Lining up guest speakers

I knew from the get-go that I wanted to include 2-3 guest speakers during the semester. I am well-experienced with the ebbs and flows of a course, and around November we will need some new ways of connecting and some new folks to connect with. I feel really good about lining up three folks...they will really add new life and energy to a typically low point in the semester.

I am glad that we have access to a good tool for these synchronous live sessions with guest speakers. We will use Adobe Connect, and we will record the sessions for those folks in class who cannot make the live sessions. I also hope that the guest speakers will participate in a discussion forum for a few days following the live session...all are in agreement, so it should work out well.

The first reading = Tufte

I selected Edward Tufte's essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint for the group's first reading. I did this on purpose because this essay can either (a) resonate with people's feelings and experiences about conventional presentations and the limitations of PowerPoint (e.g., low resolution), or (b) rile folks up because they disagree with Tufte's hard-line or his message style. Regardless, it can be a somewhat emotional reading for folks, and I wanted everyone to get emotional about our work as instructional message designers. I wanted folks to be thinking about how they could prove Tufte wrong, how they could show alternatives to PowerPoint for the presentation of instructional messages, how they could defend/rationalize (using the literature on theory and research) the use of tools like PowerPoint for presentation, and so on.

I think the essay worked as a first reading. Now we will move into readings (i.e., Medina and Mayer) and videos (i.e., the Discovering Psychology videos) that are grounded in research. This will empower the group, and give them the information they need to reevaluate Tufte's message and decide whether or not he is correct...and, if so, what to do about it as instructional message designers.

Soundtrack of Your Life activity

During the first week, folks completed the Soundtrack of Your Life activity. This went over very well. It worked as an alternative to bios, and -- hopefully -- it also achieved two important instructional message design objectives too:

* To remind everyone of the potential of audio -- including music -- as a layer in an instructional message...a layer that enhances the message, makes it richer, more memorable, more engaging.

* That as the designers of instructional messages we need to think beyond convention. We need to think about things differently, allow ourselves to be creative and unique.

I hope that the activity was successful in conveying those messages...I really want this course to not only provide the necessary foundation to be great instructional message designers, but to also free everyone to explore and try new things.

It launched!

Well, the course is live. Not too much activity yet, but that is pretty normal. Folks are at work, so it tends to be more important for me to check in and answer questions during the evening hours.

I am antsy about not having the Culminating Projects posted. I really do need to wait to gather data from the group, but I prefer to have everything posted when the course starts. Although that has the potential of feeling overwhelming, adult learners prefer to have all of the information up-front so they can start planning their schedules accordingly. [This hearkens back to my conversations with Raymond Wlodkowski and my 22-page syllabus!] Anyway, it should all be fine as long as the detailed project descriptions are available during Week 2.

Need to do a front-end analysis

I realized, a bit too late, that I have been making a number of assumptions about the technical skills of the audience as I designed the assignments. I think most of the assignments have reasonable technical requirements (e.g., Word, PowerPoint), so it should be fine. But, for the three Culminating Projects in particular, I was planning on requiring the integration of Web 2.0, podcasting, digital storytelling, and the like. Since this is not a learn-how-to-use-tools course, I need to make sure my expectations of tool proficiency are realistic. So, my plan is to add a technical skill survey (just a couple of questions) to the individual "welcome" emails I will send out to everyone during the first week of the course. This will help me determine how to modify the assignments so that everyone can achieve the learning objectives. I suspect I will be able to modify the projects, if need be, for flexible tool use...allowing each learner to choose from a selection.

Formative evaluation

With the support of a colleague who participated in a formative evaluation, I think I've fixed all major (and a few minor) issues with the course shell and content. But, even now, I just noted a couple of little inconsistencies that weren't caught earlier. Let's hope it is good for launch.

Doing a tools double-take

I was plugging in Web 2.0 tools everywhere, into every assignment. I am still committed to making a go with Twitter, and to asking folks to use Web 2.0 tools creatively in support of the instructional messages they are designing. But, I have just gone through the course, and pulled out the instances of tools-because-they-are-cool. For example, for the In My Life activity, I originally asked folks to post their photos to a group Flickr account I had set up for the course. And in doing so I violated an instructional message design principle related to proximity. The photos need to be where the text is that describes the photo. Duh.

The added realization is that I was creating unnecessary complexity for each assignment by involving external tools...when the same result could be achieved by using the structure and tools provided within eCollege. Crazy.

Choosing books

I always have trouble selecting books. There is never one book that does it all, and I am reluctant to ask students to purchase a ton of books knowing we will only read a chapter here and there. For awhile, I was convinced that I would ask the group to purchase three books: Tufte's Beautiful Evidence, Medina's Brain Rules, and Reynolds' Presentation Zen. I like all three of these books. But, the problem was that I really needed a book that would get at design principles for instructional messages. That left me with two obvious options: Mayer's Multimedia Learning and Lohr's Creating Graphics for Learning and Performance (there are others too, such as Williams' The Non-Designers Design Book...a good one, for sure, but fairly narrow for the context). And, for a let's-get-inspired-by-just-looking-at-the-pages perspective, neither book is very good. Although I like Lohr's book (except the images are a bit too cartoony for my liking), I went with Mayer. It makes sense for a graduate level course because it presents theory and empirical evidence in support of principles we can apply to the design of instructional messages. It is an easy read, although he is SO repetitive (the book could use with a thorough edit...cut it in half). That's OK, I will instruct the group to keep this in mind as they read the book and use their best judgment for scanning, skimming and moving on. Mayer is an important person in our field, and it is absolutely appropriate for them to get to know his work.

After settling on Mayer, I REALLY wanted a visually inspiring book, one that not only presented good content on the instructional message design topic (even in the author didn't use that term), but one that actually put the content into practice with a great book design. Tufte's books all meet this criteria. Presentation Zen does as well (but, the content is thin, and Reynolds has most of the content on his blog). I had been keeping an eye on Nancy Duarte's book -- slide:ology -- for awhile. It was getting great press (Garr Reynolds was really talking it up on his blog, for example), but it wasn't due to release until September. Suddenly, the date changed to early August...and I knew I had to check it out for the course. I'm glad I held off on making the book decision until seeing her book, it was exactly what I was looking for to compliment Mayer. She's great!

I am also happy that I have selected a few readings from Tufte and Medina, and one from Reynolds. I think the group will enjoy the reading. (And, Tufte should do a good job at ruffling some feathers...he's always good at that.)

It keeps crashing!

Because I am a "veteran" of online teaching, I was asked to be one of a handful of faculty piloting the new version of eCollege this fall in preparation for a big roll-out in the spring. Although there are some clear improvements (e.g., how discussion forums are displayed instead of using a pull-down menu, and the cleaner general look-and-feel of the interface), there are some challenges:

* The WYSIWYG interface is unstable. I'll set up a page, think it looks good, come back later and it is a mess.

* There is still no search functionality. This seems so basic that to have yet another major roll-out and not include the ability to search the content of a course is...well, crazy.

* It is constantly crashing on me! Or, it won't be able to load a page, and sends me an error message about trying back again later, or that for my own safety I need to log on again. This is quite maddening because I have to keep logging in, and I'm never sure about the status of my work.

I'm glad to have the new version, but "new" never seems to live up to what I hope for.

Is it all challenging enough?

When I started layout out activities, assignments, and projects, I had about 25 things. Yikes! So much for simplicity and balance. It has been very effortful to get the workload under control. My concern -- one of many, I guess -- is that the learners feel they have read, practiced, and discussed enough in advance of completing a "Culminating Project" (which is a project I assess against a rubric and provide more detailed feedback, as opposed to simply check-off as completed which is what I will do with the Minds-on/Hands-on and React and Respond activities). I am trying to not overwhelm with discussions every week. I am trying to ask for a reasonable amount of reading to be accomplished. And so on. I wonder if I will get it right this time -- the balance between workload, engagement, efficacy-strenthening...

Due dates; work week

I think it can be hard to track multiple due dates within a week. When I think about teaching on-campus, I don't do that to my on-campus students. Assignments and projects are typically due at the beginning of a class meeting...with the expectation that learners will complete everything for the week by that date and time. So, for this course, I am going to try to avoid multiple due dates for products. I won't be able to adhere to this guideline when asking learners to discuss and issue using a discussion protocol, or for peer review activities...but I will try to keep due dates as simple as possible.

Related, I have often tried different weekly schedules in order to help learners protect some of their weekends for family and to rest and rejuvinate. I have two small children, and the weekends are all about them...so I am sensitive to this issue. However, whenever I have played with the schedule this way I have received backlash. Learners implore me to give them the weekend to do the work. So again, for the sake of simplicity, this course will function on a Monday-Sunday schedule. This means that the due dates for weekly work is 11:59pm every Sunday. But, let's be honest, it is only 11:59pm in my hopes that learners will get some sleep...I won't be checking timestamps or anything like that. As long as the work is done by Monday morning (9am MST), all is well (except for those who are then sleep deprived).

Other ways of connecting...what about Twitter?

With the elimination of required weekly discussions, and some collaborative team work, I have concerns about social connection. To try to address this, I have added in a few collaborative activities (for "Hands-on/Minds-on" assignments) and no-penalty peer reviews for Culminating Projects. But, I have been thinking about something more organic, more natural. So, I would like to invited everyone in the class to join me in a Twitter community. I also think it would be fun to include other faculty, and other eLearning students.

Here's my thinking about how it might play out...

One of the IT 5130 students is reading something in the Mayer book and has a question about a term or phrase. She immediately tweets the group, and gets a couple of responses. This allows for a little back-and-forth communication about Mayer, message design, and so on. Another student is working on an assignment and is wondering about embedding music. He tweets the group and gets a response. Another student can't believe what she has just read in Tufte and needs to share. So, she tweets the group and finds someone else who can't believe it either. And so on.

This seems much more natural than logging into eCollege, getting into the course shell, then getting into a discussion forum...and then waiting for someone to respond later (after she or he has already moved on to other work, thoughts, issues).

Also, I have three conferences this fall...and so will be away for about 2 weeks total. I thought it would be fun to tweet everyone from the conferences, let them know what folks are sharing and talking about. A sort of "reporting from the field" experience. I think this could be a good way for us to stay connected.

So, this is my plan. Fingers crossed.

Will they do the reading?

Without required weekly discussions, I am worried that folks won't read. And the readings are really critical to getting this stuff... I am making an effort to require annotations and citations with Culminating Projects, but that isn't necessarily an immediate application of the reading to something. Yet, I don't want to add back in required weekly discussions...I just think it is an overload. I wonder what will happen, and how the learners will react.

Requiring participation in weekly discussions

My thinking about requiring people to participate in weekly threaded discussions has really changed lately. What I really want is for discussion to flow naturally, because people want to connect and share ideas related to what they are reading and experiencing. But, I also know that adult learners have many demands on their time, and when push comes to shove may neglect to pursue these sorts of learning opportunities unless persuaded with requirements and points.

Now, getting back to the desire for things to flow naturally... I decided to pursue this with IT 5130. There will be a few "required" discussion opportunities. But, the other discussion opportunities will be voluntary. To this end, I have set up "Self-select Study Groups" for readings and tools. My hope is that people will choose to contribute to these groups because the connection and sharing is relevant. I am not going to count number of posts or anything like that...and hope that doesn't leave a few folks alone in a forum wanting to discuss and having no colleagues with which to discuss.

To counter this very real possibility, I have added a requirement to the Design Sketches that must be turned in with each Culminating Project. The Design Sketch is a description of the instructional message design decision the learner has made, with a rationale -- based on the readings -- for the decision. OK, so learners will be required to include a certain number of references: a certain number from each of the readings, and then a certain number from the required and optional discussion forums. And, they only way a learner can cite a discussion forum is if she or he participated in the discussion forum by offering at least two ideas, insights, perspectives, or counter-arguments.

So, ultimately I am counting... But, the idea is that people will make their own decisions about participation -- and the value of that participation -- based on perceived relevance and knowing the consequences (a few missed points on Culminating Projects) if they don't participate.