasoning and theimpact of instructional cues. CBE Life Sciences Education 12:645-654.Smith, M. K., W. B. Wood, W. K. Adams, C. Wieman, J. K. Knight, N. Guild, and T. T. Su. 2009. Why peerdiscussion improves student performance on in-class concept questions. Science 323:122-124.

On Tuesday, April 7, we had a webinar on using eportfolios in the classroom.  Below is a summary of some of the key points and resources:ePortfolios are an archive of materials created by students to showcase their skills and knowledge. They are basically a website with text, videos, images, link and files. There are 3 main types of eportfolios:Personal- includes items from an interest or hobbyShowcase- includes information and evidence of skills, often used in interviews to showcase someone's work, or for requesting funds for special projects. Learning- a collection of a students' projects and assignments for a class, used to provide evidence of whether a student met the learning objectives and how they met them. It often includes drafts of assignments to show the process, not just the final product. Students are encouraged to follow a 5 step process to build eportfolios which includes:collecting the dataselecting what to showcasereflecting on the work and how to improvepresenting it to others evaluating the feedback and improving the eportfolio. The BIO594 Adv. Scientific Teaching course was discussed as a case study for eportfolios that were created to highlight a students' experience with teaching. Some best practices from the case included:Giving the students indepth training on how to use the technologyProviding detailed instructions on what is expected, and examplesRequiring students do reflections throughout the process on ways to improve and what they learnedInclude peer reviews so students can learn to give each other constructive feedback, and learn collaborativelyDesign small progress "milestones" to keep students on track There are a number of technologies that work well with eportfolios, including Google Drive, PowerPoint, Wix, Weebly, and Blogger. ASU supports Digication, and the link is: https://asu.digication.com/  Some faculty allow students to choose their favorite, since sharing a public link it available in nearly all the technologies.  "Get Started" Resources:If you would like to try eportfolios, please contact your instructional designer, or amy.pate@asu.edu.Recording of session: https://connect.asu.edu/p38z4525fi8/ Slides: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12594701/eportfolio_040715.pptxHandouts from BIO594 eportfolio project: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12594701/ePortfolio%20Project-2.doc

Our Guest Blogger today is Dr. Erin E. Shortlidge. Erin is a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. Her Ph.D. is in Biology where she studied the ecology and physiology of moss reproductive success. Her current research endeavors are in understanding the ecology of higher education. As an education researcher she is particularly interested in course-based research and in identifying what factors make for effective and impactful learning environments.What is a CURE? Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences National reports such as Vision and Change (AAAS, 2011) and the National Research Council’s BIO2010 have called for systematic shifts in life science education - including giving all undergraduates the chance to do research. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (or CUREs) are an answer to these calls. In a CURE, research is embedded into the life science laboratory course itself, providing all students who enroll in the course the opportunity to do research. The work that undergraduates do in a CURE is different than in a traditional lab or in inquiry activities. The proposed dimensions that define a CURE are that students engage in1: scientific practices discovery-based work where the outcome is unknown broadly relevant or important research collaboration with one another and the instructor the iterative nature of science While there is much diversity in the research topics explored in CUREs, two distinct CURE models have emerged, both revealing student benefits: (1) a local model where faculty members develop and teach a CURE stemming from their own research interests (e.g. 2,3), and (2) a national model where a CURE is developed by an individual faculty member, and then is expanded and taught by a network of faculty (e.g. 4,5). A great way to develop a local CURE is for faculty, instructors, and/or advanced graduate students to identify a way to scale up their own research interests into a lab course. Here the ultimate goal is for the undergraduates to begin to understand the process of science by actually doing science - including experiencing all of the messiness and uncertainty of research- and then learn how to effectively communicate their results. Further, faculty who have developed and taught CUREs report benefits to themselves in that CUREs are a way to bridge some of the often-forced disparities between teaching and research, and that they genuinely enjoy their time in the classroom (Shortlidge et al. 2015, in review). For example, consider Tad Fukami, a Stanford University researcher who turned one of his research projects into a CURE in an introductory biology lab course: He was interested in the ecology of nectar-dwelling microbe communities in Mimulus flowers. Students collected data each week on this system, adding to a large central database, from which they drew upon to ask their own research questions. Three scientific research publications have now resulted in part from the data collected by the students in the course 6-8.For more information on CURES please visit CUREnet (http://curenet.cns.utexas.edu), and check out the referenced articles below. References 1 Auchincloss, L. C. et al. Assessment of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences: A Meeting Report. CBE-Life Sciences Education 13, 29-40, doi:10.1187/cbe.14-01-0004 (2014). 2 Brownell, S. E., Kloser, M. J., Fukami, T. & Shavelson, R. Undergraduate biology lab courses: comparing the impact of traditionally-based "cookbook" and authentic research-based courses on student lab experiences. Journal of College Science Teaching (2012). 3 Rhode Ward, J., Clarke, H. D. & Horton, J. L. Effects of a Research-Infused Botanical Curriculum on Undergraduates’ Content Knowledge, STEM Competencies, and Attitudes toward Plant Sciences. CBE-Life Sciences Education 13, 387-396, doi:10.1187/cbe.13-12-0231 (2014). 4 Lopatto, D. et al. Undergraduate Research: Genomics Education Partnership. Science (New York, NY) 322, 684 (2008). 5 Jordan, T. C. et al. A broadly implementable research course in phage discovery and genomics for first-year undergraduate students. MBio 5, e01051-01013 (2014). 6 Vannette, R. L., Gauthier, M.-P. L. & Fukami, T. Nectar bacteria, but not yeast, weaken a plant-pollinator mutualism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280, 20122601 (2013). 7 Belisle, M., Peay, K. G. & Fukami, T. Flowers as islands: spatial distribution of nectar-inhabiting microfungi among plants of Mimulus aurantiacus, a hummingbird-pollinated shrub. Microb Ecol 63, 711-718 (2012). 8 Peay, K. G., Belisle, M. & Fukami, T. Phylogenetic relatedness predicts priority effects in nectar yeast communities. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, rspb20111230 (2011).

Today's Guest Blogger is Christian Wright a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab in the School of Life Sciences as ASU. He has a Master’s in Education and a Ph.D. in Biology where he studied the interaction between physiological condition, environment, and foraging behavior of Gila monsters. His current research focuses on 1) generating a validated general biology programmatic assessment, 2) exploring potential biases in undergraduate biology classrooms as well as examining mechanisms and interventions that may explain and alleviate said biases, 3) evaluating assessments used by undergraduate biology instructors and by biology education researchers to determine if these measurement tools are indeed measuring what they intend to measure, and 4) exploring how and why instructional strategies differentially impact cohorts of students in undergraduate biology classrooms. He will be starting a position as an Academic Professional in the School of Life Sciences in June, 2015. Vision and Change: A general framework for undergraduate teaching There have been numerous calls to action by national agencies (e.g., National Science Foundation [NSF], American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS]) for curricular reform in undergraduate biology education, with the goal of moving students away from thinking about biology as "silos" of content and towards encouraging students to think about biology in a much more integrative way. The product of many of these discussions is the consensus Vision and Change Report (AAAS, 2011). In this report, a group of 500+ biology faculty, administrators, students, and postdoctoral scholars identified five core biology concepts: 1) evolution, 2) structure and function, 3) information flow, exchange, and storage, 4) pathways and transformations of energy and matter, and 5) systems. The report suggests that these concepts be integrated throughout an undergraduate biology curriculum in order to ensure that all students master these concepts by graduation. This report has been critical in encouraging dialogue and promoting meaningful change in the way undergraduate biology is taught nationally; however, the concepts laid out in Vision and Change were intentionally broad and thus sometimes difficult for departments and faculty members to use to directly transform biology curricula. BioCore Guide: Clarifying the Vision and Change Report Most of the work to clarify the Vision and Change core concepts has been discipline specific, therefore likely too specific for general biology majors. As such, a team of researchers took the recommendations from Vision and Change and generated the BioCore Guide as a framework for what general biology majors should know upon graduating (Brownell et al., 2014). Figure 1The BioCore Guide further articulates the core concepts in Vision and Change into a set of general principles and explicit statements situated into three biological sub-disciplines: molecular/cellular/developmental biology physiology, ecology/evolutionary biology.  The BioCore Guide is currently available for use and a printable document can be found here.. Figure 1 in this blog illustrates the conceptual framework of the BioCore Guide while figure 2 illustrates the organization of the BioCore Guide. The strength of the BioCore Guide is the manner in which it was designed: it is a nationally-validated, grassroots-generated document that incorporates feedback from over 240 biologists and biology educators at a diverse range of institutions in the United States, with ultimately over 90% of responding biology faculty agreeing with the importance and scientific accuracy of the statements in the BioCore Guide (Brownell et al., 2014). As with the Vision and Change Report, the BioCore Guide is meant to be a tool for faculty and departments to use as they continue to transform their undergraduate biology curriculum. Collectively, Vision and Change and the BioCore Guide provide faculty and departments with a nationally-agreed upon framework which they can use to redesign their curriculum. Yet the question remains, how do faculty and departments ensure that their students are mastering these concepts? Figure 2Bio-MAPS: Measuring students conceptual understanding of biology Although establishing the aforementioned core concepts, principles, and statements was a critical first step in improving undergraduate biology education, it is equally important that departments assess students’ mastery of these concepts. To address this need, an NSF-funded, multi-institution collaboration is currently working to develop an assessment that can be used to measure students’ general biology conceptual understanding at multiple time points during their undergraduate career. This tool, called the GenBio-MAPS (Measuring Achievement and Progress in Science) is aligned with the statements and principles in the BioCore Guide and is designed to be implemented at multiple time points as students progress through a biology curriculum. The GenBio-MAPS test has gone through an iterative process of developing the questions, including (1) revising based on student feedback from over 150 think aloud interviews, (2) piloting to over 2500 students nationally, and (3) incorporating expert biologist feedback. The assessment is currently being revised and will be undergoing a final set of interviews and expert validation in summer 2015 followed by administration of the final version of GenBio-MAPS in the fall of 2015. The Bio-MAPS assessment team is looking for 1) courses/institutions to help pilot the test and 2) individuals to provide expert feedback on questions. Please contact Christian Wright at cdwrigh2@asu.edu if interested. References: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action. Washington, DC; 2011. Brownell SE, Freeman S, Wenderoth MP, Crowe AC. BioCore Guide: A tool for interpreting the core concepts of Vision and Change for biology majors. CBE - Life Sciences Education 2014; 13: 200 - 211.  

Today, I'm just sharing an interesting tool that I was introduced to at the "Teaching With Technology Conference" from Maricopa Community Colleges. The excellent presentation and hands on workshop was done by our ASU folks, Celia Coochwytewa, Jinnette Senecal & Steven Crawford from The College of Health Solutions. They gave a demo, and shared a really nice handout "Planning and Preparing for a DIY Presentation" for "scripting" out your video, which is really important to do before recording. They also presented the idea that creating a great video is like telling a story, and the scripting will help professors think through their video.The tool was Adobe Voice, which is a free app available on Ipads and Iphones. I was really pleased at how quickly my table could put together a professional video (about 10-15 minutes), from concept to output. Adobe Voice allows you to narrate images and text to create short videos that can be uploaded to Blackboard or emailed. Here's a sample of what my table quickly put together: Summary of What We Liked VideoSome of the nice features included:wide assortment for images from a gallery, your webcam, or searching through Creative Commons licenses.Easily add music for a backgroundEasy to add voice on each image, and it even told you when you were talking too long!Some of the disadvantages were that it is currently only available on Ipad and Iphones, and you do need to create a free account. Here are some ideas for how to use it in the "classroom":Have students show the process in their labs, by taking photos of each step, and then recording a summary of what happened.Have students create a case study, where there is a verbal description at each stage. Then have the class go through and discuss each case.Students can find an image of a famous scientist and tell what were the key points of their research, or an image of a plant, and describe the history of the use of it. Instructors can create short videos to give additional information on assignmentsInstructors can create a video on the top 5 most difficult questions on the exam.Easily replace in-class presentations with short videos that are reviewed by others in the classFor more information, try these resources:Adobe Voice Website Adobe Voice: Tell Your Story

June 2, we conducted a webinar for TeachT@lk on alternative presentation formats. (Click here for the full recording) The most popular of these is PechaKucha (PK), where students are given 20 slides for 20 seconds per slide for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The slides are auto-forwarded, the emphasis is on very little text, and engaging visuals. There are many versions of this format that can be modified to meet the objectives of your individual courses.The benefits are that students prepare more thoughtful, refined and polished presentations. The format requires students to be creative, focus on key elements, and engage an audience quickly. The challenges include getting students to "buy-in" to this format, by reminding them of the importance of conveying their research to non-scientists, pitch their research to a publisher or a donor. It is also important to give students time to prepare, and faculty are encouraged to do "mid-point" checks to monitor progress.  We shared the following documents to use with the students, to help support their understanding:Handout to help start students thinking about the layoutTimed Template for PowerPointHandout for students to evaluate other presentationsVideo on "How to Develop PK Presentations" Dr. Carolyn Compton shared her experiences in having her BIO302 honor students do a PechaKucha style "Cancer Day" event, and the group shared ideas about using this format as an alternative for:"Book" reportsPoster presentationsTeam reportsWeekly summaries of key points, to be used as a review for final exams.Lab summaries using photos of the lab  PK Presentations can even be combined with term/research papers for more depth, or posted in discussion boards for online courses.Carolyn Compton, PhDASU School of Life Sciences"The hardest part of implementing PechaKucha presentations into my class, was learning how to say it!"- Carolyn Compton, PhDFor more information, please see the links below and contact amy.pate@asu.edu+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ How to Say PechaKucha? Video: http://youtu.be/gdghID66kLsAmy's Slides: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12594701/V2_PKWebinar060215.pptxExamples of PKs: Science: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/presentations/200 Business (sales): http://www.pecha-kucha.org/presentations/53 Social Studies (urban planning): http://www.pecha-kucha.org/presentations/88 Environmentalism: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/presentations/169Activism: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/presentations/195The Art of Good Scientific Presentations: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/stgeorge/artofscientificpresentations/Teaching with PK, The University of Southern Mississippi Speaking Center, http://www.usm.edu/gulfcoast/sites/usm.edu.gulfcoast/files/groups/learning-commons/pdf/teaching_with_pechakucha.pdfImproving Student Presentations Pecha Kucha and Just Plain PowerPoint, Alisa Beyer, http://top.sagepub.com/content/38/2/122.short"Lightning Talk" in University Instruction, Klentzin, Paladino, Johnston &Devine, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/00907321011020798

In our second summer TeachT@lk webinar on Assessment Techniques - Avoid Overload in Grading, Peter van Leusen, PhD and Amy Pate presented strategies for balancing effective and efficient feedback. As a group, we discussed benefits, challenges, and tools for several strategies including student created rubrics, peer feedback, and checklists. Many shared first-hand experiences and examples included using model responses and pre-tests.Below are some of the resources mentioned during the webinar, along with the slides and recording.Webinar Recording (60 minutes)Webinar SlidesBonk, C. J., & Zank, K. (2008). Empowering online learning: 100+ activities for reading, reflecting, displaying, and doing. Jossey-Bass.Faculty Focus - Effective feedback strategies for the online classroomFaculty Focus - Be efficient, not busy: Time Management Strategies for online teachingTo Register for future TeachT@lk Webinars: http://utotraining.eventbrite.comAs always, feel free to make comments to this post, and share your experiences! (Also post a comment below, and SHARE the blog, and help us get the word out!)

Field Trips are a great way to motivate students, get them excited about content and create memories. But often the locations are too expensive, or would be geographically impossible to get to during class times. One option is to create a virtual field trip!Our TeachT@lk Webinar on August 4, focused on how instructors can create virtual "experiences" for students that include location videos, images, interactions with experts in the field and guided discussions between students and their peers about their Dr. Jim Elser's Drone Videoexperiences. We shared 3 experiences by ASU Faculty:Jim Elser's Drone Tours (sample clip)Mike Angilletta's Expert Interviews with Robbie Wilson using Vidyo"Live" synchronous field trip at the ASU Natural History Collection with Liz Makings using Adobe ConnectFinally, we talked about using existing resources like the wildlife webcams, and having students create their own virtual fieldtrips as a final class project showcasing their interests for real and fictional locations. (to see ASU's Digication Example, click here.)Dr.Angilletta's Expert Interview VideoAlthough virtual field trips may not completely replace live field trips, with some planning, they can create similar experiences and enhance learning.Resources:Recording of Webinar: https://connect.asu.edu/p1mubmy2x9j/PowerPoint SlidesAlameda Facility: https://sols.asu.edu/about/asu-natural-history-collections Articles:Focus on Technology: Virtual Field Trips: Going on a Journey, to Learn Without Leaving School, Hani Morgan, a University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi., Published online: 12 May 2015. Revisiting Virtual Field Trips: Perspectives of College Science Instructors, Simon A. Lei, ITT Technical Institute  Experiential learning: Using field trips to see the science of real-world issues. H. Wang,  CIRTL Network. ASU Technologies: Digication Tutorials: https://asu.digication.com/asu_eportfolio_resources/Welcome23/ Vidyo Information: https://uto.asu.edu/vidyo Adobe Connect Information: https://asu.service-now.com/kb_view_customer.do?sysparm_article=KB0010602

We’re currently working on a research project looking at team-based learning, the methodologies used to support this type of learning and the technologies that are put in place to aid collaboration. One of the first stages in this study has been to ask students which technologies they feel have been the most useful for communicating and working with their team. Although the initial results have not been incredibly surprising it has provided us with a starting point from which to ask students why they choose the tools they do and to look at the strengths and weaknesses of them. A total of 48 students were surveyed, with 40 students providing a response to this question.16% of students mentioned software such as Perforce or Hansoft. Due to the nature of the courses that the students are on (Games Design, Business entrepreuneurship) it was expected that version control software and software to support an Agile working methodology would be included.By far the most commented on and used technologies were Facebook (45%) and Google Drive/docs (40%). Students had set up their own groups and shared folders through which to collaborate on documents and communicate with their team. We had predicted that Facebook would be used by many of the students due to comments from teaching staff when setting up this project.The use of Google drive for collaborative work was less expected but pleasing. It showed students were creating truly collaborative documents and understood the need for this type of tool.Skype also featured in the survey, with 25% of students naming it as a useful technology to support communication with many using this to keep dialogue active during the breaks between semesters. Disappointingly there were no responses that indicated students used the VLE to assist or enable collaboration. We now want to investigate if this is a result of students preferring different tools or the teaching staff not promoting or setting up their VLE space for students to use it in this way.This is just a snapshot of our initial findings and we intend to delve deeper into how students choose the tools they use and how they may be influenced by academic staff. We are also keen to see if students feel there are any gaps in provision not fulfilled by the technologies they currently use and whether this is something as a team we can help provide either from within the institution or with guided to support to external resources.

With increasing pressures on HEI’s to accomodate increasing student numbers and enabling wider access to learning, a fully online or blended delivery is becomming a popular means to manage this. With reference to modern web design, we take a look at some considerations for appropriate online learning content. Screen real estate It’s really important to make content that meets the needs of our learners as quickly and efficiently as possible. A recent survey suggests that our current cohort of students exist in a "a world that offers them instant access nearly everywhere to nearly the entirety of human knowledge, with incredible opportunities to connect, create and collaborate" and as such any content we produce must get our learners’ attention as quickly as possible, and hold it for as long as possible. We must make important information available up front, leaving lesser or secondary information until later; such as further down the page, or on secondary pages. We can also omit decorative or non-content elements, such as decorative images, allowing students to focus easily on the content that matters to them the most. Here’s an example of how bookmarking tool Pocket takes article content from a site and re-fromats it without any additional ‘noise’ from the original post. Writing for the web We tend to be less comfortable reading online, so it’s important our writing communicates efficiently. Keep texts short Keeping word count to a minimum is a good way of increasing reading speeds, which tend to be around 25% slower online. Reduce by half, and then half again. The guiding voice Humour and attitude play an important role in information retention. By using our own voice,  we can guide learners through our content in a personal and human way to help develop their understanding of the ideas and concepts we are presenting. Writing in a language the audience understands Avoid use of "eduspeak", acronyms or unfamiliar terms when writing learning content. Learning outcomes or assessment criteria should be clear and easy to understand and may need to be translated from institutional lingo to modern language appropriate to the audience. Scannable content Around 79% of people scan web pages on the first visit and ascertain whether the content is relevant. By designing content that is easy to scan, we make it easier for learners to pick out, analyse and synthesise relevant information. Be concise When writing text, reducing word count by around half is known to increase a user’s ability to scan. You may be able to remove unnecessary words (often adjectives and adverbs) without the text losing meaning. Scannable layout A scannable layout can be achieved using properly formatted content, using elements such as headers, bullets and lists. Headers, given appropriate titles, can aid readability by being informative and acting as a resting place for the eye whilst scanning. Bullets can be used to clump important ideas together, whilst keeping the word count to a minimum. Numbered lists can be used where the number of bullet points becomes excessive, aiding readability and information retention. The online presence for the UK government is a good example of minimal content that is in a language that users understand. Page titles Page titles play an important role in the navigation of online content. Provided they are given an informative title, they explain what will be found of the page. An optimal page title, designed for quick scanning, should include information-carrying terms towards the start, beginning with a word that meets the learner’s immediate needs. Page titles should also be around 40 - 60 characters in length, aiding scanning. Page titles need not be grammatical sentences, and may read more like advertising slogans drawing people to the content and maximising impact. Mobile-friendly content It is important to consider the constraints as well as the affordances of mobile devices to make sure the content we produce is always available to, and consumable by, our learners. Large and unnecessary images are one of the main culprits for a poor mobile reading experience. Due to slower mobile download speeds, it is important that images be information-carrying and of importance to the user, and optimised to allow them to be downloaded as quickly and efficiently as possible. Screen size also affects our reading ability online. Secondary material should be linked to as ‘extended reading’ or omitted altogether. The context of mobile use also means that learners expect content to be instantly available, so ensuring content is concise and scannable means learners can engage at a time and/or place suitable to them. The process of making our content adaptable will benefit  learners using a range of devices; phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, so the benefits outweigh the cost of designing mobile friendly content. If you don’t have a mobile device to hand, the emulation mode available in Google Chrome allows you to view content as you might see it on mobile. Images As mentioned, use of images should be minimised due to download speeds, especially on mobile. Eye tracking studies have shown that images with little or no use are simply ignored by learners; therefore decorative or non-informative images should be omitted from your content. However, learners do want to see images containing important information; a course/module introduction might contain an image that represents the theme and engages the learner in the same way that a Title might. Avatars or profile pictures are also known to positively affect user behaviour online, as they add a human touch that is often missing in online content. This is particularly relevant to fully online courses, who might make use of Forums for posting content. Including meta-data, such as an image description within images posted on the web aids accessibility and means those with slower internet connections or who make use of screen readers get useful information about that image. Video Like images, internet bandwidth must be considered for use of video. Home based/Off campus learners may be relying on mobile internet speeds to access content and whilst they may be able to view a one minute introduction to the course/module, they may not be able to view an hour long lecture recording or interview. Video is a good way of giving the learner a sense of personality and to introduce your voice.  Avoid "talking heads" and opt for showing movement in video, as this adds to the user experience and gives context. A Screencast may be able to explain a concept much better than presenting it in a lecture and allow learners to follow along at their own pace. However, video may be more expensive and time-consuming to produce, compared to other content types, so consider whether another mode of delivery might do the same job. Also, due to the visual nature of video, audio quality is often overlooked, making for a frustrating experience;  spoken word may be more difficult to understand and becomes a problem, particularly for those with impaired hearing or non-native speakers. Consider making use of closed-captioning to make the video more accessible. Audio Audio is a welcome and often overlooked alternative to text content on screen as it provides a separate channel to the visual information on the page. Audio can often supplement commentary or help information, without obscuring any visual elements that the user may be interacting with. Using voice overs, we can give a sense of personality to what might otherwise be monochrome text As well as being an alternative to text, audio may be more favourable than video due to the lower production costs. Staff at Falmouth University can subscribe to this module to find out more about presenting content in Learning Space.

In conversation with the marketing manager for one of the leading suppliers of Educational software the other day, he confirmed what I had suspected but didn’t really appreciate the enormity of, that a large percentage of their learning provider customers still hadn’t rolled their system out across their organisations. Despite one or two departments proving […]

Today, more than ever, organisational leaders must be able to orchestrate winning, innovative partnerships with external parties if they are to get ahead and stay ahead. Leaders must act as influential connectors who can win the minds and trust of those people they potentially have no direct control over - but who are nonetheless paramount to success.

Most people in the field of technical communications would agree that successful technical writing involves a great deal of collaboration: with subject matter experts (SMEs), project managers, high-level reviewers, and, of course, editors, peer reviewers, graphic artists, and other specialists, depending on the size and scope of the project and team. But I’d go even further and claim that technical writing is a social endeavor. Particularly in a medium-to-large organization, the skills you’ll be using the most are communication (especially oral and real-time), negotiation, persuasion, and psychology. And perhaps nowhere are these so-called soft skills more critical than when you’re first introduced to the SMEs you’ll be relying on for the bulk of the information in your content.

You finally managed to get all your subject matter experts (SMEs) together to review your draft, and the first 15 minutes is spent wordsmithing a single sentence on the first page. You still have 10 pages to go, and only 45 minutes left in the meeting. What happened? We’ve all been there. You desperately want technical feedback, but your reviewers keep veering off into editorial concerns. Despite your assurances that the copy edit will deal with these, getting reviewers to focus proves challenging. You may not like it, but the best answer in this situation is to reschedule the review: your draft is NOT ready for their input.

In the last decade, we’ve seen a real shift away from standard instructor-led training (ILT) modules and toward eLearning/online delivery. There are a number of reasons for this shift. First, organizations are less likely to print out training materials due to cost. This means that learners are only following along with a Word document on their computer. Additionally, online training is typically a more interactive and engaging modality. Finally, online training allows organizations more flexibility in scheduling. There’s no need to schedule a trainer or a room, or to coordinate with any other calendars.

I remember when I first started out as a corporate trainer several years ago. One of the first things a fellow trainer showed me was the physical part of being a trainer (exaggerating, making eye contact, and so on). He also helped me with the basic idea of teaching in a classroom and working with the content you’re presenting to your students. This was my first "train-the-trainer" (TTT) session. Because I didn’t have previous classroom experience, I found the information in this TTT session invaluable and was able to use it for several years. But what about experienced trainers or facilitators who are already in the classroom? What’s the best way to present a TTT session to them?

Where phone and Skype remain the gold standard for one-to-one communication (and learning), many of us find value in conference calls, irrespective of the technology (phone, Skype, Webex, Hangouts…) used. Conference calls may seem as unimpressive or mundane as that other piece of paradigm-changing learning technology, the whiteboard - but that’s the point. They are learning technology that is already embedded into the fabric of work, and directly contribute to informal and incidental learning across time and geography. The pedagogical affordances of conference calls include structure, transparency, dialogue, and accountability. Structure "Structured agenda" "Used as a to-do list" "Ensures that I’m focusing on kind of priority one-two-three" "A very good way to stay organized when you have people traveling" Transparency "forces us to be transparent" "If there are cloudy areas, it exposes [them] and moves us forward." Dialogue "anyone can join " "a forum" "open discussion" "conversation is a much more efficient way to work than using email in a lot of cases" Accountability "So you say look: why don’t we get on the phone and talk this through. " "your peers and your colleagues are on the calls" "allows for people to say, by the way here is an issue that I am facing that I haven’t thought about." Photo: Doc Porter Museum of Telephone History,  Houston Texas, USA (Texas.713/flickr.com)

Webinars reproduce the structure and format of the formal training workshop in an online space. The sole positive distinction for participants is that they may now participate from anywhere. However, to ask questions or otherwise contribute requires one to be present at a specific time (synchronously). Recordings of webinars are usually made available, so in theory we may catch up after the event but lose the ability to connect to others… and seldom actually do. If there wasn’t time (or justification) when it happened, that is unlikely to change later. Like the face-to-face workshops they emulate, webinars require us to stop work in order to learn, which we can seldom afford or justify. They are mostly transmissive, as the available tools (Webex, for example) do not facilitate conversation. By default, most facilitators will mute everyone in a conference to avoid an unintelligible cacophony of multiple squawking voices. Despite the existence of a chat feature (a "back channel") that could be used for dialogue, most of us bring online the etiquette of face-to-face events, where chatting during a presentation is frowned upon. Yet, despite such limitations, two affordances of webinars represent a dramatic improvement over other learning technologies. First, they help to reduce the need for mission travel. Second, they allow us to display a slide deck, share a screen (making them a visual medium), or show participants (using their webcams). Where, initially, teams tend to use webinars for one-way knowledge transmission, as they gain experience they may begin to use the same technology for less formal communication, such as rapid feedback and evaluation from the field or between stakeholders who cannot gather in the same place. Photo: Empty (schnaars/flickr.com)

We are both consumers and producers of publications, whether in print or online. Publications are static containers for knowledge from the pre-Internet era. Even if they are now mostly digital, the ways in which we think about them remains tied to the past. Nevertheless, at their best, they provide a useful reference point, baseline, or benchmark to establish a high-quality standard that is easy, cheap and effective to disseminate. In the worst, they take so much time to prepare that they are out of date even before they are ready for circulation, reflect consensus that is so watered-down as to be unusable, and are expensive - especially when printed copies are needed - to produce, disseminate, stock and revise. With respect to the knowledge we consume, some of us may heretically scorn formal guidelines and other publications. Reading as an activity "remains a challenge". Others manage to set aside time to pore over new guidelines and other reference content, journals, or online sources. Yet others cannot justify such time because they prioritize their own knowledge production rather than its consumption. The development of guidelines, training manuals, and other standards- and evidence-based approaches remains an accepted formal process of knowledge development that also embeds many of the benefits of informal learning, at least for its participants. When peers gather to think and work together, to figure out what should be put into the publication-as-container and why, this is often a dynamic learning process. Dialogue as real-time peer review mixes with more formal review, editing, and revision. Serendipity and creativity are not just possible, but more likely in those spaces, especially when there is one or more layer of social interaction. So the challenge for learning strategy is to figure out how to capture not just the knowledge artefact of such a process, but also the community, affective, and other social dimensions that help build trust and relationships, to then keep this knowledge current and put it to work - for both the immediate participants and those learners who, in the past, were mere recipients or readers. Photo: Read the news (Georgie Pauwels/flickr.com)

Even as computer-mediated communication is now embedded into nearly every aspect of life, the sentiment persists that written and therefore distance communication is intrinsically inferior. Here is the very interesting introduction from Andrew Feenberg’s classic article - written in the late 1980s - calling into question the presumption of superiority in the face-to-face encounter: In our culture the face-to-face encounter is the ideal paradigm of the meeting of minds. Communication seems most complete and successful where the person is physically present ‘in’ the message. This physical presence is supposed to be the guarantor of authenticity: you can look your interlocutor in the eye and search for tacit signs of truthfulness or falsehood, where context and tone permit a subtler interpretation of the spoken word. Plato initiated our traditional negative view of the written word. He argued that writing was no more than an imitation of speech, while speech itself was an imitation of thought. Thus writing would be an imitation of an imitation and low indeed in the Platonic hierarchy of being, based on the superiority of the original over the copy. For Plato, writing detaches the message from its author and transforms it into a dead thing, a text. Such a text, however, can cross time (written records) and space (mail), acquire objectivity and permanence, even while losing authenticity (Derrida, 1972a). That we still share Plato’s thinking about writing can be shown in how differently we respond to face-to-face, written, typed and printed forms of communication. These form a continuum, ranging from the most personal to the most public. Feenberg, A. The written world: On the theory and practice of computer conferencing. Mindweave: Communication, computers, and distance education 22-39 (1989). Photo: Marble statue of  the ancient greek philosopher Plato (Source: alienaxioms.com)

Experience is the best teacher, we say. This is a testament to our lack of applicable quality standards for training and its professionalization, our inability to act on what has consequently become the fairly empty mantra of 70-20-10, and the blinders that keep the economics (low-volume, high-cost face-to-face training with no measurable outcomes pays the bills of many humanitarian workers, and per diem feeds many trainees…) of humanitarian education out of the picture. We are still dropping people into the deep end of the pool (i.e., mission) and hoping that they somehow figure out how to swim. We are where the National Basketball Association in the United States was in 1976. However, if the Kermit Washingtons in our space were to call our Pete Newells (i.e., those of us who design, deliver, or manage humanitarian training), what do we have to offer? The corollary to this question is why no one seems to care? How else could an independent impact review of DFID’s five-year £1.2 billion investment in research, evaluation and personnel development conclude that the British agency for international development "does not clearly identify how its investment in learning links to its performance and delivering better impact"… with barely anybody noticing? Let us just use blended learning, we say. Yet the largest meta-analysis and review of online learning studies led by Barbara Means and her colleagues in 2010 found no positive effects associated with blended learning (other than the fact that learners typically do more work in such set-ups, once online and then again face-to-face). Rather, the call for blended learning is a symptom for two ills. First, there is our lingering skepticism about the effectiveness of online learning (of which we make demands in terms of outcomes, efficacy, and results that we almost never make for face-to-face training), magnified by fear of machines taking away our training livelihoods. Second, there is the failure of the prevailing transmissive model of e-learning which, paradoxically, is also responsible for its growing acceptance in the humanitarian sector. We have reproduced the worst kind of face-to-face training in the online space with our click-through PowerPoints that get a multiple-choice quiz tacked on at the end. This is unfair, if only because it only saves the trainer (saved from the drudgery of delivery by a machine) from boredom. So the litany about blended learning is ultimately a failure of imagination: are we really incapable of creating new ways of teaching and learning that model the ways we work in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) humanitarian contexts? We actually dialogue, try, fail, learn and iterate all the time - outside of training. How can humanitarians who share a profoundly creative problem-solving learning culture, who operate on the outer cusp of complexity and chaos… do so poorly when it comes to organizing how we teach and learn? How can organizations and donors that preach accountability and results continue to unquestioningly pour money into training with nothing but a fresh but thin coat of capacity-building paint splashed on? Transmissive learning - whatever the medium - remains the dominant mode of formal learning in the humanitarian context, even though everyone knows patently that such an approach is both ineffective and irrelevant when it comes to teaching and learning the critical thinking skills that are needed to deliver results and, even more crucially, to see around the corner of the next challenge. Such approaches do not foster collaborative leadership and team work, do not provide experience, and do not confront the learner with complexity. In other words, they fail to do anything of relevance to improved preparedness and performance. If you find yourself appalled at the polemical nature of the blanket statements above - that’s great! I believe that the sector should be ripe for such a debate. So please do share the nature of your disagreement and take me to task for getting it all wrong (here is why I don’t have a comments section). If you at least reluctantly acknowledge that there is something worryingly accurate about my observations, let’s talk. Finally, if you find this to be darkly depressing, then check back tomorrow (or subscribe) on this blog when I publish my presentation at the First International Forum on Online Humanitarian training. It is all about new learning and assessment practice that models the complexity and creativity of the work that humanitarians do in order to survive, deliver, and thrive. Painting: Peter Paul Rubens. From 1577 to 1640. Antwerp. Medusa’s head. KHM Vienna.

This is my presentation at the First International Forum on Humanitarian Online Training (IFHOLT) organized by the University of Geneva on 12 June 2015. I describe some early findings from research and practice that aim to go beyond "click-through" e-learning that stops at knowledge transmission. Such transmissive approaches replicate traditional training methods prevalent in the humanitarian context, but are both ineffective and irrelevant when it comes to teaching and learning the critical thinking skills that are needed to operate in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments faced by humanitarian teams. Nor can such approaches foster collaborative leadership and team work. Most people recognize this, but then invoke blended learning as the solution. Is it that - or is it just a cop-out to avoid deeper questioning and enquiry of our models for teaching and learning in the humanitarian (and development) space? If not, what is the alternative? This is what I explore in just under twenty minutes. This presentation was first made as a Pecha Kucha at the University of Geneva’s First International Forum on Online Humanitarian Training (IFHOLT), on 12 June 2015. Its content is based in part on LSi’s first white paper written by Katia Muck with support from Bill Cope to document the learning process and outcomes of Scholar for the humanitarian contest.  Photo: All the way down (Amancay Maahs/flickr.com)